Making Use of a Bedpan*

I am fascinated by words. They have been a lifelong passion for me. They can be manoeuvred and moulded, used in ways for which they were not necessarily intended. It is impossible to write without them. The best words of all are those that make people smile. Mostly they are ‘fruity’ words, that require moistened lips and ample saliva, but they can be what my grandma used to call ‘saucy’ words, mispronunciations or even just plain old sound-alikes: so many words have the potential to be funny.

Graham Chapman told a story in his Liar’s Autobiography of a time when he was simultaneously writing multiple sit-coms, one of which was Doctor in the House (co-written with John Cleese). Often they would be short of ideas, but they realised that the word ‘bedpan’ always got a laugh, so they used it ad lib in place of actual jokes. It is a particularly British trait to snigger at words that we believe to be slightly ‘smutty’. No English man can listen to an American talking about Fanny Packs without stifling a giggle simply because, over here, fanny is a colloquialism for a very slightly adjacent lady-area, and whilst we know perfectly well what you mean, you just said ‘fanny’ in front of your grandma for goodness sake!

There are ‘rude’ words that can be legitimately used in other contexts (try ‘ejaculate’) that are never-the-less almost certain to illicit a smirk from grown men who really should know better. Never forget, most men will chuckle over perfectly normal words if they happen to catch them off-guard. Try dropping a stray ‘breast**’ or ‘vagina’ into a conversation that is half-heard by a middle-aged man and his urge to stifle a laugh will almost kill him.

The best words, without doubt are the fruity words that are in no way ‘rude’ but sound as if they ought to be. ‘Flange’ will always cause a most unfortunate intake of coffee into the lungs, as will ‘littoral’. In fact almost anything that could feature in a rhyming dictionary against any part of the female ‘down there’ paraphernalia will always cause stifled laughter in the male. It explains why male doctors always smile slightly when telling female patients they have ‘acute angina’.

Which brings me to the Queen of all comedy words: a word that it is quite literally impossible to say without smiling (try it). ‘Moist’ can be used in a million ways but, written down, it always seems ‘naughty’; although it often has no alternative, it always sounds as if it has been chosen for effect and it is impossible to say without actually moistening your lips. It is a full, round and juicy word that will brighten any sentence and one that it is almost impossible to take seriously: compare the effect of being told you have a ‘seeping valve’ with that of ‘moist plumbing’.

The joy of writing is always in finding the right word, rather than the correct one. And that always makes me smile…

*I was trying to find a ‘non-funny’ synonym for ‘bedpan’ and I tried ‘commode’, ‘potty’ and ‘receptacle’ for size, before I stumbled upon ‘thunder mug’ and decided not to bother.
**The average British male has more words for ‘breasts’ than Eskimos have for snow.

A Deficit of Calories – Dinah & Shaw (14)

Dinah was a little ashamed to admit that money was no longer a concern for her, not because she had any, but because she had grown used to having none. It had become nothing more than normal and although her middle England, middle-class upbringing meant that she always fought to pay her way she had grown accustomed to the fact that she couldn’t always do so – at least without slipping into the kind of time-scale that could accommodate the death of an entire galaxy. Being with Shaw, she had become resigned to things being the way they were, just because that was the way they were. It was the way that things went with Shaw – she always knew that something would turn up before disaster knocked. Or at least before it knocked too loudly. She billed clients for their services whenever she could: some of them paid and some of them threatened to sue, and she went through Shaw’s pockets whenever the opportunity presented itself in search of long-forgotten dog-eared cheques and any manner of tender that, in any way, could be described as legal. At times she felt as though she was single-handedly keeping their heads above water, but she had learned that there was nothing to gain from trying to make Shaw face up to reality, to confront issues of which he was blithely unaware. He was even more annoying when he tried to put things right. It was a tacit agreement: she worried about paying the bills and he worried about… well, nothing really.

To be fair, he had buckled down in some respects recently and had started to take on what Dinah referred to as ‘proper cases’: investigations requested – and paid for – by people who had found their agency on Facebook without encountering the slanderous truths expressed by some of their ex-clients, but he still had a tendency to wander off – distracted by a paradox of which only he was aware – to solve instead a conundrum that nobody else knew existed. She would have been far happier if he could have – even just once in a while – managed to solve the case he had been asked to solve by the person who was willing and able to pay them for results, but loathe that she was to admit it, she was happy – even the way things were. She wouldn’t have changed anything much… well, she probably would have changed everything other than the strange, ramshackle, absent-minded stick of a man she had somehow hitched her cart to. He maddened her and gladdened her by equal measure, and somehow, when she was at her lowest ebb, he always managed to come up with the goods. Seldom the right goods, but a girl can’t have everything…

