Conversations with the Bearded Man (10) – The White Light

…There was no dimly lit corridor, no feeling of warmth, no welcoming arms, no smiling friends and strangers. There were none of those things. There was nothingness. Complete and bottomless, utter nothingness. Like the space behind a Barista’s eyes when you ask for a milky tea. No sight, no sound, no sensation… And yet I was able to comprehend this nothingness; to understand the nature of the void of which I had become part. Cast into a world of non-existence, I sensed myself as part of a far greater non-being: somehow able to recognise the gossamer frail grip I held on existence even though I knew that I had no influence over it. Yet if I understood the depths of nothing, if I felt the fear and the thrill of the utter unknown, if I felt anything at all, then I could not be dead. As a child my mother always threatened me with a fate worse than death and I thought, ‘name one’. What could be worse than non-existence? Well, if this was death, then it – at least what I had seen of it so far – was not so bad, although I have to admit, not being dead still felt like much the better option.

The strangest sensation was of not being anywhere: it was not like a Waiting Room or even like the long tiled corridor I had heard people talk about, it was just nowhere: an ethereal Milton Keynes. I was surrounded by a bright white light, but I wasn’t actually there. Was I actually part of it? No, that couldn’t be so – it couldn’t seem so bright to me if I was part of it. And I know that my life hadn’t flashed in front of my eyes. It hadn’t even wandered listlessly by. Unless, of course, it had and it had been so boring that it hadn’t even held my own attention.

I tried to concentrate on the moment. I wanted to know what had brought me here, even if I didn’t know where ‘here’ was. I think that even without any solid recollection I had a pretty firm idea of what I was like: bad diet, too much alcohol, too little exercise – all of the above seemed to fit into my own impression of me, so I guessed that I must be having a heart attack. Or a stroke I suppose. Or perhaps I wasn’t waiting for death at all. What if this was the life that lay ahead of me? Could I be in a coma? What if this is all that I would have – me – and no outside stimuli for the rest of my days: my whole existence the kind of dream you get after too much sauce on your kebab? I could feel my chest tighten at the thought and I decided that, all in all, given the choices available to me, I was prepared to let myself go – and then I thought of Sara…

“…Don’t worry,” said the voice inside my head. “She’ll manage perfectly well without you.” As a hypothesis, I realised that it was almost certainly factual, but I wished that I could have been a little less candid with myself, if I’m honest. “She’ll be totally lost without you,” might have been completely untrue, but it was a sentiment I could have thrown my weight behind, if I actually had any weight to throw. Even in such a state of grace I could not depend on me. “I’m just not ready to die,” was all that I could sense myself saying…
“Actually, I don’t think you are dying,” continued the voice that, contrary to all expectations, seemed to be coming from outside of me. “If it helps, I don’t think you’re having a heart attack at all.”
I was, for some reason of which I was not certain, enraged to hear my instincts so summarily dismissed. “Oh yes,” I could feel bile rising inside of me, “and what makes you so sure?”
“Well, I don’t think they’d just let you die would they? You would feel them, don’t you think? I’m sure that somebody would be punching your chest…” Mentally I tried to assemble a list of all the people that might like to punch me, even under these circumstances, and it was regrettably long. “…Someone would be giving you the kiss of life…” Again, a small, rational portion of my mind tried to assemble a roll of all the possible suspects, but this one was very much shorter. “…At worst, I’m sure there’d be a boy scout of some kind with a pen knife…”
“A boy scout?”
“Well, they’re taught to ‘be prepared’ aren’t they? I’m sure I’ve heard something about them being taught how to cut your chest open and massage your heart. No… someone would be trying to do something wouldn’t they; you’d feel them… rummaging about. The paramedics would be here.” I had my doubts, but I felt it best to keep them to myself. Perhaps a uniformed youth in search of a CPR badge really was my best hope, but I couldn’t help but rail against the injustice of it all.
“I don’t want some snotty adolescent hacking at my chest with a bloody Swiss Army knife!”
“No, I don’t suppose you do. If I’m honest, I can’t help but wonder if anyone is actually that prepared… I wonder if now would be a good time for you to review some alternative scenarios.” The voice, obviously not my own, was calm and gently questioning.
“It’s you, isn’t it?” I said, or thought, I’m not sure. “It’s Lorelei.”
“Yes, it’s me,” he said, sounding ever-so-slightly hurt, like it should have been obvious. It should.
“What are you doing here?” I sensed that if I opened my eyes I would see his face… Could I open my eyes? I decided not to try.
“Well, more to the point,” he said, his voice as soothing as Vaseline on a graze “what are you doing here?”
“Well, I thought I was having a heart attack, but you seem very intent on persuading me otherwise.”
“No not really,” he said. “I completely agree that you thought you were having a heart attack, I just think that that was what brought on the panic attack.”
“Panic attack?”
“Mmm, yes, I think that you’re probably having a panic attack.”
“But I’ve never had a panic attack in my life.”
“No, and that’s probably why you’re panicking.”
“So if I’m not dying, why can I see the white light?”
“I think it’s probably because you’re in the dentist’s chair.”
“Oh God, no. Please tell me that I’m not having some kind of episode at the dentist’s. Please let me be having a proper heart attack – like a man.”
“I’m sorry, I can’t do that.”
“Oh my… you’re not even really there, are you?”
“Well, it depends on what you mean by ‘really there’.”
“I mean really there.”
“Ah. No then, I suppose not. I mean, I’m here now, but when you open your eyes, I won’t be.”
“I don’t want to open my eyes.”
“I think you probably have to…”
“…Am I speaking out aloud here?”
“A bit, yes, I think you are.”
“They won’t believe that I’m rehearsing for a play will they?”
“I think it’s unlikely.”
“What the hell should I do?”
“Do you think you can sit up and rinse?”
“Yes.”
“I’d probably do that then…”

