Contrary to All Expectations

I am sure that you all have friends/acquaintances/relatives/loved ones who are, by their very nature, simply contrary. Who know so instinctively that what you are about to say is wrong, they do not even have to wait to listen to it. They will let you know so before you have any opportunity to finish and, even if they are demonstrably off course in guessing where your argument was taking you, will plough on with their denunciation unabashed. They will talk you around so many corners that, in the end, you will have no clear idea yourself of what you intended to say. They will never apologise. Your confusion will be your weakness. Faced with this person you have three possible reactions:
1. Have a stand-up row – seldom recommended as this invariably ends badly. Whatever ensues, you will almost certainly be made to feel like a complete heel. Of course, the letting off of steam may well make you feel better for a short time, but there is always a price to pay: your tormentor will be seen as the victim and you as the bully. Ultimately, shouting matches are never won by the person with the loudest voice.
2. Acquiesce – you will feel pitiful, but you will not suffer the pain and indignity of being proved wrong, even when you know you are not. You will, however, spend several uncomfortable hours full of smug, I-told-you-so glances. Acquiesce – and then leave smartly, dragging any dignity you can muster behind you.
3. Prove it – find incontrovertible affirmation of your statement. Unfortunately, I can pretty much assure you that the average nay-sayer, so confronted with written proof, will either outright deny having contradicted you at all, or will assure you that you are completely mistaken about what you think you said in the first place. ‘You probably thought you said…, but what you actually said was…’ Short of recording every conversation you have, you probably have little chance of rebutting this without sounding like a pantomime villain. Abanazar seldom wins the day – unless he’s in one of those very avant garde numbers where the white horses turn into rats and the pumpkin has scabies. Generally Snow White succeeds by being affable and agreeable – thumbing her nose only when nobody’s looking.

My own father, a master of acquiescence, once became so enraged that he turned to the Encyclopaedia Britannica in order to settle a difference of opinion with my mother. My mum read through the entry he thrust before her with disinterest before simply declaring, ‘I’m sorry John, but it’s wrong.’ My dad’s defeat was total. She did not have, nor need, anything with which to back up her assertion other than total conviction. It was unequivocal; not open to discussion. It would never be mentioned again.
One way or another, whatever you do, you will always wind up feeling petty. You will end up wishing that you had simply accepted the other person’s opinion from the outset, or, better still, that you had never been tempted into voicing your own. Mute nodding is generally the most reliable method of not being seen as antagonistic. If you fear you may be viewed as indifferent, just shrug your shoulders and pretend to be sucking a mint.

As I have said before, it is my conviction that opinions are, by and large, better kept to oneself, and I now realise that principal holds true for facts as well, because, as tempting as it is to view facts as irrefutable, they are not. Proof is of no avail when faced with bald denial, both on a macro and a micro scale. There are those who seek to deny the worst atrocities of man and those who seek to excuse the mildest of injustices by having the blindest of eyes: those who seek to refute the accusation that they were the one who left the toilet seat up; those who will solemnly swear that somebody else must have trodden the dog shit in. We all know that history is written by the winner, but in the past we, at least, had only one version of it to believe. Now we have the internet and, thanks to the powers that be, we are invited to believe only what we are allowed to believe; to accept as truth only what we are told is true – even when it is patently not so. Those caught in a blatant lie no longer feel it even necessary to deny it, let alone apologise for it. Ignoring it is all that is required.

And if you don’t agree with me, well, you are simply wrong. Obviously…

Silence is not only golden, it’s seldom misquoted – Bob Monkhouse

A Little Fiction; Fifty Shades of Grey

Fifty Shades

…Just to put this little melange into some kind of context, I have just stumbled upon a review for a recent novel by E L James (‘The Mister’) her first not to feature Christian Gray. It is, apparently, toe-curlingly bad, and yet I feel certain that it has probably still sold by the shed-load. It got me thinking. I realise that the Fifty Shades horse has not only bolted, but also sired, betimes, a million dotard offspring. However, I am painfully aware that Ms. James has, in the time that I have sold precisely nothing, managed to shift an Albert Hall-full of paperbacks employing a strange (and slightly disturbing, if I’m honest) admixture of coy titillation and baby-talk that, to my ears, sounds like a Sun leader on the lurid sex exploits of the inhabitants of Toytown. Now, bearing in mind that I am part of a demographic that these novels were clearly pointed away from and told to run as fast as they could – not to mention the fact that even my very best effort to read them took me only as far as page six before sleep overtook me and I fell into dreams of birds and bees and ironmongery – I still thought that I owed it to myself to add a little something of my own to the genre. I did, honestly, intend to pay due diligence to Ms. James’ opus before writing this piece but, frankly, life is too short. I have, however, followed her template (man = libidinous decathlete, woman = willing victim) and, like the good lady herself, I’ve avoided all naughty words and anatomical descriptions and, should any of my characters get carried away with it all, I have made note of fifty different ways to describe fireworks going off.

