Oblivion and all that

It came to me in a flash that when I die, the whole world will come to an end; not just for me, but for everyone in it, as far as I’m concerned. Now, I’m not a great one for philosophical thinking: existentialism, for me, might as well not… er, well… exist, but I do find it slightly comforting to know that the whole universe can only exist for as long as I am in it. When I cease to be, everything ceases to be. Unfortunately, from the same view point, it will never have been in the first place – so, not much point in keeping backups of everything on the computer is there?

If this all seems uncomfortably close to the I can’t see you, therefore you can’t see me view of a child playing Hide and Seek, well, that is entirely consistent with everything that constitutes me and my life. I presume it is part of the human condition that we all feel the need to make plans for when we are no longer here, but I think that I might just have found a way out of it. Planning has never been a strong point for me. I tend to either plan every last ounce of enjoyment out of an enterprise or get the day wrong and find myself on a bus load of pensioners heading to Cleethorpes in the rain. The lure of there being no point to it is quite a strong one. I have, in the past, started to make all kinds of elaborate plans for my funeral, but now I realise that there is no reason to do so, because it will never happen! (The italics are my own.) I will not be able to hear ‘Don’t Fear the Reaper’ therefore it is not playing; never has and never will exist. I might as well choose ‘Bye Bye Baby’ by the Bay City Rollers, which, when I do cease to exist, will provide a bonus for all of us.

Actually, thinking of all the things I will take with me: pain, starvation, the Taliban, Okra, is quite comforting. Imagine a world with no Chicken McNuggets. It will come, but I will not be able to imagine it. As I look out of my office window I see a giant buddleia at the end of the garden and it is absolutely covered in butterflies. Imagine a life without that. Imagine a life without anything, including life. Quite disturbing isn’t it? Occasionally my mind digs itself such a trough and it can be difficult to get out of. I do so now by thinking of my kids and my grandkids, and by remembering that for them life will go on long after I am no more (selfish buggers!) Each of my grandchildren will carry something of me into the future: for one it is ginger hair, for one it is a fearsome curiosity, for one it is legs that would look more at home on a carthorse. Maybe they will remember me, maybe they will not. If they do, I hope it is with fondness and not every time they catch a whiff of urine.

Not that I am planning on going anywhere just yet – I must make that quite clear. Whatever I may have lingering in the future that is waiting to pull the trigger, I am blissfully unaware of it at the moment. I feel like one of those posh fridges that monitors everything you put into it, but has no idea that you dropped a rogue brussel sprout in December 2012: it knows that the milk has only a day or two left, that the salad tray is devoid of all except a multi-pack of Mars Bars, that you really should have put a lid on the tin of tuna you opened last Wednesday, but it does not have a clue about the lump of green goo that is slowly spreading through the drain plug. If it did, it could tell you why you can never open the fridge without setting off the smoke alarm and why everything you ever eat tastes of mouldy brassica, but it wouldn’t have a clue of what to do about it. I doubt that, ‘Get yourself some long plastic forceps and a pipette for sucking up goo’ is part of its vocabulary. To be honest, as my only real experience of AI is through the Terminator films, I suspect that it is far more likely to disguise itself as a central heating boiler, seduce my wife and take up arms against me. Perhaps there are some parts of the future that I will be happy to miss.

There are two main reasons why I am currently involved in this navel-gazing. The first, and most obvious, is that I have just caught sight of the bloody thing in the bathroom mirror. I’m sure it didn’t used to look like that! It used to lay in the midst of an area of toned muscle and taut skin. It now looks like a sink hole in the middle of a pink blancmange. I would like to do something about it, but I fear that it might involve sit-ups and I cannot live with the sound that my back makes when I try to do that. I’m pretty good at sit-downs, but not so good at getting-back-up-agains, unless I have something to hold onto. I will just have to wear a vest and whitewash the mirror. The second reason for the navel gazing? Well, I have just spent a couple of days in the company of my grandkids and they are so full of life (an absolutely infuriating amount of it) that I have started to realise that I am not. I am left with a sense of inadequacy that I only otherwise feel when watching ‘Only Connect’. Whatever I had that formerly passed for get-up-and-go, has pissed off with the au pair and left me with a mortgage I can no longer afford and a dog that farts whenever it moves. I am not what I once was – although I’m not sure that I ever was – and I am not entirely happy with what I fear I might become, so the best thing I can do is to just be what I am now. It’s not much, but when the lights go out, it won’t matter. Meantime, I get the popcorn in, fuel up on the kind of fizzy drink that will bubble out of my ears if I run, laugh at the absurdity of it all and try not to worry. There’s almost certainly nothing I can do about it now anyway…

