The Plague Diaries (Week5)

letter box — Photo by Chris Barbalis on Unsplash

Had a mild panic attack yesterday when, having posted a letter in a big, red, disease-ridden pillar box, I was subsequently unable to remember at what stage I washed my hands upon my return and was thus forced to swill down the entire house, including the simmering dinner, with disinfectant. It didn’t matter, I am a lousy cook and I quite liked the summery Zaflora overtones in the pasta. Unfortunately had to throw away the sauce as I had used tinned tomatoes and, on checking, I realised that the label did not specifically rule out the possibility of bat-related additives therein. Lesson learned. I searched through the cupboards and was shocked to find that hardly any of my tinned or packaged items offer any level of reassurance, viz. absence of bat contamination and so was forced to put them all in the bin, along with the clothes (lycra shorts and t-shirt which, quite frankly, were clearly designed for a quite differently proportioned wearer – also padded in all the wrong places) and gloves I was wearing at the time. For the time being I will rely on fresh fruit and vegetables only – after I have par-boiled them in bleach.

Also, no longer have Parmesan cheese in the house since I saw the state of a cow’s udder on a programme about Yorkshire vets. Felt it necessary to don the Marigold’s before touching the TV remote control again.

I am pleased to reflect that in most ways, life in these apocalyptic times, carries on pretty much as it always did. Indeed, I have learned much from the experience. Having shaved my entire body in order to reduce the virus-smuggling potential of my luxuriant villi, I have discovered that, unless I continue to decorticate at least twice a day, the little buggers re-emerge rejuvenated and I itch like a hayfever sufferer in a pollen factory. The resultant irritation, consequent upon using my age-old Bic without recourse to shaving cream which I find contains a large number of ingredients that, as far as I know, could carry coronavirus, has left me looking like a peeled plum. I have found that neither cold, nor warm water eases this irritation and that the only thing I am able to do in order to find relief, is to stand naked in the soft easterly breeze outside. I have learned that the screams of next door’s children are very piercing indeed, and that police constables become much less threatening once you are covered in a blanket.

I explained that, having taken the recent decision to divest myself of all man-made materials – particularly those that left me looking like an over-stuffed sausage – I was left with just the one hatchback linen body-suit which, since the lockdown, I have been unable to supplement. The constable suggested that in future I should remain in the house, with the curtains closed and the lights off whilst my clothing was in the wash. She also suggested Vaseline for razor-burn.

I have recently spent many hours ‘re-purposing’ my garden for vegetable production. To date, my horticultural experience has been limited to throwing bricks at Monty Don every time he appears on the television, but fired by the drive of necessity, I have taken to planting every available seed, in the hope of achieving edible results. I am very hopeful for the baked beans. I planted tomato seeds, onion seeds and carrot seeds. I found some Nigella Seeds in the spice cupboard and await signs of growth with great anticipation. In the meantime, I have attempted to gain sustenance from the leaves, berries and fungi I have been able to forage from the surrounding countryside, with varying degrees of success. I have discovered that a single elderberry can tread into every individual fibre of an eau-de-nil shagpile and that it is best to assume the prone position before consuming the mushrooms. Preferably in the bathroom. I also found it comforting to have about me, some reassuring facts on a large sheet of paper that I can turn to at times of stress: there is no man in the mirror, it is you; the bathroom tiles cannot talk and, even if they could, you do not have to obey them; it will all come out with bleach… The nurses at A&E have been most accommodating and, after my third visit in two days, presented me with my very own stomach-pump. A most touching gesture, I’m sure you will agree.

I have felt much calmer since I stopped getting news updates from Eammon Holmes’ twitter account.

To pass the lonely, isolation hours, I have decided to finish writing the novel which I started in 1987. It is a horror/sci-fi/detective/farce heavily dosed with reality and irony. I will update many of the references to Norman Tebbit and remove the irony before the final draft. In general, I am very happy with my use of language in the chapter and a half I have so far penned, although I would, ideally, like to up my comma-count. Also, I will have to tweak the plotline a little as it is almost entirely…Oh, what’s the word? Stolen.

I intend to go shopping in the village on Thursday as I do not have any means of going further afield without contravening government guidelines on travel and roller-skating. Unfortunately, the only shop currently open is the pet shop, but that’s ok as I quite like their muesli. I particularly like the guinea pig on the packaging. The biscuits are a little hard for me, although the tinned stew is fine, if a little ‘whaley’ for my taste. If the queue for the chemists is not too long, I might join that as my ointment should be ready by Friday.

So there we are, another week chalked off. A life in lockdown, as uneventful as everybody else. Keeping well is all about maintaining a sense of perspective and not letting our imaginations run away with us. Stay safe everybody.

Due to budgetary constraints, the light at the end of the tunnel will be turned off until further notice – Anon

I like to think of myself as an optimist with a reality chaser. I know the glass is half full. I just want to know who the hell has been drinking out of it… – Bob Zany

Since I gave up hope, I feel so much better – John Osborne

Better times are just around the corner. I do not know which corner – Colin McQueen

In response to your requests…

Last week, whilst fulminating on my void of a life, I mentioned the chimp that sits on my windowsill, peering down over my shoulder and stealthily insinuating itself into my unconscious thoughts; generally appraising me of the total lack of worth in anything I might manage to wrestle from the keyboard. Boo wanted to see it – so here it is. I have never managed to give it a name, so if anyone has any ideas, please let me know. If I’m honest, I don’t actually know whether it is male or female. I always think of it as male, but on close inspection, I think that may not be the case. I am no great expert in the gender specifications of brass monkeys – it may just have been very, very cold. Whatever its gender (do let me know your opinion) it is one of the things with which I need to surround myself in order to function. It looks directly at my laptop screen and I can sense its disapproval when things start to go awry. If I spin round to look at it, it pretends to stare at the skull it holds in its hands instead of catching my eye, but I know, I know…

The second request I have to respond to, is that by Inkbiotic and Calmgrove, who both wanted to know a little more about my long, long ago radio series – which I fear, I have probably mentioned far more times than modesty could possibly permit. Honestly, there isn’t much to tell, I’m afraid, but what I can remember, I will tell, simply because I think it probably sheds some light on the way that writing works for me. (I know that Chris will read this and I am sure that he will be able to fill in the gaps left by my fragile memory.)