So here it is. You must excuse the fact that my imagination only stretches so far and my knowledge even less so. Never the less, this may get racy. I hope it doesn’t get you too inflamed.

…He stared at her across the room. It was a crowded room and their eyes did not meet – so that particular cliché was neatly side-stepped. She had more areas of natural beauty than the National Trust could shake a stick at. She was impeccably elegant: aloof, yet with an air of obtainability for a man with patience and his own bicycle clips – like the slightly dog-eared birthday cake in the baker’s window that no-one has yet collected. The noblest thought that crossed his mind when he saw her for the first time was far too ignoble for these pages. He actually made himself blush – and he had lived with himself right through puberty. This was a thought that would make Lady Chatterley flush down to the soles of her chamois thong and have Oliver Mellors booking an early appointment at the osteopath’s.

She had the kind of body that you could write a book about (probably a pop-up) and she oozed sexuality like an-over-filled éclair oozes cream, but he was not afraid of her. He was not daunted by her all-over leather cladding. After all, when he was a child, his mother had a pouffé just like it, and he always found that quietly reassuring. Besides, like everybody else of his age, he had read The Joy of Sex so many times that he thought of Alex Comfort as a personal friend. In his teens, he had grown a beard in preparation for the experiences that the pencil drawings hinted at – although he had shaved it off when it became clear that he wasn’t going to have them any time soon, and, by the time he grew it back, it was grey and his arches had fallen along with his chest which by then occupied a space just above his trouser waistband.

Never-the-less, he did have experience of sorts. He had been reading books by mature, worldly-wise lady writers and had, consequently dropped the Milk Tray from his weekly shop in favour of nipple-clamps. He felt ready to face the exotic object of his desires. Give him a box of dominoes and a small bottle of Wincarnis* and he would give her the night of her life. If she wanted steamy, he would give her steamy. He was prepared to crank the TOG of his quilt so high that she wouldn’t even need bedsocks.

He knew how to please a woman – well, his mother, at least, was always thrilled with a hot cup of tea and a Garibaldi – and he was ready for the moment when their winceyettes first enmeshed. He knew that with the right stimulation (whatever that might be) she would bloom like a rose in the summer – although he wasn’t at all certain of how he felt about that, as he was a martyr to his hay fever. He might be able to keep her awake all night but, to be honest, that rather depended on her ability to sleep through his nocturnal toilet visits and his thunderous snoring after a couple of sweet stouts.

However, he had to admit that he was running away with himself a little bit here. She hadn’t actually even spoke to him yet, except to ask whether he’d finished with the ketchup. And her husband didn’t appear to be the accommodating type. Jealous sort, by the look of him. Obviously didn’t understand a woman’s needs. Didn’t understand a man’s desperation. Didn’t understand the principle of sharing. Obviously couldn’t even be bothered to get her some tomato sauce of her own. He would buy her sauce – Heinz – in one of those big squeezy bottles. He would buy her hake if she wanted it. He would make sure she had one of those polystyrene trays to eat it from and one of those titchy little wooden forks so that she didn’t end up with greasy fingers and sauce on her chin. And when she caught the bus home to her husband late at night, he would wonder why she didn’t fancy the frozen crinkle-cuts he’d got ready for her, nor why she fell asleep before the end of Casualty…

I hereby solemnly swear that this will definitely NOT be continued. Colin

People think that I hate sex. I don’t. I just don’t like things that stop you seeing the television properly. Victoria Wood

*Wincarnis, for those sub demi-centurions amongst you, was a ‘tonic’ wine – sold for its ‘restorative’ properties.

Rain, Rain Go Away

Languishing, as oft I do, in this slough of despond, I begin to wonder whether it is possible to drown through syphonic action? Whether I will eventually be overwhelmed by the gallons of water that soak their way through my soles, up my socks and beyond my knees every time I leave the house in anything less water-repellent than industrial- strength galoshes? Will the sky ever stop leaking? One cannot turn on the TV without being made aware of how very quickly this green and pleasant land of ours has become a brown and sludgy mess, where the universally preferred venue for new housing is on the sodden flood-plains of obesely swollen rivers currently fully occupied in the deluge-driven pursuit of bank-busting overflow, leading to the wall-to-wall submersion of everything below fifth floor level. I presume that building new houses on flat land is much easier than having to flatten out sloping bits – especially if the ground is so saturated that the foundations can be dug with a teaspoon. Apparently the house-building industry is spending many millions of pounds in research into how new homes can be made more flood resistant. I have a suggestion: build them where it doesn’t flood. I can only believe that there is a generally held construction principle that states that by putting a building in the middle of a shallow lake, we can stop it being a lake.

