Couch to 5k

A picture, they say, is worth a thousand words. Well, I am in no position to comment upon the veracity of that statement, but I’ve got a thousand words going begging, so that is are what you’re getting from me. I feel that we are friends now, you and I; I can tell you things. I am in my sixties, overweight and the most physically exerting thing I usually do is to open the breadbin. These things you already know. What you don’t know is that having downloaded the couch to 5k app on my phone many months ago, I have finally opened it this week and embarked upon the journey that will turn me into an Adonis. It is a voyage for which I am in no way prepared. I do not own trainers of any kind, certainly not specialist running ones, so I’m currently wearing a natty pair of striped espadrilles. They are matched with over-long swimming shorts, a baggy ‘T’ shirt and a pair of wrap-around sun glasses so that nobody knows who I am. I look like a man who really should not be jogging. Who needs a picture to realise that it is a sight that once seen, you will never be able to un-see?

If you are not familiar with the app, it leads you slowly, slowly, slowly from zero exercise to regular 5km runs via an ordered run/walk routine, which in my case, amounts to a regular curse/gasp/stagger. My ‘companion’ on these jaunts is the lovely Jo Whiley, who I thought (correctly) would be quietly encouraging, but who, I now realise, I feel quite embarrassed to be out and about with in the state I am in.

As a child and young man, I was always ‘sporty’ and I played football until well into my fifties, but I have never been a runner. I can sprint over short distances in a heavy-footed, forward-stumble kind of a way (think hippo) but my endurance is shorter than a bus driver’s temper. At school I learned the benefits of being a plodder when our sports teacher, an ex-para, whom I always suspected of being a member of the Hitler Youth, would send us out on a 1500 metre run at the start of ‘Double PE’. Following the run we all trooped inside for tortuous circuit exercises – except for the last five to finish, who had to run an extra lap and, crucially, if they did the last lap slowly enough – possibly with a short stop for a fag behind the hedge – missed the circuits altogether and turned up just in time for ‘crab football’. Guess where I was? In my prime I could, on occasion, speed myself up to an ungainly lope, but these days I am a one-gear lumberer. My ‘jog’ is generally slower than my walk. At times I do have the feeling that I am actually going backwards, but I plod along.

I have tried to find routes where I will not encounter anybody I know, but I live in a village. I know a lot of people. I have discovered not only that wrap-around sunglasses do not sufficiently disguise me, but also that when I am jogging, I myself recognise no-one. People speak as I pant my way past, but I have no idea who they are, and I cannot hear them because Jo Whiley requires me to have my headphones in. In consequence, I reply to anyone who looks as though they might be greeting me, which can startle those who are merely watering the geraniums and have no idea who I am. I have no idea how far the run (warm up, eight jogs, eight walks and warm down) might take me (hint: nowhere near as far as you might imagine) so I simply head off and when the little bell rings to tell me that I am half way through, I retrace my tottering steps. I pass the same people twice. They see me coming (I am not the kind of sight that they can ignore) and scuttle inside if they are able. Geranium waterers suddenly sense the onset of rain; dog walkers find imaginary dog crap that they just have to clear up; solitary walkers pretend that they have lost their dog. I try to keep my head down – this is pure expedience on my part. The paths around here are pretty much as pot-holed as the road. I am concerned that I might trip. I am much more concerned that I might trip within sight of somebody that knows me. Most of my near-neighbours believe that I am useless enough already. It would be too much if they were to discover that I can’t even jog in slow-motion without floundering. Especially if they have to help me up.

And here’s another thing! I carry my phone a) because Jo Whiley is on it, b) because my music is on it and c) in case I can’t get home – and it’s a real pain. If I put it in my pocket it bangs against my thigh at every step and pulls my shorts down, when I hold it in my hand it leads to a partial garrotting at every step. Should I carry on with this malarkey, I fear that I am going to have to buy equipment: shoes that do not look as though I should be strolling along the promenade at St Tropez; shorts that do not start at my knees and end at my ankles half an hour later, and some means of attaching my phone to a portion of my body that doesn’t move about too much even at full speed (e.g. in the last couple of yards when the biscuits are within sight). Well, they did tell me that I might shed a few pounds.

Anyway, it is all out in the open now. I will try to keep it going and I will keep you informed, but don’t expect a photo. A thousand words is definitely worth not seeing the picture…

A Return to California

Being stuck at home writing; attempting (eg failing) to complete DIY projects in a fashion that could in any way be described as acceptable; watching daytime TV; endeavouring to make something edible out of three chitted potatoes, a can of mackerel fillets, four frozen brussel sprouts and a carton of lentil soup; watching late-night TV; drinking a strange brown brew that could just possibly be classed as coffee in a strangely distant parallel universe; twisting the very fabric of linear time and exploring the distortion of binary progression in deciding whether or not it is late enough to open the gin yet – sounds like fun, doesn’t it? There can be no end to the number of entertaining blogs it is possible to glean from such circumstances. Surely a brain that has lately evolved to watch the evening news without ever once imploring its host to jump off a cliff must have something valid to say.

I see my brain as a series of cogs and wheels that whirr silently, like a kind of clockwork computer, wound by curiosity. I imagine it is surrounded by little men in offices who read books and beaver the day away, taking messages from the other little men who occupy the eyes and ears, observing the world outside, like the myopic, uni-limbed pirate who was always stuck up in the crow’s nest in the kind of films I used to watch as a child. Unfortunately, my little cogs have had something sticky poured over them: the little men have taken an extended nap – perhaps they are on furlough – and whatever the eyes and ears are sending along, it is being lost in transit; dropped into a vat of porridge and abandoned to be raised by wolves. My head has become a Tena – it doesn’t matter how much I put into it, nothing is leaking out.

It’s not a new thing: it has happened before. I have learned how to deal with it. I have an infallible method that involves lack of sleep, pages of gibberish and glasses of whisky which, now I think about it, is actually exceedingly fallible. When there is nothing to see outside, then you have to look inside. Great, unless like me, you are an empty vessel. When I look inside of me, I tend to see straight out of the other side.

