Well, this is Awkward…

This is, I believe, my 417^th post. I have been blogging since November 2018 and this is, to the best of my memory, the first time I have arrived at a blank screen with only one hour to publication and not the faintest idea of what I am going to say. I am aware that, in general, what I write looks like it has just been made up on the spot, as the clock ticks round to zero, but that is really not the case. Normally I have a few pieces in the bank and often on a Monday I schedule the posts for the whole week. Now I have nothing, not just for today, but forever going forward. As my great friend Mr Underfelt will, I am sure, be happy to confirm, I am a little obsessive about what I have to say: I will strangle myself over the right word for the occasion and, given the chance, I will tinker with a piece until its time has long passed it by and it has hairs sprouting out of its ears. Today, I have nothing to fret over – unless you count the fact that I actually have nothing at all. Whatever I might find to say had better soon make itself known to me because I have no idea what I am going to prattle on about on Wednesday, Thursday or Saturday either. Wednesday’s poem will come, they are often late arrivers, and I have to run this evening, so those thirty minutes of empty drudgery have the potential to allow me the time to find something to whinge about on Thursday, but Saturday is an altogether knottier problem. My normal process involves me writing at least one piece that ends up in the bin before I start to find my feet for The Circle. Generally speaking the Saturday post falls into place at the last minute but, crucially, that last minute is in reality a full week before the actual last minute or else I would never sleep. Thankfully, the Circle has a couple of new members that we haven’t properly heard from yet. I’ll think of something.

In fact, this whole milieu (or do I mean quiescence – I am too troubled to know) has made me (again, I know, I’m sorry) think a little too carefully about the way I write and, having written his WordPress name above, about my friend Crispin (not his real name – obviously) who has had to put up with my creative peccadilloes for more years than, I am sure, he would care to admit. I have a mind that is capable only (and at times barely) of operating on a single level at any one time. I get a solitary idea and I nag it to death until it cannot give me any more. I take a single thread and I shred it. Crispin takes a single yarn and knits a pullover. Whilst I pull a single twine into a thousand pieces, he weaves a tapestry. He bubbles with a thousand ideas whilst I try to decide whether ‘Garibaldi’ or ‘Ginger Nuts’ are the funnier; whilst I try to decide whether my character would eat Rich Tea or Custard Creams, he is baking a Teatime Assortment complete, I must admit, with a layer or two of those godawful pink wafers, but also with more Chocolate Hobnobs than you can shake a stick at. I work on a single idea whilst he has a thousand more. By the time I have found the punchline, he has delivered a thousand more feeds. Chris is the stray match launched indiscriminately into the box of Brock’s*, whilst I am the Catherine Wheel that does not spin but splutters for a while before, to everyone’s relief, it goes out. I am certain to glitter, dully and briefly, whilst he will either go out altogether or produce a blast that will blow his own wig off. I tell you this for only two reasons:

Not nearly enough people read his blog.
At times like this I wish I had as many ideas as he**. Don’t get me wrong here – I would drive myself barmy. I would never keep up with me. I find the few that I do have quite distracting enough. I am not as young as I was, my mind is not as agile. But I would have something up the barrel that I could play with this evening. The process of writing is my friend. I have not been able to sit down properly to write in over a week. Such ‘jokes***’ as I can manage drop into my head from somewhere I do not know, but always as I write, never in advance. A good line in a thousand words might not seem much, but it is, in my opinion, more than Ted Rogers**** ever mustered and it is, anyway, as good as I get.

Anyway, there it is; my brain does not buzz with ideas and, when it does, I cannot concentrate on any single one sufficiently to get it to work for me, but today the shelves are empty. I am the campsite grocers on a Saturday night: my bread is mouldy, the eggs are cracked and the firelighters are damp. I will not be able to stock up until Monday on account of the fact that the wholesalers is shut over the weekend and anyway, the damp has got into his distributor and his van won’t start. But at least I’m open…

*Brock’s were a second division firework brand when I was a child. The more well-off had Standard Fireworks. They were, indeed, very standard, but not quite as much so as Brock’s. I believe the phrase ‘damp squib’ was invented to describe a Brock’s Roman Candle.

**Whenever we meet up Chris has a whole new slew of ideas under his hat. It doesn’t matter that some of them may never work, he is so enthused by them that you cannot help but get sucked in. And anyway, if they come to nothing, he has a thousand more to fall back on.

***I crave your indulgence on this matter. Think not of Laurel and Hardy trying to get a piano up a staircase, but Donald Trump trying to keep control of his combover as he gets out of a helicopter: it’s not clever but, well, you’ve got to smile haven’t you?

****Ted Rogers was an English comedian who told political and topical jokes that nobody ever understood. He hosted a TV quiz show in which he was the second funniest person. The funniest was an anthropomorphic dustbin.

P.S. Can anybody explain to me, please, why I am no longer able to add new posts through Microsoft Edge? Firefox takes an age and I am now using Google Chrome for this one thing.