I am very fortunate in living in a house that is not prone to flooding (unless the grandkids are taking a bath) although it was built in the sixties, so it is prone to falling down. The village in which I live is not on a hillside – unless I have to cycle to it, in which case it appears to be atop the Eiger – but nor is it in the foot of a valley. I understand the voices that cry, ‘You bought a house that was built on a floodplain. It’s flooded. What did you expect?’ but I also wonder, what else do you do when ‘liable to flooding’ is all that is available? There was a time when rising damp caused the wallpaper to peel, now it teaches the cat to swim. Surely in a time of ever more eccentric weather, it cannot be sensible to attempt to constrain the flow of over-brimming rivers with sandbags and tarpaulins whilst continuing to build new targets for ingress. Common sense suggests that allowing the waters to spread across unoccupied landscapes lessens the chances of them rising high enough to flow into the buildings erected outside the boggy bit. Most old Towns were built up the bank a bit: the walk needed to go down and fetch water from the river being preferable to not needing to walk further than the bedroom. Even in the days of mud floors, nobody wanted a muddy one.

Mind you, there is something almost biblical about this rainfall. I suspect we must be closing in upon the forty days and forty nights by now. I notice that the ‘Timber’ aisles at the local B&Q are suspiciously bereft of Ark-suitable planks. There is no cat-litter in Tesco’s. All we need now is a plague. I have been scanning the horizon for the first signs of frog or locust invasion; I have checked myself for boils. I keep looking at the space between my toes for any sign of webbing, because I am uncertain how long evolution takes. I figure that being a Fen-dweller may give me some kind of a genetic advantage; that I may be naturally equipped to deal with the soggy – although, to be honest, the only natural inclination I detect when traversing muddy terrain is the prat-fall. I am notoriously unstable and, in the right circumstances, quite capable of bringing an entire bus queue down with me.

I wonder if I might drown before I die of Coronavirus? (How interesting. In a world where Coronavirus is mentioned approximately twice every millisecond, Microsoft Word’s spellcheck does not recognise it – mind you, it doesn’t recognise spellcheck either – strange world…) Mystery still shrouds its origins, but whilst I’m not sure if this has any bearing, when I was a boy, the Corona man used to come around the estate once a week, delivering fizzy drinks door-to-door – a bit like a super-glucose milkman – and his van never looked particularly clean. Could well have been a viral breeding ground. Covid-19 (to give it its Sunday name) is apparently only a real risk to the elderly with underlying health issues. OK, is it just me? I would argue that merely being elderly with underlying health issues constitutes a risk to life. Am I the only person here who does not know anybody over the age of sixty without underlying health issues. And yes, I do understand that they mean chest issues. Shortness of breath and a cough… I refer you to my previous answer. I can get out of breath just opening the cough linctus.

The problem is, apparently, that we have no natural immunity to this new virus. Until you’ve had it, you stand every chance of getting it. So the whole world must now join the queue for face masks despite the fact that whilst everyone is being advised to wear them, everyone is being advised that they do not work. In fact, as a mask becomes damp through breathing, it becomes something akin to a virus crèche. I do not believe that viruses can actually multiply externally – I think they need a ‘host’ to do it in – but My God, they can lurk. Pernicious little bugger, your Johnny Virus. The best defence we have apparently is to wash our hands regularly and not touch our eyes. I thought that it was not possible to dislike this virus any more than I do, and then I discover that it gets in through the eyes! If someone tells me it thrives in whisky, I may well throw in my hand. Looking around me now, my only hope is that it might drown…

The Haphazardly Poetical – Bury Me – A Slight Return

Poetry — Photo by Trust “Tru” Katsande on Unsplash

I first published a version of this poem in November of last year. (If you want to read the original, it is here.) It had a long preamble and Calmgrove, whose voice and opinion is always to be respected, felt that I had screwed it up by allowing my ‘sense of mischief’ to cock it up at the end. As usual, he was right – although, to be honest, I think he was being kind; on re-reading it I think I probably let it slip a verse before that. So, I’ve tried again, and this time I’ve swallowed my mischief.

Could be that it doesn’t work at all now, for a whole new raft of reasons. I would be pleased to hear what you think.

Anyway, here it is…

Bury Me
Bury me up in a tree
Where the warming sun can shine on me.
Not by its roots,
Or in its shade,
Nor in the silence that it’s made.

Bury me in the canopy
Where the morning birds can sing to me.
Not at its feet,
In darkened balm,
But ever held within its arms.

Lay me in that skyward place,
Held within its firm embrace.
A silhouette
On dappled skies;
Alone to face the long goodbyes.

Bury me amongst the leaves
Encased within the living wreaths
Where, should I wake
At dawn’s first call,
I won’t be held in deathly pall.

Let me lie, under the sky,
Where I can feel the world pass by,
So, when my mortal
Days are past,
My Earth and I will merge at last.

…it’s the best I’ve got, and I promise that I won’t bother you with it again.

