Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fashion

Photo by Quang Nguyen Vinh on Pexels.com

I am not at all certain of how this will pan out: this is not my usual way of doing things. The starting point for my little ragbag of ideas and mental cul-de-sacs is normally just that, a starting point – a first sentence, sometimes a paragraph, a vague idea of destination and an unrecognized postcode for the satnav. Occasionally a topic will present itself, usually some vague gripe or perceived injustice or I may just spot a bubble I’m dying to burst. Today I have none of those things, just a nebulous conviction that I should return to a topic of the past in order to measure how I view it today, compared to yesterday.

I plumped for Fashion. I first did so in January 2019 (you can find it here) so it must have provided me a reason for the visit back then. I don’t know. I decided against reading it until I had finished scrawling today*. I was interested to see whether I had returned to old themes, or maybe repeated the same jokes. (In my head, old jokes are always delivered by Danny Dyer. I have no idea why. I think it is probably because there is so little to commend an old joke delivered by somebody who believes it’s a new one – especially when it is one of your own.) Nothing goes out of fashion quite as quickly as a bad joke – except, perhaps, for tartan edgings.

Now, I know that my love of old comedy makes me deeply unfashionable. In a weird kind of a way, I embrace bad comedy as warmly as I cling on to great comedy (I have to, I have written plenty of rubbish over the years). I cast my mind back to when a joke was written and view it from that perspective, but (and this is a really big ‘but’) I cannot defend the indefensible, what was once hurtful, remains forever hurtful. Racism used to be normal, an acceptable means of getting a laugh, seldom intentionally hurtful and yet in reality bitterly so, as it remains. Sexism, racism, religious intolerance – all fair game once upon a sit-com, but now? I desperately hope not. These are things that should never have been tolerated in the first place and most certainly should never be revisited.

And now I can’t stop thinking about okra**…

Little in this world is as fashion-bound as food. When I was a boy, mash was not mash without lumps: veg was not veg unless it turned into soup at the merest prick of a fork. Everybody ate offal – it was cheap and nutritious and about as welcome on a young boy’s plate as boiled sock on a mountain of brussel sprouts: think boiled fish and lumpy mash with a watery sauce of unknown origin; think tinned sardines on toast. In my middle years, nobody ate offal – it was cheap and therefore vulgar. It could probably turn you into a mad cow. (It was to my great amusement to find, on holiday in Greece in the late 80’s, that every bar had a sign outside the entrance guaranteeing that their kitchen served no ‘English Crazy Beef’.) Now it is impossible to turn on Masterchef without being confronted by the lights of some unfortunate small mammal being turned into a bon-bon. Meat – I think particularly of duck and pork – that once had to be cooked for a fortnight before being considered edible, is now served twitching. I have not eaten meat for almost forty years, and for many of those years, I have considered Vegans to be some kind of vegetarian extremist wing: Patty Hearst with a carrot, but veganism is now viewed not only as normal, but as the way forward for the whole planet. It could well be true. Until, of course, somebody throws a spanner in the works by proving that plants really do experience pain and distress. I have to ask myself, could I eat a carrot if it had big cow-like eyes? Could I eat corn on the cob if it made orphans of its little kernel children? I saw a TV programme recently about laboratory made meat, and it made me feel more queasy than standing beside the air-conditioning unit outside a KFC. Sooner or later, as always happens, the way ahead will come to be seen as a wrong turn and we’ll all have to find somewhere else to go.

That’s what fashion does to us, isn’t it? It makes us feel as though we are doing exactly the wrong thing, at precisely the wrong time, in completely the wrong clothing – although there is every chance that they will all be the right thing in the morning (except for those flares which, believe me, are never coming back). The danger is that putting right past wrongs can also be branded as a fashion and surely that can’t be right, can it? If we follow that logic it would be wrong of me to denounce the brushed denim loon just because I, myself, once wore them and at the time I didn’t think that it made me look like a dork. My purple, patent leather, cork-heeled boots might not have ruined any lives – but it still doesn’t mean that I would choose to go back to them. Nothing can put yesterday right – I’m not even certain of how we could possibly try to do that. All that we can do is to acknowledge that it was wrong and make bloody sure that, like leg-warmers, it NEVER HAPPENS AGAIN.

**…which I have now done. It is actually far more concerned with what I would call actual fashion, but none-the-less, similarly anti-fashion. Sadly, two years on, I still feel like a directionally dyslexic arrow with no map towards the target; a slightly warped quill in a world of carbon shafts. I still feel like I have a sucker at the end…

*I fear that you might have to pick your own way through that little lot. If you can make sense of it, perhaps you can pass it on. This is a light-hearted little blog, not designed for big beefs, but sometimes they bubble up anyhow. What I have to say can never change anything – although what we all have to say just might – and when I get mad, I think of okra…

Doormat

I have been an employee all my life. I am passably good at what I do: I have more letters after my name than the average Russian General, and yet nobody takes the slightest bit of notice of what I have to say. If I ask somebody to do something, they invariably have any number of reasons why they should not do so; why any attempt to compel them to do so would precipitate a disastrous series of events. I could stamp my little feet, scream and shout and get things done, but it’s easier, frankly, and much gentler on the nerves to just do it myself, trusting others to get on with mundane daily tasks whilst I unblock the toilet. I don’t have the will to get into battles over matters of little consequence these days.

