The Sun Machine is Coming Down…

Having recently spent a weekend at a music festival, I have a few questions which I would like you to consider. Please feel free to write your answers on a postcard (neatly please) and then do anything you like with them as long as it is not illegal and doesn’t block the sewer. Now, the sun shone, but in the middle of a large municipal park, it was windy and cold. I was wearing my customary six layers and, if I’m honest, wishing I’d brought a seventh. I was regretting the skinny jeans only because I couldn’t wear anything underneath them. Other than pants, obviously. What kind of festival do you think it was? So, there I was, swaddled but still cold, sitting on the floor next to my wife who was wrapped in a very fetching picnic blanket, contemplating setting fire to my shoes for warmth, whilst large sections of the world milled around me in T-shirts and shorts. They did not look cold. They drank cider and chatted happily without the slightest hint of shivering and I was forced to wonder, do tattoos keep you warm? I don’t have any, because I know that my sallow dermis would flare up post-needle and my precious artwork would wind up looking like an amorphous coloured scab, but I can’t help but wonder if I might be warmer with some. Also, my beard is not long enough to plait. I wonder if that might be a factor.

We had our bags searched as we went in and we were forced to empty our water bottles as the keepers of the gate were clearly unable to discern whether they contained water, gin or vodka by smell alone and they obviously wanted us to purchase both of the latter inside. Water was, as I believe it must be, freely available inside from a single stand pipe cunningly concealed at the rear of the toilet area. I didn’t try any. Clearly the noses that could not separate water from gin could also not separate tobacco from dope because the air was so thick with it that I was transported right back to the Rolling Stones in the seventies. I think that it was encouraged because twenty thousand people with the munchies ensured that the only queues longer than those for the evil-smelling portaloos were those for the various food stalls around the place. More chips, burgers and sausages than you could shake a stick at – not that you would be allowed in with a stick unless, of course, you dressed it up as a giant joint – but my wife craved a salad. I tried to explain that she wasn’t likely to find one, but I dutifully traipsed around with her for some hours whilst she searched and, glory be, in the end she had a burger the same as everyone else. Do burgers keep you warm? No, they don’t.

There were no rows and no fights. There were huge smiles and laughter everywhere. Everybody watched the bands; stood in one another’s way; stood on one another’s feet, apologised and then did it again; smoked what by the end of the day had started to smell like old tyres; drank more pints of cider than there are apple trees; spilled more pints of ciders down trousers than there are pairs of trousers; apologised and then did it again; ate total crap and, whether dressed for the Arctic or The Bahamas, had a great weekend. Is it just that we are all overjoyed to be getting back to some kind of normal, or is it just that everybody’s been waiting the whole winter to get the tattoos back out? As things stand, they have to be cheaper than central heating.

‘…and we’re going to have a party’ (Memory of a Free Festival – David Bowie)

Guillotine

After a period of extensive research and reflection, I have reached the painful conclusion that I do have the tendency to bang on a bit. When I write these posts I generally start with just one thing to say, but soon find myself meandering through about ten others before stuttering to a halt somewhere around a thousand words, which I know is far too many, but it’s just where the guillotine tends to fall. It is the point at which the ideas run out and the denouement, however tenuous, clatters into place.

It’s not in my nature to use one pithy phrase when an inordinately long and convoluted sentence will do just as well: to fully explore the possibilities raised by a single conundrum when I can blithely skim over a dozen more. Still waters may run deep, but I have an almost unrivalled variety of shallows to explore. I see myself skimming a stone across a pond: each time the stone bounces, it slips across the very surface of a subject, but it creates a series of ripples that spread out until they mingle with those caused by each previous and each subsequent skip. It is the intermingling that forms the weft and warp of these little crocheted bedspreads I concoct. I do not have the brain power to dissect and discuss: I am very much a superficial glance man. I am very much aware that when my stone breaks the surface, it will sink without a trace.

So, going forward, I have a plan to start lobbing single pebbles into the pond, so that I might simply trace the few concentric ripples they produce. As long as I don’t get distracted, I should be able to cut myself off at a more appropriate word count, and all before the stone disappears into the gloop at the bottom between the mysterious half-tennis ball and what may once have been a frog. It might not work: I’ve been writing to my accustomed length for decades now and generally things resolve themselves in their own good time. My main concern is that although this new, shortened format might well produce posts that are more linear, more straight-forward and easier to read, they might also be a lot less me.

However, from what I’ve read elsewhere, overlong (as well as badly written and meandering) posts get skipped through and forgotten. I feel supremely confident that by cutting the sheer volume of crap I bombard you with, I will retain far more readers, and my access to vitamins and money-making opportunities will thus multiply exponentially – even as the hyperbole diminishes. In short, I am certain you will agree, the less of me the better. Which brings me to the nub of my current dilemma: it means that I have to get to the point in half the time I currently take and, if I’m completely honest, by the time I have reached five hundred words, I have seldom even the vaguest idea of what that might be. With five or six interwoven themes tangling into some kind or Gordian Knot of bollocks, my crux can sneak up on me without me even seeing it coming. I don’t even have to look for it. But if I have to limit myself to a single notion, one solitary thread, I will have to approach each post with a fixed idea of where it is about to go and where it has to end, and if I’m completely honest it… oh bugger!

