Never say ‘No’ to a hippo, They don’t really like it you see, And all of the hippos that I know Rarely ever listen to me.
If a hippo just wants to get past you Then probably let him, I’d say, ‘Cos they don’t really listen to reason If they feel that you’ve stood in their way.
If you think they’re like George out of Rainbow* Then I’d urge you to please think again – If you stand between hippo and water You will land in a sea full of pain.
*Rainbow was a UK educational programme made for pre-school children and watched primarily by adults. Everybody watched Rainbow, but few admitted it. George was a pink hippopotamus – everybody’s favourite. George, Bungle (an androgynous bear) and Zippy (a puppet so inclined to ‘shoot off at the mouth’ that the others kept zipping him up) all lived with human companion Geoffrey and the show promoted social development: the importance of kindness and understanding. This was many years before the Rainbow was adopted as a symbol by the LGBT community and even further ahead of its adoption as a sign of hope in the UK during the covid pandemic, but it always spoke of inclusion and hope. Best of all, Rainbow gave the world Rod, Jane & Freddie.
(Ask any UK adult between the ages of 40 and 60 to sing you the theme tune to ‘Rainbow’, you’ll see…) ‘Up above the streets and houses, Rainbow climbing high. Everyone can see them smiling Over the sky. Paint the whole world with a rainbow…’
These two articles (part one and part two) are somewhat atypical of what I normally try to entice you into reading on a Tuesday but, you know, different times, a change is as good as a, wossname, rest and all that. If you don’t like part one, I feel it only fair to warn you that you are pretty unlikely to like part two, but don’t give in, the rest of my twaddle is the same as ever and there will be no part three. All the same, I would love to know what you have on your own Mistake Rack…
This is a little bit of a trawl through some of the CDs I have bought over the years that have never quite cut it for me. They have coalesced into a motley collection of ‘the unwanted’ on a rack that is, for most of the time, hidden from sight. I played each of the albums as I wrote about them, desperately hoping that they would somehow magically change my mind: that having listened to them again, I would feel obliged to remove them from ‘The Mistake Rack’ and put them back in the light, where they belong. It has added up to one of those days that I will never get back…
It started because the startlingly awful cover of Alisha Attic’s ‘Alisha Rules the World’ (1996) caught my eye and I couldn’t resist popping it on the player. The singles taken from it are relatively passable and there are faint echoes of Alanis Morissette hidden away in there somewhere, but I am left with no idea whatsoever of what possessed me to buy it. It’s not actually offensive, it’s just… I’m sorry, I drifted off there. ‘Not as bad as I remembered’ would probably be the best review I could give it, which I’m not sure they’d thank me for. I made it through to track 3, which is probably more than it deserves. Will it be back in the player any time soon? No. It’s back on the shelf, but while I’m there…
Next to it I find River City People’s ‘Say Something Good’ (1990) which I bought on the back of the lead single ‘What’s Wrong With Dreaming?’ They subsequently had a huge hit in the UK with a cover of ‘California Dreamin’’, which is the fourth track on the album and as far as I got. The band had the good sense to split up after this and, as far as I can see, have not intruded upon the public consciousness since. Good decision. It, too, is back on the shelf.
Which brings me to The Seahorses’ ‘Do It Yourself’. 1997 and The Stone Roses were no more, John Squire formed The Seahorses and they released the single ‘Love is the Law’. Who wouldn’t buy the album? I so tried to like this. It has some really good moments, but in the end it is more up itself than all of Oasis’ post-‘Morning Glory’ albums put together. Love is the Law is the fifth track and, if I’m honest, my attention was seriously flagging by the time I got to it. I tried to remember where the really good moments were, but it would appear that someone had stolen them. Shame. Back on the shelf.
Tasmin Archer’s Sleeping Satellite (1992) next and who can deny, a great song? The album has two further stand-out tracks (Lords of the New Church and In your Care) but they are not enough to lift the whole collection above turgid. This is a record that has no idea of where it is heading and yet still lacks the conviction to get there. The satellite is snoozing in the midst of an infinite void. An album that has no identity – at least not one that you’d want to spend any time with. Back on the shelf.