The Heart Grown Fonder

The pen is mightier than the sword, said someone who had clearly never been faced by a rapier-bearing maniac whilst brandishing only a Bic rollerball, but I get the drift. A few well-chosen words can change the course of history providing, of course, that you don’t get skewered before you can write them. There are times when an épée with ink might come in handy. When words fail you, silence can be the most potent weapon of all. We all understand the power of the non-speaking partner – especially after a night out. When you feel so passionate about something that you lose control of your tongue, the best advice is to hold it. If you say nothing in the heat of the moment, you seldom live to regret it later. (Unless, of course, it was not telling Aunty Thelma that there was a runaway bus heading towards her.) There are times when you have nothing to say; when you are literally unable to add anything to the conversation. I find myself out of my depth more often than a toddler in the deep end of a swimming pool, but in my case any willing hands that may appear are more likely to try to push me under than haul me out. Why do people react so badly to ‘I don’t know’? Whenever I am asked a question to which I do not have the answer, I say ‘I don’t know’ and it enrages people. They believe that I am either disinterested or that I am fence-sitting. Frankly, there are times when the fence is the only safe place to be; when you can see both sides of the argument whilst the protagonists can see nothing of value on the other side. The grass might grow greener, but if you can’t see it, it doesn’t matter. What is the point of a point-of-view if you can’t make everybody else accept it as the one absolute truth?

Every now and then I feel the desire to stop writing, but I never do: it just gives me something else to harp on about in the end. What I should do at such times is stop, put down the pen (or sabre, depending upon company) and pick up a book. I love to read, but seldom do. My wife has an unrivalled range of ‘Have you really got nothing better to do?’ looks for such occasions. In truth, other than checking the unrolled cardboard tubes from toilet rolls for secret messages from zombie workers and my wife’s magazines for grammatical errors*, I have read very little of late, although by next week I could well find myself unable to get my nose out of a book – the penalty for letting the grandkids loose with the superglue.

Anyway, most of the time I write: it is a constant thing for me and you’d think that after all these years I’d start to show some improvement. I have a very tenuous grip on grammar and I have never lost the tendency to prattle on for far too long. It takes as long as it takes for me to tell a story. Jeffrey Archer does it in about two hundred and fifty thousand words (or perhaps it just seems that long), whilst I tend to stall at about a thousand. Language is a precious gift; it seems a shame to be cavalier with it. And yet I have the ‘gift’ of couching a six word story in multiple layers of marshmallow. I should be concise, but that would involve me in the kind of methodical thinking of which I am totally incapable** My style (forgive me, I still work on the assumption that I have one) is conversational and my humour (forgive me, I still work on the assumption that I have some) lies in the minutiae, so it is natural for me to waffle on far too long about things that do not matter; that reside in Cul de sacs and back alleys away from the paths that I should be following, covered in broken fencing and bicycle parts. I may be going from A to B, but sometimes I find the diversion around the hidden ‘T’ junction beguiling. I constantly promise myself that in the future I will try to be more succinct. I strive to be very careful with words: I always try to make proper use of them, but maybe I should, like George Orwell, remove a whole raft of them from my dictionary or adopt a more economical style, reminiscent of Orwell himself, or Hemingway. (Although the result is likely to be that I will simply end up sounding like a local politician, with the vocabulary of a two year old and the narrative thrust of Roger Hargreaves.) Introspection is all very well when you’ve got something to look in on, but most of my time is just spent staring into the vacuum between my ears and wondering why fat-free mayonnaise leaves a greasy stain on everything it touches.

Anyway, this started out as a means of explaining my absence from the platform today – the lack of anything to say – but as soon as I started to write it down I realised that I never have anything to say, but that never actually stops me from saying it. And if you want to know why, I don’t know…

*I pass many a happy hour in this fashion, such magazines as currently survive are apparently put together by monkeys who failed to produce Shakespeare when given typewriters and are therefore very cheap to employ.

**If I’m honest, in most of what I write it is not even necessary to read the words in the right order.

Making It All Up

So, this is the moment when somebody (Hello Ian) asks you ‘How do you think of all this stuff?’ and you stop to consider it and realise that you don’t. Think of it, that is. Actual thinking implies method. If you thought of it, it would be more logical, it would be more ‘real, it would be altogether more… well, just more. This is the moment when you realise that you don’t actually think of it at all, it is just there in your head; not so much hammering on the door to be released as slowly oozing through the gaps in the frame. This is the moment when you try to force yourself to consider where it all really does come from and why you can never seem to stop it.

I seldom have trouble writing, although I do often have great difficulty in starting. Think of the final heave before the bandwagon crests the hill and begins its self-propelled plummet to the bottom. Think trying to start a Skoda in the winter. Once I have started, it (whatever ‘it’ is) just goes on its own merry way whilst I scurry behind, clinging to its coattails as tightly as a prospective MP to a popularist dream. Occasionally the original idea is the ending, and I can work backwards without using three different names for the same character, but mostly it is the beginning or the middle and I have to grope my way along with absolutely no idea of where it is all going to end until I actually get there. I am the car-boot Sat-Nav of the literary world. Even when I write a short story, I seldom know how it is all going to end. I’m rubbish at keeping secrets: if I knew where everything was heading I would, like an inept Ali Bongo*, let the cat out of the bag far too soon. Much better that it takes me by surprise too. Plots develop along the way, like mould on last week’s trifle, and endings just sort of plop into place when there’s nothing more to say.