The Death of Routine #1

I hadn’t really seen the routine: I had simply become fixated with what came next. I had given up fretting over what to write, becoming more absorbed in how to write it. Whatever was occupying my mind was squashed back into its box until I had finished what I needed to do. When I came to let it out, it merely dangled to the floor like a Jack-in-the-Box with a spring made of liquorice lace.

Tuesday was always my wild-card. On occasions*, after a long weekend, it involved delving into my many files of unfinished bits and bobs and pulling out something that I thought I might be able to bring to an acceptable conclusion, when what I really should have been doing was looking for a way to humanely put it down. I was fully aware that, whilst some of these pieces had originally been abandoned simply because I had run out of both time and steam, or because I had been distracted by something new and shiny, many of them had been discarded simply because they were not good enough, and no amount of tinkering was ever going to make them so. You can put a new door on a derelict house, but the roof still lets the rain in. I am capable of dropping jokes into just about anything, but it doesn’t necessarily make it funny, anymore than dropping a truffle into a dog-turd would make it edible. My laptop is so full of dog-turd it should really be emptied once a week by the council. It doesn’t matter how much you love your baby, what’s inside the nappy is still shit to everybody else. I really must try to stop myself from revisiting things that did not work the first time. I cannot make them work: at best they still do not work, just in a different way. Backwards is never the way forwards.

Wednesday became Zoo Rhyme day. I enjoyed the zoo rhymes. They appealed to the child in me, but after a year of at least one a week, the child has often proved a little too difficult to find. I really like most of these rhymes, but they have gradually become a little too knowing: the humour a little too dressed-up. I will see them through to week 52 (I hope – I haven’t written the final four yet) and then, perhaps stop posting on a Wednesday all together, despite it being, by far, my most popular post of the week (largely I suspect, because there is far less of me to go around in a little verse). Three posts a week is a much more manageable number for a blog that was originally intended to support only one.

Thursday was the day for the Running Diary, which will undoubtedly continue to pop up occasionally for as long as I continue to run, but week in, week out, it has become more of a drudge than the actual running. I can’t keep putting you through that. So whilst I continue to run three times a week, you will begin to hear about it far more irregularly, and we must all be grateful for that.

And then to Saturday and the Writer’s Circle day, which was originally intended to be just a hook on which I could hang a series of short stories, but somehow it started to become a single entity. In my head, I suspect, it became a book and each successive chapter began to depend on at least some knowledge of what had gone before. A sure-fire way to lose readers, as it turns out. The law of diminishing returns. By the time I had trudged on to episode 30 the ‘cost’ to the reader was obviously far greater than the reward. I think that with a little work I could (although I won’t) work it up into a reasonable book, but it clearly makes a lousy serial.

So now I return to what I was always meant to be doing: rambling. Whittering away about growing old**. On and on, like a firework display with nothing left but half a dozen dampened Roman Candles and a rocket that has lost its stick. I have insufficient gunpowder, these days, to blow my own hat off. What you will get on Thursday and Saturday this week I have not yet even thought about. We’ll see what happens (if, indeed, anything does: I am, after all the living embodiment of indolence – I am Slothman.) I fear that over-thinking – like silk boxer shorts – leads only to disappointment and, despite the fact that this whole blog is built on disappointment, I just feel that it needs to lose a little bit of the routine that it has lately developed. I need a little bit of surprise in what I write, because that is what always leads me onto what I write next – not the agenda that I have spent most of my life trying to wriggle out of. From now on, Tuesday is just the start of a new day – and the rest of the week will have to fend for itself. At my age, it might not quite stretch as far as anarchy, but disorganised is a definite ambition…

*Admittedly more regular of late.
**I’m not sure why it is always ‘growing’ old, when ‘growing’ hints at development – at getting better – whilst ‘old’ points more accurately towards failing joints and bladder, general decrepitude and death.

N.B. Obviously, The Death of Routine #2 cannot happen.