I am currently working at the kitchen table as my wife has commandeered the office. This is not natural for me. I am not surrounded by my normal paraphernalia, I cannot listen to my usual music, I cannot drag my eyes away from Homes Under the Hammer – at least not until Bargain Hunt starts. The kettle, the biscuit barrel and the toaster are very much too accessible. When I am at my desk, options are limited. I have gone there to write. If I don’t write I can do nothing but stare at the guitars I cannot play, the paints that I never use, the books that I have already read a hundred times and then, in my usual state of desperation, I write. It’s the least troublesome alternative. I know that if I persevere, will get something down on paper: I will never play ‘Blowin’ Free’, I will never paint ‘Starry Night’, I will never get over Boxer’s exit to the knacker’s yard, so I write. In the kitchen, even a full dishwasher holds a novelty that pushes prose into second place.

The knowledge that I have nothing to say is not the problem – I have written over 200 blogs now without actually managing to say anything – not knowing how to say it is the problem. Because what I write is not bound by the constraints of logic, plot or rationality, I can generally skip by such moments, but for others, for proper writers, it can be a real problem. Harper Lee took sixty years to publish her second novel – only to reveal that it had been written before the first. Samuel Taylor Coleridge lived on opium from his mid-twenties in the hope that it would help him overcome his block. I’m not sure that it helped. I’m not sure that he cared. Whilst some authors develop tactics to fend off ‘The Block’ – Hemingway, for instance, always stopped a day’s writing in mid-flow so that he could return the following day primed and ready to go – many do not acknowledge its existence. Norman Mailer said that ‘Writer’s block is only a failure of the ego,’ and Jodi Picoult, ‘Writer’s block is having too much time on your hands.’ I can’t help but agree with Paul Rudnick, ‘Writing is 90% procrastination,’ because, boy, can I put it off. If I stopped in mid-flow, I would very rarely restart.

Maya Angelou said, ‘Just write,’ and Jennifer Egan said ‘I haven’t had trouble with writer’s block. I think it’s because my process involves writing very badly.’ I share her process, but unlike her, my own writing never ascends above the very badly, it is what I do. Every time that somebody likes what I have written, I worry that I will not be able to do it again, and the little part of my brain that allows me to play with words begins to juggle worms instead.

When I cannot think what to write about, what to say, I just write. Most blogs begin as pure drivel and then, slowly, slowly, slowly a theme develops and Presto! before I know it, drivel with a theme. I chop out the first 1,000 words, move the last fifty to the beginning and what remains is almost rational. With the simple application of a red felt pen and a double scotch it might even emerge readable.

And in the meantime, here’s an omelette I prepared earlier…

And if you’ve got a writer’s block, you can cure it this evening by stopping whatever you’re writing and doing something else. You picked the wrong subject. Ray Bradbury

N.B. The title of this piece comes from a Terry Pratchett quote: “There’s no such thing as writer’s block. That was invented by people in California who couldn’t write” on which I based a blog, My Unceasing Battle with Pratchett’s Californians, in June of last year. Plus les choses changent, plus elles restent les memes, huh?

A Little Fiction – Script

Act One – Scene One: Int. A suburban living room. Edmund enters. Gilbert is slumped in a chair. His head is back, his mouth is open. He snores loudly.

Edmund: So Gilbert, the plot thickens.

Gilbert: (Surprised) What the bloody…? What? Plot? What plot?

Edmund: (Remaining calm) Plot. This plot. The plot. The plot thickens…

Gilbert: Plot. Ok, plot. Against whom?

Edmund: What?

Gilbert: Against whom? Whom… What… Who are we plotting against?

Edmund: Us? No-one. We’re not plotting against anyone.

Gilbert: But you said…

Edmund: I said, ‘So Gilbert, the plot thickens.’ It’s the line.

Gilbert: The line?

Edmund: The line. In the play.

Gilbert: The play… What play?

Edmund: This play. The play.

Gilbert sits awkwardly, confused.

Gilbert: I’m confused. What do you mean ‘The line’? What play are you talking about?

Edmund: Look, come on, there are people watching. This isn’t funny now; just say your line. Let’s move on.

Gilbert: ‘Line?’ ‘Line?’ There you go with that ‘Line’ thing again. What is this with ‘Line’? You’re acting like you’re expecting me to say something.

Edmund: Of course I am. I’m waiting for you to say your line so that I can react.

Gilbert: React?

Edmund: React. I say, ‘So Gilbert, the plot thickens’ and you say, ‘And we become more embroiled within it,’ and I react by saying, ‘Ay, there is no other way for us.’ I know it’s not exactly Shakespeare, but…

Gilbert: ‘And we become more embroiled within it’?

Edmund: Well, it’s not actually a question in the script, but it will…

Gilbert: Script? What do you mean, Script?

Edmund: Oh God! Have you been drinking?

Gilbert: Me drinking? Me? I’m not even called Gilbert. Why do you keep calling me Gilbert?

Edmund: In the play. Your character…

Gilbert: Here we go again. ‘In the play.’ What play?

Edmund: This play, for Christ’s sake. This play. The one that we are both in.

Gilbert: I’m not in a play.

Edmund gestures to Gilbert to look at the audience. Gilbert stands and walks to the front of the stage, peering intently into the auditorium. He returns to his chair and sits heavily.

Gilbert: I don’t understand. When did that happen?

Edmund: Oh come on, it’s a play. You’re just a character in a play. Stop messing about now and let’s get on with it. The audience are getting restless. They’ll be asking for their money back if we don’t get on with it.

Gilbert: But I don’t understand. I fell asleep over Doctor’s this afternoon, no biggy, often happens, but when I woke up… Is this Candid Camera?

Edmund: Candid Camera? How old are you?