Next? OK, well here’s where I really start to make enemies. The Verve’s ‘Urban Hymns’ (1997). I bought this album at the time when there was much discussion over which was the best album of all time, this or Radiohead’s ‘OK Computer’. Truthfully, I don’t believe there could ever be a best of all time because it is all so dependent on time and place. In any case, who knows what’s to come? To my mind, however, OK Computer is a very fine album indeed whilst Urban Hymns is not. Despite some great songs, as a whole it is nothing more than one long, terminal moan. I made it through to The Drugs Don’t Work, but only because I was out of the room clipping my toenails most of the time. This is one of the few albums I own that actually annoys me. It is like Chinese Water Torture. The first few seconds are fine, I can live with them, but after a while, oh dear me, no… I develop the irrational desire to strangle the CD player. If I had this album on vinyl, I would scratch it. Back on the shelf.
In ‘Closing Time’ and ‘Secret Smile’ (1998) Semisonic had two of the big hit singles of the late 90’s. Unfortunately the album does not stretch beyond those two great songs. It is hard to warm to an album that is so knowingly eighty percent filler. Shortly after its release I heard a critic say that the problem with Semisonic was that they were not nearly as good as they thought they were. With hindsight, they were not even as good as he thought they were. There is a definite element of not being bothered about this album. It has the same sense of image over substance as fat-free ice cream. Like a ballot box in China, there really is no point in it at all. Back on the shelf.
*NME (New Musical Express) journalist of my youth.
This started out as a much longer piece, which would have tried the patience of a saint. I cut it in half and even then, as a single piece, I felt that it had the same potential to hold your attention as an interview with Van Morrison, so I have split what remains into parts one and two. I can’t actually vouch for it being any more interesting this way, but at least you won’t be bored for quite so long. I can’t help but notice that the nineties don’t come out of this bit terribly well. I’m not sure whether I was less discerning back then, whether I was more keen to give anything a chance or whether it really was a decade of dross. I am also fully aware that some of you might really like these albums. I’m sorry. The opinions herein are mine alone and so, I really wouldn’t worry about them…
Vanessa had joined the Circle only six weeks ago, but had already achieved the status of ‘regular’ simply by getting into Deidre’s good books (a joke she had made to Phil and Frankie, who didn’t get it). In fact the mood within the group had improved immensely since she had appeared simply because her arrival coincided with the departure of Richard Hart, who knew an ex-copper when he saw one. Detective Inspector Vanessa Winthorpe had interviewed Richard Hart many times during his ‘career’ and she had proved herself to be every bit as tough mentally as he was physically. She had the kind of intellect that could slice over-ripe peaches and the kind of tongue that could subdue a hungry polar bear. He would have liked to have done her harm, but he feared that that was what ‘they’ wanted. Surely the police could leave him alone now – he had done his time (at least for the small percentage of the crimes for which he had been convicted). In the old days, they would have patted one another on the back – one for the times they had caught him, one for the times they hadn’t – had a drink together and let bygones be bygones. The modern police force was no longer full of gentlemen!
He did consider confronting her; he might have done so too, if he wasn’t so scared of Deidre. Deidre had seen in Vanessa a kindred spirit and had given her the seat at her right hand. It was too much for Richard who had never abandoned anything through fear, but was totally unfamiliar with confronting any challenge that could not be met with a punch in the mouth. He had gone out of his way to be friendly with everyone in the Circle, yet his charm offensive, to most of them, was exactly that: offensive. He knew that they were afraid of him, but that was ok. Everybody was afraid of him. He had never had a friend who would turn away from him. At least, not if there was any possibility that he was concealing an axe about his person. Deidre, however, was different. She was not scared; she knew that Mr Darcy would have made mincemeat of him in a fair fist fight. She did not know that Richard had taken part in more fist fights than Darcy had had hot dinners, but never a fair one. Preparation was the key. Shooting your assailant through the kneecap before starting to punch always made things a little easier. Having a knuckleduster on each of your hands, plus those of all twenty of your ‘friends’, always tilted the balance slightly. For Richard Hart, victory was always in the winning.