Like Frankie & Benny, I am very attached to these characters, but I thought that their story had probably reached a conclusion when the idea for this little episode popped into my head whilst I was sitting in the dentist’s waiting room…

The Divine Art of Being

I seldom tackle The Big Subjects on this blog: I really don’t feel at all equipped to do so – there is nothing I can add to the discussion – never-the-less, my world is currently in the midst of one of those periods where the man with the scythe is back from vacation and going flat out to impress his employer. Death is surrounding me. My contemporaries are falling off the wheel with the alacrity of a three-legged hamster. Either The Grim Reaper is getting better at his job or we’re forgetting that the whole point of life is to keep him out of it for as long as possible.

Nobody, but nobody, wants to think about dying, and the closer that you get to it, the less you want it on your mind. The inevitability of it is oppressive and the only way to cope with it is to wipe it from your mind. Deal with the day you are in, ignore the day you might not make: it will get along perfectly well without you. Mortality is a concept that can only be fully understood by the immortal. As a mortal, you deal with it by pretending that it does not exist: you create an afterlife, you invent reincarnation, you imagine ghosts… There is a kind of logic to the planet as a media on which we can all leave a mark. We can all leave an echo. Perhaps we do leave some kind of fingerprint after we have gone. The battle is to not let death define you. It would be so easy to spend the closing decades of your life running away from something that is inescapable. We all die. I’m not suggesting that you ignore it, just that you stick your tongue out and tell it that you’re not interested right now…

Personally I would be happy to put it off for as long as possible, but I do know people who have given up everything they enjoy in life in order to prolong it and I’m not sure that I could face what might well begin to feel like eternity without coffee, chocolate and whisky. My loved ones are my life. My grandchildren bring me more joy than I can begin to express. The ability to get around and enjoy life out in the world is one that I treasure. The thrill of seeing spring’s first snowdrop, first butterfly, first nest-building bird is undiminished by age. Who could fail to find the spirits lifted by a field full of spring-legged lambs? Life has to be about life.

So, I try to eat sensibly, I try to drink responsibly, I swim, I go to the gym, I plod through my 10,000 steps a day (unless, of course, it’s too hot, too cold, too wet, too windy or the armchair is too sticky) I embrace life in every way that I can. I avoid politics like the plague (no-one will ever have their opinion changed by a valid argument) and politicians like the plague dogs they unquestionably are. It is my aim to evade death by thinking about it as little as is humanly possible. I can’t deny death, but I can try to refuse it immediate access. I might be surrounded by it, but I will make like Michael Caine in Zulu, and everyone knows that the last thing that Death wants is a Zulu spear up the backside…

You stepped out into nothing, you didn’t fear a fall
You did it with your eyes closed, you didn’t care at all
And when I’m not here like the ending of this play
You can tell them in all righteousness I’m the one that got away… The Divine Art of Being – Lonely Robot (John Mitchell)

Green Manalishi

It is one of those diamond-bright April mornings: T-shirt weather in the Sun, Arctic in the shade. This afternoon the wind is expected to pick up, rain is likely to drift in and turn to hail. Thunderstorms are predicted. This is spring in the UK. However you are dressed when you leave home, you will spend some of the day too hot, some too cold and always you will get wet. No amount of pre-planning will keep you dry.

