The Beginner’s A-Z of D.I.Y Subversion (Diatribe to Dynamite)

DIATRIBE A bitter, sharply abusive denunciation, attack, or criticism. Known in subversive circles as ‘conversation’. There is little point in speaking about anyone at all except in derogatory terms. All subversives are bitter about something, be it the blatant oppression of the working classes by the ruling elite; the exploitation of minority groups in our supposedly egalitarian society, or the price of deodorised socks at the Co-op, and will waste no time in denouncing¹ any or all of them.

^{1. The most important thing to remember about the act of denunciation is that it does not encumber the denouncer with any responsibility, e.g. suggesting a solution to the problem. This is the job of politicians – who really should know better.}

DICTATOR (See Despot – above) Charlie Chaplin played The Great Dictator in a film, only to find that a Mr A Hitler subsequently plagiarised his creation and went on to achieve worldwide notoriety without having to eat liquorice boots. Many historians have considered how the impact of the Second World War might have been lessened had Mr Hitler been as funny as Mr Chaplin, but on closer examination of the latter’s films, most are forced to agree that he was.

DIM Rather stupid. It is impossible to underestimate the importance of dim people to your organisation. With proper persuasion, they will do all the things that you are far too scared to do. Also, when captured by the authorities, they will waste no time in admitting to anything at all, as long as the policeman offers to share his Smarties.

DIGESTIVE A medicine which aids digestion. More importantly, a biscuit. Should you ever find yourself in gainful employment, always strive to assume control of the staff tea fund. Once in this lofty position of power, replace the digestives with Rich Tea and watch the fun begin¹. Remember that, whatever is claimed to the contrary, the tea fund never did stretch to Custard Creams and always offer to reinstate the Digestives in return for an increase of the weekly subs. Be prepared to deny emphatically that the quality of the tea has fallen during your time in charge and also that the tea money has, in any way, contributed towards your new Rolex watch, whilst pointing out the importance of proper timekeeping in the delivery of the tea. Always keep a separate stash of Supermarket Own-Brand Rich Tea, which can be passed off as ‘low-sugar’ or ‘gluten-free’ as required and a small pack of Jammie Dodgers for the exclusive consumption of the person in charge of the photocopier and the recently divorced hottie in accounts.

^{1. It is a universally acknowledged truth that absolutely nobody likes Rich Tea biscuits – with the possible exception of vicars’ wives, who do so solely on a cost basis, and Supermodels, for whom a single biscuit provides a)100% of their daily nutritional requirements. b) A convenient ashtray. c) A nice shiny surface from which to snort their actual daily nutritional requirements.}

DISMEMBER To sever limb from limb. Probably not the best course of action for the do-it-yourselfer. To be efficient at this you need a sharp knife and a strong stomach. It does make a dreadful mess in the bathroom and, unless you feel you really have to make a point, I recommend you dismember something with far less blood, gristle and sinew than the average human being. Try a chocolate digestive biscuit, a plastic duck or Donald Trump (please).

DISSENT To disagree with the methods, goals, etc., of a political party or government; take an opposing view. Does this make you a subversive? No, this makes you normal. Governments in general serve only one rational function, that of being the focus of dissent. It is perfectly logical to hold in contempt anyone who always knows what is best for you. Government is full of them¹. It is also full of people who know that what is good for you isn’t necessarily good for them.

^{1. Politics is the only profession for which being called a ‘sanctimonious prig’ is considered a good thing.}

DODGE To evade by sudden shift of place. What one does with all responsibility.

DOMESDAY Archaic word meaning ‘The day of Judgement’. Generally associated with the Domesday Book, an early census, ordered by William the Conqueror, who wanted to know exactly how much he could screw out of whom. Think combined Census and Tax Return with the implicit threat of disembowelment for non-payment.

DOOMSDAY The Day of Judgement. Your afternoon in Magistrates Court – £25 fine and bound over for two weeks. Also, excluded from all branches of McDonalds until April.