Maybe in the past he would have rubbed them all out, possibly one at a time, but more likely in a single incident: a freak bulldozer accident, or similar, but his heart was no longer in it. Age had softened him. He dreamed of following Mad Frankie Fraser onto the stage, perhaps after dinner speaking, but Frankie had to leave his old life behind him first and that is what he would have to do too, even if it killed him. The Writer’s Circle had been his first step. They knew who he was of course, they knew not to misbehave, but he did want to fit in if he could and he almost certainly would not have killed any of them.
His paranoia – a by-product of his psychopathic nature the prison shrink had said – had gone into overdrive when he first saw Vanessa. She had not spoken that first week, other than to introduce herself to the group, but as soon as she said her name he was certain: they were still after him. Perhaps they thought he would have forgotten her, or perhaps they knew that he would not have. Perhaps they believed that he would unknowingly reveal something to the group that he had kept hidden from the police for years. He knew she was ‘mic’d-up’, she fidgeted constantly, she scratched at her arm. He was too old a pro to be so indiscrete in front of strangers and it annoyed him that they thought he would fall for that. It might not have been their game of course. They might have anticipated him recognizing DI Winthorpe, perhaps in the hope that he would be tempted into doing something stupid; well, they would have to think again.
Richard Hart went home as usual sharp at ten and attacked his prison tag with a hammer. It hurt – a lot – but it eventually came off and he hurled it at the wall before turning on the TV and drinking his tea. They would be round for him in the morning. There’d be lots of them; one or two of the young ones he would really enjoy picking off, but he would not put up too much of a fight. Just enough. Break the odd nose, that sort of thing. Just sufficient for them to have him returned to prison. He was safer there. His cell would be just as he had left it – or else somebody would answer for it. He would stay in there for the rest of his life if it meant that they couldn’t send him down for longer. Oh yes, no fool Richard Hart.
The Circle was much more relaxed after that. Terry and Billy had settled back into their former position of ‘most abhorrent members’, Phil had stopped leaving his phone’s Voice Memo’s switched on and Frankie had stopped stuffing a metal ash tray under his hat. Oh, and as for Vanessa, well, her surname was actually Morrison. She had eczema that itched like hell when she was nervous. She had never met Ms Winthorpe and she had never been in the police force, although, even in her own estimation, she did look just like someone who should have been…
You see, when I fell back into these ‘Running Man’ posts at the start of Lockdown #3, in January, I really didn’t anticipate the possibility that I could still be at it in mid-April*. It was quite simple initially, to write down the kind of moronic ‘chatter’ that goes on inside my head whilst the rest of my being is otherwise engaged, but I am quickly coming to the realisation that my sub-conscious is just as boring as the rest of me. The random thoughts that once flashed in and out have settled into the rut that my conscious mind has vacated due to a toxic mixture of herbal tea, boredom and rising damp. Somebody has pissed on my fireworks. The problem is that what has begun to make these running posts so difficult is at the same time what first made them feasible: Lockdown – initially it gave me a raison d’être, but ever since then it has searched out new ways of gumming up the works. What was once escape has become isolation. I am no longer looking inward or outward: most of the time I am just not looking.
My view of myself within the world has always been as something of an ‘outsider’. Not fundamentally different, just not quite the same. You know, the little cupcake that sinks whilst all the others rise. I am the semi-collapsed and chocolate-less amorphous malty blob in the packet of Maltesers: the dismembered legs in a bag of jelly babies. Three Lockdowns and many enforced months of watching the world drift by, just out of touch on the other side of a window, has merely made me realise that it is nothing new to me. This is how normally I view the world. I am a dislocated shoulder: I look like the other shoulder, but I don’t quite work like it. I can help you to tote that bale, but I won’t half grumble about it. Alan Bennett said of the late Russell Harty that his skill lay in saying – however indiscrete – what everybody else was thinking. I have found that it is not until after I have said what everybody else is thinking that I discover they are not. Just me.