Easylife

My wife brought home a free copy of some scurrilous rag or another from the supermarket yesterday and I was just about to head towards the bin with what I believed contained nothing of any value to me, when I discovered how wrong I can be*. As I lifted the recycle bin lid, what should flutter to the ground but the ‘easylife’ brochure; a full colour extravaganza filled with everything you had absolutely no idea you always needed. Let me guide you through a little…

My attention was first drawn to a pomegranate concoction accompanied by the most startling diagram of male genitalia I have ever seen. If mine looked like that, I don’t think that even I would want to touch it, even though, as the ‘blurb’ accompanying it claims, it could lead me to ‘a regained sex life’. Looking again at the illustration, that would almost certainly not be with another human being. Apparently ‘a number of men’ have already been helped by it. Sadly, I will retain my un-enhanced life for now as well as bits and bobs that do not look as if they’ve been run over by an articulated truck.

I could not resist the lure of life enhancement for long, however, when on the very next page I encounter the buckle-less belts that will not only revolutionise my trouser wearing, but also lead to a ‘slimmer, trimmer silhouette into the bargain’. I could not be more excited if they promised to keep my trousers up too. Also, on the adjacent page I find an amazing device that will cut out 98% of the sun’s harmful UV rays and ‘protects your hair and its colour from fading’. It looks a great deal like an umbrella and, as a special bonus, I find that it is indeed rain-proof and able to ‘shrug off summer showers’. I can’t help but wonder why nobody has thought of it before.

The same must be said for the aerosol spray on the next page that will, it says, repair leaks and make watertight within seconds. It is, according to the magazine, ‘endorsed by DIY enthusiasts’ and will, in addition to pipes, windows and gutters, also repair roofs and windows: I am surprised that tradespeople across the country have not fought to keep this stuff off the market.

A scant turn of the page onwards and I encounter ‘the instant portable fence’ – a section of expanding trellis on legs. It can, it says, be used to keep pets in their place – although it does not say what stops them merely knocking it over or walking around it – and, even better, it can be used indoors or out and, let’s face it, who doesn’t want a section of trellis fence in the house. Even better, you would be able to position the fence whilst wearing the ‘shoes so comfortable they could be slippers’ which are also suitable for indoor and outdoor wear and are, as far as I can tell, velour slippers. Be careful though, even in your sturdy, water-repellent soles, that you do not encounter the Stayaway Spike Repellent which promises to humanely keep your pets away from precious plants with ‘hundreds’ of 2cm spikes (the product description helpfully comes with a photograph of a dog staring forlornly at some distant plants) although not, I fear, the vet.

There are bras with front fastening, criss-cross fastening and no fastening; more therapeutic copper than you can shake a stick at, and more miracle ingredients than you’d find in an apothecary’s weekend bag. There is also a vacuum cleaner for removing the wax from your ears, plasters for skin-tags and a pair of gloves that, as far as I can make out, cure hand pain and fatigue by warming them up and, best of all, we have a ‘glowing solar owl’ that makes your garden a no-go area for pests, as it is a well known fact that all pests are afraid of owl-shaped light-bulbs.

I have barely scratched the surface of everything that is contained within here: I have not, for instance, even mentioned the professional way to clean you dentures, the portable door step, the diabetic socks, nor the self-cleaning toilet brush. Nor, indeed, the fact that, thank goodness, it is all printed on fully recyclable paper…

*I once believed that no president of the United States of America could possibly be insane. That’s how wrong I can be.

N.B. I have taken a short break from the Running Diary and The Writer’s Circle, both of which will return when I have regrouped.

Robot Readers

Like every other sane blogger, I never look in my Spam folder, but a sudden influx of comments this week prompted me to investigate. Most of them were the usual mixture of demi-literate prattle and fawning praise (I like those) and then came this one: “Next time I read a blog, Hopefully it doesn’t fail me just as much as this one. After all, I know it was my choice to read, but I actually believed you would have something interesting to talk about. All I hear is a bunch of whining about something that you could possibly fix if you were not too busy seeking attention,” and, well, apart from the very tenuous grasp on English grammar, you’ve got to admit that it does sound an awful lot like somebody who has actually read my blog. I was tempted to investigate further but, come on, I might be stupid, but I’m not completely mad. However, forgive my naivety, but I am at a loss to understand what this particular spammer wanted from me. Did he/she want an argument? Did they want me to challenge their point of view? (I am an honest man, I could never do that.) Perhaps they wanted me to congratulate them on their perspicacity. I suppose all they actually wanted was for me to click on their website, but what then I wonder? Do they take control of my blog? Do I become an unwitting agent of some hostile government agency bent on subverting the western world? (Well, good luck with that my dears, you could possibly mop up a couple of dozen dissenting voices at most if you manage to stick with me for a month or two.) Do they get to suck all of my genius out of it? Yup, you’ve seen the flaw there right…