Spend a Penny, Make a Million

urinals — Photo by Syed Umer on Unsplash

You know the way it is. You never want the loo, until you need the loo. You never really need to find the public conveniences until you are in the middle of a strange town centre with no obvious indication whatsoever of where they might be. You are never quite so desperate as when the key is stuck in the lock and the next-door neighbour has door-stepped you in order to complain about the state of your over-hanging hedge. It is difficult to explain to anyone who has never felt such unease, the instant discomfort you feel when you glimpse the motorway sign that says it is thirty miles to the next services. You were fine until that very second. It’s like being a child again – although the promise of a lolly does not make the feeling go away. It becomes a mental battle which, when your ammunition is as limited as my own, you are destined to lose. Distraction is probably the way to go – except that it is almost impossible to think about anything else when you are concentrating on listing the five hundred most obvious reasons why you do not need a wee.

Now, I don’t want you thinking that this little functional peccadillo dominates my life. It does not. In truth it is barely a feature, except when it is inconvenient for it to be so. I do not spend my whole life obsessing about toilets. I do not live in a widdle-centric bubble of my own making. It is an almost entirely mental thing. I want to use ‘the bathroom’ almost always when there is not one to be used. It emerges as a problem only very rarely and then only when it is entirely inopportune for it to do so. Give me a day on the beach playing ball with the kids and periodically sluicing the dribbled ice cream from them with sea water – no problem. Put me on a bus, stuck between stops – different story.

We have, I know, covered this ground before and I guess that you are now thinking, ‘Why is the soft old buffer discussing this again? Is his life so bereft of tales to tell that he has to fall back on his waterworks twice a year?’ Well, the answer is recycling; not of ideas, but of bottles. I am rigidly adherent to all the protocols. However I can contribute, I try to do so. The big ecological push at the moment is for reusable drinks bottles. As the current advice is (I believe) to drink at least thirty gallons of water a day and the current fashion is never to be seen without a water bottle in hand, then the ‘green’ thing to do is to stop buying single-use bottles of variously mineralised volcanic waters and to carry instead a sturdy receptacle that you can repeatedly refill at any other water rate payer’s expense. As I look down the High Street now, it appears that everybody is carrying such a flask in hand, bag or specially designed belt holster and – I know you are ahead of me: although small in number, mine is a discerning and educated readership – perhaps what I see is my fortune lying ahead of me. Perhaps this is my Dragons’ Den moment because I have just seen a vision of people of my age carrying an empty bottle everywhere they go, perhaps in a brown paper bag, in the certain knowledge that simply by carrying something that could – behind a convenient wall, tree or spouse – be used in an emergency, there will never be such an emergency. You know the way it is…

I don’t need you to remind me of my age, I have a bladder to do that for me – Stephen Fry

Fat – A Slight Return

blue tape measuring on clear glass square weighing scale

Other than my blog, I have no ‘online’ presence at all – no Facebook, no Twitter, no Instagram – so, after I had written this post, I decided to email as many of my old school friends as I could and invite them to read along. Consequently, this post marked an early peak in readership, although it turned out to be very short lived. Some stayed with me for a little while, a few are still here (thank you) but most have wandered away realising that they have better things to do – oiling the cat, worming the lawnmower etc – and, as they moved on, my figures plummeted again before, some weeks later, beginning a frustratingly slow ascent. My readership remains very modest in number (although, individually, of the highest calibre) but as I set out, I had the loftiest of aspirations which, I now realise, will never be met…

Fat was first published 22 November 2018 and is approximately 1100 words long.

I have a bike. It is not a super-lightweight racing machine with slick tyres the thickness of knife-blades. It is a cheap, heavy mountain bike with tyres like a tractor. It has, of course, never been anywhere near a mountain. It has generally been pushed, not ridden, up the gentlest of inclines by its shagged-out rider. It has never, to my knowledge, borne a thin, lycra-clad athlete. It carries a fat man in jeans. The fat man is me and it is an immutable fact that whatever I may do, I am a fat man doing it. We are irrevocably conjoined by some weird symbiosis of thought, my weight and I: Colin/Fat, like Nelson Mandela/Hope, Usain Bolt/Fast, Idris Elba/James Bond, James Blunt/Turn That Bloody Racket Off! I know I should take more exercise. I know I should lose some weight. Every other expert on every other TV program tells me so. Every other expert on TV makes me feel bad about myself. I’ve got to be honest; the fact that the government tells me that I need to cut down on sugar, fat and alcohol is unlikely to sway me. This is the same government that tells me the health service is not in crisis, schools are better than ever before and that Brexit really does mean Brexit – whatever it is that Brexit means…