My goal, for what remains of this earthly journey, is to keep the path as smooth as possible – even though it is littered with hillocks. I will fight when I feel that it is right, but I have a four word mantra that buzzes through my head each time I begin to get too exercised about nothing: Is it worth it? Is the fight worth the pain of embroilment? Almost inevitably the answer is ‘No’. If I was taking part in the Charge of the Light Brigade, I just know that I would be galloping along, close to the back (never actually last – that’s a step too far) chuntering quietly about the futility of the whole exercise and muttering darkly to anyone that would listen about how it would all end in tears.

Throughout my life, trouble has always found it very easy to find me: I cannot think of a single reason to head off in search of it. I never look for a fight for the very simple reason that I have a tendency to lose them. (Losing my temper is, by the way, something that I always try to avoid. My blood pressure – although moderated by pills and exercise – remains similar to that of Jupiter and I do not particularly wish to become embroiled in any activity that might raise it to fatal levels without the promise of at least some reward. Especially when the possibility of taking a punch in the bracket is on the agenda.)

Now, you might think – probably with a certain justification – that this makes me sound incredibly effete. I couldn’t possibly comment – at least not before I’ve looked the word up – but I can tell you what brought this particular spell of introspection upon me. It is twofold. Firstly, I am currently nursing a papercut, suffered during the proofreading process of my previous post (Yes, I do!) and it made me think about how troublesome even the smallest of physical intrusions can prove. Upon realising that I had suffered such a laceration, and without pausing, even for a second, to retrieve the dummy I had just spat out, I decided that I would no longer proofread in my normal, archaic manner. I even picked up my pencil and pad to write a post about it before realised how seldom I actually write in any other fashion. It is almost always with pen on lethally sharp paper (and not, as many of you might believe, with a nice, blunt, wax crayon) which I painstakingly transcribe onto the computer before printing it up in order to revise it with another, differently coloured pen. Minor inconveniences, you see, do not generally provide sufficient incentive for me to change habit. I smooth my own way by following the path of least resistance. It works for me. I decided it was ok. Then (Reasons for Introspection – part two) my wife chided me for being a push-over for the grandkids: that I am perpetually at their beck and call. Again, basically true, but where’s the problem? Grandchildren will hang out with grandparents for a very limited period of time – nature will see to that: one of them grows, one of them dies. I try to enjoy every second, and if that means dressing up as a cowboy, partaking of an imaginary cup of tea, accompanied by a unicorn, a princess and a pull-along wooden dog, then so be it. If I’d sooner watch the second half of the match, what of it? Will the football give me a hug and tell me how much it loves me? Will the football cheer me up without the faintest effort? And if I tell the kids that I just need a minute to mend the plumbing, will they listen to me, or will they bring a blanket, a book and demand that I read them a story first?

Take a guess.

Zoo #16 – Pig

Consider now the humble pig
Who has a brain that’s very big;
Who fate has cast, by some mishap
As perfect filling for a bap*.

Pity please the humble porker
Who never got to see Majorca:
No sun-dipped beach on which to lie,
For him the bottom of a pie.

Consider now his certain fate,
To end his days on dinner plate
Emulsified as paté starter,
Extruded in a chipolata.

How can it be, this brainy beast
Is viewed as nothing but a feast?
The answer lies in evolution –
To be less tasty, the solution.

Now, I haven’t eaten meat for years, but I have no bones whatsoever with those that do. It is a personal choice. Killing to eat and survive is certainly no crime. Although killing for fun is quite another thing, in my humble opinion: especially since we so revile other creatures that kill to live if their actions impinge upon us in any negative way. Anyway, pigs fascinate me in this way. My grandad always used to say that the only part of a pig that you cannot eat is the squeak. It is almost as if the animal had been especially created just for food. So, why is it so brainy? Even more perplexing, as it is so brainy, why doesn’t it do something about it? Why hasn’t it evolved cute? Maybe koalas are good to eat, but you wouldn’t eat one, would you?

*Bap – a bread bun. The average Briton has more words for the humble bread roll than the Inuit have for snow.

Still Getting On

It strikes me that the most obvious sign of getting older is the tendency to ooze. Every day that passes, I seem to find somewhere new through which to leak. Life is a diuretic. I choose my clothes these days on the simple principle of absorbency. Whilst younger people choose their clothes on style – pinstripe suit or check, flared skirt or ‘A’ line – I choose mine based solely on stain resistance. If I don’t seep it, I spill it. I normally have to be hosed down after spaghetti. You can gauge how much I have enjoyed a meal by the amount of trifle I have down my crotch. Two metres social-distancing is nothing new to me: I am forbidden, by law, from eating tomato soup in public. Sitting opposite me when I am in possession of a jam doughnut is a little like lying, face-up, under a cow: you know what’s coming, you’re just not sure when you’re going to get it.