…And then the thought struck me, ‘What if it isn’t spam? What if some poor soul has actually squandered five minutes of their life in really reading what I have to say and truly is dismayed at the loss? What if Askimet has wrongly identified them as spam? What if I owe them an apology? What if they could actually point me in the right direction to fix whatever it is that I’m doing ‘a bunch of whining about’? (Not easy, as everything I do seems to fall into that particular category.) Could I possibly contact them without making it seem as if I was seeking even more attention? (Does anybody actually write a blog without seeking attention?) If I’m honest, I am constantly dismayed when I read through my blog: it all appears to be so effortlessly crap, and yet it isn’t. I have to work at it. Perhaps they don’t realise that the stuff I’m doing the bunch of whining about is generally me. If they’d actually read my little weekly salmagundi of strife, they would surely know that. Unless, of course, it really is as bad as they say: that my carefully constructed and targeted barbs are actually little more than haphazardly collected words that, rather than pricking the balloons of pomposity at which I aim, in reality merely splat into them like a cow-pat through a sieve? What if they are not the joke? What if I am?…

…And then it occurred to me. I already know the answer to that. I have to look myself in the mirror every morning – no sane being could ever take that seriously. I gave up shaving because my face was so… unpredictable. I got really fed up of slicing chunks off it. This is not a face for the serious view. This is a face for the custard pie – even if I have to throw it myself. This is merely the face that some higher being saw fit to lash onto the front of a head that was used to house the brain that nobody else seemed to want. I always imagine somebody saying ‘Oh dear. We’d better give him a sense of humour: he’s going to need it.’ And a sense of humour I have: a very singular one. So singular that very often I am the only one that ever gets the joke.

Anyway, if you really are out there, whoever you are, and you have actually read my blog, then I can only suggest that you are merely one of the many who didn’t get the joke. You are not alone, although you could possibly occupy your time more productively by forming a club with all your fellow spammers, offering psychological advice to all we sad, damaged bloggers who cannot afford your membership fees. In the meantime, I shall continue to plough my lonely furrow – after all, I don’t have many gifts, so I have to push on with the one I do have, even if it’s whining – and hope that my attention seeking might draw something human this way…

The Running Man on a Return to Couch to 5k

I went for a slightly ‘troubled’ run at the end of last week whence I discovered that my lungs have not yet quite worked themselves back up to absorbing oxygen in the required manner and my hips are in desperate need of WD40, so it was decided that I need to reintroduce myself to the thrice weekly slog a little more gently. Consequently I reset ‘Couch to 5k’ and I intend to ‘redo’ the last few weeks of the regime until I get back up to speed. I have removed the ever-soothing tones of Jo Whiley and replaced them with the slightly more chiding contributions of Sarah Millican. The short ‘walking’ interludes (I have started at week 5 which sees me ending the week with a twenty minute run) are a little embarrassing, and always coincide with encounters with other runners, but do give me the opportunity to whip my ailing alveoli into accepting some suitable level of oxygen exchange before I lurch on again.

I have always ‘suffered with my chest’ but this is the first time I have really noticed how long it takes to build back up to normal function after it has divested itself of whatever it is it stores in there – although to be honest I have never been one to push my ability to breathe further than has seemed natural. In forty years of playing football, I seldom moved beyond canter, even at my fittest. I always managed to position myself alongside ‘willing runners’, affording myself the maximum opportunity to kick the opposition without having to chase them around too much first. I figured that, as breathing was the only thing actually keeping me alive, being out of breath was unlikely to ever be a good thing.

