Different Eyes

I write chaotically; sometimes frighteningly quickly, sometimes in a monosyllabic dirge that emerges at the speed of jelly dripping through a sock, so I occasionally maintain control over my publication dates by scheduling pieces in advance, to maintain some kind of order to my output. If my publication timetable was anything like as erratic as my writing schedule, then none of us would know what day it was. The one downfall of maintaining order in this way is that occasionally I am forced to ‘pull’ a blog because the same subject has been covered by a different writer in the meantime. Normally, it doesn’t matter, we are all seeing the same things through different eyes anyway, but occasionally, what we have to say aligns to such a degree that I know that I can add nothing to what has already been said and I have to use a ‘reserve’ piece instead. I have a stash from times of bounty, which I keep for my regular spells of brain-fade or holiday. They are often, I notice, more ranty than my usual posts. Probably fuelled by excessive night-caps or Donald trump.

They do not necessarily fit into the general flow of things, but that, of course, is not necessarily a ‘bad thing’. The seed that takes root and grows into each blog is normally found in its predecessor, so an ‘out of place’ post every now and then lends a pleasing serendipity to the flow. For the reader, foreknowledge is surely the worst of all evils. Perhaps a step out of line from time to time is required to keep us all on our toes.

We are all watching the same world, but our viewpoints are not the same. No single question has a definitive answer – unless it is on the very basic mathematical level, which, as my brain has never progressed beyond the absolutely basic on that score, is as far as I would feel qualified to say. Take, for instance, climate change, which, as an ongoing reality, was once the subject of serious debate. I don’t think it is now – at least not by anybody you would not expect to see wearing a red nose at the circus: the facts are there. The effect is certain, but what of the cause? If we accept that Global warming is an issue, then the question must lie elsewhere. Is it a looming man-made disaster, or is it merely a normal part of an ever-evolving natural cycle? CO² levels have, after all, been very much higher in the past, but the planet did not then support any of the (admittedly dwindling) diversity of life that it supports today. The planet can cope with the environmental changes, it does not need life to continue. It could probably do with the rest.

Anyway, aren’t we supposed to be the brainy ones: the top of the evolutionary tree? Shouldn’t we be trying to do something about it whatever the cause? Surely we cannot continue to dig whatever we want out of the ground forever. Surely we can’t keep on filling in the holes we make with plastic crap. (Now, here’s a thought. If we filled all the holes with water, would that make sea level go down?)

In truth, I’m not certain how worried we really are about animal species becoming extinct, as long as they are not something we would normally eat. Would we actually be happier living on a planet that was occupied only by ourselves and dinner? If the planet needs more trees, what if we planted fruit trees? Can you imagine our battle against drunken wasps on an early autumn planet coated in fruit trees and the buzzy cacophony of tiny wasp voices yelling, ‘Leave him Keith. He’s not worth it!’ (I’m assuming here that Keith is a popular wasp name) a planet where dawn’s great herald is not a chorus of birdsong, but a volley of wasp retching. Probably no more than we deserve…

Anyway, as the dominant intellect in the writing team that produces this blog (I know, I know) I have put my mind to finding a solution – and here is where I have arrived. As a species, we are wickedly good engineers. What if we scooped all of the plastic out of, and off, our poor benighted planet and made it into a single great pipe through which we could pump all of Earth’s excess ‘greenhouse gasses’ to Mars? Presumably Mars would then heat up and the frozen water beneath its surface would rise and we would be able to fill the planet with billions of CO² guzzling, oxygen producing trees and Bingo! In no time at all a lush green planet with an oxygen-rich atmosphere into which we could send all of our wasps! Genius!

It is only one of my many plans for the future: consider a planet full of CO² and melting ice-caps of pure, cold water. Answer, all you can drink fizzy water. Polar ice-caps as the planet’s Soda Stream. Of course, the changing world would expedite the imperative for the selective evolution of polar wildlife. Penguins, for example, would probably have to learn to fly again. It should be no problem for them, they have done it before. And Polar Bears? I have a plan for them too, just as soon as I discover whether they eat wasps…

Anyway, these are my plans to save the planet: my gift to the world. I will be publishing full details very soon for peer-review on this very website – providing nobody gets there first, in which case it will probably be a rant about cats…

A Little Fiction – The Meaning of Life

“…I was just saying to Meerkat here,” said the man in the lovat green cavalry twill suit, “that it is impossible to consider the meaning of life without reference to the impact of Bobby Moore’s spurious arrest before the 1970 World Cup finals.”

“Hang on…” said the man in the meerkat ‘T’ shirt, as his friend in the moleskin waistcoat placed three pint glasses onto the sticky dark wood table, spilling just a little as he did so. “I…”

“’Ere, I hope that’s yours,” snapped Cavalry Twill. “Don’t want to go paying for a pint and finding that most of it has been slopped onto the table.”

“It’s just a drop,” said Moleskin, none-the-less pushing one of the full glasses towards Cavalry Twill, “and anyway, you paid for nothing.”

Cavalry Twill sucked on his pint noisily before placing the glass down carefully on the soggy beer mat. “No peanuts?” he asked. “No pork scratchings? Not even a pickled egg to share?”

“I forgot,” said Moleskin morosely. “I’m sure that you will rectify the omission when it comes to your own turn to buy a round. Unless, of course, you have mysterious ‘other business’ in the Gent’s again.”