Gilbert: Alright, Game for a Laugh. Are you Jeremy Beadle…? No, he’s dead isn’t he? Are you Noel Edmonds?

Edmund: No I’m bloody not. I’m Edmund and you are Gilbert. We are brothers.

Gilbert: Brothers? My mum’s not going to be happy with that. She thought that there was just me and my sister. Mind you, my sister’s not going to be too chuffed when she finds out that she’s you…

Edmund: What?

Gilbert: (Peering closely at Edmund) Is that a fake beard? It is, isn’t it? It’s a fake beard. Come on, who are you really? Is this for You’ve Been Framed? (He addresses the audience) It is, it’s a fake beard.

Edmund: The fourth wall. My God! You’ve broken the fourth wall.

Gilbert: The what?

Edmund: The fourth wall. It’s a theatrical conceit. The barrier between the actors and the audience.

Gilbert again looks out into the audience.

Gilbert: A theatrical conceit. What the…? There is no barrier. What would be the point in that? They wouldn’t be able to see us. There’d be no point. Unless it was glass or something. I suppose glass would work…

Panicking, Edmund looks to the wings. He strokes his beard nervously.

Gilbert: It is fake, isn’t it? Honestly, it’s a fake.

Edmund: (Under his breath) Yes, it’s fake. Obviously it’s a fake, alright. And so is yours.

Gilbert: But I haven’t got a…

Gilbert feels his chin.

Gilbert: …bloody hell. Where did that come from? I’m sure I didn’t have that this morning.

Edmund: I’ve just told you, it’s a fake.

Gilbert pulls the beard. It comes off. He tries to stick it back on. It is upside down.

Gilbert: Blimey… Right, just let me get this straight. I’m called Gilbert and you’re called…?

Edmund: …Edmund…

Gilbert: …Edmund. And… We are doing what exactly?

Edmund: In the play?

Gilbert: If it helps.

Edmund: I’m waiting for you to deliver your line.

Gilbert: Which is?

Edmund: Which is ‘And we become more embroiled within it.’

Gilbert: And we become more embroiled within it?

Edmund: Yes, but as I said, it’s not a question.

Gilbert: And we become more embroiled within it? But not a question?

Edmund: No. A statement. Not a question.

Gilbert: Right, so…

Edmund: So?

Gilbert: So shall I say it then?

Edmund: It’s a bit late now if I’m honest.

Gilbert: Bit late? It’s just a line. If you don’t want me to say it now, what’s the point in all the moaning? What have you been moaning about all the time? I thought…

Edmund: You didn’t! That’s just the point, isn’t it? You didn’t. You didn’t think anything. The writer did. You’re just reciting his lines.

Gilbert: Oh yes…? So, what’s with all this confusion then?

Edmund: Confusion? It’s just in the script.

Gilbert: What do you mean, ‘It’s in the script’?

Edmund: I mean it’s in the script. The confusion is in the script.

Gilbert: And the fourth wall thing?

Edmund: In the script.

Gilbert: And the thing with the beard?

Edmund: In the script. It’s all in the script. Everything. You, me, everything; all in the script.

Gilbert: Are you sure?

Edmund: Quite sure…

The End.

I come from a long line of actors. It’s called the dole queue – Alan Davies

For Calmgrove…

200 – A Retrospective…

mission statement — This is the photo that accompanied my very first blog. I used it here because a) I’m lazy and b) it serves as a reminder that it is never too late to start again.

This is my bi-centennial post, so I thought that I would just take a couple of minutes to look back over my last eighteen months of twaddle. It would have been a ‘Greatest Hits’, but you know how easy it is to find yourself being sued these days.

According to WordPress my average post takes about four minutes to read, so it would seem that I currently manage to find approximately eight minutes-worth of stuff to moan about per ten thousand and eighty minutes available to me each week. (That must say something, but I’m not sure what.) I have decided not to fill this particular four minutes – which, according to my dodgy memory, is about a minute more than the warning that we would have got that the Russians were coming in the seventies – with amusing clips from my back catalogue (sic) but I have, instead, included a lot of links that I would love you to follow if you have any vacant four minute time slots to fill.

I made my first post (Mission Statement) in November 2018 and, by and large, I think I have stuck to the plan: a blog, not about actually getting older, but about life, written from the viewpoint of someone who is getting older. The (lack of) style has changed a bit along the way, but the general gist remains the same: to poke old-age in the ribs and entice it to chase you through a devilish maze filled with fake dog-dirt and clowns in the hope that it just might get bored and wonder off to bother somebody else instead. My third post (Fat) is remarkably representative of everything that has followed. By the fourth week, like everybody else, I had stumbled head first into Brexit which, as you would expect, poked up its repulsive little head like a neurotic meerkat, for many months thereafter. In March 2019 I started to publish twice a week, in the obvious misapprehension that you could not get enough of me and not too long after that I stumbled headlong into three whinges a week. I have published hobby guides, parodies (Sherlock Holmes, James Bond, Winnie-the-Pooh etc etc), some little fictions of my own (The Custodian of Time is probably my favourite of those, simply because Calmgrove liked it, but I also liked some of the ‘specials‘) and some poems, for which I can only apologise. In the main, though, I have merely talked about me – and I realise how vain that must sound, but it is the only reference point I have (I think I may have set the tone with Hypochondria in January 2019) and by far my most read piece, Making Up For Lost Time – I wish I knew why – was published in September of last year – since which I thought I was getting better. As an anchor point, I do realise that it is set upon somewhat shifting sands, but I am pretty steadfast, although wobbly. The way I write relies upon me giving bits and pieces away along the way, but I try to hold back on opinion. I feel that, if my opinion is to have any value, then I have to have a rational argument to back it up. Rational argument requires education and knowledge – and I’ve just found a bag of my old school reports in the attic, so I’ll leave my opinions up there with those. The thing about any one opinion is that it is incapable of changing any other. If you don’t like it, you hit the ‘Off’ button. Mostly this blog is about what I don’t know. I suppose the whole thing could just as easily be titled ‘Is it me?’