DOWNHILL Into a worse or inferior condition. The direction in which your life is heading. Generally, unless you are wearing skis, it is not considered ‘a good thing’ to reach the bottom first. Even in Downhill Skiing, one is expected to reach the nadir with some form and grace; not with one shoe missing, a fat lip and a tampon up one nostril. Also, remember that not even Franz Klammer was able to walk back up the mountain, no matter how quickly or elegantly he got down it. A couple of paper cupfuls of gluhwein down at the bottom end and you’re staying there baby.

DUEL A prearranged combat between two persons, fought with deadly weapons according to an accepted code of procedure, esp. to settle a private quarrel. Once an invitation to duel has been accepted, it is considered extremely bad form to hide behind one’s girlfriend pretending to be a non-English speaking Lithuanian with a dodgy leg. You will be considered a complete cad if you do not go ahead with the duel and die with honour. Duels are traditionally fought at dawn, with either swords or pistols. (If you are offered the choice of weapons, go for celery. Contempt is much easier to handle than fatal wounding.)

DUET A piece of music for two performers. What you thought you’d read when you accepted the invitation to a duel.

DUODENUM The first portion of the small intestine, from the stomach to the jejunum¹. The first indicator that you are actually properly scared.

^{1. The section of the small intestine between the duodenum and the ileum – and you think your job, stacking supermarket shelves, is grim.}

DYNAMITE High explosive. Much like next-door’s glue-sniffing son, this is never to be approached with an open flame. Much like next-door’s glue-sniffing son, dynamite can have a devastating effect on the neighbourhood. Unlike next-door’s glue-sniffing son, dynamite is very rarely sick on your rhododendrons.

ASSIGNMENT.

Place a soft-boiled egg up a politician’s exhaust (or that of his car).

The Beginner’s A-Z of D.I.Y Subversion Index is here

The Beginner’s A-Z of D.I.Y Subversion (DDT to Devil)

DDT Hydrocarbon compound, an effective insecticide. Many of the people you will encounter in the pursuit of your subversive activities would benefit greatly from a spray down with this. Pay special attention to all warm, moist areas: The Amazonian Rain Forest, North West India, all regions generally covered by underwear.

DAMAGE To injure or impair. It is a legitimate course of action to cause damage to those who themselves cause damage on a much greater scale. There are those who would damage our communities, our countries, our planet and, were they to be given the opportunity, probably several others across the universe. Now is the time to rise up and damage their cause. It is impossible for even the seasoned subversive not to take sides. Sit on the fence and you will get your balls creosoted. Think of your children. If you don’t have children, think of somebody else’s children. If you don’t like children, think of yourself.

DANGER Exposure to injury; jeopardy; risk. Oh, dear me, no! No, no, no, no, no! Exposure to injury is to be avoided at all cost. Besides serving no useful purpose whatsoever, injury is in itself a foreign word to the subversive. It translates as ‘Pain’. Pain is exclusively reserved for the benefit of others. Pain is to be inflicted. Pain is most certainly not to be endured. Some people thrive on danger. To the brave, it is like a drug. To the subversive it is like a laxative. It is best never to get involved in anything that could, in anyway, be considered dangerous.

DEATH Extinction of life. Death is not a skeletal figure dressed in black, carrying a scythe¹. Death is an insurance salesman. Death is called Nigel. Death works at a call centre in Mumbai. He got your phone number from the HMRC website.

^{1. An agricultural hand-tool for mowing grass or reaping crops. How it became associated with Death, I am not certain. A scythe is used in the reaping of crops and Death is, of course, The Grim Reaper. I Googled ‘Grim Reaper’ and got a short piece about a heavy metal band from Droitwich. I also accidentally Googled ‘Grim Reeperbahn’, which I do not recommend as a course of action, and I would like to make it known, here and now, that I have never met the lady.}

DEBACLE A confused rout. Now here is a word I know all about. My whole life is confusion – at least I think it is, I’m not sure. A rout is any overwhelming defeat, which just goes to prove that my wife is completely correct when she describes my entire life as a debacle.