We live on a little green dot on the map within which England is wet, Wales is wetter, Northern Ireland is wetter still and Scotland is probably the wettest place in the entire world. This whole nation radiates out from London in concentric bands of damp. By the time you reach the Scottish Highlands, the men have all abandoned trousers on the grounds that they are always wet from the knees down, and taken to wearing plaid skirts. (The sporran is nothing more than a vestigial mould growth.)

I, myself, live in a part of the country that appears to function as the nation’s sump. For most of us at this time of year, gardening boils down to washing the duckboards, but the time is coming when everything outside the window turns green – particularly on the inside of the shed. The general rule is, if it isn’t rotting from the root up, it will need cutting back. If it needs cutting back, it will injure you.

Secateurs are the instrumentum diei for spring gardening. You will find them, rusted, at the back of the garden shed in April and, with the regular application of WD40, you will be able to operate them by mid-May, at which time you will be able to remove branches up to the thickness of your thumb (and, for the unwary, your actual thumb.) If you do not actually excise your digit, you will trap it. The fastest growing item in the springtime garden is always the blood-blister… except for the lawn.

This is the time of the year when the front lawn will have grown by the time you have pushed the mower round from the back. Dandelions and daisies lengthen quicker than a schoolboy’s legs (although, unlike schoolboys, if you chop them off they will just grow back at double speed.) You have two choices with a lawn: keep it long and full of weeds, or keep it short and full of mud. In real life, lawn mowers have only two settings: ‘light trim’ and ‘scalp’. ‘Light trim’ achieves nothing except letting the midges out to play, whilst ‘scalp’ lifts the lawn out in giant clods and spits them into your shoe. As most lawns provide a half-inch covering of vegetation for a six inch layer of aggregate, this will be launched through your windows, greenhouse and lower legs. If you want to fill in the resulting ‘craters’ with grass, you will need to fill them first with a blend of finely sifted compost and sand dusted with seed and fertilizer, and water at least twice daily. Alternatively, if you want to fill them with weeds, just turn your back on them for five minutes.

Most importantly, do not worry: in April, moonless, crystal-clear nights can be very dark and when that happens, your garden will look Just as good as everybody else’s…

Now when the day goes to sleep
And the full moon looks
The night is so black that the darkness cooks
Don’t you come creeping around
Making me do things I don’t wanna do… Green Manalishi – Fleetwood Mac (Green)

Re-run Sunday (a short explanation)

I hope you enjoyed the ‘re-runs’ of Frankie & Benny that ended last Sunday and culminated in the new episode ‘Dunking’ on Friday. I will be back to these old chums, of that there is no doubt because, as I have mentioned before, I feel that they are the epitome of everything that this blog is about – and also because I really like their company.

I have had, through the years, a small number of other ‘running stories’ in the Little Fiction thread all of which I revisit from time to time when the muse drops in on me.

The first episode of such a thread was published back in September 2019 and featured a short conversation with a then un-named bearded man. It appeared as ‘A Little Fiction – New Book (Title Unknown) – Introduction’ because that is exactly what it was: something I was fiddling around with in my head and on paper, which I hoped might one day become a book, just as soon as I had managed to entwine his story with something that had a little bit more in the way of narrative thrust. Episodes two and three were written in the same way and it wasn’t until I approached episode four that I realised the elaborate and twisted plot I had manufactured did not actually suit my bearded man at all and I decided to let him simply appear on these pages – unencumbered by extraneous plot – each time a story fell into my head. As I have now decided to run each of his stories, in order, on a Sunday in much the same way as I did for Frankie & Benny, I have re-titled them all in a similar format to make better sense.

A new episode will drop on Friday before the re-runs begin on Sunday and I will, once again, post another new episode at the end of that run. (It is actually already written and, I am ashamed to admit, is probably my favourite – although I will almost certainly disagree with myself by the time we get to it.)

I think that, in the future, Dinah and Shaw, The Meaning of Life crew and perhaps a few random Little Fictions are likely to get a similar treatment; maybe even, if nobody has shot me before then, the Writer’s Circle. Sunday isn’t a ‘standard’ posting day for me – so I feel content they won’t interfere with the normal ooze of life that fills my weekly meanderings – and re-reading these stories always makes me wonder what should come next and gives me the impetus to write new stories for familiar characters. I hope you can forgive me…

A Sudden Realisation

Photo by Fusion Medical Animation on Unsplash

You see, it has only just occurred to me. As I fast approach retirement I was looking back over my last three years of part time employment and I remembered…

…On 4th January 2021 the UK government announced our third national Covid Lockdown in a year. All non-essential shops were to be closed from 6^th of January and the shop I had spent over thirty years of my life working in would not open again. My boss opted for full retirement, while I didn’t really want to simply stop, so agreed to work two days a week for a friend as soon as shops were allowed to re-open. This final Lockdown lasted until mid-July with inter-household mixing banned, football matches played in empty stadiums, night clubs, theatres and music concerts also closed – again. It was a bleak bleak time – the third in little more than a year: many grandparents missed all contact with new-born grandchildren whilst many new-born grandchildren missed the opportunity to see their grandparents – ever.