I wrote a novel once based entirely on a one hundred word synopsis scribbled on the inside of a packet of dried peas. The ending changed with every page I wrote. New characters appeared and changed my opinions of those I already had. An off-the-cuff comment made in a non-essential snatch of off-piste conversation – of which there were many – would lead me down an unmarked cinder-path into a situation that I had not anticipated and from which there was no easy return. When it was finished and I hawked it around, I found that like the Rum-Baba at a Methodist finger buffet, whilst everybody loved it, no-one would actually touch it. I can’t say that I blame them. When asked by one publisher for a short synopsis of the plot I was at a loss, so I sent them a typewritten transcript of my pea packet notes which, by then, showed not even the slightest resemblance to what had ended up on the page. It may as well have been written in Sanskrit for all the information it offered: it was about as edifying as a Dublin taxi driver; like being sent into the Hampton Court Maze with a street map of Fishguard.

It bothered me for a while, I thought that it mattered. I tried to address it and found myself writing a succession of what amounted to some kind of stamp collector’s guide to life, with all the sparkling wit of a verruca treatment. I realised that any ‘talent’ I may possess is not actually impaired by my meandering dives into the inconsequential because, quite frankly, that is all that there is. I don’t actually make it up at all. It is always there, waiting to be let out.

So, now you know…

*Actually a very adept magician

The Running Man on Setting Off

I was very pin-toed as a child and my mother was told that it was very unlikely that I would ever walk properly, let alone run. (They were wrong, of course. I realise that you know I wouldn’t have mentioned it otherwise.) I do have a slightly unusual gait to my walk – picture a slightly camp giraffe on ice – but, although not quickly, I do run and I have played sport all of my life, even if most of my ‘upright’ time is spent in a stance that can best described as ‘a teeter’. (I caught sight of myself in a mirror once whilst playing squash and it reminded me of ‘modern ballet’ – the kind of dance that is accompanied by music that exists only in the notes that never quite made it into formal notation; where you witness a move and wonder whether it could possibly have been intentional. The image was so shocking that I paused for a second and wound up with a bruise the size of a fried egg on my forehead.) At any speed above ‘dawdle’ I always give the impression of a man on a tightrope.

Since I began to run, a year ago, I have never done so without wearing supports on both knees. It is likely that my pin-toes are to blame for the weakness in my knees, although I always blame a lifetime of playing sport, because it sounds so much more glamorous. In fact I have a distinct memory of inadvertently attempting to fly as a child, across a space where a stone staircase should have been and crash-landing on my knees, leading to what the doctor described as ‘water on the knees’, which he treated with crepe bandages wound so tightly that my feet turned blue and my eyes bulged in my head like balloons in a microwave. Whatever the cause, my knees operate on a basis of more or less permanent ache which, against all expectations, is lessened by running. Early on in ‘my running journey’ I was troubled by hip pain, but I learned some stretching exercises and now the only time I get pain in my hips is after a couple of days without running. It is my body’s way of telling me to get my arse into gear.

The start is always the hardest. If I get up in the night – ‘if’? who do I think I am kidding? – my stagger along the landing is a joy to behold as neither hips nor knees are prepared to bend without a substantial period of notice. The imperative to reach the bathroom combined with the intransigence of my joints means that the midnight walk is more of a controlled fall forward. In fact, that is the only way that I can set off on a run. I slowly tip forward until I reach a point where the gyroscope in my head (obviously sub-standard since fitting) tells me that either I start to move my feet or ditch on my snitch. The state of the paths around here means that either result is equally plausible. In my head I am a cool runner, but in the eyes of the world I am an old man fighting a futile battle against gravity; I am a pin-toed Rowan Atkinson attempting to catch a crowded train as it pulls out of the station. In reality, of course, the train has long-since left and I’ve no chance of ever getting back on board. Just as well really, it would almost certainly be heading for the wrong station…

As always, I would refer you to the start of this running around business in ‘Couch to 5k’, here.
Should you want to know what happened last week, you can join me running ‘…on a Bicycle’, here.

N.B. At the end of a recent Running Man, I included a little footnote about my coloured pen ‘editing’ process which drew a little comment. I think I should clarify that this is not some kind of ‘professional’ methodical process, but a desolate routine that almost invariably follows the same pattern:
1. Write piece in pen on paper.
2. Transpose onto computer and print.
3. Read through and despair.
4. Take red pen and add jokes.
5. Read through and despair.
6. Take green pen and attempt to make some sense of it.
7. Read through and despair.
8. Take black pen and correct grammar, syntax and opinion.
9. Read through and despair.
10. Feed into shredder and revert to original.

So now you know…

My running diary started with ‘Couch to 5k’ here.
Last week’s little tarradiddle ‘The Running Man on a Bicycle’ is here.
Next week’s run out ‘The Running Man on Extending’ is here.