A Little Fiction – My Mistake

The bus was empty, but I knew as soon as I saw him climb aboard, that he would choose to sit beside me. He smelled like a dump in summer and something of which he appeared completely unaware, was moving around under his coat. He tried to release a smile, but it merely flitted across his face like a leer in a convent and as he sat, he turned his entire body towards me as though his head had become fused to his shoulders. He licked his lips revealing teeth the colour of teak. He had eyes like midnight and breath like petrol, his hair sat atop his head like a hat, threadbare, unkempt and matted like a cat that could no longer clean itself, undisturbed since sleep. He pulled a slightly threadbare fur coat tight around his shoulders, just failing to cover the lace neckline of the nightdress he wore beneath it, in an overt attempt to create a small space between us. In his hand he carried a small stuffed toy: a penguin I think, it was hard to tell. His stare forced me to look away and casting my eyes down I noticed that his shoes were several sizes too big for his feet, that one sole flapped loosely, mouth-like, allowing fleeting glimpses of an un-socked foot as he moved his toes rhythmically, as if they were accompanying a song in his head.

I had seen him before walking around the town, unhurried and unbothered by both drunken youths and bored policemen, and I ‘knew’ his story in my head, his name and everything about him. His name, I concluded, was Geoffrey and he had a St John in there somewhere. His surname was double-barrelled, probably featuring a double ‘f’. He was definitely aristocratic, devoted to his mother who had died unexpectedly – probably from Lassa Fever or something equally romantic – leaving him alone, vulnerable and, eventually, here on the upper deck of a midnight bus with me. A mental breakdown between then and now I surmised, life in an institution surrounded by his mother’s furs and nightclothes, and his own childhood toys, but nobody to care when he wasn’t there at night. Nobody to worry.

I offered him a mint which he took with thin, elegant but grubby hands and a nod of thanks. His nails were long and grimy, but elegantly filed into shape. It seemed strange that he should take such care over the shape of his nails, but show no concern over the filth that had accumulated behind and around them. I wondered if he cared for anything else in his life or whether this was the last thing he refused to let go. I noticed that he had worn a ring until recently, the mark still palely traced across his finger, and wondered if it had been stolen from him or whether he had sold it to buy… what? He didn’t smell of booze or cigarettes, just decay. He wore nothing that could have been even approximately new and I remembered that when I had seen him around the town centre in the past he had often worn long, white satin evening gloves, the kind that are only ever otherwise seen on overdressed women at the opera or by the murderer in an Agatha Christie mystery. Where were they now? Had they been taken with the ring?

The bus slowed to a halt and he half-turned his body so that he faced the curved mirror that allowed a view of the bus’s doors below. He seemed fixated on the doors, but they did not open. I guessed the stop was one of those where the driver had to stop – do they call them ‘timing points’? – but I wasn’t sure: I had never travelled the route before. I would normally have got a taxi home, but it was a warm night so I had started to walk, unaware of the rainclouds developing in the darkness above my head. I was sheltering in a bus stop when the bus came along so I jumped on and asked the driver where would be the best place to get off. I won’t pretend that his first answer was altogether helpful, but eventually we found somewhere acceptable so I paid the fare and took a seat upstairs that was, as far as I could tell, out of his view and beyond any unwelcome conversation, where I sat, happily disengaged, until my ‘companion’ stumbled into his seat.

Eventually, after I’m not certain how long, maybe two or three minutes, the bus sighed, juddered into gear and pulled away from the kerb, and my companion dragged his attention away from the mirror. I felt a sudden pressure to speak, but I am the king of the non-committal nod. I have perfected the shy smile and slight eyebrow twitch to such a degree that I seldom find it necessary to actually engage anybody in conversation. It wasn’t going to work here though, was it? I knew I had to speak, but how to start? “You know, you really could do with a bath,” was honest, but not entirely tactful. “Excuse me, but is your name Geoffrey?” might lead him to think that I was confusing him with somebody else – I had no real basis whatsoever on which to assume that it really was his name. How do you start a conversation with a smelly, old man upstairs on a midnight bus that is not open to misinterpretation? “What’s a smelly old man like you doing on a shitty old bus like this and why, in God’s name, did you choose to sit next to me, putting me in this insidious position?” was probably not going to cut it. In the end, societal cowardice dictated my subsequent strategy. “Excuse me,” I muttered, half rising. “I think this is my stop.”

And it was then that I caught the unmistakable glint of reflected light from the knife blade as I felt it nestle uncomfortably against my side. I felt shocked at first, not by the action, but my reaction to it. I knew that I would not be unable to lunge past him and all that I could remember thinking was, “How has he kept that blade so shiny when he can’t even wash his bloody hands?” but I felt it unwise to enquire. I sat down heavily. Should I shout out for the driver who, without question, would not put himself in danger to help me? Strangely calm, I wondered whether this was how it was all going to end for me, on the top deck of a bus with a smelly old tramp, when a sudden realisation hit me, that he probably felt he was just protecting himself, that he himself had felt threatened by something that I had said or done. I raised my arms, palms open, as I believe it is done, and opened my mouth to speak, but he merely lifted one grimy finger to his lips and shushed quietly. “Money, phone and watch,” was all he said.

Sex and the Ovaltine Generation

It is a fact of life that some things become less important as you get older, and one of them is sex. Look, it’s ok, you wouldn’t turn it down if it was on offer, but would you give up a cup of tea and a slice of cake for it? It’s such a lot of fuss. All that… preparation… and always the nagging suspicion that you’re not doing something quite right. It’s fantastic when it works out well for both of you, but let’s face it, so is Sudoku. The temptation to retain at least some items of clothing grows daily – at least a cardigan and slippers in this house – and as mobility becomes more of an issue, it only really works anyway if you’re both laying on your back and staring at the ceiling. There is a growing realisation that a night together on a sheepskin rug in front of a roaring fire would just lead to slumber and the distinct possibility of a cocoa incident. Some things become less urgent and sex is simply one amongst many that takes second place to coffee and a Wagon Wheel*.