…He wandered into the office as she was half-way through putting her coat on to leave for the evening. He was examining a stick of celery as though he had never seen one before. “I’ve been thinking,” he said.
Dinah groaned inwardly and slumped down into her chair, forgetting the caster that Shaw had assured her he would mend, pirouetting like the plastic ballet dancer in a child’s jewellery case behind the desk. This was never a good sign. Shaw’s ideas seldom took heed of consequence. She steadied herself, somewhat lopsidedly, against the desk and looked up at what the door proudly declared as her ‘parnter’. “Go on,” she said.
“Sorry?”
“You said you were thinking.”
“Yes, I was,” he affirmed proudly.
“And?”
Shaw looked at once bemused and alarmed. Nothing unusual there. Even after the time he managed to accidentally shave off both his eyebrows he still managed to look perpetually shocked. “I’m sorry, I… what do you mean ‘And?’”
“You said you were thinking,” said Dinah. Shaw nodded. “So what about?”
“About?” Dinah’s turn to nod. “Well, nothing really, I was just thinking. At least I don’t think it was about anything. I forget…” He returned his attention back to the celery. “Do you know, you use up more calories in eating celery than it contains. The more you eat, the thinner you get.”
Dinah stood and pulled it from his hand. “Then I don’t think it’s a good idea for you, is it? If you get any thinner, you’ll disappear. Why can’t you be like normal men and eat pies and chips and chocolate?”
Shaw pouted. He would have stamped his foot if his shoes had been up to it. “The woman downstairs gave me that!” he said.
“What woman downstairs?”
“She said she was looking for ‘Shaw and Parnter’, said she had a job for us.”
“And she gave you celery?”
“Not straight away.”
“After you accepted the case I hope.”
Shaw had the good grace to look decidedly sheepish. “I told her we’d think about it.”
“Well,” said Dinah, “We’ve thought about it. We’ll accept it… What is it?”
“I’ve no idea. She never said.”
“So how were we going to think about it?”
“Good point,” conceded Shaw. “Could we ring and ask her?”
“Yes!” Dinah clutched her phone. “What’s the number?”
“Ah.”
“You did get the number, didn’t you Shaw?”
“What sort of a question is that to ask of a fully grown businessman?”
“You didn’t get the number, did you?”
Shaw shook his head apologetically. “I got distracted by the celery,” he said. “She had bags full of it.”
“Why would you have bags full of celery?”
“That’s what I asked her.”
“And?”
“She didn’t say. I expect she was going to make soup. I expect she havered when Raj asked her what she wanted. You know what it’s like if you go into Raj’s without knowing exactly what you want.”
“She got the celery from Raj?”
Shaw nodded. “I expect she went in for an onion…”
Dinah rushed towards the door, grabbing her coat from the chair which, exhausted with its attempts to remain upright, collapsed and died on the office floor. “Come on,” she shouted. “Quickly!”
Shaw looked over his shoulder as if expecting to find that Dinah was actually addressing somebody behind him. “Me?” he asked as Dinah fled for the stairs.
“Is there anybody else?”
Shaw thought it wise to check one last time, but he was definitely alone, so reluctantly he started to follow Dinah out into the street. This was the trouble with Dinah, he thought, all action and no time to fully think things through. “Where are we going anyway?” he asked, when he eventually caught her, using up what little remained of his breath following his ten yard sprint.
“Raj’s,” she said. “He’ll know who she is. He’ll know how to get in touch with her. We need this case Shaw – whatever it is. We need to pay the rent , we need to pay the electricity and you need to eat something that doesn’t actually make you thinner that you already are.”
“But…” he ventured as Dinah tumbled through the jangling greengrocer’s door ahead of him.