I met Chris when I was a weekend waiter at a local hotel and he was a somnambulant breakfast chef. I cooked more breakfasts in Chris’s bed-locked absences than I have ever done since. I learned how to trim a kidney for God’s sake! We shared a sense of humour (one between two is better than none) and we became firm friends – a friendship that has endured for more than forty years. I had been ‘writing’ fairly aimlessly for years when Chris approached me with an idea for a radio show, and we began to beat our ideas into some kind of shape. Typically, we met once or twice a week. I would arrive with reams of script and Chris with a bundle of scribbled notes. Chris has ideas – bonkers ideas – and I… well, I write. Lots. It worked so well. Most of the mad ideas came from Chris, most of the words came from me, and when we got together we talked through what we had, we laughed, we inserted Chris’s bonkers ideas into my ramblings and, as we worked it through, we fell over one another, playing Top Trump with every gag we could think of. I don’t recall ever falling out over what would go into the finished script. It just fell into place.

We were very young at the time and we were having a ball. Eventually, we had produced 6 half-hour radio scripts of which we were inordinately proud, but neither of us had any idea of how to take them further. So – don’t ask me why – we sent a letter to Spike Milligan. Spike replied almost immediately (I still have the letter) saying that he would be very happy to read a script and give us his thoughts. We were on cloud nine when we posted it to him (Yep, posted, a freshly typed manuscript on actual paper!) Big Life Lesson #1 banged on the door when, some weeks later, we received the unopened script back, with another letter, also signed by Spike (I still have that too) saying that he never passed comment on other people’s work. Try the BBC. I know now that Spike suffered with depression and that he routinely signed letters prepared by his agent (Norma Farnes) during these times. I believe that the arrival of our script must have coincided with one of his ‘episodes’ and it was, subsequently, never passed on to him. We were heartbroken.

Eventually, we produced the series for the Local BBC station, but they wanted only six five minute ‘bangs’, full of gags and so with Chris not available (for reasons that totally escape me at the moment) I sat down for a forty-eight hour stint (I know that I did this – my wife remembers fuelling me up on coffee and chocolate), cramming two thirty minute scripts into six five minute bursts by popping in every gag I could distil from the original and losing much of the narrative which, since that was largely my bit, was probably not much of a loss. No computer, by the way, no word-processor; just pencil, paper, typewriter and me. Chris and I then went over and over the scripts together, crunching in so many jokes that they were breathless, working and reworking them until we were ready to record. I remember rehearsing with our two recruited actors in a huge, collapsing wooden conservatory full of plants and mould. I have no idea whose, I have no idea why. We gave them the scripts to read through one at a time and they laughed so much, we knew we had chosen wisely.

I loved the recording. We played ‘a cast of thousands’ the four of us and had a grand old time having been let loose in a professional studio. I particularly loved editing in the sound effects which were, at that time, all taken from BBC vinyl LP’s. I had to ask the producer’s permission, I remember, to play an explosion backwards, in case it damaged the record. Ultimately, the series went out with grand fanfare, even featuring in the Radio Times. We all believed (the radio station, the producer and ourselves) that we would be franchised throughout the country. We were already at work on series two when, Big Life Lesson #2, NOBODY LISTENED TO IT! It was not an ‘adult’ series, but it was definitely for adults, and the programmer put it out in the Saturday Morning slot of a show firmly aimed at kids. The decision enraged our producer and to this day, I continue to regard this as the reason for its belly flop as I cannot countenance the possibility that it – or more likely my part in it – was just not very good.

Anyway, Chris and I continued to write together for many years with the usual peaks and troughs – I have written before of our adventure with John Junkin – but Chris drifted further into performance and production (he is VERY good) whilst I drifted into blather. I have managed to sell words for most of my life, but never enough to make a living, although over the years, I have had more near misses than a myopic taxi driver.

Now, what has brought this all together at this time is another radio serial that I started, but never finished. It is a weird little thing about a local village community. Six fifteen minute episodes with just a narrator, no cast, no sound effects, just dark nonsense. I found three and a half scripts whilst tidying my office and mentioned them to Chris in a Lockdown email that I sent to him, to let him know that I had found my Best Man’s speech from his wedding. Chris, it turned out, remembered and liked the scripts (I don’t know about the speech), so – as I am a sucker for praise of any kind – I sat down to complete script four and, after an initial period of struggling to get back inside the character’s heads, I began to write in a way that left no visible seam. The chimpanzee at my shoulder approved and I have popped out the two further episodes in a sleep-deprived double-quick time. I like them and so does Chris – who, I am hoping, will agree to narrate them for a podcast (which is a little bit like radio, isn’t it?) – and, in truth, I am greatly cheered by the synchronicity of it all…

So, there you are. I promise I will never mention it again!

In Lieu of Nothing in Particular

So, I wrote a piece yesterday, that I intended to publish today, but I really didn’t like it. I had taken time over it. It had a beginning, a middle and an end, and it was about as appealing as a Channel Four documentary about Mick Hucknall, featuring interviews with Mick Hucknall, conducted by Mick Hucknall and, consequently, it has been deleted.

I now have to think about starting again with nothing much to say (I know, it has never stopped me before).

Hunt Emerson Super Nigel Best print — The reason for all of this: Hunt Emerson’s cartoon for ‘The Globe-Trotting Adventures of Nigel Tritt’

There are two positive aspects to this current state of affairs. First and foremost, it has given me an excuse to use this wonderful and recently re-discovered (in a box in the attic) cartoon by Hunt Emerson. I found it as I was completing my office ‘restructure’ and it has been sitting in front of me ever since, shouting, ‘Use me!’ It was originally published in The Radio Times almost forty years ago, to announce the arrival of a new radio serial which I co-wrote and appeared in. (The first thing I wrote that was ever properly used.) I do not know who wrote the attached caption, but I presume that he/she went on to a long career in conveyancing*. I had considered it long-lost and as it does at least tie in nicely with the previous couple of posts, I could not resist the opportunity to share it. As it originally appeared in a mass-consumption magazine, a copy of which I purchased, I hope this will not see me visited by the Copyright Police. I do not know who owns it, but for the record, this cartoon was drawn by Hunt Emerson and it is brilliant!