For those of you lucky enough to be unfamiliar with The Lockdown, it basically involved going nowhere and meeting no-one – including family – for months on end. Initially, we were not allowed even to exercise outside. People died alone and scared; people went mad with loneliness; the world started to fall apart. As ‘outside’ restrictions on exercise eased, the daily walk became a salvation for millions. Greetings were waved across the street – nobody (with the exception of certain politicians) got any closer than that – but at least you began to realise that you were not the last survivors on earth. Despite being the world’s worst pre-Covid runner, I was kept sane by running (or what, to the outside world, might well have appeared to be a protracted drunken stumble) right through the majority of Covid and blogging about it regularly, along with all the other vagaries of lockdown life. I suppose it is the ability of human beings to laugh during crises that enables us to survive. Looking back, there seems so little to laugh about but, at the time, my blogs were definitely wilfully aimed at being funny – maybe it was some kind of delirium. Perhaps we were all going stir-crazy.

Trying to put it all into some perspective now, I think that like everybody else I have probably blanked out great portions of those 18 months of turmoil. I remember the fear of the early days – sterilising all our food, everything tasting vaguely of bleach, avoiding all human contact like the… well, like the plague – but I also remember the weekly full-family Zoom get-togethers and how much I looked forward to them. Otherwise it was mostly reading and binge-watching TV series I think. Whisky and sanitized chocolate…

In April 2021, just over a year from the first restrictions, in the middle of the third and, for everyone growing evermore weary of the whole thing, the most exhausting lockdown, it was announced that whilst many constraints were to remain in place for months to come, non-essential shops would be allowed to re-open with strict mask-wearing and social distancing protocols in place and I embarked on a life of semi-retirement. It seems a weird thing to have been excited by now, but it was a life saver. Three years! It seems so long ago. It seems so recent.

Anyway, this has all just occurred to me because, as I approach full-on retirement, I was thinking about how very much I have enjoyed my last three years in a semi-employed state and especially the people I have spent them with. If you are one of them and you accidentally read this, then you’ll know. If you don’t, I’ll tell you soon enough. Thank you.

And coming next here? Well, I love the blog, so probably more of the same I’m afraid. I’ll get my apologies in early…