Age does bring some form of ‘body confidence’, a recognition that ‘it is what it is’, but seldom the desire to flaunt what now looks like sixteen stones of bleached tripe in front of anybody new. Certain conversations are never welcomed in the midst of bedtime activities: “Ooh, that’s a strange shape, isn’t it? Does it hurt?”; “Do you mind me asking, is that your breast or mine?”; “It’s no problem, I often do that when I bend my legs as well,” so it becomes imperative that any ‘companion’ is fully acquainted with what to expect before you accidentally switch the light on with your elbow and startle the cat.

One of the great advantages of long-term attachment is the absence of terminal embarrassment. How long is it before a partner becomes au fait with all of your physical peculiarities and emotional peccadilloes? I suppose it depends upon how many you have, but after a while it becomes increasingly difficult to surprise them any more. I have attempted to shock my own partner by leaping out on her, stark naked, when she least expected it, but she merely looked me up and down coolly and said ‘Are you going to get the doctor to look at that.’ Her mother though was far more startled.

Ambition is another thing that takes the fall as you age. My grandson is not going to be a racing driver, he is going to be the greatest racing driver ever. He is not going to be a pilot, he is going to be the test-pilot for the fastest jet ever built. He is not going to run further and faster than me, he is going to run faster and further than anybody ever. I retain ambitions, but they no longer involve anybody else. I will run, not faster or further than anybody else, but I will run. I will be a successful writer in that I will successfully write and should nobody else ever read what I have written, well, at least I liked it. I have ambitions for myself, but they no longer impact on anybody else. Nobody is ever going to be threatened by my presence; nobody’s prowess is ever going to be challenged.

There are things, of course, that become more important with age. Comfort begins to outweigh fashion. Velcro shoes, elasticated waistbands, zip-up cardigans, all designed for easy dressing rather than easy removal. Nobody over sixty ever wears buttons because top button never, ever aligns with top button-hole. The doorway to torment stands ajar for those with a button fly in a public toilet. It’s not that you want to look like a dork, it’s just that you know that you will, so you might as well do so comfortably. It’s a thin line we walk between dressing inappropriately young and inexcusably old. Nobody wants to be the man who looks just like his dad – well, maybe in some parts of Norfolk that can’t be avoided – we all want to look younger than our parents’ generation. There is a sudden and unpredictable point at which dressing in fashionable clothes simply makes it looks as if you’re trying too hard: when your whole appearance screams ‘desperate old man on the pull’. Walk into any pub in the country and you will be able to spot the middle-aged man waiting for his Tinder date by the fact that his clothes are ten years too young for him and his haircut is designed for the age he has claimed to be.

It’s a sad fact of life that as some of us live longer, more of us find ourselves alone and looking for new partners with whom to totter off into the void. Dating does not come easily as you get older. First date conversations could make a worktop anxious. We’ve all spent too long being ourselves to start pretending we’re somebody else: “Oh yes, I love to read” (the directions on a microwave meal for one); “I’m a great walker” (the off-licence is just around the corner); “I enjoy an odd glass of fine wine” (and many a gallon of Tesco Finest strong cider); “Oh yes, these are all my own teeth” (my father left them to me in his will). Telling the truth is not really what it is all about, is it? And there’s so much to misunderstand. “Do I want a ‘physical’ relationship? Well, I’ll arm-wrestle you if you like.” “Of course I believe in female equality. Shall we go to yours for a coffee? Mine’s like a shit-hole since the wife died.” “What do I know about the clitoris? Well, I think they make Allsorts out of it?”

In the end, it’s just as well that sex has become less of a priority and the time is right to ask the important question, “Do you like Countdown?” Sooner or later, you will get the right answer and it will be time to get the Hobnobs out. And if she asks you to stay the night, you can always hide her glasses…

*A chocolate-covered marshmallow and biscuit confection that, ironically, everybody believes used to be much bigger than it is now.