And the second positive? Well, to be honest, I haven’t thought of one just yet, but bear with me, I will.

You see, I am not, by nature, one of life’s great gardeners – my wife keeps me on the books simply for my capacity to lug heavy stuff about – but today I have been emptying the compost bin which, coincidentally, requires the shifting of much heavy stuff before I can get at it. It is the perfect garden pastime for me. It requires no skill whatsoever and obliges me to be up to my elbows in something that looks a lot like horse shit for prolonged periods of time. It could be a metaphor for my life. It is, however, a peaceful job – except for when I drop something on my shin or pierce myself with something unseen – and I get to listen to the birds singing in the field and the rustle of God-knows-what in the leaves. I am at peace with the world – at least I was, until the bumble bee, whose nest I appear to have disturbed, took a particular interest in my ear and I was forced to withdraw for a while.

It was during this short hiatus that I made the not terribly difficult decision to bin my pre-written article and plan what I would do in its place…

Part one went very nicely. I find great joy in junking something that I know is just not good enough. I have written plenty of it. I think that the thrill of trepidation in the micro-second before I press the button is good for my heart. The knowledge that all but the final page of an unfinished play has accidentally been cast into the ether is guaranteed to exercise these old, furred-up arteries, particularly when I can’t find the back-up which, I have a sneaking suspicion, I may have over-written with the recipe for carrot cake anyway. A quick check however reveals that Mick Hucknall has gone. The play has not. In relief I read a few pages of the stageplay and contemplate the possibility that I might just have decided to delete completely the wrong thing anyway…

Part two is proving an altogether more thorny issue. I thought that, as I had already decided to use the cartoon, I might write about the radio series, or at least the writing of it, but it seemed like such a vanity project that I couldn’t bring myself to it. (At least, not until I have been able to get my hair done.) I have ‘done’ gardening posts before and, in the time that has subsequently passed, my agricultural aptitude has not changed. On a scale of one to ten it is Norman Lamont. Tomorrow, I have been told, I will be pruning a large green bush (that has exhausted my horticultural knowledge) that is starting to engulf the weeping cherry tree. The loppers have been sharpened. Like the moment in the film when the single teenager sets off with a torch to find out why the lights have gone off – you know this is not going to end well. I feel that it is only fair to warn the paramedics…

Now, at the beginning of this ramble, I mentioned that there were two positive aspects to finding myself with nothing to write about today and, I must admit, that ever since then I have been trying to decide what the second might be. Well, firstly, I realise that in my last post I claimed to have ‘re-found my mojo’ and, having read through the crap I wrote immediately following that, I am pleased to announce that I may have lost it again. And secondly, I have just realised that the word count has drifted comfortably past 900 – and there’s only so much nothing you can write about…

*All careers in conveyancing feel long.

The Stuff That Surrounds Me

On the window-sill to my right, peering over my shoulder, is a bronze figure of a chimpanzee. It is about fourteen inches high. The ape is sitting on a pile of books, on the spine of one of which is the single word ‘Darwin’. It is holding a human skull. I have no idea why. All I know is that it watches over everything I type and I am certain that at times I can sense it thinking, ‘Come on, what’s that? Give me an infinite number of mates and I reckon I could knock that out in half the time.’ It is part of the general clutter of ‘stuff’ with which I surround myself and which, I have just discovered, is absolutely vital in order for me to do this.

Let me backtrack just a little. If you were with me on Tuesday, you may remember that I was struggling to understand why the current lockdown had robbed me of anything even approaching inspiration. Well, I’ve had a few days to think about it, and I understand it now. You see, at the beginning of this enforced retreat, I decided that I would take the opportunity to tidy and clean my office. I stripped it out, I painted it and I laid the new floor that I hadn’t, until that point, got round to doing. (I removed a carpet and fitted a hard floor – you would not believe the joy that is to be found in a new hard floor and a swivel chair on casters.) It looked great and I decided that, in order to keep it so, I wouldn’t fill with all of the gubbins that has surrounded me for years. I put back the books and I put back the CD’s (I listen to music all the time and I like to pick the discs and play them as I go. I have many hundreds. I am a sad case, I know, but I am also old enough not to care) but I didn’t restore the ephemera. The office looked clean, neat and tidy and I found that I couldn’t write a word.

So, bit by bit I brought everything back into my tiny little womb and drip by drip I re-found my mojo. Perhaps I can talk you through some of the stuff that surrounds me…

To the side of the chimp is a brown-glazed Morris Minor Estate. If you are of sufficient age, you may remember these old wood-clad estate cars. They were the automotive equivalent of Mock Tudor houses except that generally they were slightly less manoeuvrable than the building (and should you want to know how my brain works, having written that line I immediately fished out a CD called ‘Mock Tudor’ by Richard Thompson, that I’m playing right now). I learned to drive in one. It had no power steering and, being the weight of a truck, it required a vigorous work-out before you were able to make it turn. It also had no synchromesh on the first two gears (look it up!) so going up hills usually involved a frightening slide backwards at some point in the ascent. I loved it. I took my wife out in it once and she refused to ever get in it again.

On the shelf above me are a series of mugs, including a George Best ‘European Footballer of the Year’, which I clearly remember being given for Christmas long ago, with a pair of George Best football boots. The boots are, sadly, long gone, but featured a circle of studs on the ball of the foot on which it was possible to swivel and, supposedly, leave the defender standing. What actually happened was that you swivelled when even you were not even expecting it, and fractured your ankle. It is notable, I think, that I do not remember Mr Best, himself, ever wearing them. Elsewhere on the shelf there are various shells, rocks and pebbles; a hand-forged roof-beam nail, which I found on the floor outside a barn on the day of my youngest daughter’s wedding; photo’s of the grandkids; a Melodica; the Complete Works of Shakespeare and a knitted PG Tips monkey.

