Married Life and All That

I have been married for more than forty years and in that time I have learned a few lessons about making things work which I set before you now. If you are just setting out on this marital trail I can only urge you for the good of your marriage to read this article very carefully before acting on it by deleting it completely and studiously ignoring everything I say…

Demands – Never make too many demands on your partner. My own wife has only ever made three demands of me during our entire marriage:

That I do what she wants.
That I do it when she wants it.
That I do it how she wants it.

These three rules apply for almost every household duty, from DIY tasks to pouring the gin. For those of you with a smuttier state of mind, they do not apply to our sex life. In that we have only one rule these days: do it only when there is a reasonable chance of at least one of us remaining awake throughout.

Money – Should not be an important issue in any long term relationship and will not be so unless a) you have some or b) you do not.

Play – Badminton, bridge and Monopoly, nothing leads to accusations and recriminations as surely as ‘play time’. From the early days of deliberately losing to the more mature ‘win at any cost’ phase, games form the backbone of every marriage. Those that play together stay together, the saying goes, but whoever said it was obviously asleep for the Christmas Day game of Newmarket. It is the nature of most games that the winners are smug and the losers are sore and everyone in the middle claims that they’re not really that competitive. It is the nature of married couples that, even when on the same side, they are more intent on beating one another than the opposition. When either partner plays badly, the other believes that they have done so simply to spite them. There is no better feeling than losing when it isn’t your fault.

Shop – Married couples shop together at their peril. What men want from shopping is a pair of comfortable pants*, chocolate and a hedge trimmer that looks as though it might have been designed by NASA. What women want from shopping is food to put on the table, clothes to put on the children and a couple of hours free of the husband. If it was allowed, Tesco’s would be cited in more divorce cases than adultery.

The ‘S’ word – Every relationship has to face spaghetti at some time. Whether you eat it in quite the wrong way, make a terrible slurping sound whilst you suck it in, or distribute sauce over every conceivable surface whilst you chew, nothing contributes to marital strife quite like those little pasta strings. Anyone who has been married for more than three years will tell you that there is only one right way to eat spaghetti: alone and in a wetsuit.

Television – Many happy couples spend hours on end happily watching TV in one another’s company and they are all employed by Gogglebox. The rest of us spend our time moaning that our partner has it on too loudly, or too quietly: that they insist on breathing when it all gets tense; that they insist on talking when it all gets quiet; that they insist of seeing what’s on the other side at the exact moment that the murderer is unmasked. It is impossible to watch TV without resenting the person who has control of the remote control. It is impossible to remain happy with someone who snores right through ‘Bake Off’.

Travel – Travel is a must for binding married couples together. It provides the perfect opportunity to see new sights, experience new sensations and to discover new words – especially when your spouse has set the Sat-Nav. What could be better than a hundred mile journey together in order to get to a destination you had no intention of ever visiting in a time-scale that would have allowed a three-week break in the Seychelles. For many young couples the nuptial journey begins with the honeymoon where traditionally, you discover that you have made a very big mistake indeed and that you really should have listened to your parents when they told you never to trust a man who sells popcorn by the piece, or a woman who insists on calling you babe any time after the age of fifteen. As you get older, you will appreciate that parents are actually responsible for everything that goes wrong in your life – often because they allow you to ignore their advice, or even worse, take it. In the early days of my own marriage road journeys were often accompanied by a loud and detailed examination of each other’s parentage followed by the road atlas being launched across the whole width of the M56 (not that we were aware that it was the M56, of course, as we thought that we were heading for Southend). Today journeys are normally guided by GPS systems that are not so easily thrown through the window. GPS systems will always get you effortlessly from A to B when correctly set – even if you really want to get to C. Sat-Navs are as simple to set as central heating timers – which explains the night sweats.

Words – Words are the trigger in the marital weapon of choice. In my own home, the words ‘I’m just going for a shower’ are the certain trigger for my wife to turn the washing machine on or, if she has no laundry, the lawn sprinkler.

Work – Never work together. By working together you turn marriage into a full time job. Nobody works for pleasure, they work for money. If you have married for money, then all is well. If, however, you have married for any one of the other 1001other reasons, it will not come as a complete surprise to find out that two cannot live as cheaply as one. Whoever said that was either an idiot or married to an inflatable doll. A long marriage, particularly one punctuated by the arrival of children and grandchildren, is all about sharing poverty. Some couples – often to be found in lifts tapping their feet to the muzak, in hotel toilets smelling the soap, or on railway platforms counting the wheels – claim that they both work and live together without ever falling out. It may be true, but I wouldn’t like to meet either of them on their own.

*UK pants = US jockeys. Having a snug pair of jockeys around your groin in the UK will, at least, lead to a double-page spread in the tabloids.

As ever 1000 words does not allow for breadth or analysis. If you feel that you would like to add to this guide, I very much look forward to your contributions.

The Value of Advice

If I could offer one single word of advice to any aspiring writer it would be not to come to me for advice. Having got that out of the way, I would say, ‘Never write the same thing twice,’ because someone said that to me once and I always liked the ring of it. Sound advice, I am sure you will agree, but advice, none-the-less, I find myself increasing unable to heed for the simple reason that I can never remember what I have written about before and, more to the point, I have decided that life is far too short to check. I am sure that once-upon-a-gag, some wise man – Bernard Manning probably – postulated that there are only six jokes known to man and womankind: the trick is in finding a different way to tell them. (Likewise, I think – I can’t be sure: the Magic Circle is a closed and locked cabinet to me – there are only six magic tricks: the one with the sleight of hand; the one with the distraction; the one with the stooge; the one with the smoke; the one with the mirrors, and the one where the magician discovers that the upstage trap-door doesn’t work properly.) Anyway, who am I to argue?

I do not know what the six jokes are. I know one of them, but I fear that political correctness being what it is, I dare not tell it for fear of being sued by every chicken between here and the other side of the road. The problem with jokes, however you tell them, is that they tend to have a butt and being a butt is never comfortable. To avoid causing offence, you make yourself the butt and that works even better when the joke doesn’t – work that is. There’s no wonder that comedians are, by and large, such a morose bunch. Except that they’re not you know. I’ve met a number over the years – although not as often as I’ve been called one – and most of them have been quite jolly. Not all of the time, of course – that would just be weird – but normally so. I never met a comedian who didn’t want to laugh – which can’t be easy when you already know all six of the jokes that other people are telling you. (I’ve never met a magician, although it stands to reason that they must know at least one gag per trick for when it all goes wrong. I did watch a magician once whose tricks all went spectacularly wrong. He had no ‘patter’ outside of his sweat as it fell to the stage, but the audience thought that the whole thing was hilarious. He was decidedly unamused, and I was just relieved when he decided against sawing his assistant in half.)