This would be understandable if I was a fast eater, but I’m not: I’m slow – painfully slow – I cannot remember the last time I made it through the potatoes before the gravy congealed. I have never eaten a cheese fondue: by the time I get to it, it is just cheese. I seldom have to ask for the bill in a restaurant, I just wait for the waiter to come round and ask me to turn off the lights as I leave. Which comes as some relief of course, because, as we all know, waiters are trained from birth in how to studiously ignore people who wish to pay their bill. It is as though bringing the bill drags the whole evening down to the status of ‘financial transaction’, which seriously reduces their opportunity to appear superior to you in all respects. How can a waiter maintain an air of quiet superiority when you are about to pay him? When you are his de facto employer? To be honest, I find that most of them manage to maintain a reasonably high level of disdain when they see the amount of tip I am about to leave. The skilled waiter is trained – up to Ninja level – in the art of saying, ‘Well, you obviously need that more than I do,’ without ever moving his/her lips.

Now, I used to be a waiter – a good one, oddly – able to silver-serve a Dover Sole, off-the-bone, without so much as a scale out of place: the waiting equivalent of eating a mushroom vol-au-vent without getting a crotch full of pastry. I worked in the dining room of a high class hotel, in which the well-heeled clientele reinforced their sense of pre-eminence by hardly ever leaving a tip. When they did, it was generally in the form of a handful of small change from some exotic foreign shore – ensuring that you were left fully aware of the places that they could afford to visit whilst you continued to wait at tables. Also that they were tight enough to hang onto their change on the way home rather than drop it into the little seat-back envelope, in order to help a Romanian orphan buy a prosthetic nose, or similar. I am always polite to waiters: I know what they can do to your food.

When I was younger, I worked behind a bar with an older man called Neil. He had a semi-permanent ‘dew-drop’ on the end of his nose. It was always there when he started to pull a pint, but not always by the time he finished. It was like Russian Roulette. Did you buy lager so that you could see any sign of viscous intrusion, or did you buy Guinness so that you would never know? It paid never to examine the pickled eggs too closely. I was popular simply because I didn’t have a dew-drop. Damned by faint praise: the barman that everybody wanted to be served by, just because I didn’t add volume to every third pint. As a barman I was always told to, ‘Get one for yourself’; nobody ever told me that when I was a waiter. ‘The entrecote was superb. My compliments to the chef and get one for yourself. I would recommend the Chateau Laffite to accompany it, but you’re only sixteen. Here, have a Tizer.’

I did learn to love food as a waiter. We were fed at the end of breakfast and lunch sittings, and before dinner. I would have been happy to have done the job without pay. For a boy raised on luncheon meat, tinned tomatoes and chips, this food was a revelation. I didn’t realise that you could eat food that hadn’t been fried. I didn’t comprehend that salmon didn’t necessarily come from a tin, full of tiny little crunchy bones. I didn’t know that fresh scampi was even a thing. As far as I was concerned, fish was caught in batter – I had never seen it any other way. Who knew that vegetables didn’t have to be boiled for hours?

I met my wife when I worked as a waiter. We were both children. The pride of the dining room was the sweet trolley. It was famous throughout the county. Everything was freshly made, every day. One evening, at start of service, she managed to upend the whole trolley. The head waiter refused point blank to go and tell the head chef – who, to be fair, may well have killed him – and ordered my one-day-to-be-wife to go. I went with her, regretting my decision from the very first millisecond, especially when she was struck half-dumb by the fearsome visage of a gourmet chef in mid-stress and I took it on myself to help her explain, hoping only that death would come quickly. He stared silently, hollowly, first at her and then at me. The whole kitchen froze. He turned away from us and started barking out the instructions that ensured that within a scant few minutes, sweet trolley#2 trundled off to the dining room in all its resplendent glory and service resumed almost unbroken – except that a certain waitress was quietly excused sweet service. The chef never mentioned the incident to either of us – although he did give the head waiter a severe wigging. He, too, never mentioned the incident. Funny things, adults.

Anyway, there we are. Other than my wife displaying a slight nervous tic every time she serves a syllabub, you would never know that the incident ever occurred. I’m not even sure what brought it to my mind, but I do know that even now, forty five years later, the memory of that trolley is making my mouth water…

Sixty Two

Some of the things that are kicking about my office and make me feel my age.