On the shelf above that are my snakeskin boots (as worn by Jimmy Page – not his actual ones, you understand, just similar, but my God I loved them back in the day); two malt whisky bottles (empty – come on, I’m not that sentimental); a footprint of my grandson; a grey felt Fedora and a remote-control car that I made out of Meccano.

Behind me my beloved red Fender, my blue acoustic guitar on a stand and a ukulele in a bag (I fitfully try to play them all. I habitually fail); an Andy Powell signed setlist from a Wishbone Ash gig ten years ago (at which I also bagged three of his picks from the mike stand, with which I still cannot play the guitar); a drone that has done nothing but crash; a plaster duck that quacked forlornly at me as I walked past it at a car boot sale and a collection of Victorian bottles which I used to dig up until they chased me off the golf course.

In front of me I have two cork boards covered in family photo’s; paintings by my children and my grandchildren; a brass sundial (I have no idea); a Peppa Pig book on a stand; a virgin canvas on an easel, and a box file full of old ticket stubs (oh how I hate e-tickets).

Add to this lot, six drawers full of old manuscripts; thirty plus racks full of CD’s and my books, many of which are tattered and mangy paperbacks, all much-read and much loved, and you begin to see that the ordered disorder that surrounds me mirrors exactly the chaos between my ears, and that what falls out of my head, directly or indirectly, is a product of all that surrounds me, and now it is back, so am I. You have been warned…

The pen is mightier than the sword, and considerably easier to write with – Marty Feldman

This writing business. Pencils and whatnot. Overrated if you ask me – Winnie the Pooh

I asked my publisher what would happen if he sold all the copies of my book he had printed. He said, ‘I’ll just print another ten.’ – Eric Sykes

Keeping It All Under Control

the scream

My brain, which has always been like a sponge, has now become a child’s nappy*: a sponge-full of water releases its content with a kind of random certainty, whilst a child’s nappy retains pretty much all that it has absorbed locked within it, entombed and festering. My intellect has become a sanitary product from which I cannot extract my usual effluvia. (I’d better tackle this straight away, whilst I am here. I am talking about a modern disposable nappy. I am of a generation that used Terry nappies, which you had to learn to fold correctly – differently dependent upon sex – and pin without puncturing the child. I am of a generation that had a nappy bucket lodged permanently in the bath. I am of a generation that had a bathroom that smelled permanently of ammonia. I am of a generation for whom nappies were wholly unreliable: you simply wrapped the child in them and hoped for the best. It seldom arrived. Leakage is what arrived – of all kinds and in all directions. I am of a generation whose children always came complete with mysterious brown stains. I am not talking about these nappies. Just so that you know…)

Obviously, I know exactly what has caused this logjam, what I do not understand is why?
The cause is very obviously Lockdown, but why has it affected me so? Although I am currently trapped at home, exactly the same amount of interesting stuff happens to me now as has always done, eg none. I’ve always managed to write about nothing in particular before, so why not now? Common experience is what makes comedy work. Who amongst us has never felt frustrated enough to thrash his errant car with a branch? Who has not wanted to wedge bread sticks up his nose and say ‘Wibble’? Who has not tried to make breakfast to ‘The Stripper’; not attempted to appear cool by dancing (badly) like someone half their age; not resisted the urge to yell ‘Don’t tell him Pike’ whenever the opportunity arose? Humour only works when it is shared, so our present situation – although NOT its viral cause – should be ripe for the old rib-ticklers. Why, then, is it so hard to find the funny?

It is very hard to imagine that any family cooped together under current circumstances, would not get on one another’s nerves. My wife has taken to calling me Thrush because she finds me so irritating. Keeping a two metre distance between us is not difficult: we seldom drift so close without snarling. My wife has laid a tape measure across the bed which ensures that I sleep on the dressing table. Many of the things that we normally take in our stride have become extreme irritants: ‘Do you have to breathe like that?’ ‘Like what?’ ‘Alright, do you have to breathe AT ALL?’ I have taken to drinking rather more than I usually would, because I realise that it makes me much more difficult to fall out with**. I presume that by the time this is all over, having to live together will have become valid grounds for divorce.

And what has happened to sleep? During lockdown I have not stopped. I have ‘worked’ on one task or another, all day, every day. I have become tired at the same time as usual. I have gone to bed at my usual time. I have lain abed trying to persuade my legs not to perform the kind of involuntary Irish jig to which they are prone, as I am painfully aware that doing so produces the kind of ‘Tut!’ that could perforate an eardrum. I have got up and found a film that I have already seen a thousand times and watched it again. I have gone back to bed and found sleep, eventually, having grappled with the ‘do I or don’t I need a wee conundrum’ (I do) for thirty minutes. I have found myself welded to the sheets in the morning: absorbed into the mattress, neither prepared to let me go until it is much too late for breakfast, but not quite late enough for lunch. So I open the fridge door and stare at yesterday’s leftovers before thinking ‘Why not?’ and attempt to spread a congealed mass of lumpen gravy onto a slice of toast that is brown on only one side, due to the toaster being on the blink again and the chances of getting a replacement being close to zero seeing as everyone likes a slice of toast at such times and the only one that Amazon have left also cooks Coquille St Jacques and comes out at £347 for the two slice model (which is totally inadequate – obviously). I’ll wait until dinner, when we can sit in tortured silence after a three hour discussion about whose turn it is to cook, and eat beans on semi-toast whilst watching Pointless.

And thence to my little office with the water of life and the opportunity to put all of my thoughts down onto LED. Except that I don’t have any. I’m beginning to build up a picture of who walks what dog and when, if you’re interested. I’ve begun to differentiate between those who have always run and those who started with the lockdown, by the colour of their face and the number of the arteries throbbing on their foreheads. I have begun to recognise those tortured souls who wander past the pub each day, just in case it has opened again and no-one has told them. I can pick out those who reluctantly find themselves trudging off to join the three hour queue for the pharmacy as the Germoloids has run out and grandma’s traditional family cure does not bear thinking about. Besides, where could you even buy a poker these days? My head has turned into a super-absorbent disposable nappy and until I can find some way of dropping it into a bucketful of Napisan, I have nothing really left to say.

Stay safe everyone.

*For my US readers, that is diaper.
**For Alanis Morrisette, THAT is irony.