My head is a sponge for ‘bad’: shame, regret, doubt – once it finds its way in there, it will never be released. It batters around like a stick in a candy floss** machine, getting bigger by the second, more and more swamped in goo, more and more difficult to swallow. I have had many years to get used to myself. I don’t have to like me, but I have little choice other than to live with me. Most of what is good about me is what makes me popular with the grandkids – I’m just not very good at the adult stuff. I do try to change the bad bits as best I can, but who can actually, fundamentally, change what they are? In the real world, Pinocchio would still be an oafish puppet and Geppetto would still be eating frozen meals for one. If I ever found myself conversing with a top-hatted grasshopper, I would seek help. I don’t need a talking insect to tell me that I should be better. I am fully conversant with the fact.
And it is at this point that my regular runs have begun to get troublesome. Like, I imagine, everybody else over the last few months, I have spent quite a lot of time looking in on myself: quite a lot of time trying to figure out how I would get on with me if I was somebody else. (I fear that if ever I was to attend a ‘Speed Dating’ session, I would find myself sitting at the table marked ‘Toilet Break’.) Sadly, I don’t have any more answers now than I did a year ago – although knowledge of ignorance must count for something. I just have much more time to ask the questions – and most of that time seems to be available whilst I’m running. Whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing, I am certainly ill-equipped to decide, but I’m fairly certain that unless I manage a prat-fall into a ditch soon, or rupture my spleen in a comically inept effort to sidestep an intransigent dog-walker, it is not terribly entertaining. I will try to buck myself up. After all, good times are just around the corner. In England, Boris has detailed his ‘road map’ to recovery, the ‘end’ is on the horizon and, honestly, I don’t think it can come soon enough…
*When the Government hopes we should begin to move towards some kind of normality. **Cotton-Candy, I think, for those of you with the rather less fanciful US version of the English language at your fingertips.
I am used to waking with some weirdly disassociated phrase or sentence banging about at the forefront of my cerebellum, desperate to get out before wakefulness blocks any means of escape. (I have written about this before in a short piece from June 2019, There Is No Means of Testing This Hypothesis, but the Fact Remains That the Dog Has Three Ears which you can read here and from which I nicked the photo at the top of this post) These little phrases, fleetingly available to me only in the very moments of waking, trapped, like Steve McQueen was not, on the barbed-wire fences that separate conscious from unconscious, disappear from view as the morning’s more immediate uncertainties kick in: ‘What day is it?’, ‘What time is it?’, ‘Who am I?’ and ‘What on earth has died in my mouth overnight?’ This morning the little nosegay documented atop this post clattered through into my conscious mind, refusing, like a spoonful of yesterday’s cold mashed potato congealed in the bottom of a bowl, to be dissipated by the cold-water swirl of dawn, and hammered around until I wrote it down. It did not need to be so conscientious; I could not shake it off now even if I wanted to. It is stark and it is precise: I remember it word for word. It has somehow imprinted itself onto some neuron or other (Do I mean neuron? Is it synapse? I can never remember.) that has strayed off into some darkened recess within my cranium, where it should not be; taking up the private parking space, no doubt, of the whatever-it-is that should be remembering the PIN number for my credit card. It has become impossible to forget. It is still pinging around the cortices of my brain like the little ‘table tennis ball’ in the video games of my youth.
I remember the phrase, I hear it still, but I do not recall the context and, because of that I have no idea of what I was banging on about at the point that daylight punctured my nocturnal bubble. I presume that the words are meant to be reassuring: ‘Don’t worry, Viffers are safe to eat,’ but I can’t be sure. Is it, perhaps, a warning: ‘They have no calories and are, therefore, of no dietary value’? Well that really rather depends on where you stand on celery, doesn’t it? Does food without calories serve any purpose other than to make you crave food with lots of them? Perhaps I am mistaking lack of calories for something else – like lard – and lack of calories may not mean that foodstuffs are deficient in dietary value – just taste.