Latterly I have returned to posting twice a week, having found that posting three times a week had started to dominate my life – these things don’t come easily to me (hard to believe, I know, but I do work on them) and a large chunk of what I have written recently has, of course, involved Coronavirus which I appear to have first mentioned in February this year. In Lockdown, my blog has become something of a plague diary. I refuse to get dragged down by the bloody thing. It might just take me away at some future time, but if it does it will have plenty to deal with; I can kick and scream with the best of them. I will leave it to others much more able to discuss the politics of the situation; I just want to know why every time I try and get a grocery delivery slot, my computer assumes I want to order three gross of wagon Wheels and a tin of water chestnuts.

Anyway, there you go, I hope you will excuse me a little bit of a look back and, if you should choose to follow any of the links, I hope you enjoy the older pieces (there are two hundred of them out there!) and get some idea of where this has come from and where it is all going. (If you do find out, please tell me. I would love to know.) Things will return to what passes for normal around here by the next post and you can return to subsisting on my usual salmagundi of dog-eared open sandwiches (which, unless I am sadly mistaken, are just a sop for those too lazy to butter a second slice of bread) mushroom vol-au-vents (fly-in-winds – go figure) cheese and pineapple cocktail sticks (preferably spiked into half a tin-foil wrapped orange) and trifle (upon which I could answer questions on Mastermind). How long it will take the world to return to normal, I cannot say, but I do hope to be around here long enough to document it all. Life is short, so enjoy what there is. Take all that you can from it – like you’re sucking the colours from a puffin’s bill. There are still joys to be had; like finding a bottle of Cointreau at the back of the cupboard that, now you come to think about it (and in the absence of anything else alcoholic) you really quite like. Especially with warmed-up vegetables and a sausage that smells of socks…

Envoi: like Bryntin last week – who has subsequently said that he intends to leave the platform – I have now published my two hundredth blog; although unlike him I have yet to top the 200 hundred followers mark. It is true that a reasonably large percentage of those who click to ‘follow’ me do so only in the hope that they can tell (or more probably sell) me something – Vitamins appears to be my thing; I must give off the whiff of a man with a startling deficiency – and they never subsequently reappear. In my own case, I think that my actual number of regular readers is probably in single figures. I don’t have a social media presence at all, so I always realised that pulling together a readership of any size was going to be an uphill struggle. It is not what I expected when I started this, but it is what it is and I have a small number of followers who do read what I write and whose blogs I also enjoy reading. If you’ve been with me for any portion of this ‘journey’ then you’ll pretty much know all there is to know about me. I’m sorry, it won’t happen again. Like Bryntin, I’ve also noticed that my ‘Likes’ are often in excess of my ‘reads’, but I choose to believe that people without the time to read my posts just want to let me know that they are still there – it’s how my brain works. It allows me to preserve some modicum of self-esteem – which is ok at the moment, although it has probably had one too many to make it down the stairs on its own…

To the few and, if I may say so, incredibly discerning, fellow bloggers who do regularly tune into my waffle I would just like to say thank you for sticking with it. And if you find yourself with a spare minute to comment, please do (unless you want to tell me that I am a wazzock, in which case don’t bother yourself, you’re telling me nothing that I do not already know) – I always try to reply and it makes my day. If you have an opinion on what I should (or shouldn’t) be doing in the future, please let me know. Nothing too abusive or physically taxing though please…

Round and round and round…

dictaphone

Some years ago I wrote a monologue – which centred, to my recollection, on the Queen’s toilet roll – by shouting into a Dictaphone as I went about my daily business. Well today, having a blog to write, a ceiling to paint and a water feature to de-slime, I thought I’d try it again. You never know, technology having moved on, as it does, I might even just to be able to play the recording back straight into the laptop so that it can transcribe it into my blog for me. I’ll let you know…

So, the one thing I have discovered during the lockdown is… Is this working? How can you tell? I’ll have to run it back and see if… Yes, yes, it’s fine. I should have known – you can see the little wheels turning on the cassette. I wonder if you can still buy these titchy little tapes? I guess not. All digital now I bet. Anyway. Now, where was I? Oh yes, I remember, late night T.V… Now, I’ve happened to catch Gogglebox these last few nights and… Do people really watch T.V. like that? I… No, it’s me. No, I’m not on the phone, I’m talking into my Dictaphone. Yes, I did keep it. I know you put it in the charity box. Yes, I’m sure – I can see the little wheels turning. It has one of those titchy little tapes. I know… Have you seen Gogglebox by the way? I know, that’s what I was just saying. Nobody watches TV like that. They have to be actors don’t they? People just don’t react in unison unless they’re directed. I wonder if they need scripts? I’m sure I could… Shit! Did you move the paint tray? Oh bugger. Quick, get the turps and some cloths. I’ll take my shoes off and you check the insurance details. Just a minute while I turn the bloody tape off…

…OK, now, where was I? Oh yes, late night T.V. Now don’t get me wrong, I know that Gogglebox is just a repeat of an early evening programme, but let’s face it, nobody ever looks at Channel 4 during normal hours do they? Just in the middle of the night when the only competition is Live Casinos, Shopping for Crap and Gordon Ramsay shouting at somebody who would punch his lights out under any other circumstances. Oh yes, and Come Dine With Me. Presumably the production companies have a special department dedicated to searching out the obnoxious. I… Is that my phone ringing? Hang on, I’ll just have to turn you off a minute while I look for it…