Wish You Were Here?

beach beach chairs beach hut blue — Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

It’s Easter. I thought I might remind you of what you are missing…

Snapped awake to sound of shrieking smoke alarm.

Also snapped bedside lamp e.g. dodgy 25 watt light bulb suspended from short length of unsheathed electric cable hooked through small piece dog-eared hardboard attached to attractive eau-de-nil leather-look nylonette lamp shade with embossed Greek God motives illustrating a range of physically impossible practices (at least for mortals) from some sort of mythological Hellenic Olympian Kama Sutra (Greek Gods appear to have three arms… I think. Greek Goddesses appear to approve) – covering bed in a million shards of paper-thin glass and electrifying bed-head.

Did not notice smoke alarm in room before sliding into ouzo induced slumber, having discovered that only practical method of tackling virulent gastric eructations is by using short length of gardener’s hose-pipe wedged into bidet with partially disembowelled travel bag.

Anyway…

Not first interruption to sleep this p.m. First occasion involved very large lorry crawling past window, high revs, low gear, megaphone where exhaust should be, at 11pm by my watch (although is always 11 by my watch since testing state-of-the-art diving function in 3 inches of lukewarm water yesterday). Rushed to window to witness scene. Fortunate not to bang shins on strategically sharpened coffee table or equally disposed bed leg; unfortunate to rupture spleen on long-abandoned broom handle, discarded after broom-head missed mosquito size of International Space Station. Eventually managed to hop through newly opened door, having removed lock with tin opener, gripping shin tightly in strangely coloured dishcloth to minimise bleeding, only to find lorry long gone. Replaced by boy with suitcase on wheels and cobbled path.

Also wild cat eating tattered remains of Mickey Mouse beach towel…

Closed window carefully owing to difficulty encountered earlier when refixing ill-fitting pane of glass with 4 bent paper-clips, two previously-owned best quality Chinese belt buckles (belts having dissolved in wear) and a 1947 street map of Calais, and returned to what remained of bed after 4 hours of nocturnal spiralling in emery-board sheets laced with holes, darns and enough stains to keep an avid collector guessing for hours. Listened to romantic sound of cicada in distance. Except not in distance. Call of cicada not so romantic when made from balcony. Calling to mate, possibly 300 miles away. At least.

However…

Interruption Mark II featured couple talking through megaphones on balcony above. Also walking on stilts. I think. In near distance an adenoidal woman sang a selection from Andrew Lloyd Webber. Or maybe not. Could have been Rogers and Hammerstein. Or Radiohead. Could have been radio with speakers on the blink or re-enactment of mediaeval torture. Overhead, open-air discussion turned to whispered argument. Still through megaphone. After much banging, overhead argument eventually turned to….. Why people always do that after argument?

Arose, spurred on by sound of running water, and picked my way to bathroom. Did not turn on light. Did not want to disturb wife. Did not want to startle children. Did not want to wake 37,000 (app.) mozzies hanging from lamp-shade. Found wardrobe in main bedroom. Found broom cupboard in kitchen. Found little light did not work when fridge door opened. Found door to corridor. Did not find door to bathroom. Perhaps bathroom had been stolen whilst I slept. Also all light switches. Also bed (why bed not where I left it?). Held hands ahead like 1940’s Dracula and staggered forward like Bela Lugosi wearing wife’s flip-flops. Shin-height coffee table and ankle-height dresser corner had not disappeared. May have been sharpened. Where Scully and Mulder when needed? Clinically bright American T.V. Studio – that’s where. Un-bruised shins, non-lacerated ankles, pristine spleens, within easy reach of well-lit lavatory. No help to me. The truth may be out there, but it does not save me from having to wee into convenient saucepan. Colander actually. Have probably drowned several hundred cockroaches or similar. Decide to sleep standing-up. Lean gently on wall. Wall now missing. Bathroom door returned. And open. Conscious of sound of skull hitting bidet rim… Then unconscious.

Anyhow…

Awoke covered in blood. No, not blood, at least not entirely. Must have hit bidet tap in fall. Bathroom ankle-deep in possible non-potable water/blood cocktail. Attempted to turn off bidet tap. Could not turn off bidet tap: bidet tap not turned on. Groped for bathroom light switch, dimly aware of possible consequences viz ankle-deep water/dodgy electrical appliance situation, but desperate to shed some light on possible ebbing away of life-type experience. Attempted to operate switch with elbow. Attempted to operate switch with nose. Attempted to operate switch with chin, after shave bottle, wife’s toothbrush, wife’s toothbrush handle… Finally accepted probable fatal repercussions and decided to use finger. No flash, no bang, no tell-tale odour of semi-singed eyebrows. Just light. Am pleased to report that ankle-depth liquid is not blood. Also, is not water issuing from mal-plumbed bidet, fractured in collision with speeding cranium, e.g. mine. Is not, in fact water. At least, not entirely. Is bubbling up through toilet pan. I trust I do not need to draw pictures, we are people of the world you and I. Carefully closed bathroom door and jammed all available apartment towels into gaps. If door holds until tide reaches height of bath then deluge may drain down plug-hole. Perhaps.

Some of it…

Climbed back into bed, now partially occupied by wife’s spread-eagled body, one child’s shoe (explain in not more than your own words) and 37,000 mosquitoes fed up with hanging from ceiling. Drifted off to sleep as only a man with concussion, ruptured spleen and effluent-filled bathroom can. Until smoke alarm went off. Really cannot remember smoke alarm in room. Cannot remember smoke alarm in entire apartment block. Possibly wife’s rape alarm gone wossname again. Doolally. Occasionally set off by impure thoughts or heavy breathing. Wife by now also awake. She too set off by impure thoughts or heavy breathing. Also rape alarm going off in small room at 3 a.m. Except did not bring rape alarm in case set off by x-rays at airport, security guard with over-zealous scanner action, or over-close air steward.