DEBATE Contention in words or arguments; discussion; controversy. To dispute; to deliberate. Forget it. Politicians do it all the time – and look at them. The gentle art of persuasion is best served with a baseball bat. Do not deliberate – it merely postpones the painful realisation that you haven’t a clue what you’re talking about. Debate requires at least two parties and has three rules:

Don’t get involved.
If you do get involved, always stand by an open door.
Write down very clearly the points you wish to make and, in an emergency, use the list to set fire to the other person’s trousers.

DEBAUCH To corrupt; to pervert; to riot; to revel. Excess in eating or drinking; lewdness. This sounds like so much fun, the government will almost certainly tax it in the next budget.

DEFEAT Frustration; overthrow; loss of battle. Try to avoid all possibility of defeat by never openly being drawn into battle. If you should become embroiled in a literary battle, use a pen-name and, if possible, somebody else’s typewriter or cut letters out of the newspaper. If you are drawn into a verbal battle, remember always to speak slowly and quietly. Very quietly if your opponent is bigger than yourself. Keep calm when stating your own arguments and listen carefully and patiently to those of your adversary before destroying them with your incisive wit and perception. It is also a good tactic to stand behind them and pull faces. Should you get drawn into a physical battle you have two basic choices: flight or fight. Of course, one of them is right and the other one is fight. If all possible escape routes are blocked, and a physical confrontation becomes inevitable, you must immediately adopt the correct stance. This is best known as the foetal position. Roll up in a ball, as tightly as you can, and whimper softly¹.

Never worry about losing face – it does not hurt as much as getting beaten up.

^{1. Foam at the mouth if at all possible: your opponent will a) believe that you are in need of medical attention and will not want to get involved in all the questions that are associated with a 999 call (the answers to which are all ‘I don’t know’) b) will not want to get sputum all over his brand new linen trousers and c) will have just the vaguest suspicion that you might have rabies and/or a trapped fish bone – the consequences of either being far more messy than they would want to risk.}

DESPERADO Desperate fellow; reckless ruffian. A media word for subversive. If you like the sound of this title, do not wash or change your underwear for a week.

DESPOT (See Dictator – below) A king or other ruler with absolute, unlimited power; autocrat; any tyrant or oppressor. Everything that you most revile. Everything that you’d most like to be. You could buy a dog, but remember that even the dimmest of canines might be inclined to answer back now and again – also it is not easy to remain imperious with dog crap on your slippers.

DEVASTATE To lay waste; render desolate. The effect that the dedicated subversive can have on an ‘All U Can Eat Oriental Buffet’ during its £4.95 Afternoon Special session. Also the effect that certain prawn dishes in the above may have on the hungry subversive after they have sat in lukewarm water for four and a half hours under a dodgy heat lamp. (You know that I meant the prawns and not the subversives.)

DEVIL (1) The supreme spirit of evil. I drank some of this on holiday in Bulgaria and spoke Swahili for three days afterwards.

DEVIL (2) An atrociously wicked, cruel, or ill-tempered person. You will meet a lot of these. Tell them that you have wandered into the Job Centre by mistake and, anyway, you can’t attend a job interview right now because you have a bunion.

DEVIL (3) A person who is very clever, energetic, reckless, or mischievous. Exactly the kind of person that you do not want in your band of desperadoes, but will almost certainly be first in the queue to join you. Allow them to become a member at your peril. Finding your shoes super-glued to the pub floor is all well and good the first time it happens, but can become seriously annoying, particularly when you are trying to evade the landlord.

DEVIL (4) (Cookery) a grill with Cayenne pepper. Something that you do with kidneys – although God knows why. As far as I am aware, kidneys serve only one purpose in the culinary world, e.g. something to pick out of steak and kidney pie.