It is the stock in trade of comedians to tell the same jokes night after night, for magicians to make the same stuff disappear and for singers to sing the same old songs – Greatest Hits tours are the most popular of all – but a writer is never really allowed to plunder his own back catalogue (much less somebody else’s) for reuse at a later date. I cannot imagine that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, for example, would have been allowed to reuse an old plot on the grounds that everybody liked it last time around. Most people will read a treasured book repeatedly, but will put it down the moment it reminds them of something else (particularly if it is a Shake ‘n’ Vac advert). I do wonder if there are only six novel plots: I once attempted to read a Jeffrey Archer novel in a hospital waiting room and I think that he must have had all six of them in there somewhere – God knows where – and I have attempted to read James Joyce so often that I am certain he manages perfectly well without any at all, thank you very much.)

Of course, repetition, in itself can be amusing, but it is never surprising. Life is all about repetition, and most of it much closer to a failed illusion than a Billy Connolly rip-snorter, but every day we wake up ready for more of it. There is something in the human spirit that says ‘OK, I’ve had ninety nine attempts without getting the rabbit out of the hat, but today’s the day.’ And we try again. And if, by some fluke of fortune, we succeed, then we believe that we will always succeed.

I am always intrigued by those who manage to keep – and even more puzzling – publish a diary. Do they leave out everything that happens again and again, day after day or, do they just invent stuff? Perhaps the successful diary is just a novel with the writer as the hero. Or maybe interesting things do happen to other people. Is it just me that goes around and around? I have tried to keep diaries many times, but they are so tedious. I very quickly start making things up. Do you think that Samuel Pepys really buried his cheese whilst London burned? Did Captain Oates really say ‘I might be gone for some time’ or is that just something that Scott put into his diary after giving him the wrong directions to the toilet in order to break the monotony of a whiteout? Most of the time, life is only brightened by hindsight.

In written dialogue we always edit out the repeated phrases that litter real life conversations. Any story that runs beyond twenty four hours in real life, will feature repetition. We treasure routine: the same breakfast, the same parking spot, the same sandwich, the same journey home – so startlingly routine that it is normally impossible to recall getting there. We are only happy that a day is complete when it is just the same as all the others – real life is not great for the telling.

Anyway, having given it due consideration, I believe I might have changed my mind. If I could offer one word of advice to an aspiring author, it would be to never be tempted to dip into real life, in case you can’t find your way out again.

Mind you, it won’t be the same tomorrow…

Excused Trousers

I will begin by apologising to at least 50% of my readership who will, at best, have to read this post with their legs, if not their eyes, crossed and at worst will be on the phone to the doctor in the morning to cancel the appointment, because once again, the Devil has found work for my Idle Hands. My twice weekly search for something new to say has once again led me into the past. You will know, by now, that I often fill these pages with fond memories, but today’s slightly asymmetrical limp down memory lane is a rather more uncomfortable one for me. On this occasion, a bit of an office clearout has unearthed a little poem (which I believe I may have used on these very pages once before) and a picture which I have not, and together they set the ghost of recollection whirring…

I will begin with the little poem…

A Small Deception in the Vasectomy Clinic.

He smiled at me, lain on the table
And said, “Now this won’t hurt at all.”
Then rammed over 6 foot of needle
Right down my wherewithal

…and the recollection of writing it – excused trousers – on the morning after my first vasectomy. Yes, I did say first. Allow me to fill you in…

It will have been thirty years ago now. My youngest daughter was about eighteen months old and it was decided that it was up to me to ensure that we didn’t have to go through all that again. I made an appointment with the doctor. “Yes,” he said, he would refer me if I was sure. I said “Sure?” and he said, “Yes, ‘Sure.’” I said, “You sound doubtful. Don’t you recommend it?” and he said, “It’s not up to me to recommend it, it’s up to me to ensure that you know what you’re getting yourself into. Do you understand everything I’ve told you?” “Yes,” I said. “Not a word,” I thought. “In my position,” I asked, “would you have it done?” “No,” he said. “I’ll refer you for counselling today and you’ll hear from us very soon. There’s a new clinic just opened in town. They’ll do it before you get the chance to change your mind…” I left the doctor’s somewhat less than reassured about the operation, but assured that at least I would be counselled before it took place.

The counsellor said, “Right, are you sure?” I said “Sure?” and she said, “Yes, ‘Sure,’ after everything I have told you, are you sure you still want to go ahead with this?” and my wife said, “Yes, he is,” so I was referred to the clinic which would, she said, do the operation very soon. I was slightly uneasy that she did not say they would do it very well.

Cometh the day, cometh the pallid man and I was led into a small operating theatre (ex-broom cupboard with a single new light fitting, one fresh coat of eau de nil emulsion and all shelves removed as per) at the back of the doctor’s surgery in my NHS rear-ventilated operation gown. “Lay on there,” said the nurse, who looked almost old enough for her own paper round, “feet in the stirrups and pull the gown up to your chest.” And there I lay, stranded walrus-like, when the doctor entered with his assistant (who was also his wife). They both looked at me intently. “I know you,” they said in unison. And so they did. We had known one another for years. The area being doused with iodine was slowly dying of embarrassment. “There’s a nice soothing photo on the ceiling,” said the assistant, “You might like to look at that.” She had, I thought, the widest grin I have ever seen as she lifted the hypodermic needle out of the tray and I stared fixedly at the waves crashing on the shore…

I will honestly tell you that after the injection, there was no pain, but the unsettling discomfort of somebody rummaging about in the family treasury. They chatted happily away as they worked and, when they had finished, I was surprised that they did not bring me a mirror so that I could admire their handiwork.

They fit you with a little hammock then, to keep everything secure whilst it settles down overnight. It was, I remember thinking, more than adequately roomy. Come the following morning, it was not quite so spacious. There was no room to spin a cat, let alone the two over-large aubergines to which my little knotted pocket now provided sanctuary. Surely this was not the way that things were meant to be. So, a quickly arranged visit to the doctor who didn’t actually say, “Well, I did warn you,” contenting himself instead with a quiet ‘tut’ and a whispered “Oh dear.” He advised me to take some Paracetamol and lie down. As I could barely walk, I was happy to do so.