A Little Fiction – Frankie & Benny #3 – The Night Before

“You, my friend, were drunk.”
“I was not drunk, Frankie. I have not been drunk in many years.”
“You were slurring your words. Were you having a stroke?”
“No.”
“Then you were drunk.”
“Nobody else said that I was slurring my words.”
“Well, they wouldn’t would they? They wouldn’t want to upset you, in case you were having a stroke.”
“I was as sober as a Methodist christening. I was not slurring my words. I was not drunk.”
“You were most definitely not sober. I walked the several miles home with you.”
“Several miles? We were only across the road. Eight hundred yards at the most”
“As the crow flies, Benny, I’ll give you that. Eight hundred yards in a straight line, but you were not walking in a straight line. You, Benny my friend, walked as far backwards as you did forwards, and twice as far to the side. You were bouncing off parked cars and garden fences like a pinball. You were singing to the lamp-posts.”
“You’re exaggerating again. I know what you’re doing. Alright, I had drunk a little – as had you – but I was not drunk.”
“Ah well, ok, have it your own way. Have you checked your coat pocket, by the way?”
“My coat pocket? What for?”
“Why don’t you go and check?”
“…A mushroom vol-au-vent. What does that prove? Everybody sneaks food away from a buffet. It’s expected.”
“We weren’t at a buffet, Benny. You went through the baker’s bin on the way home. Check your other pocket.”
“…What the?…”
“Chicken Chow Mien, I believe.”
“I don’t even like Chicken Chow Mien.”
“I know. You kept bothering a young couple at the bus stop, telling them your life story and eventually they offered you some of their food to go away. You said that you didn’t actually like the fore-mentioned concoction – I seem to remember you showed them how the noodles get under your dentures – but that you’d take some home for the dog.”
“I don’t have a dog.”
“Indeed you do not. Nor do you have a parrot, but you also took their prawn crackers.”
“Oh dear. I must admit, I do have a bit of a fuzzy head this morning, but I don’t remember any of this. Are you sure you’re not winding me up here?”
“No. No, not at all… Well ok, maybe just a little bit. The landlord brought out the vol-au-vents after the quiz, that’s where you got that from.”
“And the Chow Mien?”
“That was from the couple at the bus stop.”
“Oh God… What were we even doing at a quiz, we’re both thick aren’t we?”
“I believe that is indeed what our teachers told us Frankie. A verdict I have never felt equipped to contradict.”
“So why were we doing a quiz?”
“There was a prize.”
“What?”
“A bottle of whisky.”
“And did we win it?”
“No, but we did drink one.”
“I think I’ll put the kettle on. Do you want a tea?”
“I wouldn’t say no. If I’m honest I feel a little out of sorts myself.”
“Do you want a biscuit?”
“Yes, and a couple of aspirin if you’ve got them.”
“…Why do we do it?”
“What?”
“Drink too much. At our age, why do we do it?”
“Well, I think that if we were sober, Benjamin my friend, we would not do it, but as soon as we get drunk, then we start to drink too much.”
“So you’re saying that if we didn’t start to drink at all, then we wouldn’t drink too much?”
“Precisely.”
“Well, that’s cleared that up for me then. Here, have a biscuit. I’ve only got Rich Tea I’m afraid.”
“Rich Tea? What happened to the Hobnobs?”
“I don’t have any.”
“You do, I was with you when you bought them yesterday.”
“I ate them.”
“When?”
“Last night when we got back from the pub. I also appear to have eaten several slices of toast and fried my last two eggs.”
“You ate your last two eggs?”
“You should listen to what I say Francis, perhaps clear some of that wax from your ears. I did not say that I ate my last two eggs, I said that I fried them.”
“So what did you do with them then?”
“Well, one of them I appear to have put in the fridge with a beer mat and a half-eaten spring roll.”
“And the other?”
“I have just found in my slipper…”
“So are you not going to wash your foot then?”
“I think I’ll just sit a minute first. Drink my tea… I might need to take a minute or two before… The yolk, you know… So how many of us did this quiz thing then? I mean, how many were in our team?”
“Just you and me old chum. Just you and me.”
“So we came last then?”
“Oh yes we did indeed. Very. But we did win a prize.”
“Really, what?”
“This.”
“A tiny cup. Very nice. I’ll keep it in my trophy cabinet with all the others. What does it say on it?”
“‘Wankers.’”
“Oh classy. Charming that. Quite a wag, that landlord, isn’t he?”
“He did apologize. He said that if he’d known we were going to take part, he would have had our names engraved on the loser’s trophy in advance.”
“Oh well, fair enough.”
“Yes, fair do’s, he could have insisted that the losers at least scored some points.”
“Did we not score any?”
“We never answered any, Benny. We spent the whole night arguing over our team name. I wanted to call us ‘Frankie and Benny’ – everyone knows who we are anyway – but you said it should be something clever and witty.”
“And?…”
“We couldn’t think of anything… How’s your head now?”
“Not so bad. I’m starving mind, how about you?”
“I could certainly go a fry-up.”
“Come on, I’ll just get this yolk off my sock and we’ll go and get one.”
“Ok. I fancy the whole works: fried bread, black pudding, mushrooms… That’ll sort me out.”
“Mind you, we did spend quite a lot at the pub last night. If you want, I could warm us something up here instead.”
“Oh yes, and what have you got?”
“How do you fancy Chicken Chow Mien?”

These chaps are currently my favourite characters. You can find their previous appearances here and here.

Growing Older, Growing Wiser, Growing Ears and Growing Nose

Apparently there are only two things that continue to grow, no matter how old a man gets, and these are his ears and his nose. This morning I looked in the mirror and contemplated life as Dumbo. Why does nature arrange for the two things of which I am already most conscious, to become an ever greater feature of my ebbing life (and, as it happens, face)? I suppose if things continue to develop as predicted, I might be able to wrap my ears around my face like a scarf and thus hide my giant conk. Why does age do these wild things to the body? I already have a prostate the size of a football and a bladder the size of a peanut: my brain has more holes than a Boris Johnson alibi. I don’t think that I am losing my memory yet. I don’t think that I am losing my memory yet, but I am acutely aware that my marbles stock is not what it was.

I have developed an alarming tendency to take myself very much more seriously than it is sane to do, so I have resolved to give myself a metaphysical slap around the face whilst I slip a virtual whoopee cushion under my ever-expanding arse. I try very hard to pop my own balloons. My mantra since returning to this bloggy fold has been to lighten up. I’m sixty three years of age, if I had anything of importance to say, I’m sure I would have said it by now. I have a head full of mulch, and if I’m going to start taking that seriously then I fear that an odd loose slate may well prove to be the least of my problems. This little blog of mine has always been about the vagaries of growing old. I write it, and I am getting old. It is a sad fact that, at its heart, it has always been all about me. (When I see that written down, it seems far more vain than it feels. It’s never been intended as a ‘Look at me’ kind of thing. It’s about me casting myself as some kind of ‘everyman’, imagining that if it happens to me, it must happen to everybody else and… Yes, ok, now I’ve read that out aloud it does seem even more vain now than it did a sentence ago…) As a man who is growing old, I feel uniquely qualified to write about what it feels like to be a man who is growing old – and mostly, it feels like this…

Age brings a two-pronged attack with both the brain and the body taking direct hits. Everything I once knew, I still know as well as I ever did – although it often takes a little longer to locate. I can work things out and I can think things through, but I’m sadly aware that the bit of the brain that learns ‘new stuff’ has, of late, developed a tendency to let its attention wander a bit. It doesn’t always remain present for the whole tutorial. It doesn’t necessarily put its hand up when it doesn’t understand what the flip is going on. It might, in fact, be wondering how long it can decently leave it before asking for a toilet break, instead of concentrating on left clicks and right clicks and how to stop taking selfies of its own ears.