Truth dawns. As indeed does dawn. Noise is not smoke alarm. Is not rape alarm. Is not even cicada on balcony. Is cicada behind `fridge. Sprayed only available aerosol beneath fridge door. Please God, do not let duty-free anti-perspirant drive out any other native wildlife e.g. extra-large cockroach, lizard, spider, rat, estate agent etc. Stand on chair and watch cicada hop out. Place clear plastic box on cicada and watch from distance. Cicada even noisier in plastic box than behind fridge. And very fierce-looking. Wife and children (standing on bed) want it evicting. I (standing on wardrobe) want somebody else to do it. Want anybody else to do it. Perhaps wild-cat would like animate kitty-crunch instead of beach towel. Invite possibly rabid moggy into room. Moggy eats tomorrow’s lunch. Moggy craps in corner. Moggy falls asleep under bed and snarls at anyone that goes near it…

Snapped awake.

Also snapped shoe-lace attempting to crawl inside own shoe. Prise open eyes and stare at marbelette-tiled floor. Closely. Cannot remember moving from wardrobe to floor under bed. Cannot remember placing right ankle behind left ear. Cannot remember swallowing something hairy. Attempt to adjust to morning noises. Things always brighter in morning. Things always being done e.g. handyman dredging bathroom with tooth mug, wife’s epilator and 3 foot length of dental floss; wife cooking breakfast on electric ring which may achieve tepid given enough notice (or possibly not); children feeding best shorts, passport and wallet, to wild-cat. Cicada is dead. Or sleeping. Not certain how to check vital signs of hemiptera. Could hold mirror up to tiny mouth I suppose, but have no idea where to find it; if, indeed, it has one. Have no idea how to administer CPR to a bug. Anyway, how can I be certain that cicada is not playing possum. Might make a dash for wardrobe as soon as plastic box is lifted. Might send out mighty distress call to millions of chirruping cicadidae. Might hide in shoe. Do they sting? My entomological knowledge does not stretch to toxicity of invertebrate venom. Cover plastic container with large metal saucepan weighed down with upturned coffee table in case of mass celeoptera rescue attempt.

Attempt to yawn without dislocating hip. Without dislocating jaw. Without trapping ear in bed springs. Count to three. Breathe in Hellenic air. Swallow lung-full of Hellenic under-bed crud. Inhale large colony of Hellenic cat fleas. Cough up Hellenic corn plaster. Sing one verse of God Save the Queen and feel myself unwinding. Needed this holiday. Needed to relax. Booked fourteen nights this year. One week of rest is never enough…..

The Commercial Vision of a Happily Hirsute Man

haircut

OK, given the manifold possibilities associated with coronavirus: serious illness, death, bankruptcy, starvation, fewer episodes of Eastenders, it came as something as a surprise to me to discover that many people considered that not being able to go to the hairdresser was the worst problem they could imagine. Now, I realise that it matters so little to me because I am by nature a scruffy bugger, but I can’t for the life of me imagine why it does matter quite so much to anybody else. None-the-less, times being what they are, and philanthropy being the order of the day, I felt that I might be able to help. I remembered, in the years of my sallow youth, that it was possible to buy a DIY hair trimmer, which resembled a Stanley knife blade fixed to a comb, although I could not remember what it was called. Like everybody at the moment, I have time on my hands, so I found myself a comb, a Stanley knife blade and some Sellotape, and I improvised. To my utter astonishment, my little construction worked in exactly the same way as its predecessor of some fifty years ago: it took a huge jagged hank out of my hair and left me with a laceration to my scalp that a couple of weeks ago would have required stitching, but now, a liberal application of super-glue and a hat. But it set my brain whirring.

You see, I was young during the great days of K-Tel and Ronco, when new products, similar to the hair trimmer (Was it the Trim-o-Matic?) appeared upon our TV screens almost daily in a branded nuclear arms race of tat. All of these products had a number of features in common:
1. They were made from the kind of plastic that shattered into a thousand tiny razor-blades if dropped, shook or stared at in an inappropriate manner
2. They were always designed to do something you never knew needed doing
3. They never did what they were designed to do
4. They always broke the first time they didn’t do it.
It struck me that now could be the time for the return of the great days of built-in obsolescence and in my own modest way, I would like to offer the following suggestions. (In my days of yore, somebody would have paid for an illustrator at this point, but I am afraid that you will have to use your imagination. If you don’t have one, do not despair, you may be a chartered surveyor.) I have almost certainly copyrighted these designs, so don’t even think about it…

Self-removing gloves – you all know the problem. You wear the gloves so that you don’t have to touch infected stuff, and then you have to touch the infected gloves in order to get them off. Well, now you can relax. These little beauties are made from an incredible new material, invented by NASA specifically for Russian underwear manufacturers, that falls apart after – or in times of stress during – the first wear. Simply use the gloves for whatever sordid task you have planned and then sit around for an hour or two without touching anything whilst they slowly decompose with the kind of must usually associated with field-latrines. Guaranteed to leave an unsightly stain on all types of flooring that cannot be removed with any generally available cleaning product.

Self-removing glove stain remover – will stubbornly refuse to remove the stain for which it was designed, whilst effortlessly lifting the surface from the floor, the sole from your shoes and the skin from your hands. Please note: this product is in no way similar to oven cleaner and anyone suggesting that it is merely an over-labelled bottle of Mr Muscle will find themselves tight-up against the iron fist of British Justice (or Big Geoff, as we call him).

All-over body wrap – a giant roll of cling film designed to shroud the full body and thus completely protect from the coronavirus. In reality you will be completely unable to find the start of the roll and will eventually shred the whole thing in a huge explosion of impotent rage.

Telescopic ‘shaking’ hand – a slightly soiled and shop-worn mannequin’s hand crudely gaffer-taped to the end of a two meter garden cane which enables you to safely shake hands with people you meet. The hand will fall off the stick during its first use, which is just as well, as it may be diseased and in need of incineration. The soiled hand can subsequently be retrieved with my cunningly designed Clamp-o-Crap – an over-sized pair of plastic scissors from which one blade will shear on initial ‘snap’ and take the crotch out of your trousers, at which point you will almost certainly stop worrying about the tatty plastic hand in the gutter.

The socially-distancing hat – a construction-site hard-hat with a javelin stuck through it. Defy anyone to infringe upon your personal space from front or rear. Perfect for family gatherings and camping holidays

To purchase any of these products, simply email me your bank account details, National Insurance number and a list of dates when your house will be empty.