Initially I thought that I understood what I meant by ‘vicious’ – fiery, as in chilli, or Gordon Ramsay when yelling at the powerless – but now I’m not so sure. What if I meant feisty – as in something alive – if it continued to be vicious, it would have to be alive wouldn’t it – which carries quite a different meaning. Who eats living beasts? Well, pretty much every carnivore except humans if you think about it. Was the sentence spoken by an animal? If so, who gave it rational thought and, more to the point, have I been sleep-anthropomorphising again? Slightly difficult to imagine a weasel, for instance, issuing such a warning to its offspring (although I can, for some reason, imagine a cat doing so). Besides, if it was about to be eaten, it would have every reason to be a little spiky wouldn’t it? Anyway, if it was a living thing, it would contain calories surely. Am I wrong in thinking that anything that consumes calories must, itself, contain them: that a miniscule part of everything you consume becomes a constituent part of you? That when all is done and I am being loaded onto the little steel trolley that will wheel me along to my fiery goodbye, they will find me to be sixty percent chocolate, thirty-nine percent alcohol and one percent cauliflower?
Perhaps it is a good thing. Perhaps whatever-it-is is being encouraged to eat whatever-it-is by whatever-it-is because it has no calories. Perhaps obesity is a growing problem in the weasel world.
But if I was right in the first place, it would be a warning wouldn’t it: a little voice saying, ‘Don’t eat that chilli: it’s volcanically hot. By the time you’ve quenched the fire in your mouth you will already be dreading the consequences elsewhere.’ Or what, after half a dozen pints, most men would consider a dare. As my dad would say, ‘I think they put something in it up the brewery.’ The consumption of beer makes men uniquely susceptible to autosuggestion: ‘You would never be stupid enough to do that.’ ‘Oh yes I would!’ Let’s face it; no Indian Restaurant has ever sold a Phaal to anybody sober. It is on the menu merely to allow the waiters to get their revenge on Stag Parties – and quite bloody right too.
On balance, I am most inclined to adhere to my warning theory. I like a nice moral ending to my dreams. But then, I know, as usual, that you were there way before me, we are still left with one unknown. That this has not occurred to me until now as even being an unknown, may tell you a little of how my brain works – or fails to do at times. Anyway, what I have to consider now is what, exactly, is a Viffer? It is not a mispronunciation of something else, of that I am certain. The word was very definite. I was clear on it when I wrote it down, I am clear about it now. Something tells me that I knew what a Viffer was when I wrote it down, but it is equally adamant that I will never know it again. Unless, perhaps, the Buddhists are right and after a dotage spent chomping celery, I am one day reincarnated as a weasel.
Phil Fontaine took to his feet and removed the crumpled sheaf of papers from the inside pocket of his jacket. They were written by hand in black ink with two levels of rewriting on them, first in red and then in green. They would be almost indecipherable to anyone other than the writer and, possibly, the translators of the Rosetta Stone. For most members of the Circle, this was the first time they had ever heard Phil read.
“So,” he began, “this is the first chapter of my latest book. It doesn’t have a plot yet…” he smiled grimly at Billy Hunt, “but I’m sure it will come along when it is ready.” He tapped the papers on his thigh in bitter imitation of Billy, but they were much too crumpled to be satisfactorily patted into shape. Phil found a certain comfort in that. He lowered himself back into his chair and began to read. “‘It was one of those dawns where the pale, sickly sunshine actually cooled the atmosphere. Tiny pin-pricks of rain hung, twisting like a veil, falling from who-knows-where, casting glistening tiny frozen rainbows on the air, the only relief from the slate grey backdrop of the sky. Early morning commuters shuffled by, hunched in winter overcoats and hand-knitted mufflers, cursing the jobs that drew them so early from their now cooling beds. On the corner, under the recently extinguished street light by the bins, Harry Hoe pulled the collar of his thinning, threadbare jacket over his ears and drew deeply on a strangely sock-scented Vape. It wasn’t ideal, but it was all he had since the damp had got into his Zippo.
Across the road, third floor curtains remained tightly drawn, as they had been since 6pm the previous evening. It had been a long night for Harry and he was beginning to flag. His hipflask was empty, as was the brown paper sandwich bag; the battery on his Vape was dangerously low and the contents level within his bladder was close to critical. He had managed to get away with a crafty wee into the dog bin at three a.m., but there were far too many people around now to try that again. There were limits to what even he would do for cash in hand and being arrested for indecent exposure was one of them. Besides, he was so cold he could barely feel his fingers and he knew he would not be able to trust them to open his zip until they had warmed a little. He figured he had about thirty minutes before he would have to find an early morning café which might let him use their staff lavatory in return for the purchase of a mug of thrice-brewed tea and a dog-eared sausage bap. Thirty minutes and no more. Whatever the client had stipulated, that was his limit.