I have calculated my BMI – 25.6, which means that I am overweight. Now, I put most of this down to my height. If I was taller I wouldn’t be overweight. I have considered hanging from a doorway in order to decrease my BMI. Frighteningly, I appear to have actually shrunk by an inch over the last twenty years, although I prefer to think that my tape measure may have stretched. In fact, I still reach the same point on the garage wall – but I put that down to subsidence. I eat less than I once did and I exercise more, but I still put on weight. I don’t believe that any of this can be blamed upon a somnambulant thyroid (although, having said that, like an idiot I have just looked up the symptoms of an under-active thyroid, and I discover that I have them all). For the time being, until I can get an appointment at the doctor’s (I’m free in March if she is) I am perfectly happy to lay the blame at the door of Messrs. Cake, Gin and Chocolate. The answer is, I know, to exercise even more and eat even less. Perhaps if I exercise enough, I won’t have time to eat. Like most overweight people, I would like to lose a bit. Like most overweight people, I know that the only way to do so is to ‘do’ more and to consume less. Like most overweight people, I choose to do neither. I’m not obscenely fat, but I am of a build that allows me two choices when buying a ‘T’ shirt: something that resembles a Bedouin tent or something that looks like it has been spray-painted onto a lifebuoy. My weight dictates my behaviour: I dare not enter a swimming pool without first checking for Ahab.

You see, I have reached the age when I look at the obituaries and think, “My goodness, that’s no age,” when I used to think “Oh well, he/she had a good innings.” And I’m tired of hearing about people who were the “healthiest person I have ever met” just one day before they dropped down dead. I remember reading somewhere that you shouldn’t take up any new form of exercise once you’ve passed 50 years of age. Problem is, what do you do if your last real exercise was kiss-chase in the school playground? The real challenge when commencing a new exercise regime at my age is finishing it conscious. Like some of the medications I now take daily, one of the less desirable side-effects of exercise is death.

My mum couldn’t cook; she could burn water. Combining the correct quantities of cornflakes and milk in a bowl was, for her, a culinary triumph. But she loved a diet; the faffier and faddier the better. Meals that had to be meticulously weighed and prepared really appealed – but not for long. Unusual ingredients were always a bonus – particularly if she couldn’t find them anywhere. “I looked everywhere, but nobody had Patagonian cumquats, so I bought a pie.” I remember her doing a diet in which she ate nothing but grapefruit. Presumably you lose weight because the only thing you are allowed to eat is completely inedible. One of the true benefits of taking statins is that I no longer even have to contemplate a glass of grapefruit juice with my holiday breakfast. Scales were pounded weekly, daily, hourly and if there was no loss, exercise might be taken – normally a stroll around the block or, on Fridays, to the chip shop. For my mum, a diet began on a Monday and ended on a doughnut.

My own approach to dieting is equally haphazard: I try to eat less, I try to drink less and I try to eat only at meal times. And I eat fruit. Tons of fruit, which my largely fruitless upbringing led me to believe was good for me, but which the experts now tell me is too high in sugar. What happened to “an apple a day” and all that? I’m waiting for the for the catchy couscous or bulgar wheat epigrams, but they don’t appear to be forthcoming. No “do’s” only “don’ts”. Can you imagine your mum telling you forty years ago that drinking a litre of green slime a day would be good for you? The nearest we got to a ‘Supergreen Smoothie’ was a pot of mushy peas. And yet, as kids, we were all so skinny. The only child in our class who carried above average ‘timber’ was known as ‘fatty’ for the rest of his life. He was revered by all because he learned to sweat before the rest of us. I was like a walking X-Ray: a badly assembled jumble of skin and bone. I looked like somebody had tried to get me onto Ryan Air as hand luggage by turning me inside out and emptying me. My grandma, a Manchester woman who did not consider food to be of any value at all unless it “gave you a lining” had a mission in life to “put some meat” on me. Sadly she didn’t see it, but in the long term, she succeeded…