“The lady with the celery? Oh yes, I remember her quite clearly,” said Raj. “Unusual for somebody to buy so much of it. Do you know, it uses up more calories eating celery than it contains?”
“Yes. My learned friend here as explained that to me. Now Raj, think carefully, who is she and where does she live?”
“Not a clue,” said Raj. “Never seen her before. She came in here looking for you, so I told her that kind of information doesn’t come for free.”
“You made her buy celery?”
“I did her a deal. To be honest, it was wilting a bit… Didn’t she come to you?”
“She did, but my gangly partner here managed to let her get away.”
“Ah.” Raj looked genuinely concerned for the about-to-be-tearful Dinah. “Here,” he said handing her a banana that looked like it had gone twelve rounds with Tyson Fury. “On the house.”
Speechlessly she took the banana and left the shop with a forlorn Shaw trailing behind her. “You’re not going to cry, are you?” he asked.
“No Shaw, I am not going to cry. I refuse to cry. I am going to go home and drink cheap wine. I would buy a kebab if I had any money.”
“Ah,” said Shaw. “Is that the problem? Here.” He passed Dinah a roll of cash which he pulled from the inner depths of his threadbare greatcoat.
“What’s this?” she asked.
“Oh, has all my training been in vain…” he said before catching a faint flash of barely submerged anger in Dinah’s eyes. “It’s money,” he said, seeking protection in the blandly truthful.
“How much?”
“Not a clue,” said Shaw who had quickly passed his humdrum concerns threshold.
“Well, where’s it from?” asked Dinah, already unrolling and counting the polymer bundle.
“The celery lady. She called it ‘a retainer’. She said she would be in tomorrow to discuss the case…”
“Why didn’t you say before we went to Raj’s?” asked Dinah taking Shaw by the hand and simultaneously tucking the cash down into the very darkest recesses of the carrier bag that was as close as she came to a handbag these days.
“Well I… I don’t know,” he said. Things just…” He thrust his hands deep into his pockets and followed Dinah up the stairs to the unlocked office. ‘Some people,’ he thought, ‘are never happy.’
Dinah turned to him, the barest hint of hopelessness in her face. “You will try to concentrate on the case won’t you Shaw?” she asked.
“Of course,” he said.
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
“Good,” she said. “You know we need this.”
“Yes, I understand,” he said.
Tension swept out of Dinah’s body. She felt suddenly serene. She was a jellyfish.
“There’s just one question,” said Shaw, and bones crashed back into Dinah’s frame as she prepared for the ceiling to fall in on them.
“Can I have my celery back now?…”

The Truth, the Whole Truth and Nothing but the Truth

Whenever people ask me “What should I say?” (and they do, which is odd, because I am world champion at saying exactly the wrong thing at precisely the wrong time) I always give the same answer, “Just tell the truth.” It is so much easier than trying to manage a landscape of falsehoods, however well-intentioned they may be. A little white lie in order to shield someone from a painful truth is all well and good, but they are none-the-less unlikely to be happy when they find out you have been lying to them. Lies will always find you out.

I’m not suggesting that you go out of your way to be brutal with the truth – friends don’t do that – but I do know that the protection offered by a lie is transient and that the truth becomes even more painful when the ‘shield’ has faded. Saying “Yes” when your best friend asks you, “Does my arse look big in this?” is unlikely to score you brownie points, but hiding the truth could be worse. “It looks like a balloon!” probably doesn’t strike quite the right note – even if true – and “Well, I’ve seen bigger,” is not necessarily any better, but if you care and you try, you will find a way. (If you are a male, you may be faced with the even knottier problem of ‘Here, do you think this is normal?’ in which instance neither ‘yes’ or ‘no’ is the correct response.) You are mistaken if you expect me to offer any guide to what you should be saying – I have the antithesis of a silver tongue, probably pig-iron – I spend too long with my foot in my mouth to make my words easily decipherable. When all else fails, suggest calling The Citizen’s Advice Bureau.

My welded bond to ‘the truth’ is seldom bound to piety but is wound up instead to the simple practicalities of my own ineptitude. I am no paragon of virtue; simply aware of my culpability as a major-league beacon of incompetence. I spend most of my life feeling as though I really ought to be apologising, but seldom sure of what about and to whom. I am the king of obfuscation: not by intention, but by inability to consider either lying or knowingly causing distress. If you have a secret I think I might be a bad friend. I certainly wouldn’t ‘tell’ on purpose (actually, that is not strictly true, in certain circumstances, dependent upon the nature of the ‘secret’, I suspect that I almost certainly would) but I would also find it difficult to actually lie: secrets kind of ooze out of me, not voluntarily, but by action or reaction. They find their way out by some kind of osmosis. Friends and family know instinctively that I have a secret to keep and, should they suspect that they may be on the receiving end of let’s say a surprise birthday party, they keep their distance from me in the certain knowledge that it won’t be long before I accidentally reveal that I can’t look after the kids because I’m waiting in for a delivery of champagne for your… bugger, bugger, bugger! I have been the unwitting nub of familial data breaches, on the basis of pure incompetence, more often than I would care to remember. “Don’t tell mum, but…” is the signal for me to go to pieces. It is far better that I am given neither bag nor cat to let out of it. Happily, most people who know me understand that I am a lost cause and choose not to burden me, because when I let go of a ‘good’ secret, I won’t lie, I feel wretched.