The Beginner’s A-Z of D.I.Y Subversion Index is here

If the Shirt Fits…

I sit down this evening with not a single idea in my head of what I want to say, nor how to say it. I’d love to be able to claim that this is an unusual scenario, but I cannot. It is my normal practice. It is how I travel through life. Or wander. ‘Travel’ sounds premeditated. It indicates that I have a destination in mind; a route planned. I do not. In reality, I ping around like a ball-bearing in a bagatelle. Each time I sit down to write, I have five or six what-I-can-only-loosely-describe-as ‘ideas’ kicking about between my ears, but no concept of the A to Z of them. I decide which I am going to work on (by a process known as ‘see what appears on the page first’) with no idea of where it is going to lead me, but with the fairly certain knowledge that everything else that is washing about in my cranium will end up dripping in there at some stage. The denouement, such as it is, comes as it comes, generally at the end, and I stop as soon as I reach it. That’s how it works. Or, on days like today, doesn’t.

That doesn’t mean that I don’t, on occasion, hit the page with something specific to say. I’m like everybody else: I do have opinions that I believe everybody else should share. They just tend to get drowned in the inconsequential. Nothing is quite as beguiling as the trivial. Ok, I might hit the top of the page full of my intention to expose the lunatic Putin, but I all too soon get distracted by his wallpaper, the fact that he always likes to sit on a throne and wear shirts that are patently too tight. He’s as rich as Croesus, surely he could persuade somebody to make him a collar that doesn’t look like it is slowly removing his ever-ballooning bean. And that, of course, leads me on to the state of my own fat head.

I am an anti-tie wearer, because to do so leaves me in a quandary with only two wholly unsatisfactory solutions:
a) Wear a shirt of the correct size, but with a collar that does not come within two inches of fastening, or
b) Wear a shirt that has a collar of sufficient size to encircle my obviously massively engorged neck, which means that the rest of me is draped inside something that could easily accommodate a family of four on a camping trip to the Algarve. Do I want to look deformed or disrespectful? (Generally I opt for ‘disrespectful’ because anyone that knows me, knows that I am not.) I might be ploughing a lone furrow here, but I cannot for the life of me see what purpose is served by a necktie: so few appear comfortable in them. Most carry the facial expression of interrupted strangulation. Why is it necessary to attend an interview, for instance, looking like your head does not belong to your body: like it has been surgically removed and replaced onto the wrong shoulders by a dyspraxic chimp? Does the job go to the person who looks least like he has been decapitated?

I am equally uneasy, though, with the ‘casual wear only’ instruction. You see it all the time on funeral arrangements: ‘Bright colours only please’. Some people never wear bright colours (other than on the golf course): they look uncomfortable and unhappy in them. They would be comfortable in a black suit and tie, so why dictate otherwise? My own funeral guidance, should I have any input into it, will read ‘Wear whatever you like. I don’t care. Thank you for coming.’

…And then my attention is caught by something I wrote at the head of the previous paragraph. Why, I wonder, do people who spend their whole life in ‘appropriate clothing’ – suit for work, polo shirt (neutral colour) for impromptu barbecue, and expensively-labelled T-shirt and over-ironed jeans for the weekend – let it all go in an explosion of non-matching pastel on the golf course? Is it because these links are the exclusive domain of the privileged and, therefore, appearances do not have to be kept up?* ‘I can wear peach-coloured chinos and a duck blue shirt because everybody knows that I wouldn’t be here if I couldn’t afford a Saville Row suit and hand-made brogues. They can tell from my bag of sticks that I’m loaded.’ I have, myself, attempted to play golf on odd occasions and I have never been anything like as embarrassed by my own incompetence as by my complete lack of checked knitwear.

All sporting activities, of course, offer the unbridled opportunity to make a complete tit of oneself. I remember, with some discomfort, a long-ago attempt to play bowls on a seaside visit. (The white coat and flat-cap kind of bowling – not the cool Fonz game.) Having hired our balls (or ‘woods’ as we were instructed to call them) we set out onto an empty green and wizzed the jack off, diagonally and at speed across the sward. The be-tweeded reprimand was swift and decisive. We learned very quickly that we were expected to stick to our own ‘rink’ so as not to interfere with the other players (of which there were none). Well, rules are rules and, having been made aware of them, we adhered to them. The incident has stuck with me because the lady bowler was so patient in her explanation of what we were doing incorrectly, but also very obviously at a complete loss as to how we could not have known the proper ‘form’ in the first place.