“Leeks,” muttered Cavalry Twill darkly.

“I…” said Meerkat.

“Anyway,” interrupted CT, raising himself just very slightly from his stool, “the moment will have passed by then. Pardon me, vicar. Better out than in, eh?” Meerkat and Moleskin shared a glance. They had their doubts.

“You see,” continued CT, “what I’m trying to say is, you cannot simply consider the direct wossname, consequences of an action; you have to consider the indirect implications, viz, would Sir Alf Ramsay have removed Bobby Charlton from the fray so early if he hadn’t had his eye taken off the ball as a result of seeing his captain in cufflinks just prior to the tournament?”

“Handcuffs,” said Meerkat. “Surely you mean…”

“The type of wristwear is, sunshine, what we in the psychology game call an irrelevance. Best not mentioned.” He directed a long, dark look at Meerkat; took a pull on his beer and continued again. “Point is, unforeseen consequences: you just don’t know what they might be.”

“Isn’t that what makes them, you know, unforeseen?” ventured Moleskin.

“Precisely,” said CT. “It is like…” He waved his hand in front of him as if trying to evoke some distant memory. “It is like him what had the box of chocolates: you don’t know what you’re going to get. Think you’re in for a cushy coffee crème and you wind up losing a filling to a toffee finger. Buggers are toffee fingers.”

“I never understood why he didn’t look at the little picture on the box,” said Moleskin. “If he didn’t know what he was going to get, I mean.”

“Life does not come with pictures,” said CT profoundly. “And anyway, illustrations are not always accurate. ‘May be subject to change,’ it says so on the box. Also, you cannot trust the average Walloon; they put the little pictures on the bottom of the box. Drop your guard for one second and try to work out what the whirly little numbers with the nuts on top are and before you know it you’ve got fourteen individual little brown stains down the crotch of your chinos.”

“Forrest Gump…” said Meerkat.

“Belgians,” corrected CT. “Was a time when we had our own chocolates. Knew where you were with a box of Milk Tray: no unpleasant surprises there. If it looked like a lime barrel, then a lime barrel was what you got. Not,” he cast an accusing glare in the direction of Meerkat, “some kind of nutty sludge.”

“Praline…” said Meerkat.

“Mmm, strange kind of Christmas present I have to say – requires you to scrub your top plate with a dishmop to get the bits out. Anyway, least said, soonest mended. The accepted social norm does allow for the occasional detour into Crystalized Fruit when circumstances demand the less than ideal solution; when your ‘proper’ chocolates are not, for some reason readily available: in time of nuclear war for instance; as the result of fire or pestilence; when the petrol stations are closed, you know, but Flemish confections are seldom welcome on a more advanced English palate.”

Meerkat looked crestfallen. “The wife’s sister won them in a lottery,” he said. “They said that they were of exceptional quality. The crème de la crème…”

“And not a raspberry ruffle among them,” scoffed CT, draining the last of his beer. “I think I’ll just have to…” he stood awkwardly. “Braised liver,” he said as he lurched from the room.

Meerkat drained his glass and rose slowly to his feet. “I don’t suppose he’ll be back until well after I’ve got them in,” he smiled wryly at Moleskin.

“No,” answered Moleskin. “I think he will be taking a little time out in order to develop a new theory on the meaning of life. Something which, I would imagine, will completely bar him from putting his hand in his pocket.”

Meerkat sighed deeply as he gathered up the glasses and turned towards the bar. “Hungry work, I should imagine. Do you think I should get him a roll-mop herring?”

“Does he even like them?” asked Moleskin, somewhat surprised by the suggestion.

“I shouldn’t think so for a second,” answered Meerkat, smiling broadly…

Odds and Sods – Why the White Rabbit?

I need your help.

I September 2019 I published a post entitled ‘Making Up For Lost Time: a Soapy Head, a White Rabbit and a Black Hole Paradox’ (You can read it here.) It was a fairly unprepossessing thing – just me postulating, as usual, about something that I did not understand: Time on this occasion. As most of these things do, it started off with a real – if insignificant – incident and, once I’d started to write about it, well, you know how it goes, don’t you; you’ve been on these journeys with me before. I could live with what I had written, or else I wouldn’t have published it. Its reception at the time was more lukewarm than school custard, but with another post to write and publish, I never gave any particular thought as to why. If people like what I have written, that’s gratifying; if they don’t, it’s understandable. I was not nominated for the Booker after all. Its fate, as with most of what I write, was death by neglect – except, for some unfathomable reason, it has not died. It has come to life as some kind of zombie post: tottering, arms outstretched, onto my list of most-read posts almost every week and I have no idea why.

I have re-read it a number of times, to try to glean from it an essence that I can revisit. Nothing. I have checked out the tags: not a single mention of vitamins, keep fit, or diet – nothing that would explain why people keep stumbling across it: because that is what must happen. I have even considered the possibility that some poor soul keeps getting it each time they log onto WordPress – a kind of Groundhog Day blog, which, I am almost certain, would ensure that I, personally, would never try to log on again.

The subject of time has seeped into many of my posts, because I find it so very difficult to understand. Scientists say that it does not exist; that it is a manmade construct. If that is the case, what lies between now and then? What sits between lunch and dinner on a rain-soaked Sunday afternoon (other than Carry on Camping, of course)? What is the pub landlord banging on about when he rings his bell of a Friday evening? How do we get older? Astro-physicists tell us that the Big Bang occurred 13.8 billion years ago – and if that’s not time, then I don’t know what is.