Today is my birthday. I am sixty two. I made the decision to use a new photograph as an avatar, which I hope should have changed today.* (It may not have done – I am certainly not sufficiently confident of my IT aptitude to put money on it myself.) Providing the photo is there – I hope it is, I hated the last one – you can gauge for yourself the stories it has to tell about this particular ageing male. For instance, the small scab on the end of my nose tells you that I am unable to safely carry a three-year old granddaughter through a wood without snagging my snout on a bramble. The non-smiling concentration speaks of a total selfie-taking ineptitude bordering on the bloody-minded. I need an extra thumb. The one I have available merely ejects the phone from my hand. In order to use the other thumb, I have to lean forward and I appear to be leering horribly at the camera from an angle that suggests that I might be more used to having my likeness ‘snapped’ by security cameras, mid-burglary. I really have no idea why I always emerge from a smart phone lens looking like a creepy uncle. I never really see creepy uncle in the bathroom mirror. Fat geek, but never creepy uncle. I’m not at all certain why a smart phone should choose to do this to me – unless it has some issue with my browsing history – although why a record of searches for cheap wallplugs, green ink and deleted CD’s should turn it against me, I cannot imagine. I always look like the happy pictures of dead men released by the Kremlin in order to demonstrate how content they were in custody. “Zoom in on his eyes and you can see the reflection of a man with a gun.” “That’s not a man with a gun, that’s a family-sized tub of cookie dough ice-cream and a spoon for one.” That deranged looking photo of Rasputin had to be taken with a smart phone…

I could ask my wife to take a photo, but she would think me, with a certain degree of justification, incredibly vain.
“Why do you need a new photo for your blog?”
“So that my readers can see what I look like.”
“Why do they care what you look like?”
“Erh…”
Don’t you hate it when that happens?

Anyway, what you have here is the latest photograph I have taken of myself and you have it simply because I do not hate it quite so much as the last one. For some reason that I cannot fathom, I feel obliged to try to show you that I actually am a real person and most definitely nothing to write home about. I think I might change it every month through this year, until I find something better – possibly a smiling sloth, a grinning cat, or a brightly coloured orphan fish – with which to replace me. I have a soul that is predisposed to laughter but a face that’s predisposed to glum. This is what old age looks like through a filter of rum.

Rum and ginger beer is the tipple of the day. I don’t know why. I like it and I’m not at work in the morning. That’ll do. Although I’m not at all sure that it is the drink of a newly redundant man. What should that be, I wonder? I’m not ready for hemlock. Perhaps, in the future, I will have to accept that whisky can be blended – but I won’t have to like it.

I didn’t expect to be redundant at 62. It wasn’t in my plan. When I started to pay my pension, I expected to retire, a rich man, at 60. The financial crash of 2008 destroyed that illusion. I settled for ‘relatively comfortable at 67’, only to find myself torpedoed by unemployment five years early. I planned to spend my retirement on holiday, now I will probably spend it on PG Tips and oven-chips. Maybe I already look like a man who lives on tea and chips? You will need to tell me. I seldom drink tea and I will eat oven-chips only when all other options, including starvation, have been exhausted – do I look that way? When you turn 62 and you sit in your office with a rum and a smart phone, and you think, ‘I know, I’ll take a new photo for the blog,’ and you point and – after several aborted attempts at artistically portraying the best of your right ear – you manage to take a snap in which the entirety of you sexagenarian visage appears, only for you to discover that you look uncomfortably like a Russian mad-monk, then some kind of independent appraisal is probably necessary.

Having established that I am not what I assumed I would be at my age, I perhaps ought to take a closer look at what I actually am. More to the point, do I look like I’m 62? Well, I don’t think I look like a 62 year old looked when I was twelve, but then, when I was twelve, the 62 year olds had survived a war. I think they had earned the right to look a little bit jaded. If they wanted a three-foot crotch on their trousers and a waistband under the chin, they had earned that right. What have I actually done that has given me the right to look like a tangerine-haired lunatic? I’m not sure. Perhaps it’s just what I am. (My wife, by the way, constantly tells me that my hair is too long. I ask, ‘Too long for what?’ and she just rolls her eyes and disappears for a couple of hours before she reappears and finds a new way to tell me that my hair is too long. I don’t mind. It reminds me that I’m not going bald yet. Vain? Yes, alright, I’ll give her that.) I suppose I feel like a 62 year old because I am a 62 year old – and this is how I feel. I will try very hard to get to grips with my iPhone camera before I crown 63. Who knows, by my next birthday, I might have an avatar that looks like a rational old man. God knows, I might even be one…

*The observant amongst you may have noticed that it actually changed yesterday. Doesn’t that just go to show?