The client’s stipulations had, in fact, occupied his mind through much of the night. Two hundred quid in an envelope was never to be sniffed at, but the instruction was odd. A black and white photograph of a building – the building he had been watching all night – with a window circled in red. On the back a scribbled note instructing him to watch the window from 5pm and to report back with the time the curtains closed, and the time they re-opened. Why? They had closed at 6pm. It was a woman who closed them, he could see that, and he presumed that whoever it was had only recently entered the flat because the light had just come on and she was still wearing a coat. Unless she had been there all the time and had just put her coat on to leave. But why put the light on if that was the case? Security? On the third floor, he doubted that. To throw him off the scent? Could she even know that he was there? He’d only been there an hour by then. This was a London street. He would have to have been there for weeks before anybody noticed. And dead probably. He seriously doubted if anyone in this neighbourhood would pick up the telephone to call the police even then. Short of blocking access to the Waitrose Delivery Van, there was little he could do to impinge upon the consciousness of these people.
Anyway, whatever the answers, the client did not want to know them, just the precise times that the curtains opened and closed. Really odd. It was quite specific. Not the times that anybody entered or left the flat, just the curtain opening and closing times. Watching out for people entering or leaving the flat would have been more tricky – a little work on the pin-entry system – but definitely achievable and certainly warmer.
It was at about 4am, in that brief window between the latest of home-comers and the earliest of risers, that an uneasy suspicion had begun to settle upon him. Just suppose that it was not about the people in the flat at all? Suppose it was about him. Suppose it was all about watching him. He had to stand where he was standing in order to keep the window in view. Whoever had sent the money would know exactly where he was for an extended period of time and they would know immediately if he had not done what he had been paid to do. It was that realisation alone that had kept him there these last two hours. It could all be a test.
But it could also be a set-up. Incriminating someone when you know exactly where they are and what they are doing; when you know that they have no idea why they are there, nor who sent them – piece of cake.
Harry decided that the time to move on had come. The curtains might never open – that could be the plan. He’d earned the money by now. Whoever had put the two hundred into the envelope would have to come and fetch it if they felt differently. They would have to admit they had been watching him; to explain exactly what was going on. He crumpled his paper bag and dropped it into the bin before taking one final glance up at the window, when he noticed the curtains had opened, just a crack, revealing that the light was still on behind them. He resolved that he would go and ring the bell adjacent to the flat door. He would ask whoever answered it to explain exactly what was going on here. And he would have done too, if the sudden, friendly wave from the window had not coincided so precisely with the flashing pain across the back of his skull…’
So, that’s the set up,” said Phil, looking at his little sheaf of notes fleetingly. “Utter tripe of course.” He slowly and very deliberately tore them in two. “The trick is knowing that it’s rubbish, don’t you think?”
I didn’t run at all last week: the snow carpeted the whole village and for a full seven days diminishing only in very small patches. Some hardy souls did still run, I saw them from my window. Mostly young, they sped past gazelle-like, apparently oblivious to the white stuff beneath their feet: unperturbed and unaffected, whilst I dare not walk the few steps to my car for fear of ending up on my arse. I could happily make a living out of suing the maker’s of non-slip soles, if it were not for the want of serious injury rather than a grazed backside and a bruised ego. So I walk around the block now and again in boots that sport soles like tractor treads and are of a size that requires me to wear three pairs of woollen socks inside, stepping deliberately along like Neil Armstrong on the surface of the moon. Other than that, I do not venture further than the garden bin.