Anyway, White Rabbit was far from my first – and certainly not my last – plunge into the unfathomability of time, which has nagged away at me for several posts (all of which, if time really does not exist, must have been written simultaneously – showing a distinct lack of imagination on my part.) It cropped up most explicitly in Dog Years, which I have also just re-read, and I, for one, remain none-the-wiser.

Whilst Lewis Carroll’s White Rabbit was also obsessed with Time, the quote I used at the end (from White Rabbit by Jefferson Airplane) was clearly about drugs. Could that be part of the reason for the on-going interest in this post? Well, no, I don’t think it can. The world is full of drug references. Why would a single, oblique reference in an unknown blog entice new readers in?

I have to confess that it is highly likely that I am missing the one, certain and bleedin’ obvious reason. (Perhaps the title is very similar to a different blog that is worth reading.) Maybe you too have inadvertently stumbled into my White Rabbit post and you could tell me what you were hoping to actually read at the time. I would be so pleased of your help…

Addenda.

On holiday, last year, I was talking with a family member about the plethora of great songs either explicitly about or obliquely referencing drug use. We listed many and I compiled for him a ‘Now That’s What I Call Drug-Refrencing’ CD for Christmas. Here’s the track list. Try it on Alexa – she’ll be thrilled to play it for you:

1. White Rabbit – Jefferson Airplane (Slick)

2. One Way Ticket – The Darkness (J. Hawkins/D. Hawkins/Poullain)

3. Elephant Stone – Stone Roses (Squire/Brown)

4. Bad – U2 (U2)

5. White Light/White Heat – Bowie (Reed)

6. China Girl – Bowie (Bowie/Pop)

7. Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds – Beatles (Lennon & McCartney)

8. Happiness Is A Warm Gun – Tori Amos (Lennon & McCartney)

9. Cocaine – Eric Clapton (J. Cale)

10. Medicine Jar – Wings (McCulloch/Allen)

11. Golden Brown – Stranglers (Stranglers)

12. Itchycoo Park – Small Faces (Marriott/Lane)

13. Meet Me On The Corner – Lindisfarne (Clements)

14. Johnny The Fox Meets Jimmy The Weed – Thin Lizzy (Lynott/Gorham/Downey)

15. Purple Haze – Jimi Hendrix (Hendrix)

16. Perfect Day – Lou Reed (Reed)

17. Gold Dust Woman – Fleetwood Mac (Nicks)

18. Morning Glory – Oasis (Gallagher)

19. Dealer – John Martyn (Martyn)

20. Waiting For The Man – Velvet Underground (Reed)

21. Roll Your Own – Jethro Tull (Anderson)

22. F.U.B.B. – Wishbone Ash (Wishbone Ash)

23. Day In The Life – Beatles (Lennon & McCartney)

Some of the versions I’ve included are covers (Bowie’s version of ‘White Light/White Heat’ easily eclipses the V.U. original). I left out ‘Heroin’ by Velvet Underground, because it wasn’t a ‘hit’ record* and, to be honest, as Lou Reed wrote about little else, I could have simply copied his Greatest Hits compilation. Similarly so the mid-period Beatles. Also, I have just realised that I left off ‘Ebeneezer Goode’ by the Shamen – for no other reason than I am probably too old for it.

*Although Lou Reed’s version on ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal’ is as close to a ‘seminal’ recording as I can cast my mind to.

Anyway, there it is. I now predict lots of new readers – or a knock on the door from CID at least…

The Size of a Cow*

Firstly, let me tell you about my tooth… Well, my demi-tooth really – now more accurately known as ‘stump’. It began its disintegration on the first day of Lockdown and it has made a hobby of shedding little bits of itself into my food at inopportune moments ever since. At the weekend it gave up the iron fist in the velvet glove approach and instead went full-on iron fist, divesting itself of everything above gum level in one fell oatcake, with the kind of sound that you get when you inadvertently stand on a snail in the rain. I’m hoping the dentists will see me – she has refused for the last six months unless I claimed to be in agony and I refuse to lie – although what she is going to do with it now I cannot imagine. I’m guessing she will have to try to extract it – it would appear to be all that they are prepared to do at the moment – but exactly what she will be able to pull on, I have no idea. Frankly, I am too scared to find out. I am terrified enough of her, without the fear that she may have to dig down into my gum in the manner of a western frontierswoman armed with miniature pick and shovel with which to liberate the shattered fragments of subterranean dentine. She is a very nice lady, and I am sure that her family love her, but she scares me when all she has to do is examine me; if she approaches me with ‘machinery’ I fear that I will be left with only the silent scream and a sudden lapse into unconsciousness. I worry that I will emerge from the pandemic able only to drink dinner. I can no longer grind my teeth – I will have to gnash my gums instead.

This week, the worries that normally dance around my head like cackling malignant sprites have threatened, temporarily, to engulf me: to descend, en masse, into my soul via my sagging shoulders. Individually they are not heavy, they cannot pull me under, but together, they are having a damn good go at giving me a jolly good dunking. I do not drown when I am in this sort of mood, but I do tend to wallow. It is infuriating that my equilibrium is so easily disturbed, not by major trauma, but by a thousand little dominoes slowly tipping over, each one destabilising two more.

