The Analogue Kids #3 – Seaside

“…Well, that was a lovely day wasn’t it?” said Muriel.
“I enjoyed it,” answered Harry. “Although I never realised how absorbent chinos can be.”
“Pale cream was a brave choice for such a rainy day,” she said. “And I don’t suppose your suede shoes have come out of it too well either. You’ll need to stuff those with newspaper when you get home.”
“Newspaper? Do they still print newspapers? I haven’t had one of those in years. They don’t even wrap fish and chips in them anymore do they?”
“No, they don’t. And seaside chips are not quite the same out of a cardboard box are they?”
“They’re not quite the same in the pissing rain either.”
“Oh come on, it was fun. We found a space in the bus shelter didn’t we?”
“Oh, it was a bus shelter was it?” asked Harry. “It smelled like a public toilet.”
“It wasn’t the best, I must admit.”
“I’m not sure which was worse: the smell of urine, Evo-Stick or the woman with the farting dog in the pushchair.” He sniffed his coat. “I can smell it now.”
Muriel wrinkled her nose and laughed quietly. “Alright,” she said, “I’ll admit that the bus shelter was a bit of a low spot, but we had a good time otherwise, didn’t we?”
Harry smiled. “You were particularly impressive on the darts at the fairground.”
“I told you I hadn’t thrown a dart in years,” she said.
“I didn’t even know that it was possible to throw them backwards,” he laughed. “I wonder if that bloke has still got it dangling from the back of his hat.”
“That dart man made me pay for the dart,” she pouted. Harry laughed and Muriel slapped his shoulder. “Yes, well you were no great shakes on the coconut shy,” she said.
“They were nailed down,” he protested. “I hit one right on the button and it never flinched.”
“He lifted it up to prove to you that it wasn’t,” she laughed.
“He turned his back when he did it,” he whined. “Could have been releasing a catch or something.”
“Don’t be so defensive,” she giggled, offering him a seaside humbug. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of, being a bit limp-wristed at your age.”
“Limp-wristed? I am not limp-wristed! I’ve always been above average wrist strength-wise. I’m a bit of a jam jar opening Ninja actually.”
“You couldn’t even open your own tomato sauce sachet,” she laughed. “You threw it on the floor and stamped on it.”
“It was clearly defective.”
“Tell that to the woman who got it splattered all over her dog.”
“I tried. She hit me with an umbrella.”
They both laughed. Muriel rested her head fleetingly on Harry’s shoulder. “I enjoyed The Waltzer,” she said.
“They spin around a lot don’t they? I don’t remember them spinning around so much when I was younger.”
“I think that’s just what they do. Always have. Maybe it’s just that your head spins for a bit longer as you get older.” She glanced at the soft toy that rested on her lap. “And I love my teddy by the way,” she said. “Fancy you being able to win that on the crane machine… and in less than an hour too.”
“They’re fixed as well aren’t they, those machines. Grab the loot fair and square and then, just at the last second, watch it fall out of your grippers – it’s like trying to understand the Universe after an afternoon in the pub.”
“Well I love it anyway,” she said. “It was a good day. It’s lovely to get some fresh sea air in your lungs.”
“I don’t know about my lungs,” said Harry, “but it certainly got inside my vest. I’m sure it blew straight in from the Arctic.”
“You’re such a wuss,” she laughed. “Look at you. How many layers of clothing are you wearing?”
“I don’t like the cold.”
“Really,” she laughed. “I would never have guessed.”
“Can you believe that they were even trying to sell ice cream down there today? The man in the cabin on the prom had a paraffin heater going. His flakes were wilting. You wouldn’t have got your 99 out from under his canopy without it washing away.”
“Oh listen at you. Didn’t you like anything along the front?”
“Whatever happened to the slot machines? Flash your credit card to get a pocketful of tokens and try to win a three metre length of paper tickets. Push yourself up to about fifty metres-worth of tickets and you can exchange them for a packet of Fruit Gums. What’s wrong with using coins and winning coins?”
“Well I don’t suppose anybody has a pocketful of coins to put in the machines these days do they?”
“No they don’t. Even the Prize Bingo is cashless – and what the hell am I meant to do with a penis-shaped toilet roll dispenser? Five wins that was. The seaside used to be all Candy Floss, Mr Whippy in a soggy cone and a pot of winkles with a wooden fork, now it’s venison smash burgers, fifty shades of exotic Italian Gelato and a million ironic uses for a plastic dick. It’s all gentrified tat. Remember when you needed to ‘spend a penny’ in the loo? It cost a pound and you had to do that ‘contactless’ because somebody had nicked the toilet seat.”
“The soap smelled nice though.”
Harry shrugged. “That’s ok then. I think I’d sooner save my pound and not have to wash my hands.”
“You are such a grump,” laughed Muriel. “Did you hate everything?”
“No, I liked the pub.”
“Because it had a fire?”
He nodded. “If I’m honest, yes… And beer.”
“Yes, you didn’t mind that being cold did you?.”
Harry grinned and closed his eyes briefly. “You’re right,” he sighed. “It was a good day – maybe not for Hush Puppies – but I really did enjoy it, thank you, even if I will have to buy a new pair of trousers.”
“Make them darker,” she said. “And maybe get an elasticated waistband. You know how difficult buttons can be when you’re a little bit limp-wristed…”