It’s about doing things properly, isn’t it? It’s about thinking things through. If you’re going to play a game, you learn the rules. If you’re going to invade a peace-loving country, killing thousands and displacing millions, you have to follow the correct protocol. You have to have at least some modicum of rational justification. You have to have the courage to allow your own people to see the atrocities you are committing in their name. You have, at the very least, to find a way to avoid being guilty of genocide simply because you imagine that the rest of the world doesn’t take you seriously enough.

Even the vainest of gangsters can’t necessarily buy a shirt that fits properly.

*The answer is ‘Yes’ – obviously.

Below are five quotes by Josef Stalin (the well known and moderate Russian leader)…
“Everyone imposes his own system as far as his army can reach”
“Do you remember the Tsar? Well I’m like a Tsar”
“The only real power comes out of a long rifle”
“When there’s a person, there’s a problem. When there’s no person, there’s no problem”
“People who cast votes decide nothing. The people who count votes decide everything”
…Nice man. Thank goodness we’ve no-one like him now…

A Little Fiction – Goodbyes (Frankie & Benny #2)

“Well Francis my friend, that was a pleasant kind of morning, don’t you think?”
“Oh yes, certainly. You can’t beat a good funeral, can you?”
“No, you can’t. Indeed you can’t. Providing, of course, that it’s done right.”
“Oh yes, has to be done right.”
“Proper mourning. None of that happy-clappy nonsense. Proper solemn hymns. I like a good hymn.”
“Traditional, yes. A good traditional hymn, where the words don’t fit the tune properly and the verses don’t rhyme unless you pronounce them wrong.”
“Yes, nothing worse than being asked to sing something that sounds like it might have been written by Gary bloody Barlow. I am at a funeral, not a Take That concert. I do not wish to clap along. I do not wish to shake my hips. I do not want my vicar to wear a kaftan.”
“And I don’t want to celebrate the life of the dearly departed either: he was a miserable bugger anyway. Wouldn’t have appreciated a good joke at his own expense when he was alive, let alone now he’s in a box.”
“You knew him then?”
“Who?”
“The fella in the box.”
“No, no… not at all. I was just generalising. I didn’t recognise a soul. I thought the widow was very dignified though.”
“Even when they had to lower her down into the grave to get her bracelet out.”
“Always a perilous business, chucking soil down into a hole. Fraught with danger…”
“Nice to get out in the fresh air though. Get a bit of sunshine.”
“Definitely, beats a cremation. Who wants to sit indoors for twenty minutes just to see the curtain come around and knock the flowers over? Who wants to listen to the corpse’s favourite song when you could be on your feet banging out ‘Jerusalem’?”
“…Did I see you putting money in the collection, by the way?”
“Changing really. Couple of those coins in there that you can sell on Ebay, so I swapped them for a couple of bog-standard. Nobody loses out and possibly I might make a bob or two. Silver linings and all that.”
“Do you know how to put them on Ebay?”
“Not a clue, but still, better in my pocket than the vicar’s.”
“Have you ever considered your own funeral, my friend?”
“How so?”
“Well, what hymns you would have, what prayers… who would read your eulogy?”
“I don’t suppose it will be you: you’re three years older than me.”
“Fitter mind.”
“Do you reckon?”
“I traipse half way across the estate and up the stairs to your flat every day. All you ever manage is a stroll to the pub.”
“I walk a lot faster than you. You dawdle. Dawdle, dawdle, dawdle, like you’ve not a care in the world… Mind you, there’s no doubt why you want me to get to the bar before you, is there?”
“Nor why you never decide to have a pie until the second pint. ‘Oh look, it’s Benny’s round. I think I quite fancy a chomp on a chicken & mushroom.’”
“…I’ve written it all down, you know.”
“What?”
“My funeral wishes.”
“What on Earth for? What does it matter? You won’t be there, will you? Listening, I mean, or watching. Well, you’ll be there of course… unless you’ve been lost at sea or something. Unless you’ve just wandered off. ‘Police are making enquiries about the whereabouts of Francis Collins – known to his friends as ‘Tight Bastard’ – who they believe was trying to walk his way out of buying peanuts…’ but you won’t know what’s going on, will you? They could be singing a selection from Abba for all you’ll care.”