My legs, I have mentioned before, have something of the ‘tree trunk’ about them. They are ‘sturdy’ in the extreme and, I fear, not ideally suited to running – probably more designed for holding up a motorway bridge. My calf muscles alone must consume about fifty percent of the oxygen that I do manage to take on board. Moreover, when given the opportunity to utilise an amount of oxygen, they generally seem to enjoy it to such an extent that they continue to flap around all night. It is incredibly annoying (possibly more for my wife than myself) when my legs are still pounding the streets whilst the rest of me searches for sleep. I have tried so many ways of combating this: hot baths, cold baths, super-hydration (leading to super-micturition), standing, sitting, heating, cooling, beating with birch twigs, giving a stern talking-to, but to little avail. My legs have no speed control and whilst they are unhappy to lumber up to a pace that is anything in excess of brisk stroll, they are, having done so, generally unwilling to return to anything resembling inertia. If I do manage to tie the damn things down overnight, they repay me by aching and, occasionally, cramping up in such a manner that a blacksmith could use them as an anvil.

My hips are relative newcomers to this circle of pain, but boy are they making up for it now. I have developed a hip-flexing and stretching exercise routine which fits between my runs and my hips have been much better, but whilst I was not running, I was also not doing the in-between stuff. Hence my hips have become like rusted gate hinges and they make a similar noise when I walk. I desperately need to get them back into some kind of order so that I can get out of the car without groaning; so that I can bend over without next door’s cat thinking that somebody is shooting at it.

I’m hoping that my second lope through the latter stages of Couch to 5k will be somewhat easier than my first: I am somewhat more adjusted to the levels of discomfort and boredom, having developed the distraction techniques needed to cancel out both. I may stumble on through the schedule, to the end of week nine, or I may find that I am back up to speed (relative term*) before then and decide to drop back into the old routine. Either way, I am actually feeling keen to get back to my established routine of runs and exercise before winter descends.

Who’d have thought it?

*VERY relative term.

‘Couch to 5k’, started my running saga here.
Last week’s running diary ‘on Being Grandad’ is here.

Zoo #43 – Ptarmigan

A ptarmigan is a bigger partridge
(Though hunters use the same size cartridge)
A little larger than a grouse,
Substantially smaller than a house.
Its fate is often Christmas fare –
It tastes a little like a hare.
Ptarmigans come with a silent ‘P’,
Like toddlers swimming in the sea.

The Ptarmigan is classed as a ‘game bird’ e.g. it has obviously been placed on earth with the simple function of giving the ruling classes something to point their guns at when they’re not starting wars. It is the ultimate arrogance of man that everything else on this planet has been placed here solely for our benefit and such things that clearly do not fit this criteria, probably need to be eradicated. Weirdly, the creatures we protect the best are those that we eat.

N.B. the bird was originally known by its Gaelic name ‘Tàrmachan’ until a man called Robert Sibbald (Psibbald?) thought that it would look far more classy if it appeared to have a genus name of Greek origin, so he stuck a silent ‘p’ at the front. I’ve always been intrigued by silent letters. How did they get there? I know (that is, I have been told, and I am trusting enough to believe) that some of them were originally pronounced – e.g. both the ‘k’ and the ‘g’ in the word ‘knight’ were originally spoken – but I cannot begin to imagine how ‘igh’ ended up in so many words. Some kind of lexicographical aberration. I’m sure the Greeks would have a word for it…

My One and Only Piece about the Euros

You have to be honest: it is the grinding inevitability that is so galling. Our position as world-class gallant losers cemented once again. Oh well, if it’s going to take another fifty-five years until we do this all again, at least I won’t be here for it – although, if I am, I will just about have recovered. As a life-long football fan and lover of my country (although not always my countrymen) I should by now have grown used to this torture: that everything ends in disappointment sooner or later. Let’s be honest: we all knew that Italy were the better team, but we believed, really believed, that it didn’t matter. We had destiny on our side (not to mention Baddiel, Skinner and Neil Diamond). In actual fact, even if they’d have given additional marks for ‘Anthem Singing’ we’d have lost. Watching the Italian team sing their anthem is joyful. We Brits feel obliged to sing the anthem solemnly – loudly – but reverentially. Gusto is, I believe, an Italian word…