A Little Fiction – The Discovery of Fire

bonfire surrounded with green grass field — Photo by Vlad Bagacian on Pexels.com

The man on the high rocky platform raised himself unsteadily to almost his full height. He was still slightly unused to standing: he felt distinctly giddy when his knuckles were off the floor. Never the less he steadied himself against the rocky outcrop and peered down at the gaggle of fellow troglodytes that had assembled below him, squatting uncomfortably on the rocky ground and checking one another for edible parasites. He raised his hand and a hush descended on the crowd, broken only by the sound of scratching and the occasional ‘pop’ of a tick caught between thumb and forefinger.
‘Come on,’ yelled one of the homunculi gathered at his feet, ‘We haven’t got all day, you know. We got holes to go to, stuff to, wosname, hunt, stuff to gather.’ There was a gentle hum of agreement; the crowd were getting restless. ‘Best get on with it,’ thought the man on the rock, ‘Before they start chucking those sharpened flints about.’
‘Fellow cave dwellers,’ he began ‘I have brought you here today to disclose my latest, life-enhancing invention, which, I am sure you will agree, will revolutionise our very way of life.’
‘I hope it’s better than that flippin’ limestone boat you had us all in last week,’ said a man in goatskin. ‘Damn lucky we could all, what do you call it, swim.’
The man on the platform gave goatskin one of his hardest stares before stepping triumphantly to one side in order to reveal the fire that flickered behind him. ‘Behold,’ he said proudly. There followed a long silence, which at first he took for awe, but which was, in fact, fuelled by indifference. Eventually goatskin spoke for the crowd.
‘Very nice, I’m sure,’ he said. ‘What’s it do?’
‘It is fire!’ yelled the inventor. ‘It gives you warmth and light. It scares away the savage beasts of the night.’ The man in the goat skin leaned forward and rested a hairy forefinger on the glowing embers. It took him a moment to recognise the sensation as pain and, by the time he removed it, his finger was a blackened stump. ‘And,’ continued the firestarter, ‘You can cook with it.’
‘Cook?’ cried a woman examining goatskin’s charred digit. She turned to face the crowd. ‘He’s making words up now. What is cook?’
The man turned back to the fire and, with a flourish, withdrew a hunk of mammoth from the flames on the end of a stick. ‘Try that,’ he said, handing it to the woman, who took a rapid mouthful and then screamed in pain, waking the baby at her breast.
‘Not the stick,’ said the man. ‘Try the meat.’
Warily, the woman eyed the meat. ‘It’s all black,’ she said.
‘A little well done I’ll admit,’ he acquiesced. ‘I’ve not quite got on top of the timings yet, but just give it a try.’
Reluctantly, she gnawed on the wizened flesh and chewed. ‘It’s like meat,’ she said at last, ‘But hot. No blood.’ Whereupon she grabbed what was left on the stick and ate it before it could be taken from her.
‘Hold on,’ cried a woman from the back as the melee at the front began to subside. ‘How long does this cooking take?’
‘Depends on the size of the animal,’ answered the man on the rock. ‘I told you, I haven’t quite got it worked out yet. An hour or two I should imagine.’
‘So, who’s going to do that then?’ she continued. ‘I mean, whilst you’re all out hunter/gathering and we’re stuck in the hole looking after the kids, keeping the place tidy, who’s going to do this cooking?’
And even as her voice trailed away on the prehistoric breeze, every male eye in the gathering turned towards her.
‘Oh, I get it,’ she said, ‘Charming. Bloody charming…’

You Pays Your Money…

I remember ‘D-Day’ – Decimilisation Day – with startling clarity. I went to bed on 14th February 1971 with a Penny Arrow (a thin strip of tooth-pulling toffee, much beloved by schoolboys) costing, as its name implied, a penny (1d – I have absolutely no idea why an old penny was expressed as ‘d’) and I woke up on Monday morning, 15th February 1971 to find that it still cost a penny, but it was now a New penny (1p) – meaning that, although the toffee bar was of the same size and weight as before, it now cost over twice as much as it did the day before.

Now, for those of you who are not from these shores, and for those of you who are younger than myself (most of you) I feel that I probably need to offer some sort of explanation of what happened on that fateful day. (Concentrate now, this could get very messy.) The coins that were in circulation on 14th February 1971 were a half penny (ha’penny), a penny, three pence (thrupence), six pence (tanner), a shilling (bob), two shillings (florin), two shillings and six pence (half crown – which my dad always referred to as ‘half a dollar’) and five shillings (crown – five bob – ‘a dollar’). There were also the ten shilling (ten bob), one pound and five pound notes. Rumour had it that there were also notes of higher denominations, but they had never actually been seen by anyone on our estate. Are you still with me? It gets more complicated. There were twelve pennies to the shilling and twenty shillings to the pound (my, wasn’t currency fun!) Larger items were often priced in guineas (one pound and one shilling) although there was no longer a coin of that denomination.

On ‘D-Day’ the pound remained the same, but it was now populated by one hundred New Pennies. The coins were now ½p, 1p, 2p, 5p, 10p and 50p – none of which had a friendly nickname and, because the government did not feel that we would be confused enough at this stage, the old six pence, shilling and two-shilling coins remained in circulation for some time, to be used at their new face value. My pocket money went from two shillings (twenty four old pence) to ten new pence, and I felt very hard done by.

The shops all had conversion charts by the tills (which mysteriously, I recall, showed that 1 New Penny was equivalent to 3 old ones) and for many months thereafter all young people were expected to help their elders work out exactly what lurked within their purses. Everybody suspected the shopkeepers of profiteering – especially as some manufacturers took the opportunity to simultaneously introduce the decimal into our weights and measures. I cannot possibly go into the pounds to kilograms, pints to litres thing – principally because I staggered through Maths ‘O’ level and have never added up anything that goes beyond my number of fingers since. Just imagine if somebody told you that your four ounces of ‘rhubarb and custard’ sweets, formerly costing 6d, would, henceforth, cost you 22p a kilo, and then try to imagine attempting to work out whether or not you were being ripped off whilst standing at the head of a queue full of belligerent and confused pensioners in a hurry, brandishing a fistful of coins that they did not understand.