I arrived home to find this little gift from my great friend Crispin Underfelt:

COLIN’S NEW SCAR WAS A GREAT HIT WITH THE LADIES OF THE WOMEN’S INSTITUTE

…and I discovered that this was not a good time to laugh out loud. (N.B. I feel it only fair to offer a little reassurance here: it is perfectly ok to read on; there are no actual photographs.)

Time passed, swelling subsided and eventually I was tested, only to find out that the doctor was obviously worse at knotting than I am: all had been in vain. “Do you want to try again?” asked the doctor. “I’m not doing it myself,” I said. “I’ll book you in,” he said. “Not the same butcher,” I said. “No,” he said, “I think he’s taking a little time off.” (I hoped for everyone’s sake, particularly for those that might be tied below him, that he was not going on a mountaineering expedition.) “It will be done at the hospital this time.” And so it was.

Thankfully on this occasion, I was unconscious throughout. I awoke, already ensconced within my little hammock, which was feeling, I thought, rather more snug than it did the time before. And so it was.

The doctor sucked his teeth. “Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear,” he muttered. “Did you walk here?”
“Well I certainly didn’t come on my bike,” I said.
“Take some paracetamol and lie down,” he said.

Eventually things settled down and I was able to look an aubergine in the eye once again. A first test was not clear, but second and third were. “If you change your mind,” the doctor said, “we could always try to reverse it.” I could not imagine ever being that desperate…

And today, hindsight being the wonderful gift it is, I ask myself, would I do it all again? Well possibly, although I would certainly investigate the alternatives a little more assiduously, like neutering, or life as a monk – although, if I’m honest, I’ve always thought there must be some reason why they all appear to be permanently excused trousers…

Stopping the Trains

If Robert Helpmann had been alive today, he would be 112 years old and no less scary for it. Readers of my age – and there are some, I’m sure, who battle through this twaddle sometime between morning porridge and evening Sanatogen – will nod in agreement when I say that if I can envisage a single person reaching that age in rude and menacing health, it would be he. Mr Helpmann (actually Sir Robert Helpmann C.B.E.) played the Child Catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and, as such, was the man who terrified an entire generation. Check it out, this is a children’s film, but there, in the company of Freddy Kruger, Chucky, the Alien, Hannibal Lecter, that bloody clown from ‘It’, Damien Thorn and Herbie the Love Bug (or perhaps that’s just me) in any list of Most Terrifying Film Characters of all time, there is the Child Catcher and, I feel confident in saying, he will not have been voted for by a single person of under sixty years of age: you had to be there. You had to be the right age to be terrified to such a degree that each future whiff of Butterkist popcorn, Raisin Poppets and damp pants, each taste of Vanilla tub and wooden spoon, brings it all flooding back. This is the power of early film encounters: to imprint on the brain like a duck to a newborn duckling, like a cuckoo to a clock…

Today, in the course of my work, I was introduced to a lady who said her name was Lydia and the song began playing so loudly in my head that I had to really concentrate on not letting it come out of my mouth. The Marx Brothers films were made long before even my time, but I loved them. They, along with Phil Silvers, were my introduction to a lifelong love of comedy. I don’t know what age I was when I first saw At the Circus*, but I do know that ‘Lydia the Tattooed Lady’ had me howling with laughter. ‘Lydia, oh! Lydia, say have you met Lydia / Oh! Lydia, the tattooed lady / She has eyes that folks adore so / And a torso even more so…’ I’m pretty certain that I had no idea of what the ‘torso’ business was about, but I learned the words none-the-less and I knew then that I wanted to be Groucho. Fifty years on and it took just the one mention of the seldom heard name to fill my head with so much of the past that it, fleetingly, ceased to operate in the present.

Another film that predated me by many years was Bob Hope’s ‘The Paleface’, but the bumbling attempts of his character to remember all the instructions he was getting for his gunfight: ‘He draws from the left, so lean to the right’ left me in helpless laughter at the ABC minors some twenty years after its release. In my head I still hear that riff every time I try to write deliberately confused dialogue, but I know I will never match it. Confused I’m ok with – I could probably claim to be a natural – but it’s the helpless laughter that eludes me. So often, when I write, my mind is filled with these old films, not for the dialogue, but for the manner in which it was delivered. Who could possibly write a carping couple without hearing Bogart and Hepburn in The African Queen? When I had a pond in the back garden, I was unable to stick my arm into it without worrying about leeches. Thank goodness I have never owned a boat: I am far from convinced that I would be any good with improvised torpedoes.

In 1968 I was nine (work it out) and, as everybody told me, born to play The Artful Dodger¹. I didn’t, of course, Jack Wild did, and look where that got him. A couple of years later I was sent to auditions for the role in some stage production or another, but I didn’t stay. Most of the kids had their mum’s in attendance, wiping down their faces with a spit moistened corner of handkerchief. I didn’t have anyone with me. I went along because my then teacher asked me to do so and within five minutes I realised that I was at a serious disadvantage in that, although I could easily have been the Dodger, I certainly couldn’t act it. I sneaked away and have never auditioned for anything in my life from that day. But I still love the film and I could probably sing you every song from it here and now (although probably not in a key you would recognise). Sadly, were I to audition today, it would be for the role of Fagin or, if I’m honest, having just looked in the mirror, Bumble.

And then came 1970. I was eleven when The Railway Children² was released, but I knew even then that, despite not being even remotely a child, the star of the show was Bernard Cribbens, who contributed both pathos and comedy to the character of Perks. In ‘real life’, Cribbens was, of course, much too young to play Perks and Sally Thomsett, who played the younger sister, was actually two years older than Jenny Agutter who played the elder sister, but, you know, that’s the movie business: nothing’s really as it seems – I bet Julie Andrews doesn’t even own an umbrella. I knew none of this at the time and even if I had, it wouldn’t have made any difference. All that occupied my mind as I left the cinema was Jenny Agutter’s bright red bloomers. If I concentrate, I can still hear the hormones buzzing in my ears today, an echo of youth, like the Big Bang with fewer connotations. I have no idea what subsequently became of Ms Thomsett, but I do know that Ms Agutter went on to star in Nicolas Roeg’s Walkabout a year later, and the boy became a man – albeit one still terrified of the Childcatcher…

*The Marx Brothers at the Circus was made in 1939, twenty years before I was born. I suppose that during those twenty years, the once ‘racy’ quips of Groucho became innocent enough to be shown on daytime TV, much as ‘When Harry Met Sally’ is now. Progress…

¹Oliver! Was voted the 77^th greatest British film of the twentieth century and is most notable – as far as I’m concerned – for introducing me to Shani Wallis and the notion that girls were something that I really wanted to find out about.