The Writer’s Circle #9 – The New Chapter

Elizabeth Walton knew that time spent in regret and recrimination was always wasted. It achieved nothing positive. It merely deepened disillusionment – and bitterness was so ageing. She had been lucky enough to spend twenty years of her life with the man that she loved, and she was grateful for that. It had been a happy marriage; not blissful, but normally happy. There had been times when she wished him dead and times when he had wished the same for her, but there had also been times when she felt truly contented – and those were the times that she chose to remember. She remembered the day he had died – had been killed – of course, but not with any detail. She remembered it as one remembers a taste or a smell. The loss was a sensation to which there was no detail. It was emptiness. It is not possible to recall emptiness, only to experience it, and emptiness is what she experienced, day after day until one morning, several months after he husband’s death, Elizabeth awoke with the realisation that she had experienced quite enough of it and so she packed it carefully away – she had to know that it was still there if ever she needed it – and closed the cover on it, like a precious flower pressed between the pages of a favourite book, never forgotten, but seldom recalled.

Joining the Writer’s circle was the first conscious move that Elizabeth had made towards opening a new chapter in her life; she felt it apposite. She had seen the leaflet in the library and, despite never having written a word in her life, she went along at the first opportunity, because she knew that if she left it to the second, it would never come. In the event, it had been a very easy introduction. A local history writer – a professor from the local university with a bad wig and, from the look of it, only one good shirt – had agreed to read them a short section from his new book, so apart from introducing herself briefly she had little to do for the first hour. When the professor had finished his reading to polite applause on the hour mark, Deidre had suggested that it would be a convenient time to take ‘tea’ and everybody went down into the bar below. She noticed that most of the group drank happily together whilst two men – whom she later got to know as Billy and Terry – tended to hang around the fringes, unwilling or unable to properly join in. It didn’t take her long to realise that backs bridled whenever they came close enough to join in the conversation. She also was aware of the smartly dressed man with the boxer’s brow who stood alone, occasionally shooting his cuffs, and constantly looking over his shoulder. She felt that he did not belong. Fortunately she retained sufficient intuition not to approach him – although she was intrigued by the bulge on his ankle.

She’d had two gins – the first of which was bought by a man who introduced himself as Phil and said that he was pleased to see ‘new blood’ in the group. The second she bought for herself and had to finish somewhat hurriedly when Phil told her that they were not allowed to take the drinks upstairs with them when they returned to the Circle. Thus it was that, when she was asked to better introduce herself to the group, she did so fully and, briefly, tearfully. She was a little ashamed of herself but, if she was honest, it felt liberating to be able to unburden herself in such a way in front of strangers – like taking her bra off in a restaurant. (It was only the once, you understand, and she’d put her blouse back on before she came out of the ladies. She’d only done it to see if her husband would notice. He didn’t, but the waiter who found the bra under her chair did.) Anyway, it was done; there was no way of turning back. In her mind she had decided that it didn’t matter because she would never return here, but then everybody had been so nice about it, not condescending, just nice. Phil and Frankie had made her laugh, Penny had offered her a tissue and Louise had passed her a little mirror saying, ‘You might like to take a little glance in there,’ which was very nice of her because nobody likes snot trails do they?

Anyway, long story short and all of that, the rest of the session really became just a little bit of a chat, mostly about books: they asked what kind of books she read, which authors she enjoyed, all the kinds of things that she’d anticipated and rehearsed and then Deidre asked her what kind of books she wrote. Elizabeth had been prepared to obfuscate a little on this point – not really wanting to own up to getting little further than a shopping list – but the question was so direct and the manner in which it was asked allowed so little room for equivocation that Elizabeth panicked. She closed her eyes and visualised the library shelves. “Family saga,” she said. “Oh good,” said Deidre, “We haven’t got one of those,” and the die was cast. It seemed to satisfy everyone. Well, almost everyone.
“What are you working on at the moment?” asked Penny.
“Well…” she looked at Penny and smiled. Penny seemed very nice really and Elizabeth was sure that she would grow to like her, if she could just get over the current urge to strangle her.
“Maybe you could read for us sometime.”
“That would be nice,” said Elizabeth, painfully aware that ‘nice’ was a word she was going to have to try and eradicate from her vocabulary if she stood any chance of perpetuating the fiction of herself as an author that she was in the process of creating. “It’s all a little bit fragmented at the moment, but I’m sure in a week or two…”
“That would be lovely,” said Penny, genuinely pleased. “To hear something new. Lovely.”
“Well, I’m really not sure how good it will be,” said Elizabeth, realising that if she was to come back again she would, almost certainly have to write something – and that was the second positive thing she did since opening the new chapter…

‘The Writer’s Circle #1 – Penny’s Poem’ is here.
‘The Writer’s Circle #8 – Ovinaphobia’ is here.
‘The Writer’s Circle #10 – Phil’s Baby’ is here.