Everything is blown out of proportion in this weirdly fluctuating world of sub-lockdown. Everything is starting to get me down: the constant internal discussion of what is and is not ‘allowed’; the constant deliberation over action – physical welfare versus mental wellbeing; the realisation that half of the world is terrified, whilst the other half is terrified of the half that is not; the constant imperative to explain that the sign that says that masks have to be worn does, indeed, mean that masks have to be worn and it doesn’t really matter if you’ve left it in the car, and I understand that you don’t care if I don’t care, but all the other mask-wearers in here might care, and, yes, it is the law actually. I’m sick of saying ‘I’m sorry, you have to wear a mask,’ and I’m sick of having to wear a mask. I’m sick of staring into the future and seeing nothing there.

Now, I am very keen that you do not think me pathetic – although I almost certainly am – and this is most certainly NOT depression. This is merely being very fed-up indeed, bordering on pissed off. (You see, I swore there. I seldom swear in print – although my characters often do. I’ve just realised how odd that is.) The problem with this current situation is that there is no visible end to it – and infinity always appears to be very, very empty indeed. Everyone is, I think, beginning to feel the weight of it. Even the best of things become tedious if they go on too long. When something begins badly, it almost never improves for an indefinite extension. When I was small, I had a friend who sometimes used to bang his head on the wall. In my naivety, I asked him why. He was a little taken aback: he thought about it for a while and said, “It’s really good when I stop.” It seemed odd at the time, but I think I get it now.

Anyway, my wife, who is obviously more astute than even she realises, decided to give me my favourite comfort meal this evening: fish fingers, mashed potato, frozen peas and parsley sauce – I will hear of no other! It is the perfect comfort food. It fulfils all the criteria:

It is comforting.
It is food.
Possibly most important at the moment, it doesn’t take any chewing.

The only problem with it, is that in the current circumstances, it is nothing like enough, and it’s not the sort of thing that ‘scaling up’ will solve. Supersizing is not the answer. No-one likes to think of fish hands. Nobody wants to be that person who opens the second packet. Eating more and more is never comforting. The trick with comfort food is to eat until you feel pleasantly, comfortably full, not until you feel as though you may have to be rolled to bed. Although, now I come to think of it, a big bowl of sticky toffee pudding would not go amiss – although not with ice cream of course. Not with this tooth…

*Oh wow, look at me now, I’m building up my problems to the size of a cow – The Wonder Stuff

A Little Fiction – Super-Nigel and A Covid Adventure

Who needs an excuse to use this wonderful Hunt Emerson cartoon for ‘The Globe-Trotting Adventures of Nigel Tritt’ one more time?

For crispinunderfelt.

These characters were all created by myself and my great buddy, Chris (the afore-mentioned Mr Underfelt – his own blog is here) for a long, long ago radio series called The Globetrotting Adventures of Nigel Tritt (which I have written about previously here and, at the end of which, you may notice, I promised to never mention again). In keeping with the ethos of this blog, I felt that it was high time that I looked in on them to see how they are all coping with advancing years in this age of ‘New Normal’ – in short, how they are getting on. This is what I found…

Super-Nigel Tritt tucked himself tightly within the folds of his tartan ‘Slanket’, becoming increasingly agitated as he fiddled with the buttons of the TV remote. ‘Corinth, Corinth!’ he called, ‘Can you do something with this TV? The remote is not working and all the programs seem to be in Bulgarian.’

Corinth walked into the room. She still held the pneumatic promise of a twenty-something, although it did appear to be deflating in places. ‘That’s the telephone’, she said, taking it from his hand. ‘The TV remote is on the coffee table next to your glasses and your pills, which you haven’t taken as usual. The man on the TV is Danny Dyer – he always sounds like that.’

Nigel shifted uncomfortably in his chair: his leotard was giving him merry hell. ‘I don’t suppose you could just…?’

‘Again?’ asked Corinth, ‘I don’t know why you insist on wearing that thing these days. Just wait a minute whilst I go and get a couple of spoons.’

‘Remember to warm the cream,’ Nigel yelled at her retreating back. ‘You know what the cold stuff did to me last time.’

‘How could I forget,’ Corinth mumbled, with an involuntary shudder.

Covid isolation had proved to be particularly difficult for the retired Super-hero. Granted, his globe-trotting adventures had become increasingly rare in recent years – particularly since he now found it difficult to dodge anything more lethal than a speeding marshmallow – but this enforced isolation from his friends, How, the Professor and Freddie the Spy had left him low. They had tried Zoom calling on a number of occasions, but never with great success. The Doctor, as How preferred to be known, was struggling with his electric wheelchair – assembled from the bottom half of a Dalek – which had developed an alarming tendency to do exactly as it pleased. He suspected tampering by Davros, or possibly Huawei, but whatever the reason, he was seldom able to be at his laptop when the call came through – especially since his ‘assistant’ kept leaving it upstairs.