… Oh, of course, I didn’t turn you back on, did I? Didn’t think to check if the little wheels were turning. So, where was I? Ah yes, late night T.V. Well, let’s face it, they wouldn’t show those programmes at any other time of day would they? I think… Ah yes, good afternoon neighbour. No, I am clearing the green slime from the bottom of the water feature. No, no need to call the police. I am not having an illegal gathering. I do not, since you ask, have ‘a group of nobbish friends round infecting the whole bloody neighbourhood’. I am talking into this little tape gizmo thing – you can see the little wheels turning… No, there’s no need to call the intervention team. I am not having a lockdown induced breakdown. I am carrying out one of my mundane tasks whilst attempting to write an entertaining blog. No, blog. No, not a huge number, no. Yes, I suppose it could be a little sad, if you chose to look at it in that way; although, I’m not certain how that automatically makes me ‘a sad old tosser’. By the way, I’ve got a bag for you here. No, not a parcel left by the postman, no, it is many, many parcels left in my garden by your bloody cat…

…No, it’s just a bruise. I had no idea that the bloody maniac had put a gate in the fence. Community police officer decided against charging him, pointing to the cat crap I had dropped on his hat. She locked the gate and wedged it. She also fished the little tape recorder out of the water feature. Wonder if it’s insured. What? Oh really? So they are. Amazing this old technology – you just can’t stop those tiny wheels from spinning. It’s no wonder they caught Nixon. No, Nixon. The American president. He… oh, never mind, it’s not important. No, I’m just going to go inside and finish the blog. I won’t bleed on the sheepskin. It’s stopped now. I don’t know, I won’t be long. No, I have no intention of talking all night. My blog. It is for my blog. No, that is not why I have taken to sitting up half the night. I never even knew those channels existed. I have been watching a group of everyday people watching the television. No, on the television, it’s… oh, never mind. Look, the titchy little tape has almost run out. Must be a blog in there by now. What time does Naked Attraction start?…

…Well, that seemed to go ok, didn’t it?…

There’s a hole in my neighbourhood down which of late I cannot help but fall… Guy Garvey (Elbow – Grounds for Divorce)

Preparing for the New Normal

tins

So, the lockdown hesitantly begins its long, slow stumble towards the finish line and, as we have all grown used to the once-a-month, only-available-slot, 2am grocery delivery, I thought it would be a reasonable idea to take a peek into my food cupboards and consider the ways in which we might all prepare for whatever is to be, as we approach the ‘New Normal’ and struggle to use up the thirteen tins of Pek Chopped Pork and three gross of pan-scourers the supermarket sent as substitutes for fresh veg.

During the lockdown I, myself, discovered that we had in a huge quantity of oats which, since it was not minus twenty eight degrees outside, was not being utilised in the production of porridge. Pluckily, I decided to make flapjack. It couldn’t be easier. My first attempt produced something which could just possibly be used in the building industry – probably as a substitute for concrete lintels, whilst my second attempt produced something that could only be eaten with a spoon. Such being the times in which we live, both were eaten. I have also discovered that, as we slowly run out of anything that even remotely resembles real coffee, I can actually drink tap water – as long as I add a splash of Scotch to disguise the flavour. If, like me, you have discovered thirteen tins of coconut milk in the back of the cupboard, accidentally hoarded for no conceivable reason, why not make a coconut milk shake? The method is simplicity itself: take a tin of coconut milk and shake it. The flavour is a subtle blend of coconut and lard, and the fat content is sufficient to give your statins a nervous breakdown.

Also at the back of these shelves you will find at least one tin of sardines in tomato sauce (possibly, depending upon your age, pilchards, sild or even brisling – nobody knows what they are nor where they come from) and you will be wondering what to do with them. The answer is surprisingly simple: put them in the bin. Do not open them (particularly if they have one of those titchy little key jobbies that allow you to put a three-inch gash in a two inch finger) they taste like shit and they are full of tiny calcified bones that make retching unavoidable. Also, they have an odour half-life of about three million years and you can smell them on the breath of any consumer for decades – think snogging a sea lion.

The same procedure should be followed for the bag of Okra you are bound to find at the back of the fridge, it having been sent in mistake for green chillies, or miniature hairy cucumbers, or tampons, or anything else that they were out of. Whoever decided that it should be called ‘Lady’s Fingers’ must have mixed in very unsavoury company. Do not be tempted to put them in the compost: they turn into something that resembles green wallpaper paste and smells like a Glastonbury Portaloo. In my experience, okra is destined for the bin cooked or uncooked, so you might as well save some energy and dump it from the off. However, if you absolutely cannot tolerate food waste and insist on eating it, okra can be cooked in one of two ways:
1. Slightly undercooked – crunchy and inedible
2. Slightly overcooked – slimy and inedible. Now you know how a hedgehog feels when it eats a slug. Just imagine a staple diet of something that looks like it has been coughed up. Like a lifetime trapped on Ready, Steady Cook. Traditionally it is cooked in a curry sauce and left in big enough chunks to pick out and leave on the side of the plate.

Now is also the time to go through the freezer and throw out all of those little bags of leftovers that you put in there ‘just in case’. You will never eat them. In twelve months time you will find them whilst searching for potato waffles and have no idea whatsoever of what they are. You will defrost them and attempt to feed them to the cat who will probably decide it would sooner eat beetles. Unloved brussel sprouts do no become more alluring for the freezing. Remember, this stuff was probably leftover because you couldn’t face it first time round. It is quite permissible to experiment with turnip and banana pizza, but it is not permissible to defrost it and serve it to friends.

Finally, it is time to go to the veg rack, in order to discover where that smell is coming from. Do not dispose of things simply because they look a little withered: your children will remember and remind you of your cavalier attitude when they think the time is right to put you in a home. Potatoes remain edible providing the sprouts are not long enough to coil around the cupboard legs; carrots do not have to be entirely orange; nobody eats the kale anyway, so don’t worry, and parsnips always look like that…

Normality is a paved road: it’s comfortable to walk, but no flowers grow on it – Vincent Van Gogh

A Little Fiction – If…

grammar school — Photo by Mwesigwa Joel on Unsplash

…Staggered through the heavy, creaking iron gates shortly before 9.30 a.m., heavy eyed and stiff limbed. Slight suspicion that tongue may have been sand-papered overnight. What a party it was! Seven straight dandelion and burdocks and two helpings of trifle from those crinkled paper bowls. Also Marmite sandwiches and Cheese & Onion crisps. Sausages on sticks. And red jelly. Sally, the short freckled girl with braces on her teeth and unevenly pierced ears, made a big play for me during Postman’s Knock. It took me a whole two hours to get the jelly out of my ear. Also partial night brace from my left nostril.