Resolute

Well, the New Year arrives and with it the same old resolutions that I make and break year after year. I can’t help but feel that it would be great this year if we all got together to make one single New Year Wish instead of wasting our time making promises that we never even expect to keep. 7.5billion souls, all wishing that Covid would go away forever and leave us alone would have to achieve something wouldn’t it? There is much to be said for the power of positive thinking. Like when you stare pointedly at the last doughnut in the canteen chiller, just knowing that the seven people in the queue ahead of you are not going to take it before you get there… O.K., bad example…

In truth, this year, as every year my resolutions will do well to make it past my birthday – which is January second – so my ambition does not stretch too far. My seldom-varied resolutions are:

Be Kinder – A laudable and achievable ambition if only the world was not so full of IDIOTS! Let us all stand aside for the self-important. In this country, you only have to drive a car in order to realise that everyone is much more important than you! That everyone in a bigger car than yours is infinitely more important than you and that you, yourself, are actually the idiot if you think otherwise. I have very little knowledge of the German language, but just enough to understand that Vorsprung durch technik means ‘Get out of my way, pleb in a small car.’ Being kind to a person who stares down at you at you from the lofty heights of the family SUV, sneeringly observing you as though they would have more respect for something that had just dropped out of the back of their dog, is not easy. They turn driving into some kind of mediaeval feudal battle in which those with the poorest armour are fated to perish, whilst those with airbags, roll bars and a little hook in the back for the riding boots are set to prosper. What right do we small car people have to even share their road? Call that a car? It’s more like a motorised skate. Where do you even fit all the pony’s tack? Where do you put the glamping stove? How do you transport the gardener’s barrow? They manage somehow, these people, to carry their cars with them wherever they go: even in the supermarket, the best cumquats are theirs by right; the Parma ham has been sliced solely for their benefit, and they shudder to think what you might do with a decent Chablis. The content of their trolley is infinitely more worthy than your own four cans of Belgian lager and a ready-made chicken Madras. It is difficult to be kinder to these people – even in anger… I used to try, I promise I did, but now I just think about it, before dismissing it out of hand. I cannot be kinder to them, and they wouldn’t notice if I was. Will they be kinder to me? Possibly. If they feel that God is watching and is as easily bribed as everyone else they know.*
Keep my opinions to myself – Age has brought me the knowledge that nobody wants to hear them anyway. We live in a society within which listening to the opinions of others is considered a sign of weakness. Where the slightest temptation to consider, even for one second, the possibility that you might just, conceivably, be wrong, is an admission of abject failure. Where not having an opinion you feel impelled to share – especially upon subjects of which you have no knowledge – is considered disrespectful; demonstrating a kind of benign disinterest, a complete disdain for societal norms. The unwillingness to enter into an argument over a subject of which you know nothing is viewed as a declaration of war. The determination to find a fight becomes a battle in itself. If you don’t fight, you can’t win. Keeping your opinions to yourself comes at a price – namely alienating everybody you know who feels you should be arguing with them. If you want to keep your friends, just tell them they are wrong. You don’t need a reason. They wouldn’t listen to it anyway**.
I will be a better person – I will try, for ages, sometimes hours, but it’s just so complicated, so time-consuming. And where do you draw the line? I do make random phone calls to lonely people all the time – but it’s usually just to order a take-away. Does that count? I give money to charity virtually every single time I am shamed into doing so. This year I will drop something into the supermarket food bank box that is not the second half of a buy one – get one free offer.
I will be optimistic – I will never have a half empty glass (unless of course the bottle is completely so). I shall endeavour to always look on the bright side – even if that means putting my back out. Sometimes the bright side can be very difficult to see. The human body is not built for obtuse angles. Also for rollercoasters. Sometimes the bright side is only marginally more cheery than the dark side – like a BBC3 sit-com.
I will stop worrying – because worry is leading me to an early grave. Today, at my house, ‘A’ happened. I don’t want to go into detail – it is profoundly depressing – but perhaps I should explain a little. ‘A’ is the start of a chain of events. ‘A’ varies, the chain of events, less so. If ‘A’ – which is generally of little consequence in itself – has occurred, then it stands to reason that ‘B’ is only just around the corner. ‘B’ will always lead to ‘C’ which, itself, always causes ‘D’, and the inevitable consequence of ‘D’ is ‘E’ which, leads inevitably onto ‘Z’ just a few minutes later, resulting in the collapse of the house, and the disintegration of my entire life; leaving us all homeless and hopeless. In my head, the train has left the station, destination Rack and Ruin, with no stops between here and there. Will I be able to talk my way out of the journey? Almost certainly not: I was given the ticket at birth. Anyway, my bicycle is in the Guard’s van which detached, along with the Buffet Car, at Crewe. Logic dictates that mishap leads inexorably to disaster; the only variant being the number of stops between here and there.
I will be more ‘on the ball’ – if there is a ‘party’ to metaphorically go to, I will generally arrive as the swingers emerge, sated, from beneath the dining table, vaguely aware that the person with whom they have just forced the Earth to move (or, more likely the guacamole to wobble) is almost certainly their four-year old’s teacher, and the jilted lovers appear bleary-eyed from the bathroom whilst the host is running warm water into a bucketful of Dettol. I never seem to be there for the fun, just for the clean up. (It should be clear that I am not talking about an actual party here. Parties are never fun once you have passed the age of jelly and custard.) I become aware of trends simply because they cease to be trendy. If there is a bus to miss, I will miss it. If the world is looking one way, I will be looking the other, wondering why everybody else is wearing something that ceased to be fashionable twenty years ago, blithely unaware that twenty years ago became the New Now yesterday. I will endeavour to change all of this. I have no idea how.
I will try to sleep more – this is the path to contentment, although I have no idea of how I might achieve it. If I go to bed early, I do not sleep. If I go to bed later, I do not sleep. If I go to bed loaded with alcohol, I cannot sleep as my bladder constantly tells me that I need to go to the loo, whilst my prostate just laughs at me when I get there. I can happily fall asleep over a book or an ITV Game Show, but the moment my head hits the regulation pillow I am wide-awake, counting the darkened seconds until my alarm goes off. Only after the morning clarion call of the radio-alarm do I truly feel like sleep. I have tried counting sheep, but those spooky little yellow eyes keep me awake. Sheep are not restful. Sheep are evil. I believe that people count them only so they know where they are.
I will try new things – I won’t. I think, in a piece entitled ‘Some of the Things That I Will Never Do’ I explained why, a year ago. The list of things that I wish to try before I die is dwarfed by the list of things that I fear would kill me if I attempted them. I have a personality that means that some doors must always remain closed on me – I tried to explain that one in ‘The Great Abstainer’ also last year – I have lost the will to kick those doors open. These days, I am happy to sit outside with my ear to the letter box, trying to catch snatches of what is going on, whilst ensuring that the letter flap doesn’t snap down on the bridge of my nose. If curiosity killed the cat, then indifference must be the gateway to a long and unproductive life. Whatever…
I will eat less crap – I won’t.
I will drink less alcohol – I won’t.
I will wish you all a very happy and contented New Year – I do.