The Running Man on the Path

I would choose, if it was safe, to run on the roads rather than the paths. The paths around here are very much the second choice for running. For a start they would appear never to have recovered from being bombed in the war: it would be uncharitable to call the craters that litter them ‘potholes’ – I think ‘fox-holes’ would be more appropriate: they are wide enough to defy hurdling and deep enough to conceal ancient Japanese soldiers who still do not know that the war is over. Dodging them pretty much doubles the distance of a run. Then, where there are no potholes, there are drives. For some reason this village specialises in driveways that merge with the road via something with sides that appear to have fallen off a rift valley. Those that do not treat you to an up and down of about six feet over a car’s width, indulge you, instead, in a headlong dive either into the road or somebody’s garden, as the whim takes them. After a ‘path run’ my knees feel like they have just done ten minutes on a bouncy castle with my grandkids – the most strenuous exercise known to man. And finally, of course, the paths have dog walkers…

I know, I know, I have been here before, but really! What is it all about? Normally if I am running in the road, providing I stick to the gutter – that’s quite enough of that, thank you – approaching cars ease out a little to give me room. I always acknowledge them. Everyone is happy. If I am on the path and have to pass anyone – a novelty for someone who runs at a speed somewhat short of walking pace – I move into the road if I can, or cross to the other side. None of this is possible when the rain means that the road is as slippery as a greased eel. I stick to the path and gauge my speed, the best I can, to pass walkers at a convenient point, causing both of us the minimum inconvenience and allowing the maximum distance. Now, I am a walker too. I do realise that walkers do not want a shagged-out senior citizen panting all over them at close quarters. It’s easily sorted. We all move a little and everyone is happy. Normally pleasantries are exchanged and the world carries on turning. Unless the walkers are attached by a leash to a dog, in which case the path becomes a kingdom to be defended. None shall pass. A laird whose territory extends exactly to the end of the pooch’s lead.

Most of what passes for rational thought when I am running, is expended on where I should be in order to cause the minimum inconvenience to other path and road users: on plotting a path that keeps everybody as safe as possible and, if possible, avoids the necessity for a trip to A&E with my leg in a makeshift splint, cunningly fashioned from pieces of the larchlap fence I have just crashed through. A walker, on seeing a runner approaching, will normally move to one side, the runner to the other and it is very easy to manufacture a point of crossing that coincides with a driveway. Two metres is an easy distance to gauge: imagine falling over; would you crack your head on the path or on the other person’s toe-cap? A walker with a dog, however, will glare and stop, with great deliberation, between driveways before moving to the very centre of the path, giving you the simple choice: go ‘dog-side’ and risk a trip through somebody’s hedge, or go ‘idiot-side’ and risk a high-wire act along the kerb whilst they glare at you and defy you to breathe their air. With the road out of bounds, the ‘full stop’ is the only way out, whilst they walk by at their leisure, snorting gently from the nose. I was actually asked today whether I was ‘allowed to be doing that’. ‘Lockdown,’ apparently, ‘is not over yet.’ I was about four hundred yards from home. I did not recognise my interrogators – who were even more ancient than me – but I’m guessing they were probably not from the village, that they drove here to walk the pooch – doubtless because they have run out of places to dump their plastic wrapped bundles of faeces closer to home.

I could have stopped to argue, but, to be quite frank, it’s such a battle to gain momentum that, once I’ve got it, I don’t want to let it go. I could have said something caustic en passant, but I’m not certain that my breathing was up to it; I could have given them a withering look, but I fear they may have thought I was having a stroke, so I settled for a cheery ‘And a good morning to you too.’ They didn’t see the irony. I must be slipping.

The whole running saga started here with ‘Couch to 5k’
Last week’s bulletin ‘The Running Man on Reasons to be Cheerful’ is here.
The next Running Man bulletin ‘…On the Go’ is here.

Zoo # 25 – Lion Fish

As a boy I was very taken with the ‘Little Willy’ poems. Sadly, I have absolutely no recollection of who they were written by, nor where I read them, but I do remember that the form of these little rhymes never varied. I can remember two of them today – over fifty years on:

Little Willy with a shout
Gouged the baby’s eyeballs out;
Stamped on them to make them ‘Pop!’ –
Mother cried, ‘Now William stop!’

And…

Little William with a roar
Nailed the baby to the door.
Mother cried, with humour quaint,
‘Careful Will, you’ll mar the paint.’

A have absolutely no idea why they appealed to me so greatly, but I thought it was about time that I allowed myself to take inspiration from them. I hope that whoever wrote the originals will forgive me…

Little Willy, with a yen,
Threw baby in the lion’s den.
Mother seemed to be quite happy –
‘It was almost time to change his nappy.’

Sadly, it was at this point that I realised that at least fifty percent of my readers (‘Hello’ to both of you) will not know what a nappy is (actually the diminutive of napkin I believe – although how it came to be wrapped about a baby’s nethers I am not sure). I understand that American babies have diapers (the etymology of which completely escapes me) and I couldn’t make that rhyme in any sensible way, so I tried again.

Little Willy with a yell
Dropped the baby down a well
Filled up with piranha fish –
Mother whispered ‘Make a wish.’

Which, in the end, I’m probably happier with…

The ‘Mistake’ Rack (part two)

The main thing about the ‘mistake’ rack is that albums do not make their way onto it over a period of time: they do not move there because I have grown bored of them over the years, or because I seldom play them any more – I have many, many CD’s and some of them get played very rarely, but when they do, I still love them. ‘Mistake’ rack albums are different. They are destined to be there. Back in the days of Andy’s Records they would have had appropriate labels on them: ‘This album may not be anything like as good as you think it is going to be.’ Sometimes I have been given them, sometimes I have bought them on the strength of one great track, sometimes I was just looking for something new. However they came into my possession, I just knew that we were not meant for one another. I am not saying that they are, necessarily, bad albums – just that, all in all, they would have been better not to have been made…

So, having paused only for fortification in a glass of 40% proof, I continue my trawl through ‘The Shelf with No Name’. Next in line, and the most recent album on the shelf is ‘Amulet’ by Circa Survive (2017). I was led to this partly by a brilliant Roger Dean-esque cover, which is every bit as good as Alisha’s Attic (part one) is bad. The album is very polished, but so soulless that not even the devil would want it. This is a band that very badly wants to be Rush, but sadly seldom gets past amble, playing the kind of music you would expect to hear piped into the toilets at a prog-rock convention. It came off the shelf only very briefly. It is back there now.