Glanced up through designer sun-glasses to meet the stare of “Hoppy” Hopcroft as I stumbled gingerly towards the school entrance. Smiled sweetly at him as he spun away on his black leather-luk swivel chair. Have never been afraid of Hoppy – his school needs me: best runner in school, demon centre forward, ace seam bowler, opening bat and all round sporting hero. Anyway, the photos I took of him and Miss Denby in the senior cloak room have always given me the edge.

Morning break. Sat with Alison Penderford whilst others chased a threadbare tennis ball around to a final score of 47 – 33, twelve grazed knees, one badly sprained ankle, two fat lips (both, strangely, attached to the same face) and an already neurotic playground monitor taken to matron’s office with whistle fatigue. Meanwhile, I took Alison behind the bike sheds and gave her the full benefit of my training as a doctor’s nephew. She promised that I would be first to know if she suffered a sudden attack of breasts.

Sat through geography with Mr. Laing, vainly trying to concentrate on his lecture about watersheds, or anti-cyclones, or something, but unable to wrench my eyes away from his armpits. Has he never heard of anti-perspirant? He must be single. No partner would allow him to sweat like that. Nor wear those socks. Or the purple toupee. Nylon I shouldn’t wonder. Probably attached with Copydex. Like my eyelids.

Shared a table with Linda James at lunch time. She is a sweet girl and almost certain to embark upon puberty at any moment. I do not want to miss it. I gave her one of my luncheon meat fritters and she agreed to notify me the moment there are any developments.

Summoned to Hoppy’s office at 1.30 p.m. He did not mess about. He immediately offered me ten pounds in return for which I was to tell the rest of the class that I had been reduced to tears by his erudite and fearsome wit. I enquired whether this was a bribe and he said `No’. I said, `Good,’ and showed him the photos.

He made a renewed offer of fifty pounds, which I was pleased to accept. We shook hands amicably and I made a mental note to look out the snaps of Hoppy in an extra-curricular romp with Mr. Wynecroft, the school janitor. I intend to email a copy to myself in case of accident. Also if Mr. Wynecroft attempts to show me up in front of Betty Smith again.

Fought with four uncouth youths from 7C during afternoon break, confirming my belief in the efficacy of a brick-loaded satchel. The reason for this unseemly brawl was a loudly intoned slander on my good name. I prefer not to go into detail, but suffice it to say that the question of my sexuality was raised, owing to my preference for spending the games session in the gym with the girls rather than out on the cold and muddy rugby pitch with the boys, none of whom are conversant with the game’s etiquette, preferring on most occasions a swift kick in the groin to the more orthodox flying tackle. Anyway, I am allergic to mud.

Walking home with Valerie, she suggested that we could find something interesting to do in the woods. Blood coursed through my young, unfurred veins at a pressure that made me fear the imminent explosion of my upper cranium. Scenes from ‘Don’t Stop Now’ flashed through my mind. Or was it ‘Toy Story’? I can never be sure, I slept through both. “Hurry up,” lisped Valerie, leading me away to pleasures unknown. Visions of two naked bodies, dappled with late afternoon sunlight as it filtered diaphanously through the autumn-brown leaves; relaxing contentedly entwined, leaning back against the trunk of an ancient oak, sharing a gob-stopper, one colour change apiece…

Picked thirty two conkers and found an old kettle which is probably solid gold. Part of Captain Kidd’s hidden treasure I shouldn’t wonder. Valerie took it home to her dad. I’m sure a skilled craftsman could fashion a new lid, replace the spout and repair the hole in order to return it to its former glory, and Valerie’s dad has just bought a new hammer.

Past dark when I got home. Mum yelled in a muffled sort of way (her teeth were soaking in a mug of bleach) and tried to hit me with a box of fish fingers. I ran upstairs and wedged the bedroom door. Below, I could hear my parents discussing what to watch on Netflix and arguing over the last tin of lager. Attempted to read one of dad’s magazines under the bedclothes by the light of my phone. Perhaps my battery is going, but I couldn’t make out the pictures at all. I could not tell if I was holding them the right way up. Certainly there was something amiss with the man whose beard had slipped, and I wouldn’t want to meet Doreen from Devon on a dark night. Downstairs, not even the gathered might of Fast & Furious 73 could disguise the fact that mum and dad had settled the dispute over the lager and were now setting about the contents of mum’s secret gin bottle (not as strong as it was, since I discovered it). Strange rustlings and giggling as I dropped off to sleep.

Slept fitfully, waiting for the inevitable thump of parents attempting to climb the stairs quietly; faint echoes of whispered abuse; pleas to come out of the bathroom quickly, and the distant twang of the Slumberdown.

Sex, drink and violence, that’s all adults ever think about…

The Never-Diminishing Bond (part two)

…My secondary school tutors enjoyed a far greater degree of autonomy than their modern counterparts are allowed. For the first two years at the school we were taught English by Mr Newby. Far younger than most, he had, I recall, a prodigious set of sideburns. If class had gone well, Mr Newby would often say, ‘Homework tonight class, read the Echo’. The Echo was the local newspaper. As far as I was concerned, I would sooner have read Chekov, but nobody ever checked, so I did neither. He would also, on occasion, conduct his lesson by the swimming pool. We were in it, doing what we pleased, as he sat on the poolside reading aloud from Shakespeare or Hardy, in case, he said, the Headmaster happened to wander past. I loved Mr Newby. He stirred an interest in language and books that I have never lost. He left at the end of the second year and I was then taught by a Mr Wells-Cole who was a dead-eye with the lobbed blackboard rubber and had a personal crusade to persuade me never again to use the phrase ‘all of a sudden’. I am grateful to him for that.