I have a laptop at home and I’ve been bound to the countless variations of Windows for many, many years. I use an Apple computer at work and, despite it being for all intents and purposes merely a bigger version of the phone I have had for many years, it confuses the hell out of me. Why does it not do the same things, in the ways that I am used to? It would appear that I can cope perfectly well with the ‘new’ as long as it works exactly the same as the ‘old’. I am not one of life’s great adapters. Nature has not designed me to bend easily to the unfamiliar as I get older. I wonder, in fact, whether it actually intended me to do anything past the age of sixty. As far as life is concerned, I think my work is probably done. We are placed on this earth to have and to raise kids. Many of us have done that now and, with some element of relief, left it all behind us. We are now contributing to the nurture of our grandchildren: other people’s children / other people’s rules. I do not recall that being in the manual when I first became a parent. Grandparent Rules are different to Parent Rules. Who knew that they shouldn’t have chocolate if they don’t eat their greens? Who knew that ice cream and a ghost story is not the right way to tackle sleeplessness? Who knew that we were meant to say ‘No’ so often? As an old man I am well-versed in the absurdities of life: if I can teach my grandchildren to laugh at them, surely that must count for something.

As for the body, well, each successive blow does tend to knock the wind out of me just a little bit more. I can still run and chase well enough to tire out the kids, but I bet that they don’t need a hoist to get them out of bed in the morning. A single head-over-heels does not leave them needing traction. I am of an age when mutating cells conspire to overwhelm me and I would be lying if I said that in the quiet moments the prospect didn’t terrify me, but nobody wants a bedtime story from a fearful old man, so I become the me who is not concerned and therefore, by extension, not old. Growing old is just what happens. As the strap to this blog says, whatever its drawbacks, growing old is better than all the other available options. Life is not a battle: it is all we have got. It is full of love and laughter as well as an occasional pain in the back and a strange tic in the eyelid.

So we do what we do: we ease our conscience by buying a funeral plan – because we always wanted a free Parker pen – and in all other respects we completely ignore the specifics of what lies ahead. We learn to live for the day, and even with the realisation that ears the size of satellite dishes do not allow us to hear the television without cranking the volume up to eleven, we laugh about the fact that everybody mumbles these days. Surely a nose of this size (and growing) should mean that quite shortly I will not snore anything like so loudly during the Antiques Roadshow.

And if I’m honest, I’m not exactly certain how much bigger my lugs and hooter can get before I start to get blown over by the wind, but as long as I can still find a pinch of salt to take with my life, I think I’ll just about get by…

Fact is Fact and Truth is I’m Not Sure…

My head tells me many, many things that reality is unable to confirm. It has, fortunately, given up on trying to convince me that I am a handsome, six foot Adonis – that is six feet tall, obviously, and not a particularly good looking ant – but it does, unfortunately, continue to blithely disregard even the slightest fragment of reality in many other areas of my existence. I believe myself to be moderately intelligent, even though I have no physical evidence to back this up. I believe in the goodness of humankind. I know that there are bad people, but I believe that the only way in which they succeed and thrive is by pulling the wool over the eyes of all the good people. Bad people are able to do that, but not forever. They will get found out eventually and the good will succeed. I truly believe that, and it probably explains my peculiar attachment to rom-com. I know that the world is up to its neck in ordure at the moment, but I know that before the final titles it will come up smelling of roses. (Although my dad used to grow roses and, thanks to the local totter’s horse, they always smelled of shit.)

It is so hard to be certain that what you believe to be true is actually true. History is written by the victors. Scientific fact changes by the generation and, given that time is a man-made construct, what are we all messing about at? Everything I know about the Universe is so patently untrue. None of it makes sense, but the brains that tell me it does are so immense that I have to submit to them. They tell me that light travels at 299,792 kilometres per second – although I’m not certain who had the stopwatch when they measured it – and that nothing can exceed this speed. But what if Scotty managed to get his hands on some extra dilithium crystals? What if somebody actually found a way of speeding it up? The Earth wouldn’t orbit the Sun any faster, would it? (Would it? Blimey, I’m starting to worry about all those mirrors my wife has had me dot around the garden now.) The edge of the Universe (If Infinity can have an edge – discuss.) would still be just as far away. Wile E Coyote would still be just as far behind Roadrunner. Although you’d never be able to work out how far away a thunderstorm was.

Now, if I’m honest here, I think that I might be confusing Truth and Fact which, according to the Internet are not at all the same thing – although I have no idea how they differ. If something is true, is it not per se a fact? “I have no idea” is definitely both. Maybe a truth can be universally acknowledged, but not necessarily proven and, therefore, not fact. In fact, if truth isn’t provable then it isn’t true is it? And if truth isn’t true, then false may possibly not be untrue. Maybe Bill Clinton did ‘not have sex with that woman’. Who can prove that the Loch Ness Monster, Big Foot, Leprechauns, a barber who does not leave me looking like I’ve just been on a date with a Fly-Mo, do not exist? Just because they’ve never been seen, does not mean that they do not exist. Perhaps like Fairies, truth exists as long as people believe in it.

But fact is fact, isn’t it? It can be proved. Except… what if the methods we use to prove facts are faulty? What if we just don’t understand? What of all the times we’ve shaped the evidence to fit the facts? We all know that it takes more evidence to make us believe something we do not want to. We all know that crime is getting worse and no amount of contrary facts will change our opinion. Motivated Reasoning it is called: the tendency to give credence only to evidence that proves the facts we want to believe. The simple equation F=BSxDT² (where F = Fact, BS = Bullshit and DT = Donald Trump) applies. Blurry mobile phone footage of lights in the sky may prove the existence of extra-terrestrial beings to some, whilst to others it proves only the existence of magic mushrooms. I believe in Father Christmas: he is wholly good, so why would I possibly believe otherwise. There is no proof that he does not exist. Therefore he exists.