The Professor, the most technically gifted of the team, had become deeply suspicious of any post-millennial technology, believing that it was responsible not only for Covid, but also for the financial crash of 2008, the ceaseless seep of the gourmet coffee shop and a particularly persistent carbuncle with which he had been engaged in battle since 2013. Frankly, when they did manage a virtual ‘get-together’, his extreme moodiness ensured that he was never the best of company. Like Nigel, he desperately wanted to get back out into his world of do-gooding, but he had become, of late, concerned about How’s ability to pilot his time craft in anything approaching an acceptable manner; indeed, their most recent adventure, back at the dawn of time, was a perfect example. If Corinth had not somehow managed to bang two stray atoms together, Lord knows what might have happened. Besides, the on-board toilet arrangements were appalling and in no way equal to the requirements of four men with failing prostates and a woman whose pelvic floor was practically subterranean. In the Professor’s mind, it would be no bad thing if Nigel were to hang up his super-leotard for good.

The one member of the team who could always be relied upon to be present for their on-line chats was Freddy, although his paranoia had blossomed to such an extent that his many layers of auto-encryption meant that, in practice, it was almost impossible to see him unless you viewed the screen through a colander, and his voice emerged sounding something like a man-sized cockroach, which did rather set the teeth on edge.

Corinth herself, determined to confound her air-headed reputation of old, had studied every scientific home course available. As a result, she was perfectly capable of constructing a working nuclear reactor out of two kitchen spatulas and a selection of cutlery – although her efforts to work out what day it was still left much to be desired.

Even Nigel’s leotard, the seat of all his super-powers, had been less effective since Corinth had attempted to remove ‘certain stains’ by popping it into a boil wash, and it was only by dint of the ancient elastic going that he was able to struggle into its shrivelled remains at all. Yet despite its tendency to bring on the worst of his rashes, Nigel still liked to feel cocooned within its sagging mesh during times of stress – and times seldom came more stressful than these.

‘I’ve been thinking,’ he said to Corinth as she re-entered the room.

‘Oh gawd,’ she muttered.

‘We need to get the team back together. I have a plan to defeat this viral scourge.’

Corinth gazed into his glaucous eyes, for once sparkling again with a hero’s zeal.

‘Well?’ she said.

‘Well,’ he queried. ‘Well what?’

‘You just said about getting the team back together.’

‘Did I? I wonder why?’ he stroked his chin and small flakes of yesterday’s boiled egg fluttered down onto his lap. ‘Oh yes, my plan!’ he said at last. ‘My plan to save the world from Coronavirus. It is, I believe, infallible.’

‘I’ll make the call,’ Corinth stammered with genuine pride. ‘I always knew you’d come up with a plan… What is it by the way?’

‘What?’

‘The plan.’

‘Plan? What plan?’

‘To defeat Covid. You said you had a plan to defeat Covid.’

‘Oh that,’ he said. ‘Didn’t I tell you?’

‘No,’ she said, feeling the optimism drain from her like water down a dentist’s sink.

‘Oh bugger,’ he said…

I haven’t met these people in many years, but it took me no time to become familiar with them again. I enjoyed the catch up. I hope that I was faithful to their spirit.

Yet More Random Running Thoughts – Odds and Sods…

My Cat, Lawrence.*

My cat Lawrence, he’ll never let you down.

My cat Lawrence, keeps his feet on the ground.

With my cat Lawrence, you know just where you are.

Since my Auntie Florence, ran him over in her car…

I have discovered that when running, by a method I cannot discern, my phone always plays David Bowie’s Heroes (the album version, not the dreadful ‘single edit’) at the very second I decide that I have had enough. Well, you can’t stop then, can you?

Not for the first time I find myself thinking about Thursdays.

When I first added Thursdays to my blog rota it was with the aim of using a few stray poems which I ran as Haphazardly Poetical, because that’s what they were. I planned for them to be a regular thing, but they arrived sporadically and could, only in the very broadest of senses, properly be labelled as poetry – however, as, broadly speaking, I have no sense, thus labelled they were. For reasons I have never been able to fathom, they quickly proved to be my most popular of posts, but because I am pathetically and slavishly bound by rhyme and scan, I found them difficult to write with any regularity or quality, and when I set my mind to producing them, everything else went out of the window. Consequently, Thursdays also became home for a pastiche or two (Sherlock Holmes, James Bond, Winnie-the-Pooh, that sort of thing) which I rather liked, although I was in a definite minority. From time to time I wrote longer pieces which ran better over two days, so Thursdays became a day of all manner of poems, part twos and bits and bobs and, quite frankly, I began to find them a bit of a trial.

For a while I used Thursdays to republish some old, seldom read posts, which I thought merited a second chance (although, in the main, you begged to differ) and then came Covid, and Thursday became the day of The Plague Diaries, which took me right through Lockdown towards the New Normal, during which time I began to run. I have no idea why. My ‘Couch to 5k’ diary filled the next few months, and then the problem of what to do with Thursdays returned anew.

I write masses of ‘stuff’ that, for one reason or another (usually another) never gets expanded upon and, as Thursday blogs are, by and large, shorter and looser than other days, it struck me that Thursday could well become a day for some of these pieces. Some days I write pure nonsense (some?), snippets of rhyme (see top and bottom of this post), bits of script, random conversations – all of which go into a folder labelled Odds and Sods, which I have just renamed Thursday. You get my drift…

Eventually, another sparkly something will attract my attention and a new theme will, turd-like, bob to the Thursday surface, but until then you have Odds and Sods, and I, like a pioneering prospector armed only with a broken sieve, the wrong shovel and access to quite the wrong river, will pan away, searching for nuggets of gold that I might be able to fruitfully lay before you and, who knows, something that might, one day, lead somewhere else completely…

I wish us all good luck…

A Small Deception at the Vasectomy Clinic**

He smiled at me, lain on the table

And said, “Now this won’t hurt at all.”