A Little Fiction – OldenEye

…007 sat back in the deep, yielding burgundy leatherette swivel chair, his chin resting on the pyramid of his fingertips. His once-steely eyes were focussed glaucously on the minister, he could see his lips moving – just – but he did not hear a word he said. His mind was preoccupied with thoughts of how he would get out of the recliner without putting his back out. Again. The minister smiled benignly at the supposed indifference of his senior spy and flipped open the lid of an exquisitely inlaid wooden box. Involuntarily, Bond’s body tensed and he was again thankful for the ‘special’ pants in which his house-keeper had dressed him.
“Cigar, James?”
With an almost deft flick of his finely manicured hand, the super-spy fiddled at his ear, knocking the miniature hearing aid to the floor, where it whistled irritably. Bond struggled to his feet and reinserted the apparatus, back to front, so that it echoed eerily around the office. The minister smiled again. Obviously a little piece of Q’s genius, cunningly designed to foil concealed electronic bugs or somesuch. “Cigar, James?” he repeated.
“No thank you,” said Bond, who had decided not to try the swivel chair again, but was standing at the corner of the minister’s desk, resting his weight on a red telephone and wheezing gently. Having reinserted his hearing aid, Bond was able to hear the minister, whom he was saddened to hear was suffering from some sort of adenoidal problem. “I am very aware of my responsibilities as a role model for the young.” Advancing years had made Bond ever-more conscious of the debt he owed to the planet that he, in his prime, had saved on many occasions from nuclear destruction with little, if any, consideration to the biodegradability of the apparatus he employed. “Now,” he said. “What can I do for my country?”
The minister explained in great detail the nature of the latest threat posed to the free world by Ernst Blofeld and he was almost sure, at times, that Bond understood a little of what he said. Satisfied that he had his most senior agent on the job, the minister waved him away airily and 007 left the room, finding the correct door at only the third attempt.

In the stores, Q issued the special equipment. “Of course,” he said. “We’ve had to garage the Aston Martin, James. The emissions were simply unacceptable.” Bond nodded his understanding. He had a similar problem. “But we’ve beefed up this electric trike for you. Push this red button here and the booster cuts in giving you a top speed of anything up to eight miles an hour, depending on the wind; three-wheel drive will enable you to continue pursuit across all terrain – providing of course that it’s flat and surfaced; there’s an in-built MP3 player, pre-loaded with Coldplay’s greatest hits and concealed behind the seat here is one of those clever little adapters that allows you to plug your vehicle in anywhere in the world.”
Bond grinned. “And the range?”
“Twenty miles,” said Q. “Fifteen if you use the booster. Should be plenty to get you to the bus stop…”
Bond signed out an e-cigarette that concealed a radio transmitter, a comb that concealed a powerful magnet, and a tube of ointment that concealed the worst of his rash, all of which he stashed away under the cleverly designed hinged seat of the trike.

And so, as evening drew into night, James Bond trundled off into the enfolding darkness, unconcerned by the danger that lay ahead and untroubled by the gangs of youths that garlanded his route – mostly because his glasses were steamed up so that he couldn’t see them, and his hearing aid had fallen out in Penge.

…“A virgin martini please, shaken, not stirred…” The barman looked quizzically at Bond, who would have raised an eyebrow in reply, but he was wearing contact lenses and he didn’t have any spares. Bond moved his face very close to the barman. “Tonic water,” he whispered. “Slimline if possible, with ice and a slice… oh, and put one of those little umbrellas in it will you?” He began to rifle through his purse, searching for the correct change, when a female voice behind him said “Put that on my bill, would you?” The barman nodded and handed Bond his drink. The woman joined Bond at the bar, hoisting herself effortlessly onto the stool. Bond recalled his own battle to mount it with distaste. He could still feel the bruise swelling on his shin. The woman reached out an elegant hand. “008,” she said. “Pleased to meet you Mr Bond.”
“Likewise, I’m sure,” said Bond.
“Won’t you join me for dinner?” she smiled.

The meal was acceptable, although Bond would have preferred something a little more… fried, but the company was scintillating. Memories of conquests-past flooded Bond’s mind and he found himself, almost subconsciously, taking a little pill with his dessert. He knew that he could trust a Rennie to ensure a good night’s sleep. 008 sparkled. Her conversation was engaging, witty, seductive. She laughed and her laughter was like a summer breeze; bright and joyous. He laughed and coughed up a piece of carrot the size of Sheffield. A bubble of sauce escaped his nose. She spoke of life and love in a way that Bond had never considered. She spoke of Keats, Shelley and Chaucer almost as if she actually enjoyed them. In the past, of course, he would have seduced her, but something told him that, delightful though she was, it was just conceivable that she would not welcome the amorous advances of a sexagenarian lothario with sauce down his chin and a full floret of broccoli wedged under his dentures. Besides, she was probably more than capable of rendering him unconscious with a single chop to the throat.