²The Railway Children is widely regarded as perhaps the best Children’s Film of all time. It was voted the 66^th greatest British film of the twentieth century. The film voted as the best British film of the twentieth century, in case you’re interested, is The Third Man. My own favourite ‘If…’ is 12^th, but as neither feature either Jenny Agutter and her red drawers nor a middle-aged ballet dancer with a false nose, they do not figure greatly in my childhood recollections. But that, I suppose, is show business…

Welcome Home

I have my finger on the pulse – although I wish to make it perfectly clear that I am in no way medically qualified, so please don’t ask me to mop your brow when things go wrong, I cannot be held responsible for any mishaps that fall outside my official remit. I read the papers, I watch the news, and I know that accidents are no longer the unfortunate whim of mischance – the result of ‘doing stuff’ – but are, in fact, the result of unmitigated hazard risk. They are the trigger for litigation. When the isolating horrors of Covid19 at last begin to ease, it will once again become tempting to consider inviting others – let us call them ‘friends’ – into our homes, only to afford them the opportunity to become the hapless victim of self-harm in the privacy of (hopefully) adequately insured home-sweet-homes. Well, as a man who has yet to part with his boyhood woggle, I am determined to be prepared: I have purchased several hundred metres of hypoallergenic red ‘Warning’ tape, reams of white card, a big fat black marker pen, a biodegradable plastic clipboard and more brightly coloured post-it notes than you can shake a blunted stick at. In case you should ever visit my ever more humble home, I would like to take this opportunity to herewith publish all my due warnings, which you may wish to cut out and keep. (Please be aware that scissors can pose a serious cut risk, or, in this house, the promise of severe bruising.)

Dependent upon which door you use to enter the premises (please note: doors can close as well as open and may constitute a finger-trap risk) you might find yourself in the kitchen. Under certain circumstances, the flooring in this area can be slippery when wet e.g. after the grandkids have had a water fight, washed the dog, or left the tap on after blocking the plughole with porridge. You are strongly advised against pushing your hand into any drawers in this area as they are almost certain to contain unsheathed knives, some of which may be almost sharp. Ovens and hobs can be hot – although, in my experience, seldom when you want them to be – and at least one of the taps could contain hot water just as soon as we’ve managed to track a plumber down.

If you should enter the premises through the alternative entrance, please remember that fraying doormats can constitute a serious trip hazard, particularly if you have previously partaken of alcoholic beverages (see below) elsewhere – in which case the owners of that establishment may well find themselves deemed to be liable for your inability to safely land one foot in front of the other. Should you decide to switch on a light upon entering, please note that light switches may contain electricity which can be harmful – particularly if the faulty standard lamp has not already tripped the RCD. Should you, however, decide not to turn the light on, please be warned that stumbling around in the dark, particularly if you are arriving from the aforementioned alternative premises (see alcohol – below – with brass-knobs on) can comprise many further risks – especially if the house you have entered is not your own, but one that looks ‘just like it’ after fourteen gins and a Drambuie chaser. You should also note that the doorstrip has been loose for years (just ask my wife) and it is no-one’s fault but your own if you fall over it.

Please be advised that should you decide to enter the living area, you will encounter carpeting that has ‘seen better days’. No responsibility can be accepted for ill-advised high-heels becoming entangled in bare patches, nor for any visual impairment engendered by the clash of colour in contrasting areas of faded and unfaded tattered weave. You are reminded that various assembled rugs, coffee tables, cushions and kids’ toys can constitute a serious trip-hazard – even when you know where they are meant to be.

If your visit occurs after the sun has drifted beyond the yardarm, you may be offered alcoholic refreshments. Please note: alcohol can increase the likelihood of walking into things, falling over things, erroneously inserting things and saying stuff that you may well deeply regret in the morning. I (the householder) cannot be held responsible for morning-after headaches, cuts, bruises or instances of marital strife. Non-alcoholic alternatives will always be available – just ask your host to have a bit of a rummage about in the cupboard under the stairs; I’m sure he’ll come up with something.

Should you decide to visit the upper storey, you are reminded that this is a jerry-built 1960’s construction and that the stairs have always made that noise. No responsibility can be taken for the fourth stair from the bottom – especially if you attempt to use the righthand side where it abuts the dodgy banister. This rail is fully fit-for-purpose as long as you do not put any weight on it. Once on the upper floor, please do not attempt to close any windows. We were assured by the man that fitted them that they were meant to be like that and anyway, we all know how important it is to have sufficient ventilation these days. If you visit the bathroom, it is probably better not to flush, unless you have deposited something you would not want to share a swimming pool with. Please be aware that the toilet lid has a ‘soft-close’ mechanism, which works perfectly well, up to a point. You are advised to keep your distance and protect light coloured clothing wherever possible. Do not open the under-sink cupboard – you have been warned! When you come down the stairs, please be aware that the fourth step from the bottom will now be the sixth step from the top.

Should you require medical assistance at any time during your visit you will be asked to complete a full indemnity form and medical record disclosure. NB in the event of the appearance of anything red and sticky, that clearly is not intended to be washing about on the outside of the body, all medical intervention is dependent upon the host being able to find the marigolds. It is advisable never to eat anything you find lying around unless you are specifically told it is edible and it is suggested that even then you ask to see the appropriate sell-by date as the owner’s eyesight is notoriously dodgy since the incident with the pogo stick and the door jamb.

Thank you for your visit.

Covid Warning: if you are suffering from lack of taste, you may well feel perfectly at home here.