*Wow! I’ve just caught sight of that chip on my shoulder. It’s a very big one, isn’t it? I must make a resolution to do something about it.
**Ok, I’ve just realised what a balanced person I am. A chip on each shoulder. I must make a resolution to do something about that too.

Zoo #15 – Aerophobia

Ostrich, emu, kiwi, rhea;
What on earth is happening here?
Whilst nature blessed a billion things,
The birds alone were blessed with wings.
The power to soar, to swoop, to fly,
They gave them up, I wonder why?
What could they see from on the ground
Was more than when they flew around?

Whilst other creatures scanned the sky
And dreamt of having wings to fly,
These birds developed legs for speed
Whilst wasted wings just atrophied.
Imagine finding when you hatch,
‘You are a bird, but here’s the catch,
Those tiny wings are useless, son,
But never mind, ‘cause you can run…’

I have never quite understood why evolution would rob an animal of its greatest gift, the power of flight. Surely the ability to escape is evolution’s most powerful weapon. It doesn’t matter how powerful a predator is if it cannot catch you. You can bet your life that, given the chance of having wings, the lion would most certainly have accepted. What kind of animal would give up such an advantage? The kind that buries its head in the sand I think…

The Space Between

When he was a boy, my now elderly uncle dived into the Manchester Ship Canal – foolhardy enough, given its fulfilled capacity to encapsulate every dead cat, supermarket trolley and dog turd in Lancashire – intending to swim beneath two heavily laden barges and appear, merman-like, at the far bank: a swim-suited hero, dripping in glory and excrement. Sadly, he merely surfaced, gasping lightly, between the two giant steel hulls as they prepared to clang together like two giant cymbals. He dived straight back down and, luckily, did eventually re-emerge, a floundering wreck, on the other side, from where he was dragged by all of his mates, who left him stinking and retching on the tow-path, whilst they went off in pursuit of his unimpressed girlfriend.

Sadly, the space between the point from which you depart and that at which you arrive is not always the one in which you would seek to find yourself. Such, I find, is the space between Christmas and New Year – or, more correctly, on this particular turn of the carousel, between the sterile disappointment of Covid Non-Christmas and the high hopes and possibilities presented by the New Year ahead.

At this stage, I wonder how many of us truly believe that, by this time next year, things will really have returned to normal, that when the New Year shame-facedly sneaks its way in without its usual fanfare of fireworks, inappropriate touching and vomiting, it will actually point the way towards a brighter future and not just more of the same? Much, much more of the same. Here we are, lodged in the space between what has been and what is to come. Trapped in a turmoil of Hope and Fear: hope that the vaccine will work and fear that it will not. Everything else seems to hinge upon this one thing. We are stranded in the hinterland that lies between what has been and what will be, without ever really touching on what is now. We are frozen in the very millisecond before Basil Fawlty attempts to use his guest’s nipple as a light switch, before Del Boy falls through the pub hatch, before Jones starts to panic: we see it coming, but we are helpless to stop it.

You see, it has just occurred to me that whilst most ‘creative writing’ tells of a journey – either real or metaphorical – mine largely involves being stuck in the station waiting room with only a homeless man and his dog for company, yesterday’s papers and a coin that doesn’t fit any of the slots available: permanently stranded between departure and arrival, clutching my super-saver ticket as it slowly ticks around to ‘invalid’ and the photo on my railcard grows ever-more to resemble a startled refugee from reality. I am the Man of the Moment!