“No, no. I want it to be right, you know. I expect all of my friends will be dead by then – you’ll be long gone – and I want to make sure that I don’t repeat mistakes, you know.”
“Mistakes?”
“Well, look at that funeral we went to last week.”
“The one at the chapel?”
“Yes, the one with the paste-table for an altar.”
“It wasn’t a paste-table Frank.”
“It was made of hardboard!”
“It was not. Granted, it was sagging a little bit in the middle, but a paste-table it was not. Have you any idea how heavy all that silver is?”
“Well, no. Now that you mention it, Frankie, I do not. I have never lifted any. Tell me old friend, have you and, if so, when? Perhaps you could fill me in on the circumstances.”
“I have seen it being lifted on the Antiques Roadshow. Comment is often passed viz-a-viz the weight. ‘A fine example,’ they say. ‘Full of… decoration… and… very heavy.’”
“Yes, well whatever, the service was much too long and I didn’t know a single word of any of the hymns.”
“Nor the tunes.”
“Nor the tunes indeed my friend.”
“Lovely wake though. Corned beef sandwiches and pickled onions. Trifle. Lovely.”
“Yes, nice food, I’ll give you that. Good spread.”
“No free bar though.”
“No, shame that. Fortunate you had your hip flask.”
“Indeed. My many years of Dib-Dib-Dobbing not entirely wasted Frankie my boy. Always prepared.”
“So, don’t you have any last wishes then?”
“Well, nothing special. I want to be buried, not burned: the surgeon told me that this new hip will last a hundred years – I wouldn’t want that to go up in flames, now would I? …And I don’t want a photograph of me looking startled on the front of the Order of Service. Why do people always pick ‘amusing’ photos? I want a picture of me looking serious, sombre like, you know.”
“When did you last have your photograph taken, Benny?”
“Well, I don’t know. I had a passport back in the day. I must have had a photograph then.”
“Your passport ran out in the eighties. Have you not had a photograph taken since then?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Well, what on earth are they going to put on your pamphlet then? A drawing? A photo-fit?”
“Well, I don’t know. I always thought they might take one after I… After, you know.”
“Oh yes, that’ll be nice won’t it. ‘Ah look at him on that photo. He looks really… dead.’ Classy. ‘You can see where the cat chewed the end of his nose off.’”
“Are you suggesting that I should have my photograph taken now, in case I die suddenly?”
“Well, it would save a lot of bother, wouldn’t it? Tell you what, I could do it on my phone I think.”
“Could you? Do you know how?”
“Well no, but how difficult can it be? Look, there’s a little picture of a camera there.”
“Well, press that then.”
“Alright, alright, I will. There… Oh look, it’s me!”
“You need to turn it round.”
“Now I can’t see the screen.”
“I can.”
“Oh, shall I press the button then?”
“Yes.”
“Right… Which one?”
“I don’t know. Let me see. What about this one? Oh… That’s your ear. That won’t do. We’ll need to practice a bit, don’t you think? I don’t want to be buried with everybody thinking that I looked like your left ear.”
“Yes, you’re right. It’s not urgent anyway.”
“No, I’m not ready to say my ‘goodbyes’ just yet. It can wait.”
“Shall we just take a little stroll down to the pub?”
“Yes, a fine idea my friend. Lead on MacDuff, lead on…”

Frankie & Benny first appeared here.
Episode three is here: A Little Fiction – Frankie & Benny #3 – The Night Before

This was written and scheduled in late March (since which time I have barely been around, even for reading your wonderful blogs, for which I sincerely apologise) and somehow – through a process known to WordPress alone – sneaked out to some of you at the time. If you have read this before, I can only apologise. Frankie & Benny (names have been altered etc etc) have gone on to become half a play since I wrote this, whether they will ever become a full one, only time will tell. I feel sure that I will be back with you fairly soon (please don’t report me for threatening behaviour) when I have got whatever-it-is out of my system. Thanks everyone!