A Rose by Any Other Name

I was watching next door’s fireworks through the bedroom window, when it suddenly occurred to me that it was forty years to the day since we moved into our current home…

Our first home was a tiny, two-bedroom, mid-terrace house that we lived in for just over a year before prematurely deciding that we needed a bigger house, hopefully out in the country, where we could raise a family. As we were more than a little deficient in the monies department, what we actually ended up with was the kind of ‘project’ that meant we would be in no position to have children for some years after we moved in – we may well have had to eat them before then. We liked what we felt the house could become, although forty years on, it is yet to become it, which tells you much about our ambitions and even more about our aptitudes. We liked the village – small then, unlike the demi-town it has grown into over the last few years – and we were blind to the pitfalls of so much to do, no idea of how to do it and no money with which to employ anybody else to do it. Even a bitingly cold winter, in which a large snow drift formed in the front room, facilitated by the gaping fissures in the windows (which should have been replaced under the terms of the mortgage) and our reluctance to turn the heating on – as we needed the money to replace the windows so that they did not repossess the house – could not stop us: we had our fourteen inch black and white TV set with its metal coat hanger where the aerial used to be, we had a quantity of crocheted blankets and an ancient two-bar electric fire in front of which we huddled for warmth and cooked toast whenever the electricity was working: we were living the dream.

Every house here had a garage and every garage had a car – in our case an ancient Vauxhall Viva with rather more rust than bodywork and a petrol tank that was almost entirely water-tight as long as it wasn’t filled above half way – we were on our way to the good life. We knew that as soon as we had restored the house to its original ticky-tacky 1960’s glory, we would move onwards and upwards, to somewhere better and brighter, and we will, sooner or later, I am sure. We had the asbestos central heating pipe removed before we needed specialists to do so and we swept the dust from the floor with brush and pan. We fitted new windows ourselves – gluing two standard 4×4 units together because we couldn’t afford a bespoke 8×4 – and were thrilled to find that we could open them even after we had glazed them – as long as it wasn’t hot… or cold… or raining… We fitted the front door which we still have today. It is to insulation what a sieve is to water conservation. When it opens, every other door in the house slams shut. It is about to be replaced and I’m not sure how I will manage with the new one. I have grown used to the draughts. I know exactly where they are coming from.

We were so happy to be here: I am a council estate boy, born and bred and here I was living in a village with a stable* at its centre! For the first time in my life I saw horses that were not attached to a totter’s cart. People rode past our door on them. They were dressed in tweed and spoke a language I barely understood. I was so impressed by them: they were a symbol of true country living, so you can imagine my joy when, after being in the village for just a few days, one of these giant beasts deposited a very large pile of its doings right in front of my house. This shit was indisputably mine! I ran to my bucket and spade. It was a happy man who strode into the kitchen a couple of minutes later to display my gently steaming bounty to my wife who, it must be said, was less than impressed. After a short period spent screaming, she eventually calmed down sufficiently to instruct me – rather abruptly I felt – to remove it from the kitchen.
“What the hell do you intend doing with it?” she asked.
“I’m going to put it on the roses,” I answered.
“We haven’t got any roses,” she said.
“…Can we get some,” I asked.
Her voice took on the quiet, tolerant tone that I have since come to dread. “You have to rot it down,” she said.
“Rot it down?” I queried.
“Rot it down,” she nodded.
“But it’s shi…”
“Colin!” she warned. (It was forty years ago and we barely ever swore back then.)
“Are you sure?” I asked. “Perhaps we should look it up.”
Now, this was a time, many years pre-internet. Google was something that the sink did when the drain needed rodding. If you needed to know something, you went to the library and found a book that just might have the answer you sought – if only you could find the page it had it on. We needed gardening advice and that was available only through a gardening compendium or a bona fide gardener. I could have written to ‘Gardener’s Question Time’ on the radio, but it would have taken ages to get a reply. I might as well just let the poo-poo rot.

“Maybe we could ask the lady at the village shop,” I said, suddenly blinded by the light bulb flashing over my head. “If we bought a rose…”
We had a village shop back then. It sold small amounts of absolutely everything. You could probably buy a bucketful of horse shit there. You could definitely buy a rose – she would dig you one out of her own garden if necessary. She would know what to do. These days we have only the Co-op and the punctured youth behind the checkout would be highly unlikely to be able to solve my excrement conundrum.

It transpired that the manure had to be ‘well-rotted’, that being one step on from common-or-garden rotted, and one step down from putrefied, and whilst that was happening we had our newly purchased rose to keep alive. We didn’t really have the money to waist on a floribunda back then, so having bought it, the pressure to keep it alive was intense. We manage to do so and even, over the years, bought it a few friends for company, but, my my, roses are hard work: greenfly, blackfly, mildew, black spot, Blind Pugh… there was so little to which a rose could not succumb and as our little garden established itself over the years, roses ceased to be a part of it. Forty years on we have only one rose, a giant rambling specimen that forms part of the back hedge and is remarkably thorn-free. (I’m sure we bought it as a rose, but I have my doubts.) The whole garden has evolved over the last forty years and, I think, has matured nicely, unlike the horse shit which, to the best of my knowledge, is still rotting down somewhere in the field behind us…

And that’s what set me off, the smell of manure. We get it sometimes. I think the farmer has a little ‘countryside machine’ – you know, like the supermarkets use to introduce the fragrance of freshly brewed coffee and newly baked bread to the aisles, but with the smells of the countryside – so that even as we become increasingly urban, we are still able to experience the authentic country odour of yesteryear: dung, pig and cow parsley. I opened the door to the scent and saw there, bang in front of my house, glisteningly fresh, a giant pile of horse’s doofahs. I strode to the rode. “Can’t you control that bloody animal?” I shouted at the fast diminishing rump. “Somebody will have to clean that up.” But nobody did…

*The gloss soon went off when I found out that the horses were used by the local hunt. However, the influx of townies, like ourselves, into the village soon put a stop to that barbaric palaver. These days the horses just plod around with an assortment of helmeted children and Barbour-clad adults on board. They still shit on the roads, but nobody ever picks it up…

As Man’s Ingratitude

Having cut along every conceivable dotted line on my body in the pursuit of the autumnal pruning regime: sticking plasters over every jolting puncture wound and binding each twingeing muscle in the aftermath of preparing the garden greenery for winter, the time has now come to pack and store away the various wood and metal gewgaws that litter my small square of England’s green and pleasant sward during the summer months. I have alerted the relevant emergency authorities, Elastoplast have gone on to twenty-four hour shifts in preparation and my wife is laying in a darkened room with a dampened cloth over her eyes. Wrapped within sufficient thermal insulation to keep a dormouse snugly at the South Pole, I will venture out into the garden where the garden bench that has spent the entire summer gently divesting itself of various arms, legs and backrests will stoically resist all attempts at disassembly. Muttered oaths and whispered threats will, on past evidence, prove wholly ineffective and the subsequent search for the axe will serve merely to unearth approximately sixteen new strains of fungi in the garden shed. Global Warming and the consequent threat of flooding the streets of York precludes the possibility of burning it, so the bench will be left to complete the decomposition at which it has heretofore excelled.