Making Up For Lost Time: a Soapy Head, a White Rabbit and a Black-hole Paradox

My day began, as all my days begin, in the shower and it was not until after I had dressed that it became in any way different. You see, it was then, as I loaded my various pockets with pens, keys and loose change, that I realised that I had not rinsed the shampoo from
Making Up For Lost Time: a Soapy Head, a White Rabbit and a Black-hole Paradox

This popped up on my ‘On This Day’ link from 2019. It is my most read post over the years.

The Beginner’s A-Z of D.I.Y Subversion (Face to Faux Pas)

FACE The majority of subversives have at least two of these. Most politicians would commit the country to war rather than lose one.

FACT Thing that is known to be true. Don’t worry, you won’t encounter many of these, and those that you do are likely to be Governmental Facts and therefore ‘unverifiable’. Unverifiable facts are also known as Lies – you will encounter many of these. The author Mark Twain quoted Benjamin Disraeli as originating the phrase ‘Lies, damn lies and statistics’ to describe the persuasive power of erroneously employed figures in informing opinion. I would like to propose my own alternative: lies, damn lies and facts. The practicing subversive will have a million ‘facts’ at his disposal, any of which can be used to back up his particular version of the truth. Facts merely have to be believed to be true. The more facts you can cram into an argument, the stronger your case will be, and the greater your chances of conning cash out of someone.

FACULTY An inherent mental or physical power – Don’t worry. If you are intent on following your current path, you will not need (and almost certainly will not have) any of these.

FAIL Be unsuccessful in achieving one’s goal – If your goal is a grandiose one – world domination for example – it is probably best to remember that many before you have shared this simple ambition and, to date, none have achieved it. Some have come close viz. Genghis Khan, Adolf Hitler, The Emperor Ming, but ultimately, they have all met a (thankfully) sticky end. If you are honest, they are not people with whom even you would want to be compared – especially unfavourably. Others have tried to rule the world through rather more subtle means, viz. Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, but we all know that it is also unlikely to end well for them: they will go mad (at least one of them is already half-way there) miscalculate the public mood or (the cardinal sin in the UK) simply get too big for their boots. They will not come to their death beds as ‘Ruler of the World’. Indeed, if history teaches us anything, they may be lucky to own their own underwear¹.
If your ambitions are rather more modest: to seriously annoy a politician; to convince the local bobby that you are actually building a time machine in your garage and not an illicit still; to teach next-door’s big ginger Tom that it is much more fun to shit in his own garden², then you stand a greater chance of success although, if we’re all being honest here, failure remains the far more likely outcome. Learn to embrace failure: it is the subversive’s only true route to contentment.

Unless, of course, it is tax-deductable.
World-wide, cats do not shit in their own gardens – they shit in mine.

FAINT To suddenly become unconscious for a short time – What you will do whenever you find yourself in a sticky situation from which you cannot run away. The longer you can maintain the subterfuge, the greater your chances of escape. Stop immediately if a man in a black suit and a cravat starts measuring you up and pulling out samples of satin linings.