Frankie & Benny #11 – Dunking

“…I’m not even sure that women had them when we were young Benny. I think that maybe they came along – some kind of add-on – back in the seventies.”
“It was that Germaine Greer woman I think wasn’t it: empowering female bits and free love and all of that stuff.”
“I’m not sure about free love, my Lou would have been more interested in free biscuits I think.”
“Always liked a bargain, your Lou.”
“She did Benny, she did. And not over-interested in… you know, the old ‘inny and outy’ either, except for special occasions.”
“The way it was back then Frankie, my friend. My Doreen was strictly a birthday and anniversary woman. Fifty years we were married and I never knew the hem of her nightie to go above her knees.”
“Wouldn’t have known an orgasm if it jumped out on her, my Lou.”
“Wouldn’t have wanted one if it was going to make her spill her tea, would she?”
“God no.”
“Very particular about the state of her saucer, your Lou.”
“Always kept her biscuit on the saucer and she hated a soggy biscuit.”
“I suggested that we could read a saucy magazine together once, me and Doreen.”
“Really? What did she say?”
“She said that she was quite happy with her Woman’s Realm thank you very much, and furthermore she very much regarded reading as a solo pastime. I asked her whether she wasn’t curious about the photo’s of naked men and she said not unless they were accompanied by a decent knitting pattern. She said that she’d seen me naked once, after I’d had a bit too much to drink on a weekend in Blackpool, and that was quite enough thank you.”
“Well, to be honest, you did always leave a little bit to be desired, physique-wise, didn’t you?”
“Did I?”
“It was having a desk job I suppose.”
“I didn’t have a desk job, I worked in the same factory as you.”
“But you always looked as though you spent all day sat at a desk.”
“I don’t recall you being any kind of Adonis yourself.”
“I won the body beautiful competition at Pakefield Pontin’s in 1968!”
“There was only you and a twelve year-old with fully-body ringworm in it.”
“Yes, I don’t recall you entering.”
“Doreen said it was common.”
“Common? What did she think she was getting Benny, when she married you?”
“Well, she wanted me to improve myself, didn’t she?”
“…Do you think they were ever really happy with us… the way we were?”
“I don’t think women ever really expected to be happy did they, back then? As long as you brought a wage home each weekend and didn’t make too much of a mess around the house, they were content.”
“It would be sad to think that they were never really happy though.”
“I think that they were happy in their own way, just not necessarily in a way that we would understand. What about you, Francis my old friend, would you say that you’ve had a happy life?”
“Well, I’ve never gone hungry – except an odd time when I’ve come to yours for tea – and I’ve always had a roof over my head. We’ve had a lot of laughs along the way, haven’t we?”
“Well, most of yours seem to have been at my expense.”
“Only when you’re being an arse.”
“Alright, so when, exactly, is that then Frankie?”
“Most of the time Benny.”
“I bloody am not! I… I… You… You do it to me every single time you bugger.”
“You just make it so easy old chum. Now come on, enough talk about whether the girls were happy or not: we both know they’d have let us know if they weren’t, and you, my friend, have been the rock of my life… even when you were being an arse. Now, what biscuits have you got in the tin?”
“Orange Viscount.”
“Orange? Very classy.”
“I thought they’d make a change.”
“They certainly will, and look, I have two caramel Rockies for afters, so let’s get the kettle on eh?”
“Ok. Tea?”
“Of course tea, my friend. What else would we drink with such a fine selection of chocolaty treats? Tea it must be – and don’t be tight with the condensed milk now…”
“So which will you have first?”
“First?”
“The biscuits. Which will you have first?”
“Well now, caramel is very much a dessert wouldn’t you say, and Viscount – with the inclusion of orange – is very much one of your ‘five-a-day’, so I think, on balance, I’ll go for Rocky first and Viscount second.”
“I agree. Besides, it would be wrong to dunk a Viscount, wouldn’t it?”
“Oh yes, definitely no dunker, your Viscount. Dunk the Rocky and then peel back the silver foil on your Viscount when the tea has all gone. No temptation that way.”
“Although I did make a full pot of tea.”
“Have you had a win on the scrathcards again?”
“Oh come on, I boiled the kettle, why not make a full pot?”
“Well, perhaps a second cup after the Viscount.”
“It will have stewed by then. Perhaps we should save the Viscounts for later.”
“We could do that Benny, you’re right, we could do that…”
“But you’re not going to, are you?”
“No Benny, I am not. I am going to dunk it.”
“The Viscount?”
“Yes.”
“In your tea?”
“Yes Benny, I am. And do you know why? I’ll tell you why. I’ve just looked at it Benny, properly looked I mean…”
“And?”
“No ‘U’ on the wrapper my friend. You bought off the market, didn’t you? Look, ‘VISCONT Orange Cream Biscuit’. No ‘U’ you see. You have been conned my dim-witted pal, you have been duped into buying an inferior product. Probably from China I shouldn’t wonder.”
“Maybe they’re mandarin Orange.”
“Oh, very good my friend.”
“Come on, let’s try them together anyway. Are you ready?… What do you think?”
“Well, I think that they lack the subtle piquancy of the legitimate luxury confection. A little skimped on the chocolate, perhaps, but all in all Benny, if they had been here today I think that Doreen and Lou would have found them all together preferable to one of Ms Greer’s orgasms…”
“I’m sure you’re right, old friend, and anyway, you can’t dunk an orgasm can you?”…

Rocky and Viscount are chocolate covered biscuits. Dunking is the act of dipping your biscuit into your tea, long enough to soak some tea, but not long enough for it to become soggy and drop off. When you have fully mastered the art of dunking, you can rightfully call yourself British…

Losing Things

I’m not a great loser of things – the will to live possibly, during an interminably long plane journey – but items, other than chocolate, held in my care are generally secure. I have particular places to put things and I always put them there. Those ‘things’, being inanimate, remain there – unless my wife or grandchildren are involved – until I pick them up. Of course, there is a price to pay. I am hyper-aware of everything I should have about my person at all times. Whatever I have to put down, and wherever I have to put it, imprints on my brain like a fresh-out-of-the-oven treacle tart on my tongue. Everything remains unmoved, everything and its whereabouts remains logged until I decide to pick it up, or until I sleep when, like all men of my age, my memory undergoes some kind of malevolent deep-clean, whereafter I forget not only where I left things, but that I actually ever had them. Some nerdy little blighter sneaks into my head with a board eraser overnight and rubs everything off the blackboard:
“Where did you leave the car keys?”
“Did I have them?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I will have put them where I always put them.”
“Which is…?”
“On the table near the door.”
“Which table? We haven’t had a table near the door for years.”
“Oh dear…”
If I never slept, I’d never lose a thing… except, perhaps, for sunglasses.