Metal benches, chairs and tables are not, unfortunately, quite so accommodating. They require careful deconstruction in order that they can be carefully packed away through the winter months allowing for easier disposal of the rusted remains in the spring. The liberal application of WD40 to the nuts and bolts should allow easy removal. Should, but does not. The separate elements remain fused as one by a layer of binding oxidisation and the oily layer from the spray merely accentuates the fact that the spanner I have for the job just doesn’t quite fit. It is imperial, whilst the bolts are metric. Or the other way around. I have no idea how you can tell. One way or another I have removed more knuckles than I have fingers – that total not necessarily being the number I started with – and (if you will forgive me) completely rounded my nuts. I would hacksaw them off, but the hacksaw is still conjoined to the garden bin where I left it last year. I have an electric jigsaw that would effortlessly cut through them, if only it had not cut through its own cable with similar ease the last time I used it. I will return to this particular problem once I have found my big hammer.

Having already removed most of the mirrors that are dotted around the garden I must now remove the shards that remain fixed – either too tightly or too loosely, I am never sure – to the walls. I approach the problem forearmed with such a variety of Pozidrive, Phillips, SupaScrew and Flat Head screwdrivers that Wickes – should they be able to see them through the various layers of paint they have been used to stir – would probably throw in the towel. Unfortunately, whatever screws I have used quite clearly require a completely different model. My attempt at removal with a claw hammer, although unsuccessful at loosening the screw, does remove the mirror and the lower third of a finger that, truth be told, I use very rarely anyway. I am relieved to find that the two mirrors I affixed to the fence are no longer my responsibility as they currently lay, still secured to the larch lap panels, in next door’s pond.

My previous attempt at mending the ailing garden gate ensures that no burglar can now enter our premises from that direction. Unfortunately, as I appear to have fixed the new hinges to the latching side, it also means that I cannot put the bins out. In order to facilitate the necessary revamp I conducted a careful search for my hammer which was subsequently found propping up the sagging rear corner of the shed. Having carefully removed it, replacing it with a brick that, until that moment was blocking the bigger of two mouse holes, I set about trying to get the handle back in it. What I needed was a hammer, but… Having used the brick instead I was thrilled to find that the shed lurched no more than forty five degrees without it. I will reset the clothes pole as soon as I have found some means of opening the shed door to get at the spade. Having spent the entire evening reattaching the wobbling hammerhead to the hammerstick-thing with gaffer tape, I intend to tackle the ‘gate conundrum’ tomorrow. Should I move the latch to the hinge side or vice versa? If I leave the hinges where they are, I will have to move the little hook that holds the whole thing, when it is capable of being opened, back against the garage wall. Without it, I recall, the gate does nothing but flail itself to death. I am tired of hammering the gate post back into the wall.

The final pre-winter garden task is to move all pots, tubs and planters under cover for the duration. The cover, in this instance, is the greenhouse. It is also partial. Such broken panes as do not have black plastic bin liners sellotaped over them have been replaced with variously assembled pieces of hardboard, cardboard and, in the door, a piece of mirror that gives me a terrible fright each time I open it. None-the-less the greenhouse is a wonderful refuge for all the bulbs and rhizomes that, having survived and wilted through the summer, need somewhere to go and quietly die. The smell of the greenhouse in Spring speaks volumes about the fragility of life. The crackling sound under my feet speaks volumes about the fragility of glass.

And so, like the rest of nature, the garden is prepared for the travails of winter. For months ahead there will be no tinkling of water-feature, no twinkling of solar lights and no inkling of why everything else, including the lawn, has turned to brown sludge. Come the Spring, after a dark eternity, new green shoots will appear everywhere I don’t want them to and every plant that I treasure will snap when I go near it. As soon as the clocks go forward, I will retrieve a large bag of six inch nails from the back of the garage and see if I can get another year out of the garden bench…

Blow, blow thou winter wind. Thou art not so unkind as man’s ingratitude – William Shakespeare

Idle Hands

Surely I should have learned by now that having time on my hands is never a good thing, that idle hours are never well spent. My own idle hands clicked onto ‘Reader’ and typed ‘Humour’ into the search bar. It’s been a long time since I found a new blog to follow and my latest crop of followers clearly don’t want me as one of their own, or if they do, they obviously think that I am somebody else: somebody with even the slimmest chance of making an income out of this waffle. I scanned down the page of the ‘humorous’ blogs on offer and reminded myself that dealing with crushing disappointment is all part of the human condition – at least if you are me. Firstly, I did not find a single blog that could in any way, be described as humorous, unless my grip on the English language has become even more tenuous than I feared. As far as I could see, most of them were there because they had the word ‘Humour’ as a tag. If this is the way that tags work, then I am very tempted to tag my next post ‘Get £1,000,000 of free cash by clicking on this blog.’ I see myself with thousands of new, albeit disappointed, readers.

Secondly – and I must be honest, by far the more distressing aspect of my trawl, this blog hadn’t even made the cut! Now, I realise I am no Oscar Wilde – I miss that particular qualification on so many counts – but come on, surely I should be able to get myself onto a list that is otherwise filled with ‘What is the basic fundamental of joke construction?’ and not a single ‘Why did the chicken cross the road?’ This is a very small pond, belly laugh-wise, and I cannot even get myself hauled out in a very broad net. I fear my goose – along with all hope of golden eggs – is cooked. I have ‘Humour’ as a category for God’s sake! What on earth do I need to do? (OK, if you’re going to be picky, I concede that including a joke or two might help.)