If you can imagine cutting and pasting little bits from every great rock album by every great rock act into a single album and still ending up with something interminably boring, well, that brings me onto the next album on the shelf, because that is exactly what Thirty Seconds to Mars managed to do with ‘A Beautiful Lie’ (2005). It is an album that is far, far less than the sum of its parts. Waiting for one track to end, knowing that there is another one to follow is actually painful: not so much a question of where one tracks ends and the next one starts as why they bothered? It is like throwing every fruit you have ever liked into a liquidizer and switching it on only to end up with a brown, tasteless sludge. Every little bit of this album detracts from every other bit. The album sold by the bucket-load (the bucket, in my opinion, is where it should have stayed) and won plaudits galore as well as awards, which just shows what I know. Like deliberately banging your head on the wall, the only fun to be had from this album is when it stops. Back on the shelf.

Next in line is The Flaming Lips ‘Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots’ (2002), an album that I really feel I should like, but I’ve tried and I can’t. It doesn’t help that the melody from track one (Fight Test) is lifted straight from Cat Steven’s ‘Father to Son’. It bothers me. I have checked the cover to see whether it is credited, but it is one of those bloody awful booklets that is either designed to confound all attempts at reading it, or very shoddily printed. The cover is littered with critical praise and five star reviews, yet the record is nothing like as good as it thinks it is. This is the class swot. This is the album that stands in front of the class and says, ‘Look at me’. This is the record that your parents point out is so much better than you. I don’t know who Yoshimi is, but I’m pretty sure I’d like to flick him/her with a wet towel. I played this CD all the way through to give it the chance to change my mind. It didn’t. Back on the shelf.

Kula Shaker’s ‘K’ definitely has moments, notably in the singles (a common theme) ‘Hey Dude’, ‘Govinda’ and ‘Tattva’, but the rest of it sounds uncomfortably like a bunch of middle class public school boys who want to be The Stone Roses. It’s ok for a little while, but then… actually, it’s not ok for a little while. It’s dispiritingly tedious. The overall sound is of a band whose independent financial means ensured that the music didn’t really matter. It’s a bit of an ‘in-joke’. On the ladder of aptitude, they are many, many rungs above me, but, if I’m honest, that’s nothing like enough and, sadly, I can still hear them. Rather than a ‘Curate’s Egg’, this is an Easter egg of an album: cool cover, plenty of glitter, but, ultimately, hollow. It’s back on the shelf.

Finally, we come to an album that it kills me to see there: Iggy and the Stooges ‘Raw Power’. I know, I know, please let me explain. I am a life-long Bowie fan. This album was released in 1973, having been rescued from the record company bins and cleaned up by Bowie at the mixing desk*. Along with The Sex Pistol’s ‘Never Mind the Bollocks’ it is the very best of punk. Over the years I have played the grooves off the vinyl twice and so eventually decided to buy the re-issued CD, which was re-mixed by Bruce Dickinson and Iggy himself, who did not like the buffed-up edges on Bowie’s mix. Fair enough, except in re-mixing, they merely seem to have returned it to the kind of sound that nearly blocked its release in the first place. It sounds as though the whole thing is being played through a child’s megaphone with a sock in it. They have maxed out everything available to them. They have borrowed an amp from Spinal Tap and turned it up to 12. Everything is buried in a fuzzy, messy growl of tinny electrical noise that drives me mad. There is rough, and there is rough. I love this album, but the CD has gone on the shelf because every time I think about playing it, I just go downstairs instead and play the worn-out vinyl. Age has made that a little fuzzy too, but I remember how it used to sound before Iggy tried to force it through a tin box filled with horse-hair and feedback and so, as long as I still have the old vinyl, the CD stays on the shelf with all of its friends…

Once again, I must point out that the opinions expressed above are all etc etc etc. Before you are tempted to be upset by anything I might say, just remember how worthless my opinion is. If you feel that you can give me the key to unlock the joy in any of these albums (or indeed those by The Levellers, ARZ or Ben Harper that I never quite got round to mentioning) I would be delighted to hear from you.

*Whilst transposing these two posts onto WordPress (yes, I do still write with a pen on paper) I played Bowie’s three great career-rescuing productions of the 70’s: Lou Reed’s ‘Viscous’, Iggy’s ‘The Idiot’ and Mott the Hoople’s ‘All The Young Dudes’ and the world became a better place. Now, where did I put those glittery flares?…

The Mistake Rack (part one) is here.