As I could not run, I took my exercise where I could. I pedalled away on the exercise bike in the garage and I played about with the weights in the spare bedroom. The garage is full of clutter – it hasn’t seen a car in years – and somehow manages to be colder than it is outside. I perch myself between the tumble-dryer, pots of paint, the deep freeze and the vegetable, rack and I pedal whilst watching music videos or old sit-coms. Anything to avoid thinking about what I’m doing. It’s a difficult thing for which to motivate yourself and an exhausting way of getting absolutely nowhere. It doesn’t matter how fast I pedal, I remain where I am. I finish exactly where I started, only bathed in sweat and wishing that I’d worn gloves. As a means of getting exercise, it fills a gap, but it’s pretty much like painting your whole house beige: you’re never sure of where it begins and where it ends, but in the end, you realise that it doesn’t really matter – it’s still beige. This sad, uni-paced spin leaves me ‘jelly-legged’ for a couple of minutes, but not challenged in the way that I am by a run. There is no jeopardy. It doesn’t matter if I stop only half way there, I won’t have to phone for somebody to come and pick me up; there is little risk of falling off and bruising something vital; there is no crossbar.
Twice a week I also thump about with the weights. I have a forty minute ‘circuit’ that uses barbells and bands. I do my circuits upstairs in a spare bedroom because there is insufficient room for my prone self amongst the junk in the garage. The bedroom is considerably warmer than the garage which, initially at least, feels like a good thing. Some thirty minutes later, it no longer feels like a good thing. It feels like I am lunging in a sauna. I cannot open a window without the possibility of drawing attention to myself – I have only just started to leave the curtains open a crack – so I boil. After my forty minutes I really feel ‘worked out’. I can see and feel the results, and it is a good way of expending energy when I cannot run. Except it is not the same kind of energy. I have just discovered this.
Whilst unable to run for this last week I have cycled three times and completed my circuit twice, so no problem in setting straight back into my running routine today. Well, just the one. It nearly killed me. I felt as though I had never run before. Whatever muscles the weights and cycle exercised, they were clearly not the ones I needed for running. Those little fellas had obviously put their feet up for the week. Whilst the new muscle-sets were stretching their legs, my running muscles were having a fag and a couple of pints. They felt like they had put a few stones on when I rattled them out of bed this morning. By the time I plodded back up the street thirty minutes after setting off, they were all deeply ruing the error of their ways. They are complaining about it loudly now. They need to watch themselves: if they make too much noise, I may well be taking them out in the snow next time – I will be covered in many layers of whatever it takes to break my fall – and we’ll see how much they like that…
Consider animals that flock, Or congregate within a bloc; The fish that shoal, the wolves that pack And spare a thought for those who lack The need to be a species clone But need to spend some time alone, Who feel that it is quite absurd To be no more than part of Herd.
Consider too the beasts that find They’re not like others of their kind. Imagine please the problems that Befall the vegan vampire bat Who nightly flies around the wood Whilst others go in search of blood Who finds his twilight life a test Not being quite like all the rest.
Consider please this lone outcast Who lives his life in bloodless fast (Blood oranges would be his choice, But there’s no rhyme for that of course) And, like me, hope that he will find A space for him within his kind – I think that all he wants is that ‘Cos after all, he’s just a bat.
Being different is never easy, but sometimes it’s more difficult than others…
Having become confused over which animals I have, and have not, written a rhyme about, I decided the time had come to write a list, at which point I discovered that my last rhyme (Zoo #21 – Aardvark) is about the same animal as my first (Zoo #1 – An Explanation). The rhymes are completely different – so at least I think I am not going completely ga-ga – but now I have ‘the list’ it should not happen again. Well, it might, if I’m honest, but at least I’ll know…
For the second time in less than a year my left ear has gone into Lockdown. I have no idea why, but it is very unsettling. My hearing is generally exceptional and my right ear is still operating at its normal threshold, so I can hear ok overall, but I have no idea where noises are coming from. This is a very weird experience. Everything I hear appears to be coming from the same direction, that of my good ear. Bang a tray to my left and I spin to the right. Now I know what goes on with my Sat-Nav when I set off for Edinburgh and wind up in Llandrindod Wells. Stick a peanut in my ear and I would probably spin around in circles for eternity. I don’t know why a deaf ear should be so disconcerting.