Then rammed over 6 foot of needle

Right down my wherewithal

*I heard somebody shouting out for Lawrence from their doorstep late one night. They could, I suppose have been calling for a stray dog or husband, but something told me it was probably a cat. I started to think about how much easier cats would be to find, if they didn’t move around so much…

**Personal experience – I can say no more except to add that on the day of my ‘op’ I was prepared and splayed on the table when the surgeon and his (female) assistant entered the room, and the assistant took one look at me and said, ‘Colin? It is Colin isn’t it? I haven’t seen you in ages…’ The conversation from that point might be best described as strained and I cannot remember a time of greater relief than when I was able to gather myself together and limp, manfully from the room…

The previous running diary instalment, ‘More Random Running Thoughts’ is here.
The next running diary instalment, ‘Man on the Run’ is here.
Couch to 5k starts here.

The Trigger Point

It’s irritating. By and large, it doesn’t take much, just something to set me off whingeing: a trigger point I think it is called. This morning I discovered that our new next door neighbour had erected a new Sky dish. (‘Discovered’ probably sounds a little more dramatic than it actually was – it required no searching. I looked out of the window and it was there.) It is not very high, ten feet perhaps, and it sticks out over my property – a much-used path that runs along the side of the house – by about a foot. I looked at it and thought about all of the ways in which it would inconvenience me, but, other than meaning that the window cleaner will have to take extra care when bringing his ladder round to the back windows (I think I’m right in saying that with a little knock of just a few degrees on the left of the dish, they will wind up watching Albanian Third Division Crown-Green bowling in place of Strictly Come Dancing) and that the erection of scaffolding would require rather more care than it did just a few days ago (I am fully aware that I have no plans of doing anything that will in any way require scaffolding – unless I build some kind of mini-suspension bridge to get the window cleaner’s ladders safely by the dish – but it’s the principal of the thing godammit!) I can think of none. It’s very disappointing. I feel violated. I feel saddened that my permission was not sought (even though I am pretty certain that it wasn’t mine to give) yet I am struggling to find actual, concrete objections to its presence.

Not that I want a disagreement with the neighbour. She is new. She seems very pleasant and the last thing that I want is confrontation. I am not good with confrontation. If she had mentioned the impending work to me I would, without any doubt, have said, ‘Of course, no problem, would you like me to hold the ladder?’ but she didn’t and now I feel sore about it.

I think that it is a generational issue. Both of my neighbours are half my age (as are roughly three quarters of the world’s population I believe) they know what they are allowed to do and they just do it. That’s fine – there’s absolutely no point in getting exercised over something you can do nothing about – unless, of course, you’ve got a blog to write. Nobody cares for the narrow-minded, and self-proclaimed paragons of virtue are not going to be at the front of the queue when it comes to sympathy. I wanted to be mad, but I’m not – it’s definitely an age thing. It vexes me that the kind of things I do get enraged about: poverty, racism, sexism, hate, ITV football commentators, are all big things: things that I can do nothing about. The kind of things upon which I can legitimately vent my spleen: whomever keeps stuffing litter into my front hedge; the idiot who keeps parking his van across the grass verge; the internet provider that won’t allow me to keep my current number; my own ability to take any manner of ‘selfie’ that does not feature at least half a screen of out-of-focus thumb; my television’s tendency to turn on at full volume regardless of the volume at which it is turned off are, irritatingly, merely mildly irksome now: nothing to get worked up about.

Don’t get me wrong here – I fear we may be walking along parallel* sides of different highways – I have never been one to look for a fight – I spent far too many years losing them as a child. The righteous indignation that occasionally boils within me, does just that – it stays between my ears and gives me a headache from time to time. Occasionally, if I get really, really angry, I will write a strongly worded letter which I will never post. I will, of course, like every good English man, stand my ground when faced with queue-jumpers. I was, on one occasion, threatened with a knife in the Post Office queue. I laughed (in retrospect not the brightest of reactions) and it puzzled the youth to such an extent that he just walked away muttering about seeing me outside. Although thoroughly alarmed, I again did the British thing and carried on as if nothing had happened. There was nobody waiting for me outside: presumably his mum needed the knife to peel the spuds.

Now, new readers will no doubt be moving in closer, cocking their best ear, waiting with breath suitably baited for the point of this tirade, whilst those of you who know me better will have already drifted off and put the kettle on – knowing that any point I might, by some miracle make, will almost certainly not be worth the making – well, stow that teabag, you’re getting it anyway. The point is this: in the past, when I had so much to get mad about, it was so easy to find something to write about, but now, I am the personification of calm and, unless someone erects a satellite dish without telling me, tongue-tied and that my friends, is truly infuriating.

*my inability to correctly spell parallel without recourse to the spellcheck is truly irritating.

Don’t raise your voice, improve your argument – Desmond Tutu

A Little Fiction – Morning is Broken (Dinah and Shaw part 4)

In Shaw’s long experience, nothing quite matched the exquisite pain of toothpaste underneath the contact lens. The eye, it would seem, was no more designed for the absorption of fluoride than his teeth were designed to withstand the Cif with which he had inadvertently cleaned them that morning.