Bond slept peacefully. He knew that 008 had been sent along to shadow him in his pursuit of Blofeld, but he realised immediately that she stood a much better chance of success alone. She was smart, she was beautiful, she was ruthless and, unlike him, she had never once mistaken the hotel ice machine for a urinal…

First published 04.03.2019

I love these little parodies. I suppose it stems back to a boyhood full of Mad Magazines. I will try to write some more…

At Last – The Eulogy You’ve All Been Waiting For

In my five years on this site I have returned to the subject of death on many occasions – in fact if you put ‘funeral’ into the search bar, you will find that it brings up virtually every post I have ever published – and I discover that in my post Part of the Process (01.05.23) I talked about the possibility of writing my own eulogy. I don’t think I have ever done this – although I have written a large number of posts since then which, alarmingly, I cannot remember – so here it is…

Colin came into this world at the dawning of 1959 which, typically, made him far too young to enjoy the benefits of The Swinging Sixties: no sex, no drugs, just loads of suet roll. Britain was still clambering its way out of post-war austerity and his childhood was a time of freedom and exploration, his playground a landscape of ad hoc dumps and tatterdemalion ruins, of permanently grazed knees and white dog-dirt. Colin was (to the best of his now meagre memory) the only person in his class with ginger hair and most certainly the only person in the entire school with the forename-that-time-forgot. Little did he know at the time that he would reach the age of one hundred and fifty years, fully sound in both mind and body. (I put that bit in to cheer myself up.)

At school he never rose to the exalted rank of milk or window monitor, but he did fall very easily into the role of class-pain-in-the-arse. Described by his teachers as ‘lively’ he none-the-less breezed through eleven plus exams – largely on the basis of being blithely ignorant that it was happening – and into Grammar School and an environment that left him feeling one degree south of normal for the rest of his life. His proudest achievement during this time being his school prize for Industry and Progress or, as it was known to the teachers Thick, but tries hard. The effort did not last, and he found it difficult to corral his brain into what it should be doing: Daydream became his default setting.

It is fair to say that everyone who ever knew him was, at some time, aware of his existence – beyond that I would not like to commit.

At the age of twenty-one he married his first love Beryl*, with whom he had two children – Gladys and Ethel* – and eventually four grandchildren – Cedric, Lilac, Anna and Viola* – all of whom are here today, weeping inconsolably and wringing their hands for all they are worth. He has left behind a hole that cannot be filled by money – because he hasn’t left any.

Throughout his life Colin was a man of principle which meant that he seldom paid for anything that did not come with a certificate. He was also prone to foible: his penchant for wearing hats that very clearly did not suit him, a passion for the short-lived television series El Dorado and the conviction that the world was being run by a giant lizard called Donald. His life-long passion was music despite his possession of an ear so tin that it may well have contained baked beans. He could not play and he could not sing, but he spent almost all of his life listening to those that could. He also had a soft spot for those who could not, but patently thought that they could.

Humour was his thing and he spent most of his life looking for – but seldom finding – it. He never did really grip the distinction between funny and weird. He was happy to think of himself as a successful husband, father and grandfather, based on his failure at pretty much everything else. He once scored 180 in darts, but it took him twenty-seven throws.

As you are all aware, Colin died as he would have liked to have lived, covered in chocolate and whisky – it is just unfortunate that it was still in a ten-ton truck at the time. At least it saved us the problem of spreading his ashes.

So, if you would all now like to stand, we can all say our final ‘goodbyes’ to him before you are invited to join the family at the pub where Colin has left something behind the bar for you all – it is called the bill…

*All names have been changed in order to ensure that nobody has to endure any association with this tosh.

A Self-Guide to Putting My House in Order

You know how it goes; there are certain times in your life when you feel it is important to put your house in order. For me, these usually occur when I am hanging several miles above the ground, encased in an aluminium tube with wings, suspended in the air by God-knows-what, and the drinks trolley is not getting around to me quickly enough. But not this time. On this occasion my desire to get all my ducks in a row is down to the imminent house move and runs in parallel to the physical act of putting all I have and am into cardboard boxes. These things are physical entities and yet they are no more solid than memory. A record collection may be nothing more than a half ton of plastic, but once it has gone into a box, it becomes the story of a life. I am not ‘packing up my troubles’, I am packing away my life.

Everything I own, everything I have packed, is nothing more than a crystallized memory. When I unpack my records they will not have changed, only the location will have shifted. What will be different will be my awareness of the ‘connection’. In the past, when I lifted a disc from the shelf, all I thought about was the music I was about to hear. When I put the same album on the new shelf for the first time I will remember how, when and why I bought it, the set list from the tour and the friends I went to see it with. Each track, each crackle and pop carries an echo of yesterday.

Obviously, not all memories are good ones so I must ask myself whether I should take this opportunity to throw out the bad ones. Should I, like Russian, Chinese and German governments before me, expunge certain elements of my past from the narrative, leaving gaps that I am able to fill with self-aggrandisement? Well, I’ve got plenty of age-old photographs – mostly featuring tank-tops or ill-advised facial hair – that could certainly get the chop. I have seldom kept diaries – well, never for long – because I quickly became aware that they were little more than a terminal whinge. They have long gone, shredding is not an option. I have boxes full of old scripts because I am far too lazy to transcribe them all onto digital media, but I will not destroy them: not because they are of a quality that will ever see them reworked, but because they are my very own, slightly dog-eared archive of all that I was and did. In there somewhere is every pre-computer joke I ever wrote. Stick an infinite number of monkeys at an infinite number of typewriters and sooner or later they will come up with exactly the same stuff – only funnier.