I have spent my life attempting to wrangle some kind of joy out of words. Most of the time the words have put up a pretty good fight. I know from very long experience that on the rare occasion I am truly happy with something I have written, a sober read-through the following day will see it hurtle towards the bin. Writing alone is the process of making a hundred jokes that nobody else gets whilst completely missing the one that everybody laughs at. There is nothing more joyful than finding that ‘killer line’ and nothing more soul destroying than seeing it die a death. There is joy to be found in writing with another discordant soul, laughing at the other person’s jokes and realising that you can add to them. Joy is in reading through an idea you had and hearing laughter exactly where you thought it might be hiding. I have laughed so much during long-ago writing sessions with the wonderful Mr Underfelt that I have feared for my health and my sanity – something I have never done in the last thirty or so years of writing alone. (Laugh, that is. I fear for my sanity on a daily basis. If I ever manage to find it, I will give it a very stern talking to.)

Solitary writing is a form of self abuse – although without quite the same sense of guilt or fear of blindness. It is all about the release. It is all about the disappointment. It is all about the ‘I’m not doing that again.’ I never think about writing: I just write. Like everybody else with an enthusiasm that dwarfs talent, I know that I will get it right one day. Like everybody else who waits for the day that they will get it right, I wait, and write.

I know that many of you are far more professional in your approach than I. On the one occasion that I wrote a novel, I meandered through the first half of the book, found the ending, went back to the beginning and then slowly drew the two together. I never had a plan, it just sort of worked itself out in a way that all of the top publishers of the day described as utter tripe. Only in sit-com did I ever have a beginning, a middle and an end in mind, because each episode is really just a single joke and the trick is just in holding the attention long enough to get there. Normally I had given up the ghost myself long before I reached the end. My dialogue just wouldn’t follow my plot. The phrase ‘It’s almost there, but…’ is the one I will have chiselled on my tombstone.

For the last three decades I have passed my time banging out this kind of fol-de-rol. Generally I start with the first line – I know what you’re thinking, but let me explain… I have a bookful of them. I write them down constantly. A million first sentences with absolutely no idea of where they are going. Often I sit down and leaf through the book until something catches my eye. Always I will have something on my mind, although I seldom know what it is, and it somehow attaches itself onto what I have written and, hand in hand, the two of them wander off towards the horizon where, if I am lucky, I catch them before they fall over the edge. Comedy is the gift of a flat earth. I can agonise all day over a single sentence, or I can find myself with a thousand words on paper and no real idea of how they got there. Either way, it makes little difference unless I can find a way to search for them that does not include the word ‘humour’. (Before you suggest it, I have tried prefixing with ‘Vain attempts at’, but I’m still not there. In fact I have just typed my name into the search bar and I still do not appear to exist. How closely this blogosphere mirrors life.)

The Devil makes work for idle hands, so the saying goes. I’ve always thought that the Devil probably had the best jokes. I wonder where he keeps them…

I Should Be So Lucky*

My wife tells me that I always view the world through a jaundiced eye. She is wrong. I use both jaundiced eyes. Life is full of pitfalls and I feel that it is my responsibility to warn you of all of those that I have already fallen down. Never-the-less, I consider myself an optimist – although it would appear that I am alone in that – and in celebration of the fact, I would like to take the opportunity today to share with you my ten favourite omens of good fortune, in the certain knowledge that it doesn’t matter how you paint them, they are all a complete load of tosh, but you know, it’s just me isn’t it, always looking on the bright side:

It probably says more about the British psyche than anything else that we consider having a bird drop one on us to be good news. Being shat on from a great height is not normally something with which a person would associate good fortune. Whilst a sparrow turd on the shoulder might not be catastrophic, a swan stool on the forehead might be considerably more difficult to laugh off. Imagine how lucky we could be if cows flew. Apparently it is considered lucky because of how rare an occurrence it is – well I, for one, am not quite feeling it. It is pretty rare to be struck by lightning, but I certainly wouldn’t consider it a lucky break if it were ever to happen. I think it is probably fair to say that the only time I might feel fortunate to have a sparrow shit on me would be if the alternative was an emu.
Throughout most of the world, the black cat is seen as an omen of bad luck, whilst in the UK it is considered to be an augury of good fortune. Having a black cat visit your home is thought to be a harbinger of wealth and prosperity – unless, of course, it is a puma, when it is a portent of running away. Why we in the UK are so diametrically opposed to the rest of the world in this view, it is difficult to say, except to note that, if we’re honest, it’s that way with most things. “The rest of the world says that putting your head in a crocodile’s mouth would be stupid? We’ll see about that. Bring me a crocodile, I’ll show ‘em.” As Brits, of course, we carry the complete conviction that the rest of the world is just plain wrong. It is why they love us so much.
According to the legend, a chimney sweep saved the life of William the Conqueror by rescuing him from a runaway carriage in 1066. (I’m not entirely clear what kind of living there was to be made from chimney sweeping at that time as, according to the ever-reliable Wikipedia, chimneys don’t appear to have been invented for another century. Probably explains why he had so much spare time on his hands, wandering around, plucking folks from fugitive wagons.) Anyway, casting all logic aside, it would appear that the grateful king invited the sweep to his daughter’s wedding as a display of his gratitude – although I’m sure that, given the on-going non-chimney situation, he might have preferred money – and it has become traditional to have a chimney sweep at a wedding ever since; although if I’m honest, I’ve never seen one. Speaking for myself, the thought of Dick Van Dyke hoofing his way through the proceedings would lead me to seriously reconsider my intentions.
Finding a clover with four leaves is a relatively rare happenstance, but as far as I can see, not one to get too worked-up about. The most it is likely to get you is a bad back. If such a leaf had a bounty on its head, for instance, then the search might be worth the effort. As something to sellotape to the pages of a teenage diary, probably less so.
My paternal grandmother used to say that a horseshoe should be hung ‘u’-shaped over the house door, in order to keep the good luck in, whilst my maternal grandmother maintained that it should be hung ‘n’-shaped, in order to let the bad luck out. Convention appears to favour the former, for just as long as it takes the retaining nails to rust through. A falling horseshoe on the head is a certain sign of hospitalisation.
Not walking under a ladder has an obvious rational justification. I would argue that common sense is not an omen: that not walking under a ladder is no more a portent of good fortune than not putting your hand into a working waste disposal unit or not jumping off a very tall building. My advice? If it is likely to cause you harm, don’t do it.
The number seven is considered lucky because God decided to rest on the seventh day after creating the world. In both Islam and Judaism there are seven heavens. Snow White had seven dwarves (which was clearly lucky as she got picked up by Disney, whilst Goldilocks with her three bears, did not) and seven is the number I always hit when I aim for sixteen on the dartboard. It is a prime number and, well, that’s about it really. Basically seven is a lucky number simply because it is none of the others.
A baby born on the New Moon will always enjoy good fortune. Why? I have no idea. We all like things when they’re shiny and new, don’t we? Except a New Moon isn’t very shiny, is it? A Full Moon is shiny. Mostly, in my opinion, a New Moon is a bit spooky. The New Moon night is darker and you are much more likely to encounter Dracula on such a night (which is particularly galling if you have just broken a mirror). Apparently a New Moon on a Monday (Moonday) is doubly fortunate – although not if you have a dentists appointment, or you fancy a night-time ramble without having to festoon yourself with garlic.
Apparently rabbits’ feet are considered lucky because rabbits spend so much time underground where they are more easily able to communicate with the Gods and associated spirits. If that is true, then the Gods are clearly not over-fussed by it, because rabbits are also much more likely to get eaten by foxes and ferrets than we are. The practice of saying “Rabbits, rabbits, rabbits!” on the first day of the month to bring good luck is associated with this, although not if you own a terrier, which will be driven mad by it.
Wishbones, along with all the other internal paraphernalia of a chicken, are traditionally used in predicting the future. When a wishbone is pulled and broken by two people, the person with the biggest bit is considered to have ‘won the luck’. An unbroken wishbone, therefore, is considered to carry the promise of good fortune – particularly if you are a chicken and it’s still inside your chest. The wishbone shape is probably the most imitated shape to be found in all manner of talisman – unless you are in certain areas of London, where it is a stab vest.