FAIT ACCOMPLI Something that has already happened or been done and cannot be changed – The ill-advised tattoo from the dyslexic tattooist; the fact that the holding cell at the police station has been given your name following one-too-many ill-judged, smart-arse comments about the policemen you considered to be less intellectually acute than yourself¹; general ostracisation, these things were always going to happen. If they haven’t, they will. There is no point in fighting it. All you can do is whine a little – mind you, come to think of it, all you ever do is whine a little.

Despite the fact that they have never been arrested for being caught short in the park on the way home, nor had to spend the night on a concrete bed in their socks and underpants with nothing more than an extremely iffy-looking bucket for company.

FALSE Not real, but made to look or seem real – The number plates on your car, the meter readings you send to the electricity board, the money in your wallet, the stories you tell, the credit you demand, everyhting you claim as true…

FALSEHOOD The act of deceiving; a lie. The inevitable result of you opening your mouth to speak.

FAME The state of being known or recognized – This is not as alluring as it sounds when all the people who know or recognize you are either police constables, social workers or shop-owners who won’t let you in their shops as a consequence. You are unlikely to ever walk the red carpet, unless they’ve just had the stairs done at the Magistrate’s Court.

FANATIC A person who is excessively enthusiastic about something. This might be universal emancipation, freedom of speech, the right (not) to work, or blue Smarties¹. Fanatics wear multiple enamel badges, have multiple misspelled tattoos and grow mushrooms in their socks. Fanaticism is seldom regarded as in any way unusual at Film Award ceremonies, Political Party conferences or anywhere that sells nothing but organic cider and mung bean salad.

Similar to M&Ms, but inferior in every possible way.

FARCE A situation that is very badly organized – See ‘LIFE’ (below)

FAUX PAS Words or actions that are socially unacceptable or impolite – Faux Pas is almost a language to you. You will do little that is socially acceptable – particularly if you have a spouse – and as for impolite, just ask the barman that served you the cloudy pint that time. Social revolution can never be socially acceptable because it has such terrible manners, breaks wind and jumps queues. As a subversive you will commit many faux pas, don’t worry about it too much – at least it means you’re in company.

Casual Conversations

You see, I have worked with the same person for thirty years now. We still speak to one another (which is amazing enough) but we don’t, perhaps, listen as much as we used to, and our conversations do tend to meander along the same old path every day… “What was the name of that bloke
Casual Conversations

This popped up on my ‘On This Day’ notification from 2019 and it made me smile because since I retired, I don’t have this conversation anymore, and I miss it…

Red Squirrel Day

Photo by Siegfried Poepperl on Pexels.com

The main grist of this blog, I am ashamed to admit, has always been me: how I respond to a changing world and the ever multiplying challenges of age. This year has increasingly allowed itself to become entangled in all things medical: doctors, nurses, consultants and obscure medical terminologies have all begun to dominate my existence. Understanding the minute differences between the specialist practitioners of varying ‘ologisms’ is a required skill in itself.

My most recent sojourn in a hospital ward has added a further two unsuccessful procedures to my back catalogue as once again we await a decision on where we should go next. In the UK we do not have groundhogs so, I suppose, it is not possible for me to have a Groundhog Day. Google tells me that the closest thing we have is a red squirrel, so that is where my life is at this moment: Red Squirrel Day – operate, fail, repeat.

Disappointingly I have found a greater portion of my attention is daily being drawn into me. It is frustrating and embarrassing. Age was meant to make me more outward-looking, but illness has sucked me so far into myself that I can actually view the inside of my own trousers without taking them off. Obviously, sleep is what I need, but I have never been a great sleeper and recent nights spent in a hospital ward were far from restful. Lights stayed on, nurses chattered, patients snored and beds were trundled in and out with all the intrusive regularity of newly-throned British Prime Ministers. At 2am you would find greater peace in the middle of Piccadilly Circus which would, without doubt, itself feature far fewer people attempting to extract a phial of blood from you. It is surprising how many people talk in their sleep. In my little ward of eight poorly souls, three of them talked loudly through the mid-night hours – snatches of one-sided conversations, often set on random repeat – and one of them actually sang quite loudly (a selection from Les Miserables if I’m not mistaken, or The Jungle Book if I am).