My books have gone into boxes and they will be coming out – no book burning here – despite the fact that I have re-read them all ad nauseum before, without remembering a single word of what they said (with the notable exception of the ending). Books don’t change, do they? (Unless, of course, they were originally written by Enid Blyton and featured a certain jam-related ragdoll.) I do retain the memory of when and why I first read them, and I never forget who first recommended a book to me.

And then I have my various bubble-wrapped knick-knacks (which I am guessing will be known to my French speaking readers as knack-knicks) which I surround myself with as pure memorabilia. Beautiful objets in my opinion; yet another thing I never bother to dust in my wife’s. When, in the fullness of a chainful of solicitors’ time, I unpack, I very much doubt that it will in any way enable me to get it all together. In short, when I place my old life into its new surroundings, it will remain to be very much in a house of disorder…

An Unsolicited Address to my Alma Mater

Each year many UK schools ask notable ex-pupils back to make an inspirational speech to current pupils. I have (of course) never been asked – not even my school was that crap – but if ever I was, this is the speech I would give:

…It is over fifty years since I first walked through the doors of this august establishment, almost immediately picking up a Saturday morning detention for looking at a prefect ‘the wrong way’. The school has, of course, in common with the rest of society, changed in the intervening years: as a first year pupil you are now unlikely to be sent by a sixth former to buy five Park Drive from the local shop; you will not find yourself scrubbing the school cloisters on a Saturday morning to the accompaniment of a bored tutor reading passages from Dostoevsky out loud; you have the right to refuse when invited into the changing rooms to see ‘the blue goldfish’. Walking around the school today I can immediately see the massive improvements in the fabric of the buildings: I note that hot water has been connected to the changing room showers and that the woodwork room now has an electricity supply that does not require the use of a thirty metre extension lead; the biology lab is no longer made of asbestos and the cockroaches are kept in a tank.

This school will open up a world of possibilities to you – some of them legal. Those of you fortunate enough to one day be put in charge of the tuck shop will learn all that you will ever need to know about finance, private enterprise, dentistry and clinical obesity. Never lose track of why you are here: your parents almost certainly did not want you anyway. You are here to learn but, let’s face it, if you can attract a girl or two by making smartarse remarks, win/win I’d say. During my first four years of incarceration… sorry, I mean education, this was an all-boys school: life passed by in a haze of learning, farting and catching a whack in the b*llocks if you didn’t have your wits about you. In the Fifth Form, at the age of 16, with more hormones flying around than a Chinese Sports Science facility, we were co-joined with a previously all-girls school and expected to drag some exam results out of the wreckage. I learned about patchouli oil, sweet cider and the fact that out of uniform schoolgirls did not look like schoolgirls whilst similarly divested of cap, satchel and blazer, boys looked exactly the same, but smelled faintly of their dad’s Old Spice.

Always be open to learning. Lessons do not only take place in the classroom. You will learn more about your place in the world in the shower after rugby than in a year’s worth of Social Studies. As you get older you will begin to regret every lesson you refused to learn. I, myself, failed miserably in both French and Geography and so, consequently, cannot rely on satellite navigation on the other side of the channel where, in my experience, all roads lead to someplace where nobody speaks English. My grip on scientific subjects was even more tenuous and generally involved either poisoning or electrocution. I did not concentrate; I did not try. I saw myself as a comedian, but the joke, as always, was on me. I left school with a handful of ‘O’ levels, a single (Art) ‘A’ level and no idea at all of what would become of me. Employers are perfectly aware that qualifications are not everything, but they can also spot a non-trier when they see one.

So, my message to you is a simple one: don’t be that non-trier or else you could, like me, in fifty years’ time find yourself giving a ‘talk’ to a group of totally disinterested, press-ganged teenage students for absolutely zero return – and nobody wants that, now do they?

A Little Fiction – Love Amongst the Ellipses…

Following on from the runaway success of my first attempt at geriatric erotic fiction (‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ is here) I decided to try my hand at Mills & Boon style romantic fiction. I’m not entirely sure that it followed the path that I intended. It’s not altogether easy to get to grips with this world of masterful men and passive women. Especially when you’re a fairly passive man…

“…”

The space between them crackled. The air was alive. Atom by atom the ether became electricity. His skin bristled with energy. He felt as though his whole body might be glowing, alive with a vigour that was not his own. The weight of all that surrounded him crowded in on him, until he feared he would no longer be able to breathe; as though he might drown in the nothingness that enveloped him.