I have to schedule most of my posts through December: I get the opportunity to write very little and to read even less and, for that, I apologise. Things should return to normal now in the New Year – and for that I also apologise. I strongly suspect that what I write will continue to depart a few hundred yards beyond the station platform and arrive with me still in the lavatory. I’m looking forward to it.

Have a brilliant New Year everyone. I’ll see you on the other side.

The Ghost of Christmas Past – A Boxing Day Tale

photo of santa claus sleeping — Photo by cottonbro on Pexels.com

‘…Always the same these days,’ said the old man randomly stabbing the buttons on the remote control. ‘Reality TV and repeats. Whatever happened to Morecambe and Wise? Whatever happened to Only Fools and Horses? Whatever happened to Val Doonican?’ He switched off the set as the latest X-Factor winner made his final ever TV appearance before returning to his life of flipping burgers and performing in the local Working Man’s Club on a Saturday evening – a valid life, with which he would have been perfectly happy, if only some idiot had not told him he could be a star.

‘Here,’ said Mrs Claus. ‘I was watching that.’ With a glare, Santa turned the TV back on. ‘Moan, moan, moan,’ continued the old woman, even as the seasonal Celebrity-Something-Or-Other burst into noisome life. ‘That’s all you do these days, moan, moan, moan. I’ll be happy when December comes about again: get you out of my hair.’
‘Yes, well,’ said Santa, stroking his beard agitatedly. ‘I’ve been thinking about that. I think I might retire. I’m tired. This is no job for an old man.’
Mrs Claus stared at him for a very long time whilst she considered spending even more time with him than she currently did. ‘What do you mean, no job for an old man? Who else is going to do it? It has to be an old man.’
‘Could be a woman.’
‘Not according to all of the literature.’
‘Literature can be modified,’ S.C. muttered, darkly.
‘Besides,’ ploughed on the old lady, ignoring the truth in her husband’s argument ‘You only really work one day a year – it’s a long day I’ll grant you, but other than have a few kids to sit on your lap through December, what else do you do?’
‘Elves don’t look after themselves, you know,’ he snapped. ‘Elves do not forward plan. Leave it to the elves and we’d have, come Christmas Eve, nothing more than dolls and wooden forts. And’ he continued, a steely glint entering his eye ‘Kids do not sit on my knee anymore. Not allowed. If I can drag the little bleeders away from their mobile phones for a minute, they pull my beard, wipe KFC down my coat and kick me in the shin before asking me for a vaping kit.’
‘What you need is a good sleep,’ soothed Mrs C. ‘Why not go to bed? Don’t worry about setting an alarm; I’ll wake you in March.’
‘Why March? What’s happening in March?’
‘Just a few promotional shots. Nothing taxing. Maybe a video or two. Few minutes work; nothing more.’
‘Promotional shots?’ he spluttered. ‘Promotional shots? Why do I need promotional shots? There’s only one of me. I’ve got more people on my books than I can handle already.’
‘Never hurts to advertise,’ she said, placing a small glass of sherry at his side. ‘Here, drink this.’
The old man eyed the drink. ‘Sherry?’ he coughed. ‘Sherry? Have you any idea how many glasses of sherry I drank last night? You’ll be offering me a mince pie next.’ He glared into the fire. ‘I’ll tell them in the morning,’ he said at last. ‘I’ll tell them I’m packing it in; that I’ve had enough.’
‘Tell who?’
‘Well… I’ve no idea. I’ll find someone.’
‘And what about the children?’
‘They won’t even notice, as long as they still get all of their stuff, they won’t care who brings it. The magic has gone already. They’ll never know.’ Despite himself, he drained the sherry in a single gulp. ‘I’m off to bed,’ he said.
‘Fine,’ said Mrs Claus. ‘No problem. Just before you do, though, can you read this so that I can reply.’
‘What is it?’
‘It’s a letter. It came down the chimney earlier while you were out talking to the reindeer.’
‘A letter? My God, they start earlier and earlier with their demands, don’t they? Can you read it to me? I don’t know what I’ve done with my glasses.’
Mrs Claus unfolded the single sheet of paper and, having cleared her throat, she read. ‘‘Dear Santa. Thank you for everything. I hope you get some rest today. I love you X.’ Carefully she refolded the letter, ‘Shall I burn it?’ she asked.