Morning light is the most welcome of sights through ward windows as it usually means that all efforts to find sleep can be shamelessly sidelined. 6am sees the morning ob’s, 6.30 morning tea and 7am the breakfast trolley. By the time the slow snake of elderly men on the way to morning ablutions has dissipated, half of the ward is asleep again and the other half is talking loudly on the phone. Only those awaiting a change of catheter sit in pallid, contemplative silence whilst everyone else waits for the exquisite agony of Ward Round, when a giant phalanx of clinicians casts shade around the beds: senior consultant, consultant, junior doctors, nurses, clipboards, ipads and an unidentified uniformed person pushing a surgical trolley descend upon the beds one by one, curtains remaining open if the news is good, but closed when it is not. The consultant uses your Christian name (which is written above the bed) but all too clearly has no idea of who you are or why you’re there. Massed bickering erupts when it becomes clear that you (an elderly male) are not called Gladys and are not recovering from a hysterectomy, and the woman with the trolley is sent off to retrieve the correct notes, returning ten minutes later with the news that they’ve amputated the wrong leg.

I came home this morning and my wife has gone to the hairdressers this afternoon – a trip that will swallow up most of the day, a good slice of disposable income and end in inevitable disappointment – so I’ve pottered around, emptying the dishwasher, the washing machine and the biscuit barrel. I have drunk far more coffee than is good for me because… well, because the machine is just sitting there quite frankly and all it requires from me is the push of a button. I’d have tea but all that pouring the boiling water and stirring the teabag is so irksome. I have become some kind of inverse superhero capable of doing almost anything extremely slowly and deliberately. It has just taken me I-dread-to-think-how-long to hang out a batch of laundry one peg at a time. The transition between normal, fit and healthy to doddering old twat has been swift and merciless.

Now I don’t want you to misunderstand me here. I believe that the plan is still for me to return to something approaching full strength in the foreseeable future, as soon as all remedial works have been completed (including tidying site and making good). When the scaffolding has gone and all plumbing and drainage is back in place, I should be good to go. Unless the roof blows off in the meantime.

So, I’m home now, sitting at the kitchen table and the whole point of this little post is to inform you that as my life has settled into what I hope is a temporary slough of despond in which the same old rubbish just keeps coming on round again, my intention is to stop writing about myself week in week out for a while, and instead to write about others now and then. As I have so very few real friends – and as those that I do have will almost certainly not want me writing about them – this will inevitably involve me making some up. I will revisit some old pals – Muriel and Harry, Frankie and Benny, Dinah and Shaw, maybe even spend a little time with the Bearded Man if I can find him a path – and perhaps I will try to make some new ones who might just have something different to say. None of it, I hope, about Red Squirrels…

The Beginner’s A-Z of D.I.Y Subversion (Emergency to Eyesore)

EMERGENCY A sudden, urgent and unexpected occurrence requiring immediate action. Usually the result of a late-night kebab from a take-away that you wouldn’t have gone within thirty feet of without a flame-thrower and an economy-sized spray of industrial-strength DDT when sober.

ENCUMBER To load with debt, to impede, to embarrass. Obviously it is the embarrass bit that is relevant here – particularly if you thought this was a green, phallic salad fruit.

EQUIPMENT Anything kept or provided for a specific purpose. Machine guns, ground-to-air missiles, fast cars, Swiss Army knives etc. may all prove to be beyond your means. Don’t Panic! Equipment does not need to be expensive to be effective. A loaded pea-shooter in the ear can be very disconcerting, particularly in the dark. A tumbler applied to a joining wall can be just as effective as expensive electronic bugs – and you can’t drink out of a bug when you get bored of waiting for something to happen. A certain amount of creativity will be required when gleaning information in this manner, as the conversation you hear will unfailingly be muffled, repetitive and exceedingly boring to all but Alan Bennett. The juice of an onion (readily available at Waitrose I believe) makes perfect invisible ink (although it does make all your correspondence smell of onion) and a house brick is the ideal substitute for expensive skeleton keys.

ESCAPE To get away from confinement or restraint. Technical word for what we practiced subversives call ‘running away’. Escape is the only logical response to all types of danger. Much is made of the Fight or Flight effect of adrenaline, produced by the body’s adrenal glands in response to danger. I suggest you strive to develop a Flight or Fight effect. Learn to respond instantly to your initial instinct and run. Run every time. That way, if for some unfathomable reason you should decide that you do not want to be seen as a pathetic little coward and you take the decision to fight, you will already be too far away to do anything about it.