It has become a national trait: play brilliantly, get ahead, freeze with the realisation of what we have just done, die a little. Somehow English teams, in all sports, are viewed as arrogant, when what we are is, in fact, fragile. People of my age might remember the ‘mantles’ that used to be a necessary component of gas lights in caravans: they gave out a brilliant white light, until you touched them when they collapsed as though made out of talcum powder. English confidence is a brittle beast. It can’t help that we live on a tiny island of three nations, of which the other two despise us. Ask most Scots who they would want to win and they would answer ABE (Anyone But England). On Sunday, Scotland was populated by 5.5 million Italians. Our Welsh neighbours are similarly disposed towards us. The answers, I suppose, must lie in our history – shared, presumably with France, Germany and Ireland amongst a plethora of others – who would support the Invading Hordes of Betelgeuse if they were playing England. I’m sure we had a few of our American chums supporting us – although how many chose to watch a European competition shown, presumably (and if at all) in the middle of the night I cannot imagine. Also, I seem to remember reading that there are more Irish people in the US than in Ireland and those of Italian descent not far behind, so I’m guessing we probably didn’t feel the waves of support washing across the ocean anyway.

The problem is, we have a ‘history’ – seldom a good one – with most of the rest of the world, and history, it appears, is not easily forgiven. Imagine being beaten up in the school playground because of something your great, great, great, grandfather once did. Try to imagine how much weight an apology would carry: I apologise for the actions of all of my countrymen between 1558 and 1980. Here, have my Snickers Bar as reparation is not going to cut it, is it? It is a burden that all English people carry, and one that we cannot shed.

…And then I read that a number of the England players (You can guess which ones. I’ll give you a clue: they are not white-skinned.) have been subjected to all sorts of abhorrent abuse on social media since our loss – presumably from the people who are currently doing for the Flag of St George what they previously did for the Union Jack e.g. making it reviled throughout the world – and I think, you know what, I now get what the rest of the world sees in us. You’ve all seen these ‘people’ when they get caught (not often) and they appear gloating on the TV News: the boo’ers of ‘taking the knee’; the jeerers of other National Anthems; the denouncers of different; the haters; the flower of English manhood (and they always are men) huh? And I realise that this young, diverse and focussed group of football players, who made it all the way to the final and played brilliantly along the way, is something to really celebrate. They represent the England I want to be part of, and bugger the penalties…

The Writer’s Circle #26 – The New Skirt

Penny smoothed down the perceived creases in her neatly pleated skirt. She was certain that nobody had noticed, but it was new and just a very few centimetres shorter in length than those she habitually wore. She felt somehow empowered by it. She had caught a sideways glimpse of herself in the mirror in the Ladies and she thought that her legs were actually nothing like as ‘stringy’ as her mother always told her. She had seen worse, much worse, and although the skirt gave her a little difficulty in keeping her knees covered when she sat down, she was happy with the way she looked. She felt suddenly hot and thought about opening the top button on her blouse. Just briefly. Steady now Penny, just one step at a time…

Shyly she looked around the Circle (all of whom had noted the new skirt) and almost sat straight down, but she caught sight of Deidre who was clearly ready to speak, and decided to press on. “I drew,” she said, “Family Saga, and I would be lying if I said that I really knew what that meant. First I thought ‘Gone with the Wind’ and then I thought of ‘The Waltons’, but I knew that I was only going to write a few hundred words, and ‘Saga’ didn’t really seem to apply. So, I hope that nobody minds, but I intend to take a bit of a liberty and take myself even further out of my comfort zone…”
“Oh God,” muttered Deidre, “What is it, a poem about cats?”
“…by writing this. I think you will all agree that it is not what I’m used to doing, but I listened to Frankie and he said that I needed to ‘lighten up’.” She looked to Frankie for support and he smiled warmly and nodded his approval. “I know what everybody thinks of me and, frankly, you’re not really wrong, so I tried to remember how I used to be; what I used to like and, somehow, for some reason, I came up with this and… well, Phil has agreed to help me ‘act’ it. I hope nobody minds…” She smiled at Phil who took his cue to stand, grasping a sheaf of papers in his hand. “We grabbed a few minutes ‘rehearsal’ before you all got here. I don’t know about Phil, but I have never acted before – not even in the school nativity – so please be patient. I will have to set the scene. It is an old-fashioned bookshop. Phil is the owner and I am the customer. I hope you will bear with me; I’m no actor and this is… well, I hope you will bear with me.” She and Phil moved into position, each grasping their script and a book in a bag.