He had not had a good start to the day. His alarm at waking in an unfamiliar room had been of such magnitude that the hotel staff had alerted the management who, in turn, had despatched Security to handle the situation. By the time the man in uniform arrived at his door, Shaw had recovered some equilibrium with fast returning Tarantino-style flashbacks of an over-indulgent night in the hotel bar, but his renewed calm was not matched by the generously proportioned man in the over-tight suit who blocked out the light in his doorway. Indeed, Shaw’s own mood was darkened further when the be-suited Neanderthal pushed past him and insisted on looking around as ‘there had been reports of something that sounded like animal abuse,’ from the room. Shaw, in particular, did not care for the pointed remarks about his lack of luggage, nor the persistent bone-headed references to ‘people of your kind’.

Eventually, satisfied that the room had not been the scene of some bestial ritual sacrifice or perverted sexual practice, the shaven-headed behemoth returned to his dot-to-dot book and Shaw sat heavily on his bed to think.

He had been doing this ‘job’ for many years now and had, during that time, woken in many places far more alien than a hotel bedroom, but never in the state of agitated disorientation in which he had awoken on that morning. He felt around his body, searching for signs of injury or attack but, save for the extreme discomfort of a severely over-extended bladder, all was as usual. Of course, there was the issue of the hotel bedroom itself. Shaw presumed that it must have been paid for, but he had no recollection of how. He, himself, never carried more than a few pounds in cash – it was a matter of principal – and the only credit card he had ever possessed had been eaten by an iguana in 1999. He claimed ‘eaten’ – it had actually fallen into the animal’s terrarium (or ‘lair’ as he insisted on calling it) and Shaw, having witnessed the lizard’s scaly little swivelling eyes in action, was too freaked out to retrieve it. Even when the friend had returned the card to him, he refused to keep it and posted it instead, back to the bank in an envelope marked ‘Sanitisation Department’. The bank, for their part, seized the opportunity to withdraw the card from the man who had run up an overspend somewhat in excess of a developing nation and who possessed more aliases than a Sicilian telephone directory. He had never had a credit card since.

He rifled through the detritus from his trouser pockets and attempted to assemble some sort of coherent chronology to the previous night’s affairs from the crumpled papers he retrieved. There was a name and address he did not recognise, several old bus tickets and a National Lottery ticket from almost a decade before, but no sign of a receipt for the room. It was not until he found the neatly folded slip of paper in his shoe (he always took special care with Dinah’s phone number) that he realised he had also lost his phone. Dinah would know how to handle the situation in a manner that he was unable to fathom – e.g. without causing an incident that required the presence of police from three different counties – but there it was; she was not available to him. ‘Just goes to show,’ he thought bitterly. ‘You just can’t rely on anybody.’

He couldn’t pick up the phone in the room and ask reception to put a call through for him: he just knew that the ape of a security guard would be right there, uncovering the fact that the room had never been paid for: polishing his knuckles and devising his excuses. Dinah would have to wait for now – although he made a mental note to speak to her about unreliability – while he considered how he could extricate himself from his current predicament.

He could, of course have crept downstairs and made a run for it as soon as he reached the hotel lobby, but he remembered, with some pain, the consequences of his last attempt at such an exit, when the revolving doors had spun him straight back into the room and deposited him at the feet of the receptionist who had gripped him in an arm-lock so severe that he had suffered from pins and needles for months, before she doused his face in the depilatory spray that she had mistakenly put in her pocket in place of mace. It worked just as well. He certainly wouldn’t be able to talk himself out of the situation as he had done back then – the face that had launched a thousand ships looked as if it had done them all with a head-butt this morning – and not even a protagonist of more advanced years would ever find her head being turned by a man who had absolutely no idea why he was wearing odd shoes. Besides, he feared the only head-turning to take place would be his own, at the behest of the muscle-bound troglodyte at the door.

No, it was clear now. He knew what he had to do. Stealthily he traversed the wall, past the still un-noticed partition door – on the other side of which an ear-plugged Dinah slept soundly on, with both of their phones and her credit card beside her – past the ceiling CCTV (actually a long-disabled smoke alarm) and to the sanctuary of the curtain, from the shelter of which he deftly slipped the catch and opened the window. Good, only three floors up. All he needed to do now was to reach the drainpipe…

This is the fourth little snippet from the story of Dinah and Shaw. If you are interested, you will find part one here, which has links to parts two and three

Part five is now here.

More Random Running Thoughts – Raindrops on Roses and Whiskers on Kittens…

…Bright copper kettles and warm woollen mittens…

Don’t ask me why, because I don’t have the answer, but yesterday as I ran, this song kept looping around in my head. Not, in case you should wonder, because I was happy, but because, I think, I had just heard it in a radio advert and I was in a state of bewilderment. You see, I know that Maria (in The Sound of Music) is a nun, but come on: bright copper kettles? Really? What is so exciting about a bright copper kettle? At least with a brown paper package tied up with string there is intrigue, jeopardy even: what is in there – a bomb, or an unexpected bottle of Scotch? A bomb would definitely not be in my list of favourite things, but I get the uncertainty, the anticipation thing. I just don’t understand why anybody would consider a copper kettle, bright or otherwise, to be a favourite thing? Surely, even in a convent, there must be more alluring objects of desire. ‘I tell you what, Sister Maria, why don’t you just pop along and make me a nice cup of tea? The kettle is ever so bright – and copper too, by the way.’ How dull does a life have to be?