Santa coughed slightly and rubbed gently at what might just have been a little itch in the corner of his eye. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Give it to me. I’ll reply now and then I suppose I’d better go and get some sleep. I’ve got a busy December next year…’

Originally posted 26th December 2019

The Ghost of Christmas Past – A Christmas Tale – The Three Wise Men Who Came from the East

three kings figurines — Photo by Jonathan Meyer on Pexels.com

‘…And you are absolutely certain,’ said Melchior, ‘that this is the right place? I mean, I know that it is under the star, but then, truth be told, so is the rest of this village. So is the rest of this country, I shouldn’t wonder. High up, stars, shine all over the place they do. Must be some margin of error there, star-wise, that’s all I’m saying. Maybe we should check out the five star places first.’Balthazar sighed – again. ‘None of the five star places have angels hovering over them,’ he said. ‘Nor,’ he continued, ‘are they packed with shepherds watching their flocks, donkeys and assorted beasts of the fields.’
‘Or giraffes,’ said Gaspar.
Balthazar nodded his agreement. ‘Or gira… Did you say giraffe?’
‘Yes.’
‘What’s a giraffe?’
‘It’s a bit like a tall cow,’ said Gaspar, ‘with a long neck. My cousin brought one back from his travels. Dead, mind. Same as the big tusky, grey thing. Don’t travel well, apparently.’
Balthazar stared. ‘Do you see any of these tall cows around here?’
‘No,’ said Gaspar.
‘Then in what way, pray, are they relevant?’
‘I’m not sure,’ answered Gaspar. ‘I just have a feeling that someone will find that there’s only the giraffe left to play, in the future…’
Balthazar stared manically at Gaspar, his fists tightened and his jaw clenched. A small vein squirmed like a lug-worm below the skin of his forehead.
‘Shall we go and look inside,’ suggested Melchior, summoning the slaves to help them down from their mounts.
‘And where did you come by these things?’ asked Gaspar. ‘I’ve never sat on anything so uncomfortable in my life. They smell like the inside of an old sock and they spit. What’s wrong with a horse?’
‘These beasts are our traditional mode of transport,’ answered Melchior. ‘A man’s wealth is measured by them.’
‘I,’ said Balthazar, ‘have thousands.’
‘Sooner have gold,’ said Gaspar, gripping the gift-wrapped parcel he had borne with him from Arabia. ‘Think I’d rather travel on one of them long-necked cows, if I’m honest. At least they don’t have lumpy backs. And also,’ he continued as he was helped down from the musky beast, ‘how come yours has got two lumps and mine has only got one? Know exactly where to sit with two lumps. Never sure with one: either slide off its back end or wind up dangling from its neck…’
‘Rank,’ blurted Balthazar, suddenly aware that he had brought myrrh for the baby and nobody else even knew what it was. ‘The higher your rank, the more lumps you get on your camel.’
Gaspar gave Balthazar one of his stares. ‘So,’ he said, ‘where’s his then?’
‘His?’
‘His lumpy thing. Surely you’ve brought one for him if they’re so valuable; King of Kings and all that. Must be worth at least three lumps.’
‘They’re called camels,’ said Melchior, breaking the uneasy silence. ‘And they only come in one and two humped varieties.’
‘Bit of a design flaw there then, isn’t it? I’d be inclined to have a bit of a word.’
‘A word?’
‘With Himself, you know, when we get in to worship him, have a quick word in his ear. See if he can get it sorted.’
‘He’s a baby!’
‘Got connections, though,’ said Gaspar.
The three wise men had, by now, all been brought down from their camels and were straightening their robes in preparation for their big moment. Melchior was checking his frankincense. ‘You can never go wrong with perfume,’ he thought. Gaspar was scraping camel doings from his satin slipper. Balthazar, meanwhile, was chastising his Chief of Staff. ‘‘Take him myrrh,’ you said. ‘Everyone likes a bit of a rub down now and then,’ you said. Nobody else has even heard of it. Have we got nothing else we can give Him? Maybe jewels, or something?’’
The Chief of Staff looked crestfallen. ‘We left in a bit of a hurry,’ he said, ‘if you remember. Didn’t really have much time to shop around and myrrh always goes down really well in my family.’
‘Your family the myrrh merchants, you mean?’
‘Come on,’ said Gaspar, who had by now got the worst of it off with a stick. ‘Let’s go in.’
The three wise men entered the stable and fell to their knees at the side of the manger.
‘Gawd,’ said Gaspar, peering in. ‘He’s an ugly little bleeder, isn’t he?’
‘That’s a pig, you fool,’ snapped Balthazar.
‘Really?’ sneered Gaspar. ‘One humped or two?’
‘I think, gentlemen,’ said Melchior, rising to his feet. ‘That we may be in the wrong place.’
Balthazar and Gaspar also rose, brushing the crud of the stable floor from their robes as they prepared to leave.
‘So what now?’ asked Gaspar. ‘This had to be the place. What about that star?’
‘It appears to have moved on,’ answered Melchior. ‘They have a habit of doing that, apparently.’
‘And the Heavenly hosts?’
‘They appear to have found themselves rooms at the Travel Lodge. Perhaps we should join them. Try again in the morning…’
‘But how long is it going to take us to find him?’ asked Gaspar. ‘How long do we have to keep looking?’
‘Who knows,’ answered Melchior. ‘Could be days. Could be weeks, years…’
‘Could be,’ said Balthazar, ‘millennia…’

Originally posted December 24th 2019.