PHIL                            Ah good morning madam. May I be of service?
PENNY                        Yes, it’s about this vegetarian cook book you sold me yesterday.
PHIL                            Yes madam.
PENNY REMOVES A VERY DOG-EARED COOK BOOK FROM THE BAG. PHIL LOOKS AT THE BOOK AND THEN ENQUIRINGLY PENNY.
PENNY                        It’s an ordinary cookbook with all the meat recipes torn out.
PHIL                            Your point being…?
PENNY                        Well, it’s not the same as a vegetarian cook book, is it?
PHIL                            I’m afraid you’ll have to help me there.
PENNY                        Well, a vegetarian cook book is a carefully selected and varied collection of non-meat recipes, whilst this…
PHIL                            Yes madam?
PENNY                        … this is a carnivorous jamboree with everything but the lentils ripped out of it.
PHIL                           (Under his breath) Not unlike the average vegetarian fruitcake’s diet, I’d say. Perhaps, madam, you could tell me exactly what it is you were expecting.
PENNY                        Well, I wanted a book of recipe ideas, especially designed for vegetarian consumption, which I could cook for my son’s non-meat eating girlfriend when she comes to stay at the weekend…
PHIL LOOKS POINTEDLY AT THE BOOK.
PENNY (cont)              … that doesn’t say ‘100 favourite meat recipes’ on the cover. I don’t think I’m going to get very far with a recipe for Steak & Kidney Pie with ‘Steak & Kidney’ Tipp-Exed out and the words ‘Some Vegetarian Rubbish’ written over it in biro. Nor, I think, will she find (SHE TURNS THE PAGE) and I quote ‘Beef Stroganoff with all the good bits picked out’ particularly to her taste.
PHIL                           Right, well, I’ll just throw this one away then shall I?
MELODRAMATICALLY, HE THROWS THE BOOK INTO THE BIN.
PHIL (cont)                  Another week’s profit down the drain.
PENNY                        Oh come on. It’s not the first time you’ve tried it on with me, is it?
PHIL                           What do you mean?
PENNY                        The whodunnit you sold me last week…
PHIL                           Yes?
PENNY                        2019’s ‘Wisden’ with the last page torn out… And what about the ‘Da Vinci Code’? Did you really think that I wouldn’t realise that it was just a remaindered travel book about Venice with half the words cut out and stuck back in at random?
PHIL                           Alright, what do you want?
PENNY                        Have you got the latest Jeffrey Archer?
PHIL REACHES INTO HIS BAG AND PULLS OUT A PRISTINE PAPERBACK.
PENNY                        Can you cut all the crap out for me?
WITH A WEARY SIGH PHIL TEARS OFF THE FRONT COVER AND PUTS JUST THAT IN THE BAG, WHICH HE HANDS TO PENNY. HE THROWS THE REST INTO THE BIN.
PENNY                        Thanks
SHE ‘EXITS’.

In the ensuing silence, both Phil and Penny retook their chairs. Penny looked down at her exposed knees and Phil cast his eyes slowly around the Circle. Frankie clapped. “Bravo,” he said, and he stood. Phil joined him, clapping loudly. One by one the rest of the Circle stood and joined in the applause with even the reluctant Deidre belatedly joining in. Penny, with half a smile, took a deep inward breath and slowly pulled down the hem on her skirt…

N.B. I’m sure that Crispin Underfelt has mentioned before the difficulty of getting sketches to format for WordPress. This is the best that I can muster. I hope that it is, at least, understandable.

The Writer’s Circle began here with ‘Penny’s Poem’.
Last week’s episode ‘Redemption (part two)’ is here.

A Time Limited Sketch – A Different Reason: A Friday Introduction

SCENE: INT. THE BANK. TWO RAIDERS CHARGE IN WAVING SHOTGUNS AROUND AND THREATENING THE STAFF, DEMANDING MONEY. UNFLUSTERED, THE CASHIER FINISHES HER COUNTING BEFORE LOOKING UP AT THE MEN. SLOWLY AND DELIBERATELY SHE TURNS HER EYES TOWARDS THE COVID NOTICE ON THE WALL STATING THAT MASKS MUST BE WORN. THE MEN SLOWLY FOLLOW HER STARE AND THEN, APOLOGISING PROFUSELY, SEARCH THROUGH THEIR POCKETS AND PULL BALAKLAVAS OVER THEIR HEADS. WITH A NOD OF THANKS THE CASHIER STARTS HANDING OVER THE CASH.