The Writer’s Circle #8 – Ovinaphobia

Jane Herbert smiled nervously as she looked around the Circle. “I don’t have anything to read to you,” she said. “But I have an idea I want to pitch.” None of the other group members really knew much about Jane. She was an ever-present, always pleasant company but certainly no open book. It always appeared that whatever small revelation she was prepared to make had been well thought-through beforehand. She played her life like a poker hand. The others knew that she wrote horror stories, she had described herself on one occasion as ‘Stephen King in a frock’, but other than the little insights she chose to impart in and around the bar, little was known about her or her writing. “The tale starts with the discovery of a dismembered cat in field near a farm. Nothing unusual in that; must happen all the time – foxes, stray dogs, drunken youths… Nobody pays much attention, even when other mutilated small creatures start appearing – rats, rabbits, one or two more cats – nobody really bothers, until that is, the first of the brutally dismembered larger animals appears and it gradually becomes clear that nothing is safe any longer: dogs, foxes, badgers, deer are found – all horribly killed and half-eaten by who knows what?…”

“My God!” whispered Frankie. “That’s like no Tale of the Riverbank I’ve ever seen.” Jane Smiled, she was happy with the reaction.

“The killings become more regular; more brutal with each passing day,” she continued. “The local people begin to discuss the possibility of some slavering mythical beast. The national tabloids catch wind of the story and they descend on the village: farm animals are locked away at nights, watched over by reporters, farmhands and CCTV cameras, all hoping to uncover the truth of the Beast of Westhall, but the killings stop as suddenly as they began, interest wanes and the farms slowly return to the mores of normal rural existence. It is widely believed that it has all been some kind of morbid publicity stunt, or even, perhaps, some kind of arcane sacrificial ritual. Over time, as things return to normal, only one reporter remains, an atypically thorough journalistic investigator, determined to uncover the truth. It is he who finds the first human victim, stripped of flesh and clothing, and huddled under a hawthorn hedge surrounded by nothing more than a bloodied muddy lake, fringed by ungulate footprints and wisps of wool fluttering in the breeze where it has snagged on the barbed wire fence…”

“What’s an ungulate?” asked Phil after a pause that was just long enough to make him feel that he was the only one who didn’t know.
“I think it’s an animal with a cloven foot, isn’t it?” said Frankie. Jane smiled at him once again.
Phil turned to Frankie and mouthed the words, “Teacher’s Pet.” They both grinned.
“So, is that what’s doing the killing then?” Phil persevered, aware that he may still have been the only one of them in the dark. “Something or other with a clover foot?”
“Cloven,” corrected Deidre, who was never one to turn up such a chance.
“Well,” answered a thoughtful Jane. “It’s likely, isn’t it? Although it’s even more likely that the ungulates, whatever they may be, could just have been curious bystanders. They are, after all, herbivores.”
“What about pigs? Are they ungulates? My grandad had a pig during the war – it ate anything.”
“But did it kill anything?”
“I’m not sure, could have done. I’ve never trusted pigs since they sent Boxer off to the knacker’s yard.”
“What about the wool on the barbed wire?” asked Penny. “…Unless that’s a red herring.”
“Do herring have wool?” asked Phil, ashamed of himself almost immediately as Penny flushed instantly crimson.
“Well, they are weird, aren’t they, sheep?” chipped in Louise. “Evil little eyes.”
“They don’t kill though, do they,” said Terry. “At least, not in real life.”
“They have plenty of motive to start killing humans, I’d say,” countered Vanessa. “I agree with Louise, evil little eyes. Although Penny’s right,” she cast a glance at Phil, “the wool could just be a red herring.”
“Why do we count sheep do you think?” asked Frankie. “When we want to go to sleep, I mean. Why sheep? Why not rabbits, or kittens, or koalas, they’re far more restful… Maybe sloths would be even better. Counting sloths – how peaceful can you get?”
“They are sinister, aren’t they, sheep? Lambs are cute, like baby hyena, but by the time they’re adult and they’ve seen most of their contemporaries carted off to the abattoir, they definitely give the impression of an animal with a grudge.”
“Killer sheep – or maybe just one killer. Be a nightmare to identify in the middle of a flock wouldn’t it?” said Phil. “Mind you, knowing what sheep are like, they’d all want a go. They’re notoriously…” his voice trailed away, “…sheep-like aren’t they?”
“What about deer?” asked Billy, keen to join in the conversation. “They can be big and aggressive.”
“Didn’t Jane say that some of the victims had been deer?”
“Wouldn’t put it past ‘em,” Billy muttered darkly.
“Bloody hell,” said Frankie. “Psycho Rudolph! This could be more disturbing than The Child Catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.”
“Nothing could be that scary.” Penny looked genuinely alarmed at the prospect.
“Imagine,” grinned Billy, “you’re just drifting off to sleep, peacefully counting sheep, when one of them leaps out and starts to chew your face off!”
“I really…” Penny turned very pale indeed. “Why do we count sheep do you think?”
“I think it’s because they come in flocks,” suggested Deidre.
“Starlings come in flocks,” said Terry. “And pigeons.”
“Much too difficult to tie down,” said Vanessa. “It would keep you awake, the possibility that you’d missed one.”
“You’d have to count so quickly,” added Penny. “I think it would keep you awake.”
“Unlike a demented sheep?” Billy chided, winking at the grinning Terry.
“I think we’d all agree,” said Vanessa, “that consideration of the demented in any species is probably inadvisable in the moments before sleep. Nobody should have to try and sleep in the company of the psychotically unhinged. Do you have a partner Mr Hunt?”
“I…” Billy’s mouth lolled open like a dying carp. He looked towards Terry for support. He got none.
“Good,” said Vanessa, unaware of Deidre’s appreciative stare. “So, Jane, what are they, these killer ungulates: sheep, pigs, deer or just plain old red herrings?”
“Well, there’s my problem, I’m really not sure,” she frowned slightly. “I haven’t really got it straight in my head yet, and I’m afraid to say that it’s keeping me awake at night…”