From the moment he had first encountered her, rinsing her underwear in the village stream, she had fascinated him. Not least for the fact that she had a perfectly good washing machine at home. Her hair flowed down her back in luxurious blonde waves. Unfortunately, despite having an extraordinarily hirsute back, she had a totally bald head. She wore the kind of clothes that all serving girls wore when you’re looking to sell the film rights: riding britches and a blouse that appeared to be made from tracing paper. Her eyes betrayed a total innocence – or at least they lied about it very well. Her lips were full and red, the colour of blood. It was the third time that week that she had walked into the stable door. She refused to wear her spectacles because they hid the limpid nature of her eyes – and also because they were the kind that you get from the joke shop, with a plastic moustache fixed underneath them.

She looked at him now, stripped to his braces, and she couldn’t help but wonder why he was so keen to get his teeth straightened. They’d be alright if he didn’t keep taking them out and putting them in his back pocket every time somebody gave him a balloon to inflate. Her heart burned every time she heard his voice – especially if she had been eating onions. When they first met, he had swept her off her feet. He apologised at once; it was his first day driving the road sweeper. Mind you, it wasn’t his fault that she was lying in the gutter under the remnants of a whole flock of Kentucky pullets. He was everything she had ever wanted from a man. Well, he was a man. Rich, handsome, charming – he was none of those things, but he did have his own transport, even if it did have the council’s name stencilled on the side of it. He had the air of a Lord about him, although the nearest he actually came was drinking at The Nelson on a Saturday night. His yearning body told the tale of several hundred too many fried poultry dinners and his skin had the pallor and sheen of a pound of lard. He glistened with perspiration at the thought of having to blink. It was unlikely that he would ever make the Earth move for her – unless he sat down very sharply. He could not have ripped her bodice without becoming seriously short of breath. If he had thrown himself at her feet, it would have taken a crane to lift him. He was what her mother would have described as ‘wet’ – less Colin Firth, more Moray Firth – and his small-talk had the habit of bordering on the microscopic, which was fitting, as his breath resembled some kind of fungal growth and his brain was reminiscent of a single-celled organism.

They lay side by side on dew-fresh grass, dappled in the sunlight that filtered down through the woodland canopy, surrounded by the scent of dog-rose, bluebell and fox shit. She had seldom felt such a gathering storm within her since the day of her sexual awakening – watching the bare-chested farmhand scrub down the Hereford bull to prepare him for the market. The smell of Dettol, the memory of his muscular body made her glow even today. If only the stupid farmhand hadn’t kept getting in the way. Absent-mindedly he toyed with her nipple (She had only one? Ed.) which bloomed, like a rose, beneath its sheath of silk. She did the same with a boil in the middle of his chest. Only one of them burst.

He half opened his mouth to speak, uncertain of what he was to ask her; uncertain if to ask her. In his life, nothing was certain – except for the odd horse that his father swore must have been got at. “What did you say?” he sighed at last.
“When?” she asked, distracted momentarily from the search for her other nipple. (Hah!)
“At the top of the page.”
“Oh, I said ‘…’” she replied.
“No,” he whispered. “I meant before the ellipsis.”
“Before the what?”
“Before the three dots that you left at the end of the sentence, indicating that it… Oh, it doesn’t matter.”
“Three dots… Are you sure?”
“You just did it again!”
“I did? I don’t know. I…”
“You seem to finish most of your sentences that way.”
“Well, it’s that kind of book isn’t it? What’s left to the imagination is so much more important than what is said.”
“Oh, I see,” he said. “I suppose that explains the plot then…”
“Plot? I shouldn’t think so,” she said. “Anyway, it’s getting late. Shall we…?” she breathed – she had to, she would have died otherwise.
“Be a shame not to,” he said.
“…” she sighed…

First published 31.10.20

Well, there’s always time for plain daft in my estimation…

Just What is my Problem with ‘Grown-Up’ Films?

I have never been very good at ‘serious’. ‘Grown-up’ films and television series are a real problem for me. My attention span is that of an ADHD goldfish. Paranormal horror keeps me awake at night; gore makes me nauseous and I experience the hot-under-the-collar discomfort of all British men of my age when confronted with on-screen sex of any kind. At the very best I have to turn the sound off. I can manage ‘Action’ movies as long as they are not too demanding – and probably more importantly – not too loud. (It always seems to me that the volume of the special effects is in direct inverse proportion to that of the dialogue.) Indiana Jones, Star Wars, earlier James Bond – the latter ones require far too much attention – probably mark the limits of my Action threshold. My Refresh Rate is not what it was.