Anyway, that’s why I remember the day, but it doesn’t explain why I’m wittering on about it now, does it? Well, you see, I’ve just had somebody suggest to me that Brexit provides the ideal opportunity to reintroduce our old system of pounds, shillings and pence. Money, they assured me, made so much more sense back in those days. I remember being told, back then, that our new system relied on units of ten, but the only unit of which I was aware (a shilling) was five. I was deeply sceptical. Was this some sort of Soviet Plot? (Why, the next thing you would know, they’d be interfering in our elections.) Why, if they wanted to be compliant with Euro-regulations, didn’t the government just have ten old pennies to the shilling and ten old shillings to the pound? Probably they realised that we needed something that was simultaneously banally trivial and yet unreasonably complicated in order to take our minds off real life in the UK at the time. (Check out the Wikipedia page for 1971 and you’ll be pleased that you are alive today.) Anyway, I cannot begin to imagine the confusion that going back could cause now: ‘OK, we’re taking this five pence off you and giving you a shilling instead – it has twelve pennies in it…’ Unless, of course, there is something currently going on in the UK that the government thinks it needs to take our minds off…

The Haphazardly Poetical – Poems of Love and Indifference: Infamous First Drafts

The days have grown long
And the winter is finished
I love you in Spring
Now your rash has diminished.

So, it started when I attempted to write something romantic to put inside a Valentine’s card for my wife. These things seldom go to plan, do they? Anyway, it occurred to me that even the great poets must have suffered the same anguish when attempting to construct the early drafts of their own declarations of love. So, I did a little digging around and this is what I found. Consider, for instance, the difficulties faced by Robert Burns when he first attempted to express his devotion…

A Red, Red Nose
O my Luve is like a red, red nose
That’s newly sprung a leak.
O my Luve is like the melody
That only tone-deaf seek.

So fair thy skin, so red thy lips
So bloodshot is your eye
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
When the bar is all drunk dry.

And O my throat is parched, my dear.
Behold my empty glass.
Just go and fill it up with beer;
Be quick my bonnie lass.

Then fare thee weel, my only luve!
Our farewell stays unspoken,
For I will come again, my luve,
When the barman has awoken.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning attempted to get this sonnet right on so many occasions that, eventually, she began to number them…

How Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43)
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love some things about you, but I might need to think.
I would write them all down, but I can’t spare the ink
And I cannot buy more until somebody pays.
I love thee to the level of every day’s
Flossing of teeth and washing of socks.
I could love thee more if you bought me some chocs.
I love thee madly when I wake in a daze.
I love thee the most with the help of some booze
When my vision is blurred and I can’t see your vest.
Though I don’t love the way that thy dentures are loose
And, if I’m quite honest, your skin’s not the best.
I don’t love your pimples and pussy-nosed ooze.
In fact, if I’m honest, I think you’re a pest.

John Keats, also, did not find that his first drafts always went to plan…

You say you love; but with a voice
You say you love; but with a voice
Chaster than a nun in wimple
To God she promises herself
And not some oik with pimples –
Oh love me Julie!

You say you love; but with a sneer
That positively smoulders,
With nought but pure indifference,
For you have two cold shoulders –
Oh love me Julie!

You say you love; but then your lips
Are pursed, clenched tight like mother.
More than ever kissing mine,
You’d sooner kiss my brother –
Oh love me Julie!

You say you love; but then your hand
No pleading cheek doth grazeth
And, in the stead of soft embrace,
Two fingers it doth raiseth –
Oh love me Julie!

Oh sweet insanity of love,
Although your words can injure,
The pain they cause cannot compare –
Your punch is like a Ninja.
Oh, love me Julie!

Even Shakespeare didn’t always get it right first time…

Sonnet 18: Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day?
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And rattle the hinges of the gate.
Sometimes the clouds of steely grey
Are blown across the skies of blue
And it pisses down the length of day
And that’s when I most think of you.
You are, by nature, full of gloom,
That even sunshine cannot lift:
You fill me with a sense of doom
That even Dairy Milk can’t shift.
Dejected I know I shall be
As long as you are here with me.

But they all persevered and, of course, got it right eventually. I fear I may not do the same…

Roses are red
And delicately scented
I don’t know what I saw in you
Quite frankly, you’re demented.

One thing I learned during the course of writing this piece was that there are some poems you just cannot mess about with. I realised that ‘That I Did Always Love’ (Dickinson); ‘A Subaltern’s Love Song’ (Betjeman) and ‘Love’s Philosophy’ (Percy Bysshe Shelley) are all untouchable. That I did not even discover the latter poem until I was researching for this piece, probably tells you all you need to know about me…

With abject apologies to Robert Burns, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, John Keats and William Shakespeare

Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
A medley of extemporanea;
And love is a thing that can never go wrong;
And I am Marie of Roumania
Dorothy Parker

A Footnote to Faust*

blur book stack books bookshelves — Photo by Janko Ferlic on Pexels.com

Perhaps the most vital of assets, one of the key markers in social aspiration, is to be well-read – or at least to be perceived as such. But this is the age of rush. This is the age of little opportunity to pause in the forward thrust of life, let alone time to read – what are they called again? – books. So, here’s my plan. I intend to publish at regular intervals (this will probably turn out to be irregular, bordering on the never again) some easily digestible précis of great works of fiction that will allow you to exude an air of education and erudition during conversation in almost all possible social contexts. (I think it only fair to point out that I almost certainly won’t have had the opportunity to read the originals myself, so don’t be drawn into detail!)