So now you know what happens when I’m stuck at home on a diet of red wine and peanuts…

‘Homer, lighten up. You’re making ‘Happy Hour’ bitterly ironic.’ – Marge Simpson

Crafting the Perfect CV

The knowledge that, thanks to this bloody virus, I may soon find myself looking for work has slowly, slowly, slowly eaten its way into my consciousness. At some future point, considerably earlier than originally anticipated, I will find myself unemployed and, in the absence of any discernible talent, trying to persuade somebody that it would be in their interest to offer me work. It is almost forty years since my last formal interview – and, truth be told, I wasn’t very good at it then. I am by nature nervous and when anxiety kicks in I have a tendency to lose control of my mouth. I anticipate that, should I be fortunate enough to secure a meeting, I will suffer from a level of nervousness similar to that I endured the first time I dared to pull up my own zip, possibly leading to a degree of incoherence most often associated with a Tarrantino outtakes reel. There can be little point in memorising a string of pithy epithets if they are to be delivered in the kind of rambling babble employed by politicians when addressing an audience that they do not consider worthy of their time. (Actually, I’ve just read that sentence through and realised that I could have stopped at ‘politicians’.)

For the first time in my life, I am contemplating my CV and its companion, the personal statement, with absolutely no idea of what they should contain. It doesn’t help that I have a skill-set that would embarrass a Lilliputian imbecile. Faced with the question, ‘So, what do you think you could bring to the party?’ I would have to answer, honestly, ‘A trifle.’ I have been trying to think what I might have to offer; what might make me attractive to a prospective employer, but I can’t actually get beyond ‘Cheap’.

In this country, it is (theoretically) illegal to discriminate on the grounds of age, never-the-less, I must hope that any prospective interviewer is even more short-sighted than I, if looking for a man in his prime: they can be very creative in inventing reasons not to employ you, e.g. you’re rubbish.

So, in the hope that I can produce something that will entice an offer of employment rather than a fevered phone call to the emergency intervention team, I have made a few notes, in the expectation that you may be able to advise me what it’s best to include. Please feel free to contribute…

I have been married for forty years and so have no problem whatsoever in doing as I’m told. I am willing to learn, although sometimes a little slow on the uptake (I have only just realised that the Pied Piper of Hamelin is not a variety of potato). I am presentable enough and used to wearing a suit, although I don’t do so well with ties these days: having a neck like an all-in wrestler’s thigh, I keep finding the knot has migrated to a spot just below my left ear and that I cannot swallow without making the kind of gurgling noises usually associated with a surfacing submarine. I am happy to wear a uniform, although I don’t feel that I am best-suited to lycra and polyester brings me out in a rash. My teeth are all my own, although they do have rather more ‘growing room’ than they did in my prime.

I am very much a ‘people person’ and I do suffer fools gladly (which is just as well, since I am one). I tend to thrive in a team environment – as long as it does not undertake anything that could, even vaguely, be described as ‘gruelling’. I am probably too reliant on regular showering and easy access to flushing ‘amenities’ to be of much use in any team-bonding exercises that are not centred around fully catered lunch and dinner breaks. I cannot sleep to the sound of insects and I am allergic to tents.

Fortunately, my work-time memory is very good and providing the toilet doors are clearly labelled there should be no problems for me there.

I am a good time-keeper – sorry, I have a good time-keeper. It was given to me by my father. I wind it every day and it goes for most of them. Occasionally it tells the same time as the TV, but only during repeats. I am never late and am extremely reliable. You can depend on me to always do the best that I am able, even if that’s not very good, which it isn’t, if I’m honest… I do have my own pen.

I am completely trustworthy and have never been in trouble with the police – unless you count the incident in the orchard in 1969. The constable ‘clipped my ear’ then. It never did me any harm. Well, it did: it perforated my ear-drum, but it taught me an important lesson – don’t get caught. That was a joke, by the way. I do that. People say that I am the life and soul of the party. I am good for morale as I give everybody else someone to look down on.

If you decide to employ me, I will not let you down. I will turn up on time, I will not leave early, and between times I will probably be quite adequate at whatever it is you might ask me to do. Possibly. Depending upon what it is that you actually ask me to do. Providing it doesn’t involves snakes. Or confrontation. Or people that raise their voices…

May I take this opportunity to thank you for taking the time to read my CV. I would be delighted to hear from you should you have a suitable position available and not just because you want to call me a moron, obviously.

In these difficult times, I have taken the liberty of printing on absorbent paper. I hope it helps.

All of the Things That I Am Not Very Good At…

blood pressure — Photo by Marcelo Leal on Unsplash

I have not, despite the fact that we are at times close companions, become fully reconciled to failure. I would still really rather like to succeed from time to time. I try to succeed; I always try to succeed, but more often than not, the avoidance of utter disaster is as close as I get. I aim to do things right and I aim to do them well, but in reality I seldom do either – certainly not to my own satisfaction. When I began this thing, I wanted each piece to have a beginning, a middle and an end; for each piece to have a point, and I think that by and large I have succeeded in that. But I aimed for something approaching Stephen Leacock, Alan Coren or Alan Bennett, and what I ended up with, more often than not, was Orville the Duck.

Making the effort is the big thing of course, trying to do the best you can. The only problem is, when you have tried really hard to get things right, the dog’s dinner that you end up with is doubly troubling. Having a unicorn in your head is all well and good, but when the result is a carthorse on the paper, it is wildly frustrating.

I have recently, much against my better judgement, embarked on a number of DIY projects: flooring, joinery, general decorating, with results that can be best described as variable. (Some are bad, some are worse.) I managed to electrocute myself last week via the simple process of catching a wire whilst screwing the top back on a socket, but I have baulked at plumbing. I have no desire to drown.