Sunglasses are top of my ‘go to’ list of things to lose. Wherever I go, I take at least two pairs in the certain knowledge that I will come back with only one – and those will not be my ‘favourites’. I was told that I have to wear sunglasses to protect my eyes, but unless I am in bright sunshine, they render me virtually blind. Consequently I am always taking them off and leaving them somewhere…

My grandson can lose anything, anywhere. Socks, pants, books, bags… whatever he has taken, he will come home without it. In the winter, his ability to misplace hats, gloves, scarves and coats is unequalled in the Western World. The uncomprehending look on his face when he is asked, ‘Where were you when you last had it?” has to be seen to be believed. Nor is it that he doesn’t understand the value of things – he knows that coats do not grow on trees and his contrition is real. He has the disturbing habit of completely accepting his own culpability and has a simple answer to the problem: “I lost the coat, so I’ll just be cold.” A nine year old does not understand that adult sensibilities cannot accept that solution, however well-intentioned – especially with the parents of multi-tog’d classmates looking on from the school gates. As a grown-up you must suck it up, buy a new one and try to devise a method of keeping it on his back that does not involve a hammer and nails.

His mum, I need no reminding, was just the same: if it was lose-able, she would lose it; if it was breakable, she would break it, and if it was neither, she would trip over it and injure herself. Her distress was always genuine and I spent most of her childhood regretting the fact that I even mentioned it.

These days, most of what happens in my life receives some kind of a mention on these pages, but I am not a reporter and the stories from my life are not nearly interesting enough to bear unadorned recollection (as Spike Milligan said of his wartime memoirs, I jazz them up a bit). Most of what happens to me these days is decidedly on the humdrum side of mundane. Given time I can, generally, laugh about it all and sometimes, when I’m in the mood, I can turn it into some kind of a tale. Providing I don’t lose my thread…

I’m losing things
That’s what old-fashioned love brings
Lost the key to the house
The feeling in my mouth
I’m losing things… Losing Things – The Beautiful South (Rotheray/Heaton)

This Garden

In our little, secluded back garden we have three little patio areas, a shed and a greenhouse that, since we moved it, is in permanent shade. We have a dining set, which we don’t use because it is in a position that makes it too hot most of the time. It is in that position because it was swapped with a settee and chairs which were in the shade whenever we wanted to use them. We also have a smaller table and two chairs that we do not use because they are now in the permanent shadow of the pagoda that we built over them, and a fire pit which, to my knowledge, has never had anything more firey than rainwater in it – hence the bottom has rusted out. Where on earth am I going to put the new Bubble Chair that my wife has just ordered? When it has spent the summer, unused in any one of the many unsuitable positions around the garden, where will we store it over winter? It can’t go in the shed; it will not fit behind the once-used Lockdown patio heater, and I can’t put it into the garage because that is full of all the stuff I had to move when the shed sprung a leak. My wife says that she is going to buy a cover for the seat. She doesn’t say where she’s going to keep it…

The new chair, I am told, will seat two and so, will not fit under the pergola and, if it goes on the patio near the back door, not only will it be in the shade all the time, it will stop us getting in and out, so it will have to go where the over-heated dining set currently is. Perhaps the table could go under the unused gazebo (if I can get it out of the packaging) when, as all the lawn will then be covered up, my grandson can go and play football… well, back at his own house I suppose. Once they’ve moved the trampoline…

Was a time when this garden had a lawn, some plants and a fold-away deckchair that you moved around with the sun. Modern living dictates that we really should spend more time outside, but unfortunately old-fashioned weather tells us that we cannot. A day off work, by whatever name, is still as wet. You end up going in and out more often than a toddler’s bogey finger. In the UK gardens are made for looking at through the window. They are for staring at rather than sitting in or, heaven forbid, eating in which, in this country, inevitably means eating half raw/half cremated barbecued chicken which, given the weather, will be stone cold within milliseconds of being lifted from the charcoal: the steady drizzle will have washed away any vestiges of sauce and your salad will be bobbing on the waves. Wherever you find a place to sit, it will be wet – and always in the wrong place…

Blood, sweat and tears really don’t matter
Just the things that you do in this garden… This Garden – The Levellers