This sketch is something in the way of an excuse. It is obviously very close to its sell-by date, but I have to shamefacedly admit that I only thought of it today.

Anyway, what I really want to do is to introduce any of you who don’t know it to the blog ‘A Badly Chewed Pencil’ written by my very good friend, Mr Crispin Underfelt. Chris and I have a lifetime’s history. He makes me laugh all the time. I really think that more people should read his blog. If you like silly poems with a slightly dark edge, he is your man. If you want a comic saga, then ‘Thompson’s Lost Plimsoll’ is without peer. If you want a song lyric that you can hum your own tune to, Chris is unbeatable. If you want money, he’s not so good. I hope that this might take you back to his very first post – a perfect place to start – try it, you won’t be disappointed.

Pies – A Badly Chewed Pencil (wordpress.com)

The Running Man on Being Grandad

Wednesday was to be my first proper running day since I was first unwell – except it wasn’t. I have had a few sessions on the exercise bike and I no longer get out of breath hoisting myself into the saddle so the time felt right, but it is not. When I run, I run alone. I avoid other people as far as I possibly can and it has lately occurred to me that, should I keel over, I am many lifetimes away from a defibrillator. I am fully aware that the benefits of running far outweigh the risks, but you have to be honest, the benefits are not quite so… terminal. The pay-off of keeping fit may, if I am lucky, stretch twenty years into the future; the perils, if I am not, may stretch six feet into a box.

Exercise so far this week has consisted of being grandad. Of being used as a trampoline by two three-year olds and football/tennis/cricket opponent by a six year-old. I haven’t counted the baby, although God knows, the amount of walking up and down the room I do whilst holding her must count for something. Being grandad is much more fun than running, but twice as tiring. I have a ‘babysitting’ mode on my Fitbit that just says ‘Go and have a lie down’ every thirty minutes. I would like to introduce the physicist, searching for the secret to perpetual motion, to my grandson. Even when his body is stationary, his mind is moving at a frightening pace. He is capable of the kind of leaps of logic that would make Einstein blanch. You want to witness something moving faster than the speed of light, look inside his head whilst he’s sleeping. While the world slumbers, he hatches plans for rocket-powered shoes, upscaled building projects based on super-sized Lego and the possibility of growing chocolate from Smarties. An hour in his company is both life-enhancing and draining beyond belief. My spirits soar whilst my head throbs and my limbs ache.

I will not have run today either because I will have been at work and a day at work starts and ends with a long walk. When the sun shines, the morning walk is a golden thirty minutes, when it rains it is filled with the misery of knowing that I am going to be damp for the rest of the day. There is something about the water that runs down your back and into your pants that means that it can never dry – like badly stirred gloss paint on a plastic door. The journey back to the car on such a day, wet-panted, is never pleasant even if the sun shines. Steaming underwear is never comfortable.

Tomorrow, however, I am not at work. Tomorrow I will run. Next week’s running diary may well not be about running, but it will at least have its seeds in a run, and whether my pants are wet or dry and as long as I make it to the end without the attentions of the paramedics, you will hear all about it.

Ain’t life grand?

In an attempt to ‘glam up’ my content, I thought I’d try to post this piece with an intriguing title. I toyed with ‘Quantum Fluctuations of Time within the Somnambulant Cerebral Cortex’ but I was worried that someone might ask me to explain. I considered ‘The Mortal Coil: How to Shuffle Off – the Facts’ but I was held back by the fact that, by and large, these blogs are not, in fact, fact-heavy, but rather more fact-less. I then took a leaf from Bryntin’s book and went for ‘Easy Blogging Tips for Successful Lifestyle Investments’ but I feared litigation, so I went for the ‘what it says on the tin’ approach, which means that we can keep it to ourselves. Just the two of us…

The first running diary, ‘Couch to 5k’ is here.
Last week’s running diary ‘On What to Remember’ is here
The next Running Man post, ‘On a Return to Couch to 5k’ is here.