So, there you are: the McQueen guide to good luck has been delivered, totally without misfortune, unless, of course, reading it has kept you away from doing something (anything) more important, in which case I can only apologise. It is just one of those pitfalls that the jaundiced eye is never good at picking out…

*It is perhaps worth noting that Kylie Minogue is pretty much charm-sized and that most men would probably consider themselves luck to be able to carry her around with them.

The Eternal Circle

Those of you who were with me on Tuesday (The Seventh Seal) will have found me in my usual state of angst, on that occasion about my inability to corral my thoughts along a predictable path from cogent beginning to rational end. Indeed. those of you stubborn enough to have stuck with me these last few years, through thin and thin, will be painfully aware that narrative thrust is not, figuratively speaking, my ‘thing’. I prefer to let my mind wander a little, to find its own way through my daily travails, in the hope that I can catch up with it sooner or later and corral it into a last sentence that ties in with all that has come before, that neatly bundles all the threads together and arrives both unexpectedly and yet as expected at ‘The End’. My style of writing involves little in the way of planning and a great deal in the way of staring out of the window whilst drinking coffee. I begin each little farrago with the conviction that it will wind up (or down, I’m never sure) if not in the same place then at least on the same page (see figuratively speaking above). That each piece has a dénouement of sorts is as surprising to me as everybody else. That beginning and end should fall into any kind of order after taking a waltz around my cranium is nothing short of a eiraclm. So…

The shower is up and was, briefly, running. You may gather from that sentence that this is no longer the case. It remains up, but it is no longer running. Not, I should point out, the shower’s fault. The reason that it is currently in an ongoing non-functional scenario is actually the fault of the new shower-screen which, having spent the short time since its erection leaking like a sieve, is currently back in its box and awaiting collection. (Fortunately I kept the box because I am old and I know how these things go: they go up, don’t work and come down again, whereupon they have to be returned to the supplier in original packing.) It will be ‘up-picked’, I presume as the result of using a dyslexic Cantonese/English translator, when the new one is delivered, except it won’t, because the carriers know nothing about a new one, as they have only the paperwork for a collection and nothing on the van left to deliver other than a gross of left-handed socks for a shop in Wolverhampton. This does not concern me: at some stage, when we are not in, the new screen will be delivered and left next door with a slow-cooker intended for somewhere in Hemel Hempstead. The new screen will go up without incident and will leak in a whole new range of places.

Built-in obsolescence has reached such a stage that things are now obsolete before they are built in. The expectation is that things will not be as expected. Modern life is all about managing disappointment. In days of yore you could rely on a washing machine lasting until the very day after the guarantee ran out. Then they changed the law: goods, these days, are effectively guaranteed to last as long as they can reasonably be expected to last. It is impossible to plan. You have to spend hours researching the reasonable lifetime of a tumble dryer before you can work out when to get the man in. You have to be aware of the expected durability of a cooker before you make a note of the local takeaway’s number. Things will last just as long as expected, and if they don’t, well, what do you expect? To tell the truth, I did expect the shower screen to keep the water out – or in – somewhat better than it did. If I’m honest, the shower made less of a puddle without it. It strikes me that, if you buy a computer, it is easy to argue that it might not be powerful enough for you and the expectation could be that it might go out-of-date very quickly, it is less easy to maintain that a shower screen is meant to be porous.

So now I’m back in the bath – not ‘this second’ now, you understand, as my laptop has a battery life that is measured in zeptoseconds and has to be plugged into the mains, making it less than ideal for in-bath use, unless you’re writing a piece about the practical effectiveness of defibrillators – and, as much as I appreciate I am taking a risk by stating this, you know where you are with a bath. The water (unless the bath is full of children) stays in it. So constantly reliable is the bath that Archimedes was correctly able to assume that he displaced his own weight in water – and also that it would be cold before he managed to top it back up. It is not the bath’s fault that the towel is always out on the banister nor that the grandkids need a poo the second you settle down in the bubbles, and the downstairs loo is out of use until you can get the teddy bear out of it. Baths have a single function: hold water – much like the bladder which, at my age is far less dependable.

At which point I begin to consider the built-in obsolescence of body parts. What is the reasonable lifespan of my lungs, my heart, my kidneys? (I decided to leave my liver out of this – it has quite enough problems of its own.) Do I need to book the paramedics for the day after my seventieth birthday? I know that medical science has moved on, but what of flesh and blood? Are we destined to see out the balance of our lives waiting for spare parts? Are the ones we have obsolete? Does everything fail at once or can I expect my brain to outlive my lights? Will I be told that I’d be much better with a new one, or will they tell me that they don’t make them now like they used to? And then, of course, we face the inevitability of asking the obvious question, the one to which none of us actually wants to know the answer. Because that is the ending that nobody wants to see coming…