Anyway, as I know very little about the desirability of apple strudel (crisp or otherwise) and even less about Schnitzel with noodles, I devoted the rest of the run to devising my own lyrics (I didn’t mess with the chorus, which seems perfectly serviceable to me – nobody cares for dog bites or bee stings, do they?) I hope Rogers and Hammerstein will forgive me (or at least not sue…)

A fresh gin and tonic with ice and a slice in,

A hot veggie chilli with plenty of spice in,

A huge bar of Galaxy (chocolate of kings),

These are a few of my favourite things.

Bright yellow pimples on other folk’s noses,

Those who fall over while striking their poses,

Drunken hen-parties with pink angel wings,

These are a few of my favourite things.

The smell in the kitchen when pizza is cooking

The mess you can make when there’s nobody looking,

Bananas and custard and conkers on strings

These are a few of my favourite things.

When the dog bites

When the bee stings

And I’m feeling sad

I simply remember my favourite things

And then I don’t feel so bad…

The feeling you get when the guests have departed,

The smile on the face of a baby that’s farted,

The news that the old folk can play on the swings,

These are a few of my favourite things.

Repeat chorus etc etc etc.

There, that’s better. Now I don’t feel so bad…

For clarity’s sake, I think I probably should point out (for the aficionados amongst you) that I am aware I have added an extra verse at the end. It was a long run. Lord knows what will stick in my head the next time I venture out, but if it’s anything to do with lonely goatherds, I may have to reappraise my entire life…

The previous running diary instalment ‘Some Immutable Laws of Life’ is here.
The next running diary instalment ‘Yet More Random Running Thoughts’ is here.
Couch to 5k starts here.

What is life if full of care…

…We have no time to stand and stare?

You know the scenario: there’s an unidentified rattle in the car. It’s not much of a rattle, but it’s enough to distract you. It wasn’t there before and you don’t know where it’s coming from. You ask your passenger if they can see what’s rattling and they say, ‘What rattle? I can’t hear a rattle,’ at which point the rattle takes on a new determination and you say, ‘There! Just then! You must have heard it.’ But your passenger just sucks her teeth and says, ‘No’ and you know that the sound is going to drive you crazy before you reach your destination. So, you ask your passenger to check in their door pocket, to check in the glove compartment, to check under the seat, all to no avail. The rattle persists, as does their deafness to it and your distraction by it, until at last, driven to the point of despair, you arrive at journey’s end only to discover that the noise is coming from an actual child’s rattle in the passenger’s handbag. You know how it goes, right?

The tiniest deviation from the norm, that impinges upon the collective consciousness not one jot, but which drives you and you alone up the bleedin’ wall, becomes the catalyst for major change: the pointless argument; the tossing out of one’s toys; the changing of one’s car… And before you ask me, no, I haven’t – although I do have a rattle in my car that nobody else seems able to hear and I am actually just beginning to wonder if it really is all inside my head – whether the nuts really are working loose…

Since the dawn of lockdown we have held a family Zoom get-together and quiz each weekend. Of late, to mix things up, we have also played games and tackled Escape Rooms. I have discovered that, whilst I can solve the individual puzzles that guide us through to escape, I have no idea whatsoever of where we are, where we have been, nor where we are going. Is that normal, do you think?

I have no trouble in answering the kind of questions asked by consultant geriatricians. I can name every Prime Minister since, you know, big man, wide shoulders, funny laugh, used to sail yachts or something I think… I always know what year it is (although not, I admit, necessarily the day). My memory has always been eccentric – razor-sharp on music and sit-coms, absent on bin days – so that’s not a worry. Although I have read somewhere – I think, I can never be sure – that the absence of worry is, in itself, a worry.

I have a great capacity for the standing and staring thing – usually into space, usually because I’ve lost my keys. Or in a supermarket because I’ve misplaced the cereal aisle. None of that has ever changed, so that’s a good thing isn’t it?

The tendency for little things, insignificant things, to disturb my equilibrium is, however, a different kettle of fish. (Who’d put fish in a kettle anyway*? It must play merry hell with the PG Tips.) My ability to be knocked off stride by very little is unrivalled in the western world. A changed dental appointment can bother me for weeks. An unidentified caller on my phone sets me spinning in a neurotic spiral of paranoia, seldom seen since the days of The Prisoner on TV. I have GCHQ on speed dial.

I have just read a report on the BBC website (Knowing how the universe will end is freeing) that states that, at some indeterminate future time, the universe will end in either ‘heat death’, ‘big rip’ or ‘vacuum decay’, none of which sound like the kind of thing you would want to be around for. My first problem is with ‘indeterminate’ which could, presumably, be today. My second problem is with this infinite universe of ours. If it is no longer there, where is it? I don’t see how infinite nothing can be a thing. Maybe that’s the point. Could infinite nothing be sucked into a black hole (in which case the black hole would still exist) or would the black hole be sucked into nothing (in which case nothing would still exist). My understanding is that the universe started off as nothing, so presumably, if it became nothing again, it would still be there and therefore – do try and keep up at the back – not nothing. In any case, surely an infinite nothing would have to end somewhere and somewhere can’t be nowhere, can it? And if you’d sooner not think about it, well so would I, but if I stop worrying about the death of the universe, I start to think about this bloody rattling again – and you know where that gets us…

*Below is a fish kettle – just in case you think I am more stupid than I look.