On occasions I have watched skilled craftsmen going about their work and I am always struck by the serenity. There is none of the all-out panic that I experience during the course of a simple task. Picture a headless chicken in possession of an electric drill and Stanley Knife and you’ll get the drift…

I can imagine that the more charitable amongst you are thinking, ‘Now come on, there must be something that you’re good at,’ so I’ve given it a little thought, and the answer is ‘No.’ I have never found myself involved in anything that I did not feel somebody else could not have done much better. I have never looked at something that somebody else has done properly and thought, ‘I could do that better.’ I have looked at things that have been done by somebody even more incompetent than myself and wondered if I couldn’t have done it slightly less badly. There are even times when I do things to an altogether reasonable standard. It’s just that it all takes so bloody long.

Many many moons ago I wrote, with my very good friend Chris, a series for the local BBC radio station, which we also recorded and performed. We were inordinately proud of it. I loved the whole process and I loved our little series, as did the commissioning producer, the radio station and even The Radio Times who chose to plug it with its very own cartoon in the radio listings. When it was broadcast, NOBODY listened. The first series also became the last and the whole enterprise was quietly put to bed. At the time I blamed everything – it was broadcast at a stupid time, it was on the wrong show, Saturn was rising in Uranus – but what I never considered was the possibility that it (or more likely, my own contribution to it) was actually just not good enough.

I feel that I have something to say, but unfortunately nobody seems to want to hear it. Which brings me back to the beginning: not my tendency towards the frighteningly inept, but my inability to fully reconcile myself to it.

Today I went for my annual MOT at the doctor’s. My blood pressure was, as usual and despite medication, on a par with that to be found at the bottom of the Mariana Trench. The nurse asked me if I had been doing anything particularly stressful and I said, ‘Breathing.’
‘Well, I would consider packing it in then,’ she said. I think she was joking.

The point is that I have decided that stress is the enemy of age, and it’s worth side-stepping it whenever you can. Refusing to worry about all these things that you are not very good at is a good place to start. Especially when that is pretty much everything…

A Skegness State of Mind

skeggy

I’m sure you know how it goes. The brain needs a holiday. Two weeks on a tropical beach: hot sun, good book, favourite music, rum cocktails – you know the kind of thing… This is how brains operate isn’t it? They go on for so long and then phut! – nothing but moaning about getting time off. ‘Why no overtime for dreaming? Why no pay rise for over-vivid imagination? I need a break. I need a sun bed, a palm-frond shade, ridiculous Bermuda Shorts and a leather necklace.’ Telling them that you already give them all the blood supply and oxygen you can spare just doesn’t cut it. Brains need leisure time apparently. They need to sit back and watch the old, fat man struggle with the deck chair whilst his wife struggles with the ill-advised thong. Brains need to be under a cloudless blue sky. They need to switch off.

My brain is agitating for a break. It is tired of pondering the imponderable. It no longer wishes to consider how, if the cream always floats to the top, we have Trump and Putin; how does a fly land on the ceiling; why does a cat have nine lives when a child – equally reckless – has only one? It is tired of ‘What if…’ It is weary of spending so much time looking in on itself. But this is my brain: it is not thinking about white sand and cocktails, it is thinking about interminable drizzle, cold chips, warm beer, ‘Una Paloma Blanca’ from a broken transistor radio, rolled up trouser legs and a paddle in the sludge-brown surf. My brain is thinking of somewhere it can blend in and conform to the norm: slap on a Kiss-Me-Kwik hat and folded paper nose guard, nick the jokes off seaside postcards and sell them to Roy ‘Chubby’ Brown…

The crinkly grey matter that occupies my skull spends its life on edge. It seldom finds the space to switch off – at least not when it is acceptable for it to do so. It does, on occasion manage a quick snooze in the middle of a wifely lecture, a 0-0 draw in the rain, or any part of The Lord of the Rings trilogy. My brain works like an actor in Casualty – if there’s a kerb to trip up, it will break its leg in a storm drain. Most of the time, when it’s important that it maintains focus, it does alright – as long as it doesn’t get mesmerised by the windscreen wipers – it generally delivers me to the appropriate location at the scheduled hour, it’s the finer details it tends to let slip as it gets jaded. Minor issues, like remembering keys, wallet, shoes, have a tendency to slip from its grip. It is not always totally rational in its decisions about where to send instructions. Put my fatigued brain in charge of a nail gun and see where it gets you.

Right now it needs, I feel, a few days by the coast to unwind. I will struggle on without it: I am fairly used to just getting on with things whilst it is off somewhere else on some flight of fancy or another. After a few days in an East Coast B&B (cold water only in rooms, toilet facilities on alternate floors, no special dietary requirements catered for) it will return to me before the sheets need burning and we will decide together where to go from there. I think I might suggest that it takes me off for a week in the sun…

…It wasn’t until I read this through that I realised how many references there are that will only make sense to UK residents. I will try to explain the most glaring below, please let me know if I can help you with any others:
• Skegness is an English East Coast Seaside Resort (EECSR). It is never known by its Sunday name, but is always called Skeggy. EECSR’s are usually cold. They are usually wet. In the balmy summer days of sand, sea and sleet, the plucky holiday maker can get a surprising variety of ‘novelty’ genitalia-themed inflatables, chips, all manner of penis-shaped confectionary and, the last time I was there, dysentery.
• Roy ‘Chubby’ Brown is an English comedian, much loved by people who really should know better.
• Casualty is a hospital-based TV soap. Everything that can be fallen off or walked into is duly fallen off and walked into, leaving the hospital staff to deal with the aftermath, generally just before the bomb goes off.
• Seaside B&B’s are best visited early in the season whilst the sheets are still clean… I must be honest here, my own experience of seaside B&B’s, although plentiful, is also some 50 years behind me. I am certain that they are much more comfortable, friendly and sanitary by now. I do not know whether it is still customary for a gong to be sounded on the landing when breakfast is ready, whether it is still normal to be locked out straight after breakfast and not allowed in again until after dark, nor whether the single occupiers are still forbidden from having another person in their room – even if that were possible, given that the average single room is a former broom cupboard in either roof or cellar and, generally speaking, not of adequate proportions to entertain a gyrating feline.
• Skegness has a clock tower, a crazy golf, a fun fair, approximately 3,768 fish & chip shops, a model village and a tide that never quite comes in or goes out – and I love it. Like Blackpool it has ‘illuminations’ – although they are called traffic lights.