‘The Writer’s Circle #1 – Penny’s Poem’ is here.
‘The Writer’s Circle #7 – Vanessa’ is here.
‘The Writer’s Circle #9 – The New Chapter’ is here.

The Running Man on Reasons to be Cheerful

OK, I am willing to concede that ‘cheerful’ may not always be my default setting, but today’s run has found me with a certain (if slightly demented) smile on my face. (I’m sure that you’ve got the drift by now that the day of writing is not necessarily the day of publishing – I am nowhere near that organised – so, if meteorological references do not match up with what you are seeing through your window today, I apologise. I have posted a nice photo at the top to help you with your ‘visualisation processes’. In truth, this disconnection may be even more profound today, because I am actually writing this down tomorrow, as it were, for reasons that may – or may not – become clearer as we go along). Today (that being yesterday as I write and possibly even last week by the time you read it) I ran in beautiful Spring sunshine*. The white carpet of snowdrops that glisten along the hedgerows has been supplemented by yellow and violet crocuses (croci?) aconytes, narcissi and daffodils; the sky is blue and cloudless and the sun is warm on my back. Even the sight (site?) of an abandoned TV, three-quarters of somebody’s old kitchen and a three-legged dining room chair in the ditch at the side of the road only impacts on my mood transiently. Spring has sprung and I am in high spirits. I have discovered that I am capable of running and being happy at the same time.

Breathing is, sadly, a bit of an issue: the trees are pumping out pollen like their future depends upon it (which, of course, it does) and most of it is making its way up my snout. I have tissues in both pockets and both hands and I cannot even smell the giant heap of steaming manure that has materialised in the field alongside the newly built houses – although I’m pretty sure that the ‘new to the countryside’ owners can (nobody ever fully appraises you of the fact that for large chunks of the year, all that rural England smells of is Cow Parsley and shit) – but I am not dispirited. It is Spring and I am enjoying my run – even when the grinning ‘Community Ambulance’ driver forces me off the road and through something brown and sticky. (I’m hoping it’s mud. I will find out soon enough when I get home and my wife – who has the olfactory acuity of a bloodhound – gets a whiff of it**.) I ran further than I have before and I ran quicker. I am a man reborn. This heightened mood could last until the very last pickings of brambles in the autumn, or until the very next ministerial broadcast on Covid – you can probably guess which is the most likely.

Which brings me on to the evening (and the reason why today is actually yesterday) and the local Covid vaccination station. Yesterday we were Astra Zeneca’d (I’m not coming over all Royal Family there, we were both vaccinated). It has cheered me up even further. It was brilliantly organised and everyone was so cheerful and helpful (Thank you NHS) even when the internet failed – the site is in the middle of nowhere – and we had to sit for twenty minutes whilst many uniformed people wandered around looking perplexed. I presume that the confusion means that it hadn’t happened before: it was waiting for me. Well, I don’t care. It can bugger off. I’m happy***.

We visited four ‘chip shops’ on the way home as we decided we deserved a treat. The first two were closed. The third refused to put anything new in the friers because they were about to close and didn’t want to waste chips – the fact that we were there to buy them did not, somehow, compute – would we like a pie? The fourth was open and proudly displayed the fact that it was under new ownership. It was truly awful. The best thing about it was the satisfying ‘thunk’ it made as it hit the bin. I had ice cream with golden syrup and cream instead. (Oh come on – try it. You’ll never look back.) A good day that ended far too late to write about – particularly as it was time to get back up to speed with ‘Line of Duty’.

Reasons to be cheerful? Today (Tomorrow/yesterday, who knows?) there are plenty. Don’t worry; it’s unlikely to last…

*A note from the future: today it is cold and murky. Everything is shrouded in a thick blanket of fog. As is usual in this country, Spring has both sprung and disappeared with an alarming synchronicity. Somehow we have skipped onto Autumn, which means that another bout of Winter is almost certainly bound to arrive, shrivelling spring blooms and freezing the blossom from the trees, with the consequence that when Spring finally arrives again, all that the sleepy little bees will find with which to make honey will be KFC wrappers, somebody’s discarded dining arrangements and a strangely besieged helleborous.
**A further note from the future: it wasn’t mud.
***Yet another note from the future: we both had a headache the following morning, but nothing worse than that. Still happy.

The whole sorry tale of my attempts to run stated here with ‘Couch to 5k’
The previous instalment or the Running Man diaries, ‘The Running Man on Plodding On’ is here.
The next Running Man ‘...On the Path’ is here.