Frankie & Benny #10 – Anniversary

“…Mostly I remember the rain… and the smell.”
“Not my fault. Who the hell would let their dog do that right outside a church?”
“You could have wiped it off before you came in.”
“There were time pressures if you remember Frankie. We were running late on account of you not being able to locate your favourite socks.”
“Because you were wearing them!”
“Well, I’d washed them hadn’t I? After all, you’d been sick on mine.”
“Oh Benny, get over it old pal. It was sixty years ago. They were nice socks, I admit, but really mine were better: all wool, no darning. You got the better deal. We were young, it was our stag night and the waiter didn’t make as much fuss as you.”
“No, but to be fair, the people who were eating at the table did… We never did pay for that meal did we?”
“Well no, Benny, we did not. It was clearly faulty.”
“The chef didn’t think so. Half a mile he chased us waving that bloody cleaver around.”
“I don’t know why he took it so personally.”
“You threw up on his dog…”
“Ah yes.”
“… And then you said that if he was going to put Chihuahua on the menu, he should at least have the decency to peel it first.”
“It was a strange kind of evening altogether, wasn’t it: just the two of us out together on a joint stag night.”
“Both getting married in the morning and no friends to join us.”
“All away on National Service weren’t they.”
“Or at the mercy of the Prison Service… At least we both had our Best Man there.”
“Yes, and to be honest it was all a bit rushed wasn’t it, on account of your Doreen’s ‘condition’.”
“And the fact that Lou’s dad had threatened to disembowel you if you didn’t do the right thing by her.”
“How the hell did we both manage to get our girlfriends pregnant at the same time Benny?”
“Because you, Frankie, bought the condoms from an army surplus stall on the market.”
“I always thought that military products were super-efficient.”
“I think, my friend, that those particular ‘products’ probably became surplus during the Napoleonic Wars. I swear the one you gave me was hand-stitched.”
“Ah well, it didn’t turn out too bad did it old chum? In the end it was ok… How long have we been doing this now?”
“Taking the flowers to the crem’?”
“Ay, the flowers.”
“Well, Lou died the year before Doreen and we started taking the flowers on our anniversary just after Doreen…”
“Daffodils as ever.”
“Yes, little bunches of sunshine Frankie, little bunches of sunshine.”
“Classy… and all that the petrol station has.”
“Other than pasties.”
“Oh yes, they do a decent pasty, don’t they.”
“And Murray Mints.”
“Murray Mints, Murray Mints…”
“…Too good to hurry mints.”
“Rock-hard shite. Do you remember when we first met the girls Benny?”
“I do, my friend, I do. At the NAAFI.”
“We bought them tea and rock cakes.”
“Correction, I bought them tea and rock cakes. You said that you’d lost your wallet in hand-to-hand fighting.”
“It was when the cigarette ration came in.”
“We asked them out there and then and they said ‘Yes’.”
“Providing we bought the Poppets in the interval.”
“Oh, that first date, what a night it was. ‘North by Northwest’ at the Gaumont, hake and six penn’orth to share on the walk home and a quick grapple in the graveyard before dropping them off.”
“I learned everything I ever knew about bras in that cemetery…”
“There were more courting couples than corpses as I remember.”
“Lots of stiffs.”
“Francis Collins! You would not speak like that if your Lou was still around.”
“No, and I wouldn’t be sitting on a bus with you, going to visit her grave would I?”
“Do you think we’d still be… you know… if the girls were still alive?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, would we still be able to perform?”
“I can still sing a bit.”
“I mean perform in bed.”
“Oh no, I never sing in bed.”
“Oh very funny. You know what I mean. Would we still be able to rise to the occasion?”
“Well, strangely, I was all ready to go when I woke up this very morning.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Scared me half to death if I’m honest. I thought it was rigor mortis. Anyway, did we decide in the end, you know, how long we’ve been doing this?”
“This will be the tenth time we’ve done it.”
“Ten years. Ten years of just you and me. Ten years of dreadful coffee, still frozen chips and gala pie for Sunday lunch. The kind of whisky that should only be sold from the pumps at petrol stations… Do you ever think about marrying again?”
“Me? I never really thought about it the first time. It was just meant to be. I don’t think that lightning strikes twice.”
“Oh it does. Surely you remember Roddie Frazier, he was almost permanently charred.”
“Oh yes, Lightning Rod, whatever happened to him?”
“He emigrated to Australia. Thought that he would make it big in opal mining.”
“Lightning Ridge?”
“Yup, he thought that he was somehow immune after all the times he’d been struck over here.”
“And he wasn’t?”
“We’ll never know. He choked on a barbecued shrimp the day he arrived.”
“Can’t help the digestion can it, being upside down all the time.”
“I suppose not, no…”
“Excuse me for asking, but are you aware, Francis, that you have a full ball of cotton wool wedged in your ear?”
“Indeed I am my friend.”
“Why?”
“Wax Benny, I have wax in my ear so I can’t hear a thing.”
“The cotton wool can’t help.”
“The doctor told me to put olive oil in.”
“Olive oil? Do you have olive oil?”
“No, which is why I used the next best thing: lard.”
“Lard? You put lard in your ear? So why do you need the cotton wool?”
“Are you aware of how hot it is in there Benny? After a few minutes I had liquid pig running down my face. I smelled like pork crackling.”
“So, is it working?”
“Pardon?”
“I said is it working?”
“I’m sorry, I can’t hear you. I’ve got an earful of rendered Saddleback and cotton wadding.”
“Surely the other one is still functional.”
“Oh yes, the other one is indeed working, I just find that it’s usually pointing in the wrong direction somehow…”
“You always were good at turning a deaf ‘un. What about you Frankie, have you ever thought about jumping the broomstick again?”
“With these knees? I couldn’t jump a matchstick. No, old friend, it’s the single life for me. I’m starting to appreciate your dreadful coffee, ketchup sandwiches for breakfast and the kind of whisky you can clean coins in. Come on, let’s cheer up, we’re almost there. We’ll lay the flowers, pay our respects and then we’ll raise a glass to what we have left.”
“Love conquers, old chum, but friendship endures.”
“As does heartburn.”
“And a decent pair of trolleys.”
“Oh yes, always a decent pair of trolleys…”