I remember the names of a few teachers: Mr Baker (Chemistry and being far too nice to ever be a teacher), Mr Sexton (Biology and fear), Mr Burleigh – almost certainly misspelled, I’m sorry (Art and being the kind of teacher that let me into the art class when I had been thrown out of others so that I didn’t spend hours aimlessly wandering the corridors, hiding from the headmaster), Mr Wilson (History and telling the ‘A’ level class to hand in essays only when they thought they had something to say, which led to me not handing in a single essay over the full two years). I remember others, but I do not want this to become a list of names and foibles (either theirs or mine) so I’ll stop there. If you have not been mentioned, but you taught me (in which case you surely must have something much better to do with your time) I’m sorry: please be assured, if I could possibly have been somebody else, I would have been.

At the end of my second year I was awarded the prize for ‘Industry and Progress’ (Thick – but tries hard). It was all downhill from there. I remained thick, but I stopped trying hard. I fell from mid-table mediocrity to relegation contender very quickly. I never hid my school reports; I always took them home. My parents dutifully read through twelve different versions of ‘Must try harder’, sighed, and solemnly told me that I must try harder. Then we had tea.

Come the pivotal ‘O’ level year, our all boys school was amalgamated with an all girls school and sixteen-year old hormones exploded with a megaton force matched only by the power of a thousand spots erupting across the forehead. I would like to blame my subsequent examination results on this moment of Education Authority insanity, but in reality, it was more likely a combination of my own laziness and stupidity.

The girls were much more pleasant to be around than the boys, they were softer and they smelled better. I only have to think back to their arrival and I can scent Aquamanda on the breeze. I am eternally grateful to those who put up with me. The arrival of the girls heralded the dawn of the Christian name and the sudden awareness that I wasn’t too keen on that either. I thought that I might become an actor, not because I could act, but because I thought it might give me the opportunity to assume a more exciting moniker.

Despite a set of exam results that could, only charitably, be described as mediocre, I stayed on into the sixth form to sit some ‘A’ levels, to resit some ‘O’ levels, but principally, to postpone my entry into the real world. To my recollection, the ‘O’ levels fared little better the second time around. I took only two ‘A’ levels, one of which I failed miserably whilst in the other I achieved the kind of skin-of-the-teeth pass which spelled ‘failure’ to everyone else. The world of academia did not beckon me to continue my studies. I was not head-hunted by assembled masses of Greystone Dons and so work became my only viable option. I have done as I am told ever since.

In the interests of vanity, I must add here that having watched both my children pass through Uni, I did, forty years too late, apply myself sufficiently to totter through a degree of my own. I got a First and consequently receive regular missives from the august institution from which I graduated enquiring whether it has changed my life yet. I’m not sure that they like the answer, but they keep asking the question anyway.

I took the first proper job I was offered and I have worked without break since, occasionally being fortunate enough to supplement my income by writing, but aware of the fact that if I ever needed to rely on it, I would starve. My successes have been fleeting and governed largely by the fact that I would do it cheaper than anybody else would do it properly.

Old school friends have seen you at your best and worst, but forty years on, they may find it hard to believe that you have changed in any way and that any desire you may once have had to be the centre of attention has now, four decades on, mutated into the uncanny skill of effortlessly blending into the background. Whilst my own memory has seriously diminished over time – so that the rain now quite routinely gets in through the cracks – other’s have not. So, should they read this, they will know instantly where my memory has failed and will, hopefully, be able to put me right and, who knows, if we remain locked away, there might, in time, be yet another blog in it…

When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life. – John Lennon

The Never-Diminishing Bond (part one)

I have written previously about my early school days, but far less about my years in what we used to call ‘senior’ school. Yesterday I wrote a piece, entitled ‘If…’ that I intended to publish today. It made me chuckle and it set me off thinking about those far-away days. So I wrote what started off as a little introduction, which has now somehow expanded into two fully-fledged posts. I can only apologise. This is what happens when your mind is shut away with just old sit-coms on the TV, crisps and whisky for entertainment. Forgive me, but I cannot help wondering, if school maketh the man, what on earth did it make of me? There are two principles at play here:
1. There is probably nobody out there to correct me. When I first started this thing, a number of my old school friends read it. Now, a year and a half on, I think I have exhausted their patience as few of them seen to tune in any longer. I do not see that as a good thing, but at least they won’t be able to point out how bad my memory actually is.
2. How bad my memory actually is. I know that some of the ‘facts’ I am about to present to you will be wrong. This, most definitely, will not be done purposefully, but, I imagine that if anybody from school does still read this little hotch-potch, they may well feel it necessary to correct me when I err and then I will know that they are there, and that knowledge will make me happy.

So, what I intend to do today is to talk about school in general; not about specific instances – my memory is far too unreliable for that – and, besides, I don’t want to discover that I do have school-friend readers only by dint of receiving a letter from their solicitors informing me that they are about to sue. In truth, I do not have anything detrimental to say about anybody. If there was a prat in the class, it was me.

My senior school was a grammar school, which had only a year or two previously ceased to accommodate borders, and a torch-lit creep around the bunk-bedded rooms was an illicit delight, whenever backs were turned. The mattresses were gone, but the skeletal wrought-iron frames remained, along with the smell of dust and old socks. Sadly, being at the grammar school set me apart from many of my old junior school friends and confrontations on the way home became quite routine. Having to wear a school cap until the end of the second year did not help. Short of waving a sign above my head saying ‘Beat this boy up’ I could not have done more on my walk home to attract attention to myself. Old friends became new enemies. I became a mass of neuroses, not least, because we were told that teachers patrolled the area ensuring that we wore our caps until arriving home. Anyone found breaking the rule faced a Saturday morning detention scrubbing the school cloisters on hands and knees, or cleaning cloak rooms – it was the eternal quandary: a punch around the ear on the way home, or a Saturday morning up to the wrists in soapy water. I alternated, depending on whether or not the bruises had subsided from the week before.