…And England will win the World Cup again before I die…

Perhaps fact is simply what we have seen with our own eyes. If we haven’t seen it (or evidence of it) then it isn’t true. I struggle with the concept of religion, not because I see any problem with the concept of good and bad – in my head neither can exist without the other – but because so few of the evil are allowed to do so very much harm to so very many of the good. All Gods are Just Gods, but I can’t help but think that if they held any proper sway at all, they would surely tilt the balance just a little bit the other way. And I in no way mean any disrespect to those who do have faith – quite the contrary – I just can’t find it in myself whilst the world is so full of shit. I would love to have belief – although I’m not at all convinced that belief wants me.

And now I have reached an age where my brain is actively trying to deceive me. It spends it’s time telling me ‘You can do that. You could do it fifty years ago, why on earth would you not be able to do it now?’ I recently asked my grandson if I could have a go on his skateboard. My brain told me what an excellent plan that would be, but my grandson was not so easily deceived. He said ‘No grandad, you might break.’ He is much wiser than I.

My brain can persuade me of many things, but it will never convince me that I am not an idiot.

The Running Man – The State of Play

However much of a surprise it is to you to find that I am still running, it is a bigger one to me. Like banging my head on a wall, I am sure that I will enjoy it when I stop, but none-the-less, I keep banging on. I still look like the World’s Worst Dressed every time I set out, in a collection of ‘gear’ that can only be described – at least with my limited vocabulary – as ‘motley’. I watch other runners as they trot by in their neon yellow vests, lycra shorts and trainers that cost more than my car: they do not sweat, they do not pant, they do not look as if somebody has just had a paint-stripper to their face. I do. In my slightly holey T-shirt, baggy shorts and trainers that I borrowed from my brother and never returned, I still look like I spend my time testing fan ovens from the inside. I want to feel better when I am running, but no matter how often I do it, I never do. I always think that I feel worse. I don’t of course. That would not be possible. But, and here is the crucial point, when I don’t run, I definitely do feel worse. Each time I take a break, I feel the pressing need to run again and every time I run again, I definitely feel much worse than I did before it. Each time I sit at home with a pint of beer, a vegan pastie and nine series of Still Game on iPlayer I feel great, but guilty. I’m not good with guilt. Each time I set out, guilt-free and bereft of all pastry I feel as though I should feel great, but I don’t. I feel great when I set off – sometimes for seconds. I feel great about running, but I feel terrible doing it.

I have recently returned to the jogging throng after recovering from a chest virus and a bad back – neither of which, I suspect, would have dragged me so far down ten years ago. Throw in a holiday and I missed running for six weeks in all. I put weight on much quicker than I could ever lose it. I would have drunk much more, but I got out of breath pulling the corks. And all the time I wasn’t running I was wishing that I was. And as soon as I was, I was wishing that I wasn’t. It has become habit. It’s a strange fact of life (well, mine at least) that I only ever really want to do something when there is a perfectly valid reason why I cannot. It is another strange quirk of existence that whenever I really don’t want to do something, I can never find a suitable impediment.

So, after a fitful return to the regular routine, I am fully back on it. I run because I know that I will feel worse about not doing it than I do whilst doing it. It’s like voting. I know that I must either waste my vote by gifting it to somebody who has absolutely no prospect of success, or I use it to elect somebody who I know will disappoint me. I would like not to vote, but it might allow somebody of whom I do not approve (anybody vain enough to stand for election) to sneak into power. So I vote, in the certain knowledge that I will regret it before the envelope hits the bottom of the post box. I haven’t been to a polling station in years. I don’t like the false good-humour and the forced formality of it all. I particularly don’t like standing behind a partially drawn curtain, staring at an ill-printed scrap of destiny, desperate to do the right thing, but certain that it will be wrong.

I have had similar problems in returning to this little routine. Unusually, for me, I was laid as low in spirit as I was in health and I decided that I should pour such energy as I could muster into a long-form piece of tom foolery through which, for better or for worse, I breezed. I had four characters – all of them me – who I knew and understood. I had a plot (I am perhaps stretching things a little by using the word ‘plot’, but I knew what had to happen and, even though it was precious little, it did) and my characters just found their own way to the end. I enjoyed picking up threads. Each evening’s finish provided the following morning’s start and nothing more taxing than, ‘now, where was I?’ When my characters wandered off-piste, I didn’t have to worry about them. I just let the others take the strain whilst I waited for them to find their own way back. When it was done, I read it through. It made sense – at least to me it did – and it made me laugh (although I’m not certain that it is good form to admit that). It was one of those diversions where you discover a beautiful country church that you never knew existed, in the garden of a pub, that sells ice cream…

I have found my return to the short-form to be slightly more problematic. I want to do it, I love to do it, but somehow I have just not found the groove yet. I don’t want to keep on doing the same old thing, but then I remember that this little column is my life, and my life, pretty much, is the same old thing. It works only as long as I don’t over-think it. Someone else can do the thinking: somebody who is good at it. I should do what I am good at – and I will, just as soon as I find out what it is. Whatever it is, I’m pretty certain it will not involve too much in the way of cogitation and, if I’m honest, only a very limited amount of actual doing. It might involve thinking about doing – just as long as I don’t have to explain it to anybody else.

So anyway, there you have it, the current state of play as I ease myself back into routine – still running, still writing, still no idea why the Earth orbits the sun, why cake goes hard and biscuits go soft, why I am happy to think of myself as a running man, but most definitely not a runner. Why I fear I will forever be a man who writes, but never a writer…

A Little Fiction – Conversations with a Bearded Man (part 7) – Helpline

For Ellie (Mrs Underfelt) – who said she liked this character.