In common with most people at the moment, my life has surrendered much of its usual routine. I am an inflatable flamingo being tossed around at the whim of the North Sea: like a middle-aged man, disconsolately following his wife around the aisles of Wilkinson’s, wondering what comes next. And what comes next is beginning to bother us all, isn’t it? What will be the new normal? It looks increasingly unlikely that we are ever going to return to the way we were. If we rid ourselves of Covid, we are still at risk from any number of mutations that might arise in any one of the hundreds of nations that are unable to rid themselves of it. The world feels like a jigsaw at the moment: one thousand pieces, pulled apart, rattling about randomly in the box, waiting to be reassembled. We all know that when we finally get around to it, when we can’t even find a repeat of Midsomer Murders with which to more profitably spend our time, there will be pieces missing. (I can’t help thinking that makers of 1,000 piece jigsaws should have to print a disclaimer on the box: 1,000 pieces, but probably no more than 999 by the time you have spent a fortnight putting it together – check inside the cat.) The world has changed ineradicably.
Some of the change may be good: nobody is going to fly around the world anymore for a business meeting that can just as easily be done on zoom. Conversely, nobody is going to fly around the world anymore to meet new people or to understand a different viewpoint. The world has become smaller, yet at the same time more unfathomable. I can’t help but wonder how people will meet in the future. ‘I knew he was the one for me the moment he unmuted.’ ‘Even at two metres distance, with his mask cockled-up over one eye, I knew we were going to get on.’ And as for the ‘other stuff’, how? Two metres apart, masked and gloved. ‘OK then, but I’ll just have to anti-bac you first.’ ‘Every head in the room turned as she entered, wafting the heady scent of Domestos behind her…’
Maybe I worry too much. Maybe you don’t worry enough. Each day the news offers cause for optimism, which it then cruelly snatches away. ‘We are making amazing progress with the vaccination process – by the time we finish, it will be useless.’ ‘New Zealand has successfully eradicated the virus – and consequently nobody can ever go there again.’ Even the good news has become depressing. It’s a perverse kind of comfort I feel knowing that both of my parents died before I had to worry about them catching Covid.
When I was a child I loved Look and Learn magazines. Not new ones, you understand. The only new reading material I ever got was the Beano. These were passed down to me, from where I am not certain. They came to me periodically, in batches, pristine as though they had never been read. I loved them. I learned about Ants and Bees and Romans and Kibbutzim and how a slot machine works and how a grasshopper ‘chirrups’ and I turned into the precocious little brat that I remain to this day. If Look and Learn was about today, it would know the answers. No disagreements between various world leaders, medical directors and WHO officials then: ‘Well, what does it say in Look and Learn? Simple, definitive answers – often with appropriate diagrams – so clearly the way forward. Not only that, but whilst we were waiting for the appropriate measures to take effect, we could follow the instructions on page 5 to construct our own formicarium from 3 pieces of wood and an old pop bottle. Look and Learn was the nearest thing we had to the internet. Not quite so quick, but much less likely to lead to your bank being cleared out by a Russian cartel based in Nigeria and definitely less likely to be full of porn – unless you mistakenly stumbled upon the vicar’s copy.
Our house was not full of books and yet I was an insatiable reader. I read food labels, fag packets, my grandma’s Weekly News and Titbits, my dad’s Zane Grey novels, my mum’s Agatha Christie and yet I remember very few ‘children’s’ books about the house apart from Winnie the Pooh and an anthology of Grimm’s Fairy Tales which I still have today. I had a library card, but the library was in town and I amassed so many late return fines that I feared having a criminal record by the time I was six. Most of my book reading was done at school. I was good at it. Ahead of the curve in a way that I have never been with anything else desirable.
Anyway, Look and Learn would know what to do about my ear. Google is a waste of time. It tells me to put olive oil in it, but all I get is a greasy ear. It remains steadfastly blocked. I guess sooner or later I will have to have a zoom meeting with my GP who will also suggest putting olive oil in it. I’m not entirely certain that it isn’t actually blocked with the bloody stuff. Last time it happened, I could actually go to the surgery. He peered into it and said he could see nothing wrong. I said ‘What? I can’t hear you. Can you talk into my other ear?’ and he gave me some drops. I don’t know what they were, but it cleared up after a couple of weeks, which is what he said it would do naturally. So I’ll give it a week or two for now and see what happens – and just hope that if I encounter a runaway bus, it comes at me from the right side.
Getting On 