Alice in Wonderland (Lewis Carroll – the pen-name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, who really should have known better.)

A girl, Alice (believed by many to be Alice Liddel, an eleven year-old acquaintance to whom Dodgson proposed marriage, although he denied this, but then he would, wouldn’t he?), for reasons best known to herself, follows a white rabbit down a rabbit hole and, against all advice, drinks a potion given to her by the author that shrinks her, meets a March hare (mad as a box of frogs), a Mad Hatter (plain mad), a dormouse (slightly peeved) and the Queen of Hearts (apoplectic and psychopathic). They have a tea party and then do stuff with Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle Dee and the Cheshire Cat who, now I come to think of it, might just have been in the other book about chess. At some point, judging by Dodgson’s photographs, Alice’s clothes appear to fall off. The book is full of hidden number puzzles (which remain hidden to me), acrostics (which are clear when pointed out) and symbolism (which is just a little too blatant for my liking). After a number of adventures that I can’t quite recall just now, the author sobers up and returns to his position behind the net curtains.

Oliver Twist (Charles Dickens)

A boy is born an orphan and, after nine years in an orphanage, is sent to a workhouse to eat gruel. The workhouse is run by a Welsh man who sings very loudly and sells Oliver to an undertaker, from whom he runs away because – well, because he’s an undertaker. He is befriended by The Artful Dodger who, despite being English, has the worst mockney accent since Dick Van Dyke, and learns to pickpocket. When he is caught, he is given a home by his prospective victim, and he realises that he wouldn’t have had to go through all those years of gruel if only he’d thought about stealing handkerchiefs sooner. He is then recaptured and taken back to Fagin, a reprobate who hides his money behind the wall in the hope of becoming a Labour Party donor. Fagin sends Oliver to burgle his benefactor’s home, but he is caught. It then emerges that there are more cases of mistaken identity at play than in the average Shakespearian comedy, leaving Oliver a rich man and, if I am not wrong, his own second cousin. Fagin is sentenced to death, but blames everything on Bill Sykes who went on to co-write The Goons.

Nineteen Eighty Four (George Orwell)

In a world completely unlike our own, where the three global superpowers are constantly at violent odds, Winston Smith realises that the government is not necessarily telling the truth – an easy conclusion to reach, as he is actually employed by them to tell lies. He keeps a diary, which is illegal, although he constantly forgets to fill it in and, like everyone I have ever known outside of Adrian Mole, gives up completely before the end of March. He meets Julia, who is a member of the junior Anti-Sex League, and they have an affair. I am not sure how. Eventually, Winston is captured by the Thought Police (who I suppose are a bit like the ordinary police, but with ‘O’ levels) and, having had rats strapped to his face, betrays Julia (which is what tends to happen to girlfriends who join the Anti-Sex league) and is released because he now realises that he loves his older sibling.

Treasure Island (Robert Louis Stephenson – who I think invented the steam engine in his spare time)

Jim Ladd (son of Alan) nicks a dead man’s treasure map and sets off to find the treasure, unaware that pretty much everyone on the ship, except for himself and the ship’s captain Smollett, was a member of the original crew of the pirate who buried the treasure, Captain Flint, who is now a parrot. Despite the preponderance of eye-patches, hooks, peg-legs and ‘ooh-aahs, the captain is unaware of the nature of his crew until he is told by Jim, who has heard them plotting from his place in the apple barrel. The chief plotter is Long John Silver, whose son sang Let the Heartaches Begin in the 1960’s. Eventually Jim finds himself on an island with Michael Palin, who has been marooned by the rest of the Pythons. When Silver and his men eventually find the treasure chest, it has already been emptied by Palin, so they nick it from him instead and set off towards Bristol. Silver casts himself adrift with a bag of gold and some nuts for the parrot, whilst Jim sails home in the certain knowledge that crime does pay. Michael Palin spends his share of the loot on a ticket around the world.

Far From the Madding Crowd (Thomas Hardy, before he became Robert and learned to insert his arm up a cow)

Nothing Happens. Often…

*All literature is a footnote to Faust. I have no idea what I mean by that. Woody Allen

A classic is a book that everybody is assumed to have read and often think they have. Alan Bennett

If ever there was a writer who proved that humour is timeless, that writer is probably Stephen Leacock. (I recommend ‘Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy’, which was first published in 1915, should you wish to give him a try.) Though securely set in its own time, the humour continues to crackle brightly from every page. It is of a date, but definitely not dated. It is to Leacock’s article ‘Our Literary Bureau’ (contained in the abovementioned collection) that this post owes a huge debt of gratitude.