“…I knew it would be you as soon as I dialled. How do you do it?”
The voice at the other end of the phone was exactly as I had grown to know, except for an air of confusion with which I was not familiar but, never being one to let doubt get in the way of indignation, I pressed on none-the-less. “Your card in the newsagent’s: how did you know that I would see it? How did you know that I would call?”
“Call?”
I quoted directly from the card that I had removed from the shop window. “‘Tired? Lonely? Need to hear a friendly voice? Just ring,’ and then it’s got your phone number.”
“My number? Are you sure?”
“It’s the number I just dialled.”
“But I don’t have a card in the newsagent’s.”
“Yeh, right.” I said, regretting my tone instantly. “So how come I just got you?”
“You must have mis-dialled.”
“That really is…” I wanted to say preposterous, but the notion was simply so far-fetched that I was already checking the number on the card against the number I had dialled. It was, of course, one digit different. That single digit had connected me with the man I know as Lorelei. But how? How is it even possible to dial what now amounts to a virtually random phone number, and get him. It must be some kind of trick – a mind-game or something. Maybe I was having some kind of psychotic episode. Perhaps I’d been brainwashed, or hypnotised, or… I have no idea what… I would wake up soon and find that this was all a dream.
“So, are you?” His voice pricked into my brain like defeat into an ego.
“Am I what?”
“Tired? Lonely?”
I wanted to say ‘no’, but I knew that he would see right through that. Why had I rung the number in that case? I really didn’t want this man to think that I might have been trying to contact the kind of person who routinely displays their phone number in the newsagent’s window. “Well, I’m tired of how things are. Does that make sense?”
“I don’t know. What sort of things?”
“I thought I was making progress. I thought that she might have been ready to change her mind, but instead she just told me that she was getting married again and…”
“Ah, this will be your ex-wife.”
“The new man is called Duncan. Bloody Duncan! He sounds like a Blue Peter presenter.”
“I thought you had put that particular situation behind you. I thought you said you were moving on.”
“Duncan has a sports car. Duncan has his own house. Duncan, apparently, wears clean socks every day and doesn’t behave like a three year old when things don’t go his way.”
“Ah, so you’ve not moved on quite so far as you might have hoped then?”
“The thing is, I’ve done everything she asked.”
“Have you?”
“Well, I listened.” Even through the mobile phone I could sense his eyebrows arching. “There was a lot to take in,” I explained. “She had a lot to say. It appears that I have quite a lot of faults.”
“I don’t suppose you can remember what any of them are?”
“Not really – she might have a point with the not listening thing I suppose – but the other stuff… I’m willing to try.”
“She doesn’t want you to though, does she?”
“Not now she’s got Duncan. Good old Dunc’…”
“She was alone too, just like you, although without the six foot pile of takeaway containers in the kitchen and a mound of dirty socks in the bidet, obviously.”
“She left me. She started the divorce. She said we were both unhappy.”
“And?”
“…It’s bloody infuriating.”
“She doesn’t want you to be lonely.”
“She wants me to meet somebody. To ease her conscience.”
He sighed the kind of sigh that, even over the phone, comes accompanied with a world-weary roll of the eyes. “Where are you?” he asked.
“I’m in the park,” I answered. “It’s the nearest thing I get to excitement these days. Can I get home without treading in dog shit? Can I sit on a bench without having my hat stolen by a gang of feral kids?”
“You’re not even wearing a hat.”
“How can you possibly know that? I…” I looked at my phone only briefly before ending the call. “Don’t tell me,” I said, turning to face the man who I knew I would find standing beside me, “you just happened to be in the park as well.”
“I like to walk,” he said. “I like to meet people. It’s a good way to meet people, don’t you think?”
“I’m not really lonely you know,” I said.
“I know,” he said. “Let’s have an ice cream.” We joined the short queue to the kiosk. “And we’ll see where life takes us.”
“Beautiful day,” said the woman in front of us, trying to defy gravity by remaining upright with a bouncing toddler dangling erratically from her arm. She smiled apologetically as a whirling hand caught me a glancing blow a-midriff and gently eased the child out of range. “I brought my nephew to play. An ice cream is a small price to pay, don’t you think? It’s so nice not to be staring at the walls.”
I waited for Lorelei to fill the void, but he was silent; smiling benignly at me, the woman and the world in general. He had a look of contentment that, as ever, I found impossible to understand. I tried to grin my way out of the situation, but the silence was becoming increasingly awkward.
“Do they still do 99’s?” I asked nobody in particular.
“I hope so,” said the woman. “Otherwise I’ll have to get a Flake from the newsagents on the way home. I’ll be particularly unhappy if they don’t do sprinkles.” She smiled. Quite a nice smile, in its own way. “Sara,” she said. “My name is Sara.”
“Jim,” I said. “It’s nice to meet you. And this is?…” I looked down at the child clinging to Sara’s hand.
“Oh this,” she said. “I’ve really no idea. He’s not my nephew really, I just picked him up at the playground. It’s so much easier to talk to people if you’ve got a child with you, don’t you think?” I could feel my mouth dropping open. “It’s a joke,” she grinned. “Of course I know his name… It’s written in the back of his coat.” The smile again. “This is Tom. Say hello Tom.”
“Aunty Sara’s going to buy me an ice cream,” said Tom clinging tightly to her hand. “We’re both having sprinkles.”
Lorelei coughed quietly. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve just…” He turned to the woman in the queue. “I’m sorry Sara – I hope it’s ok for me to call you Sara – I hope you don’t think me terribly rude, but I have to go. It’s been good to meet you. I hope you enjoy your ice cream.”
“We will,” I replied in perfect harmony with Sara and Tom as Lorelei turned and wandered quietly away.
“And don’t be lonely,” he said. “I’m just a call away…”
“I know,” said Sara…