What this means is that I am not the kind of man that goes to the cinema too often these days: I can just about manage comedy and Disney (although, in my mid-sixties, I have to persuade a grandchild to come with me to the latter if I am not to appear unseemly). Comedy, it goes without saying, is not what it was, occurring now in only one of two forms: the gross-out or the rom-com. I really can’t get to grips with the gross-out – I have been a male teenager and it wasn’t funny even at the time – but I have developed a grudging affection for rom-com, without which I fear I would be petitioning Pixar for a release date for Toy Story 5 and camping outside the Chief Executive’s office in a Woody mask yelling ‘There’s a snake in my boot!’ at anyone brave enough to wander past without cackling something indecipherable into a walkie-talkie, throwing me through the door and using my ribs as a xylophone. I am a man who sought comedic solace in the Johnny English films for goodness sake, and I am not proud of it.

In today’s cinema it would appear that there is no com without rom and, if I’m honest, it has affected my whole viewing experience. I am totally incapable of watching anything without pairing people up, be they a febrile mess of confused neurons or a neatly packaged string of geek-generated pixels. Everything I watch I treat like some kind of public participation Speed Dating event. All I ever really hope for is a reasonable com to rom ratio. When it works, it works: When Harry Met Sally, almost anything by Richard Curtis, anything starring Simon Pegg, Crocodile Dundee… comedy can withstand years. Cars age, clothes age, attitudes change but funny can endure.

If I choose to review my favourite comedy films, I find that the list accords, more or less, with everybody else’s: Monty Python (Holy Grail & Life of Brian), Airplane, Blazing Saddles, Duck Soup, Annie Hall, The Producers, Young Frankenstein, Planes, Trains and Automobiles, The Pink Panther... (You may notice that there is nothing here produced since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Perhaps there is no comedy without rickets.) My list does differ from most of those I have read in that it does not include Dr Strangelove, but I was very young when I saw it for the first time and it scared the sh*t out of me. I have never fully recovered.) I have a particular soft spot for late nineties English comedies such as the sublime Brassed Off and Full Monty but there is so little to drag me away from vintage Columbo and Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads on TV now that I fear I may never visit the cinema again, which is a shame because you can never quite reproduce the experience of being bored witless by a film whilst sitting behind someone three feet taller than yourself, having a very loud conversation with a similarly proportioned partner as they eat nachos and suck Coca Cola through something that sounds like a bilge pump, now can you?…

On our Little Plot by the Plots – from Garden to Grave

It would be unforgivably disingenuous of me to claim that my relationship with gardening was built upon anything other than loathing. I enjoy a sunny day garden as much as the next man, but sunny day gardening is an entirely different matter. It seems to me that there is nothing entirely benign in the horticultural world: if it does not poison, then it stings, punctures or irritates. If it does none of the above, it sets down roots that, given time, will bring your house down. The array of hardware designed by human beings to ‘tame’ the garden flora is lethal. Having grown tired of removing stray digits with such things as hedge trimmers and lawn mowers, we electrified them in order to introduce the possible frisson of entire limb removal. Open the average garden shed and you will find sufficient offensive weaponry and chemical agents to carry out a coup. There is nothing in there that does not have the potential to cause severe harm. (I once gave myself a very passable black eye by walking into the edge of a badly suspended plastic sledge.) It is like Torquemada’s playground.

I have tried to like gardening but, my word, it’s boring: dig a hole, put something in it, watch it grow, watch it die, dig it up – at least coin collecting, for instance, comes with the jeopardy of mistakenly spending the only rare piece you have on a prune yoghurt and a pork pie. I spend weeks learning to recognise a hollyhock only to find that it is a foxglove. The only certainty I have is that if it is growing through the driveway, my wife does not want it there. I dig up nothing without written instructions, preferably in triplicate. I am allowed to kill the weeds in the lawn but I don’t like chemicals, so it is always a bit of a lottery: grab a trowel and resign myself that it’s 50/50 on whether the weed loses its root or I lose a finger. I was told by a good friend that one of the best things I could do was to put salt on unwanted weeds. I did so, but all I ended up with was a lawn filled with salty dandelions.

The new house has a much smaller garden than this one – unless you include the graveyard onto which it abuts, which will certainly make me more circumspect when digging. These days I can only complain about the stiffness of my own spine. I do not want to put myself in the position of finding somebody else’s when excavating for a water feature. It is, though, a very pretty garden full of… flowers and it has the kind of lawn that I could probably tend with nail scissors. It is, I am told, cottage garden-style, which always leaves me thinking about St Mary Mead – home of Miss Marple – and you know how many people died around there. All those picture-postcard gardens filled with foxgloves, hemlock, belladonna and aconitum (monkshood, wolfsbane, leopard’s bane, devil’s helmet or blue rocket – take your pick) there’s no wonder it was a village full of poisoners. I will approach the gardening as ever I do: with extreme reluctance. I will try not to rub up against anything toxic growing in our colourful little mini-plot, in the knowledge that, if I should none-the-less do so, all my wife has to do is ask someone to dump me over the back fence and hope that somebody will risk digging me a hole. As an investment, I think it has it all ends up over funeral plan insurance…