ESPERANTO A language invented by Dr Zamenhof (c. 1887) to enable people of all nations to converse together. – Also known as ‘shouting’ in English.

EXCREMENT Ordure, dung. Try not to be around when this stuff flies, sticks or hits the fan. Can be used in a number of subversive ways – none of them terribly pleasant – and none of them I can list here on grounds of taste, decency and the fact that if you subsequently go out and try to execute such an action, I may find myself hauled up before the beak for ‘Putting ideas into the heads of the mentally challenged’ or similar. Remember, if you get caught in the act of using ordure in the course of subversive activities¹, you may well find yourself right up to the neck in it.

Being caught in somebody else’s garden, whilst in possession of poo is something that you are unlikely to be able to pass off as a harmless hobby.

EXPLOSIVE Anything likely to explode eg gunpowder. Let’s face it, as an amateur, you are extremely unlikely to come up against anything more explosive than a prawn vindaloo – actually, I’m not certain that there is anything more explosive than a prawn vindaloo. You could try to feed it to your enemies, but honestly, it’s not the sort of thing you can slip into their muesli without them noticing. A bit like an atomic bomb – it’s the fall-out that causes the real trouble.

EYESORE Something ugly to look at. The world is full of such things, every single one of them man-made. Turning beautiful things into eyesores is an inexpensive and effective subversive ploy: try sticking an imitation wart onto the face of the Mona Lisa¹; build a dirty-great coal-fired power station in the middle of our green and pleasant land; attend an EDL meeting. Please remember that an ‘eyesore’ is not the same as a ‘sore eye’, which is what you will get if you forget yourself at the EDL meeting and reprimand the speaker for using racist language.

I say ‘try’ as the French security guards are unlikely to take kindly to it and you might find yourself nose-down on the floor with a knee in the back of your neck quicker than you can say ‘Zut alors!’ Ultimately, you may wind up in a French prison where you will be forced to share a cell with a large number of blue-chinned men wearing striped pullovers and neckerchiefs, all of them missing wives and girlfriends (plurals are intentional – they are French after all.)

EXERCISE.

Translate your subversive Manifesto into Esperanto and see whether anybody either notices or cares.

Moderately OK on a More Consistent Basis

Aware that we will be moving soon, I have been overproducing posts like some kind of hyperactive fence manufacturer. When we get to the new house it will take me some days to set up the office, sort out the internet and install the coffeemaker, so I will need posts in reserve. I no longer
Moderately OK on a More Consistent Basis

Really hoping to be able to return to writing new stuff soon, so probably the last of the ‘On This Day’ posts for a while, before I get back to the old routine. This was from a couple of years ago, just before we moved house and the rot set in..,

A Little Fiction – New Book (Title Unknown) – Introduction (Conversations with a Bearded Man part one)

I was going through some old files on my computer when I found this. It is just titled ‘New Book – Title Unknown’. I thought you might like it… i. The first time I saw him he was peering under the bonnet of a car, pulling at wires and whistling “Blowin’ Free”. “Wishbone Ash,” I
A Little Fiction – New Book (Title Unknown) – Introduction (Conversations with a Bearded Man part one)

For today’s archive trawl I give you this first appearance (in September 2019) of a character that became a firm (for me) favourite character who returned many times over the years.

Frankie & Benny #4 – The Birthday

“It’s your birthday Frankie my friend, so you choose. What should we do today?”“Well now Benjamin, that’s a tricky one. I mean the world is so full of opportunities, isn’t it? We could take a cruise on our private yacht. We could have lunch in our favourite restaurant in Paris, dip our toes in the
Frankie & Benny #4 – The Birthday

Still unable to add anything new from my hospital bed, this little episode popped up on my ‘On This Day’ notice from 2022. Among my favourite characters this episode contains one of my favourite ever lines from them. You know me by now, I think you’ll spot it.

The Middle of Nowhere

This is not a unique situation for me. I have no idea what I am going to write about, but, whatever it is, I feel that I ought to get started, so, well, you know… I normally scrawl notes on various scraps of paper during the course of the day, but today I haven’t had
The Middle of Nowhere

Another hospital bed republication of ‘Classic Material’. Never thought I’d write that sentence…