The first conversation with the bearded man is here: A Little Fiction – New Book (Title Unknown) – Introduction (Conversations with a Bearded Man part one)
The second conversation is here: A Little Fiction – A Further Excerpt from a Different Unfinished Novel (Conversations with a Bearded Man part two)
The third conversation is here: A Little Fiction – A Further Further Excerpt from a Different Unfinished Novel (Conversations with a Bearded Man part 3)
Conversation four is here: A Little Fiction – Lorelei (Conversations with a Bearded Man, part 4)
Conversation five: A Little Fiction – Conversations with a Bearded Man (part 5) A Pre-Christmas Exchange
Conversation six: A Little Fiction – Conversations with the Bearded Man (part 6)

I believed that these conversations might end here, but I’ve been asked a number of times to resurrect this character and so I’m trying to think how I might do it without him wandering out of a shower to find that it’s all been a dream…

Back on the Bike

Life is a lesson which, much like nuclear physics, it is almost impossible to learn.

I felt that I needed a break, and now I have taken it. I have done something else and now I am back, doing what I feel – although I am pretty sure that few will agree – I I am probably best at. When I was at school – back in the days of six of the best, free warm milk andReligious Education classes that studied nothing more exotic than Catholicism – it was called Creative Writing or, as I now prefer to call it, writing. If I have a skill – a point, so moot that I do not think it is even open to debate – it lies in my ability to drop words onto a page in a creative way. Not meaningful, not logical and, if I’m honest, seldom entertaining, but definitely creative. For me, spelling is a doddle, syntax is now what syntax has always been, but oh my word, grammar gives me so much trouble. I just love a comma. If there is even the slightest possibility of a pause, I bung one in, I mean, how wrong can it be? In truth, it bothers me that, although I have the warped intelligence to understand almost all of this year’s offside rules, I still can’t figure out a semi-colon. Anyway, the first thing I have learned whilst I have been away is that it really doesn’t matter: a fairy does not die every time I wrongly use a parenthesis (which I do quite often). It might not be right, but as long as the majority of readers can understand it, well, it’s almost fifty years since I stumbled to an almost acceptable ‘O’ level grade, and most of those who told me that I’d never amount to anything are too dead to gloat. If you struggle with my ‘style’ – a definition so loosely applied that its trousers will almost certainly fall down – I apologise. I do try my best. I will try to improve, but I dare not promise.

During the last few weeks I have also learned that nobody wants to listen to me moaning all the time. The more I moan, the less I live, and the less I live, the more I moan. I have grown to realise that nobody cares: they’ve all got quite enough problems of their own. It is ok to wryly raise an eyebrow to the vagaries of life, but only if you’re happy with people pointing at you and calling you a pompous prat. With the possible exception of Roger Moore, nothing good ever came from a raised eyebrow. Sharing a point of view is perfectly valid, as long as you do not believe that it is necessarily the right one. However many people agree with you, there will almost always be more who disagree. Everybody is entitled to an opinion. Everybody else is entitled to oppose it. In the UK we have a specific breed of person* who believes that, as it is their legal right to air their views no matter how caustic they are, they should take every opportunity to do so. They justify this by claiming that they are ‘merely saying what everybody else is thinking’. If they are right, then I think I’d like to move. Probably to another universe.

I have begun to understand that my readers (God bless you!) want absolutely nothing from me but five minutes of entertainment: I do not need to score points or change opinions. Every time I get a comment saying that something I have written has raised a smile, I walk a little taller for the rest of the day.

In the past I have occasionally tried to bring some continuity into my writing with ‘The Writer’s Circle’ and, more recently ‘The Beginner’s A-Z of D.I.Y Subversion’, but I realised that in this way, I can only ever lose readers: nobody ever starts to read from the middle. I toyed with writing an ‘instant novel’ this time around – a single, one-thousand word chapter, once a week for a year and voila! the book is done – until it struck me that at my normal rate of attrition, I would be out of readers by chapter seven, and probably being sued by WordPress for misuse of its platform by week thirteen. Certain characters have reappeared quite successfully in the past (Dinah & Shaw, The Bearded Man, The Men in the Pub and more recently Frankie & Benny) and will continue to do so. They are the kind of characters that I like to write, so they will be back. These random snatches of conversation with no beginning and no end are a joy to write and fit beautifully into my newly found ethos: I like it, I’ll do it, it’s fine.

I live a life that is thankfully devoid of great drama. I’m happy with that. I have no desire to report from my own experience on anything that would cause Huw Edwards to further curl his lip. I do not wish to appear, scowling, on the front page of the local newspaper. Equally, I am more than happy to be able to report on a split fingernail, my confusion with the universe in general, or the thing that I have just found at the back of the sock drawer. Providing I can eke out a thousand words and a joke or two, my life is ripe for the reporting. I have no axe to grind, which is just as well as the last time I actually attempted to use one, I managed to smack myself on the forehead (fortunately with the blunt end) and catapult the piece of wood at which I was aiming, through the greenhouse roof.

Anyway, I’ve taken my break and I am about to return – like Rickets apparently – and all that I am saying, I think – although I can never be sure – is that what you are likely to get from now on, following this brief tarriance and reappraisal of my life is… well, exactly the same as you got before, If I’m honest.

I thought it only fair to warn you.

*The male of this peculiar, preening species is known as ‘Piers Morgan’ and the female as ‘Katie Hopkins’. As I wrote this piece I found that the erstwhile Ms Hopkins’ name was eluding me. I found it by Googling ‘obnoxious opinionated woman’. I’m pretty certain if I tried to, I could bring up Mr Morgan’s name with a single word enquiry. (Actually, I must admit that I have just tried it and it doesn’t work. It does, however, pull up many images that could lead to me losing my seat in parliament.)