First Published 09.02.24

It Leads to This

…Religious Education: yet another school subject on which I had the kind of fragile grip that meant that my tutor felt obliged to summarily rip the leather-luk patches from the elbows of my school blazer as a sign of his disdain. I remember little about the Ten Commandments other than the order in which they were delivered (with murder at six) always seemed a little open to question as far as I was concerned. Anyway, I couldn’t help but wonder what Moses would come down from the mountain with today, in order to give him any chance of maintaining moral compliance amongst his over-entitled people…

Thou shalt have no other Gods before me… although I do realise that my absence from Insta means that, in reality, I might have to wait my turn behind Selena Gomez, Cristiano Ronaldo and some guy sneezing into a trombone. As I am all-knowing, I realise that pretty soon people are going to start thinking that there are more important things in life – particularly on a sunny Sunday afternoon – and may even start to wonder why their God is more important than anybody else’s. Lord knows, they may even stop killing one another for a few minutes while they think it through.
Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image… of anybody else. Many of you will strive for simplicity in church buildings, but it would seem that representations of God being all powerful and Jesus being impossibly handsome are quite acceptable. Interior design concepts are of paramount importance to the kind of people the church hopes to attract these days and comfort has become a prerequisite in order to put bums on pews, except in the case of church heating systems which remain determinedly utilitarian.
Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain… nor use it to justify lying, stealing, bullying or terrorising. Just to make it clear here, Evangelical TV Preachers and Irish Nuns are not exempt.
Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy… unless if it clashes with the Sales, a big sporting event, or a distant cousin’s fortieth birthday party, in which case you might need to pray twice as hard the following week.
Honour thy father and thy mother… particularly if they are seeing you through University. Hopefully they will have the common sense to shuffle off the perch whilst still leaving enough in the bank to provide the deposit for your first house. It may be permissible to not honour them, if all they did was to provide you with a decent upbringing and everything they could afford whilst you were growing up, and if they failed to provide for you during your third divorce and subsequent arrest for cocaine dealing.
Thou shalt not kill… unless it is politically expedient to do so.
Thou shalt not commit adultery… unless you are married.
Thou shalt not steal… unless somebody else has something that you badly want. It is not right that they can afford it and you cannot. Portability is the key to effective theft. If it is a house you desire, taking it without anybody noticing is likely to be very tricky, but if it fits neatly into your pocket it can barely be classed as theft anyway. Theft is nothing more or less than wealth distribution and everyone agrees with that, right? If you do not, you are probably a Devil worshipper.
Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour… unless it is possible to do it anonymously. If the police get involved, pretend that you are one of forty illegal immigrants living in his loft. Speak a language that nobody understands. Draw pictures to explain how you spilled the petrol.
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, wife, slaves, animals or anything else he/she owns… Especially if she looks like my neighbour’s wife. (It is likely that she is miffed at coming behind the house in the list of things thou must not covet.) Their house is a dump, their car is a wreck and their dog has only three legs. I do not covet anything they own… which must make me very Godly, right?

I hope it goes without saying that this is not intended to – nor should – offend the many amongst you with a true and honestly held faith, which I respect implicitly.

So it leads to this
How could we get it so wrong?
For all this time, for all this progress
For all this time, for all this progress… It Leads to This – The Pineapple Thief (Soord/Harrison)