We were not allowed Christian names. We were referred to by our surnames. We referred to each other by our surnames. In my class we had two Masons, both of them Keith, although only one had a middle name. Thus we had a Mason, K. and a Mason, K.W. Whenever we old boys get together, K.W. is still referred to in that fashion. Every boy also had a nickname. The nicknames and the surnames linger, but somehow it is difficult to conjure up the seldom used forenames. Where the nicknames came from, nobody seemed to know, we had a Biff, a Beefy, a Rex, a Bins, a Pooh, a Rev, a Gabby, a Chooky… and once you got the nickname, you were stuck with it. I was Queenie, and I have spent a lifetime trying to shake that off. We were split into Houses: Bluecoats, Greyfriars, Lindum and Minster. I was in Greyfriars, or in second place as it was commonly known. Bluecoats was always first, Minster always last. The more academically gifted were always in Minster, which made them a joy to play at rugby.

The teachers were referred to as tutors, and there was a strict hierarchy to which they had to conform: the Professors, the Masters, the Ordinary Graduates and the rest. Many of our tutors wore their university gowns around the school, it was considered normal, but only the headmaster, J.C. Faull, wore his mortar board. Mr Faull was the figure that struck fear into all year one and two Scrotes. He moved around the school silently. Sometimes you would see just a corvine shadow along the wall and sense the drop in temperature as he passed by. He ascended to the upper floor via a spiral staircase that was reserved for the exclusive use of tutors and prefects. Being caught on that ‘special’ staircase by a prefect led, inevitably, to detention. Being caught there by the headmaster himself, led to ritual flogging and possibly human sacrifice – I think. Instead, we, the pubescent hordes, used either one of two steel-edged stone staircases that sat at opposite corridor ends. In the crush between classes they were lethal for the unwary. I still recall the pain of ‘skiing’ down them on my shins, unable to stop myself without distributing my load of precious Latin text books under the massed stamping feet of a scholastic year on the move. I remember also the pressure of having to pretend that I was not hurt. A life lesson learned: always have your hands free when on a staircase.

To be continued…

I owe a lot to my teachers and mean to pay them back some day – Stephen Leacock

Grammar schools are public schools without the sodomy – Tony Parsons

What It’s All About

clown — Photo by Robert Zunikoff on Unsplash

Funny, isn’t it, how things seldom turn out the way we planned? How a piece that simply starts off as silly can, oh so quickly become sombre if we don’t keep an eye on it. How an intentionally downbeat article can somehow hit the screen sounding joyous. Sometimes I begin a post with something to say and end it by finding that I have said something quite different. I suppose I should plan more, but over-planning, I have discovered completely smothers joy, and when these posts do anything other than just follow their own path, they die. So I let them go where they will and if they occasionally stumble into a blind alley (Occasionally? Who am I kidding?) well, they’ll just have to stumble out again. Mostly they lurch to some kind of conclusion, although seldom the one that I was intending. When they do not, well then, it is perhaps fitting that you reach your own.

Perhaps the one thing that the last few weeks have brought to everyone is an acute awareness of the fragility of life – something with which we over sixties are already well-acquainted, thank you very much. It is a fear which we are all used to pushing away, and one that this blog has always attempted, in one or another, to confront.

Death is the one certain consequence of life: it is the inevitable and inescapable conclusion, but worrying about it does nothing but bring it closer. Anyway, this blog is not about death, it is about life, it has never been about death. It is about cheating it. Or at least blowing a raspberry at it. It is about putting a bat up its nightie, a fart-cushion on its chair and itching powder in its cloak. It is about facing up to its ever closer proximity and laughing at it none-the-less. It is intended to be life affirming. I hope that it makes you smile now and then.

Because, if I’m honest, that’s all I ever try to do. I am not a man with anything particularly profound to say. I have arguments to make here and there, but generally I can only give them any impetus if they make you smile first. I really don’t think that I can tell you anything that a thousand better bloggers cannot tell you much more clearly. Erudition is not my strong point – at least, I don’t think it is. I’ll look it up and come back to you.

Throughout my younger life, all I really wanted to be was a comedian. I can write jokes, I can tell jokes and, given half the chance, I will perform in front of anyone I know, anywhere – ask my kids: until they were old enough to go to Uni, all they ever seemed to say to me in public was, ‘Daaaddddd!’ Yet I would not, could not, stand up in front of a group of people I do not know, who might just possibly hate me, and try to make them laugh. Nah, I am incredibly thin-skinned. I have a tissue-paper wrapped, egg-shell self esteem which hangs by a thread and for which one more failure might just be one too many. Every single setback, no matter how small, is a map-pin to my sagging ego’s balloon. I fear that all I have ever done is look for a way out. If it worked, yes I wrote it, thank you very much. If it fell on its arse well, the writing was ok, obviously it was the delivery that cocked it up. It seems that I can forgive myself for not trying, but not for failing.

In this little community we share, we are all writers. Ultimately we write for the same reason – in the hope that others will like what we have to say and (even better) take a little time to tell us so. We write what we know, and what I know about is growing old. I am an old git and so I write Old Git Lit – a genre I have invented, with much, I think, to recommend it, although I’m buggered if I can remember what it is at the moment. It is generally a little baggy, a little faded around the edges. It has a tendency towards the repetitive and it is not nearly as engaging as I would like to think it is. It is also repetitive. The plot lines have a tendency towards the iffy, often wandering off on their own if I’m not careful, seldom ending up anywhere near where I intended them to go, but then, even in these trapped-in days, that’s exactly what life is all about, isn’t it?

Today’s practical task was to re-seal around the bath. It is done. It looks as if it might have been done by a one-armed maniac with a hangover. It meanders around the bath like a country bridle-path. It will almost certainly leak, but I will only be certain when the kitchen ceiling starts to comes down…

When all else fails, there’s always self-delusion – Conan O’Brien