Bucket

Beneath my desk as I write this post is a large lidded bucket which is spewing out sufficient CO² to make me personally responsible for the depletion of several feet at least of the Morteratsch glacier and will possibly result in a severe ticking off from Greta Thunberg. According to everything I read carbon dioxide is an odourless gas, but as whatever is bubbling its way out of my bucket smells like the kind of sock you find at the bottom of a child’s sports bag three months after the end of term, and is covered by the kind of living blanket you find on the elderly jam sandwich tucked away at the back of a bedroom drawer, I have severe doubts. I am supposed to be brewing beer, but it is obvious to me that something has died in the bucket. I dare not lift the lid – whatever is growing in there, it is clearly desperate to get out.

My daughter bought me the kit and all associated paraphernalia for Christmas. She clearly felt that I had time on my hands that needed to be filled. Like almost everybody of my age, I used to brew most of what I drank back in the day when I had very little money and alcohol cost a lot of it. I have produced many a glass of wine with a fine, rich and creamy head; many a pint of beer with all the aesthetic appeal of Spring Vegetable Soup, and I’ve drunk them all. The main difference with the current brew is that I am embracing the challenge, not because I have to, but because I want to. I have drunk sufficient quantities of ‘craft’ beers over the years to lead me to believe that I can, myself, produce something perfectly acceptable (e.g. not strictly poisonous). I’ve looked at a lot of paintings over the years and I feel sure that I could do that too, if I just had access to a decent brush. I’ve read enough awful novels to feel confident in my ability to write one of those. My head is full of songs that I know would be best-sellers if they ever made it out into the world – or at least into The Eurovision Song Contest (b group). If other people are able to do things, I find it hard to understand why I can’t do them too.

I’m a believer. I believed when I started writing this poor benighted blog that I could make a decent fist of it. I believed that more people would want to read it rather than just tick ‘Like’ and try to sell me vitamins. I believed that many more would read it than ever did. It is a crazy affliction: to be fully – and painfully – aware of your own limitations, whilst still believing that you might, somehow, overcome them. When ‘just about acceptable’ is an aspiration, then not reaching it is painful. I’m not looking to climb Everest – I get a nose-bleed on a high kerb – but I wouldn’t mind standing atop a knoll for a little while.

I once produced a gooseberry ‘champagne’ of breathtaking beauty, and a greengage chardonnay that could have stripped the enamel off a toilet bowl. The ingredients were similar, the methodology identical, the results, it would appear, not something over which I had any control. I don’t recall putting any more effort into one than the other. Managing ‘effort’, if I’m honest, has never been my greatest forte: generally things either come easily, or they frustrate the hell out of me, and the things that frustrate me the most are the very things that make me resolve even harder to succeed. It is only after I have discovered that I am unable to do something, that I become really determined to do it.

Consequently, I have spent many, many hours over the last three-and-a-bit years working on this blog. Hard as it is to imagine, I put a lot of effort into each and every post I make, and the disappointment of the realisation that I have fewer readers than Vladimir Putin has rational brain cells is, at times, crushing. Whilst I understand and accept that the goal is not to have thousands of readers, well… the thing is that it is really, isn’t it? The joy may well be in the writing, but the point is in people reading it. This blog has become the equivalent of playing ‘The Toilet Tent’ at Glastonbury and I don’t seem to be able to do anything about it. It is time, I think, to take a bit of a break, to finish The Play, to record some scripts to see how they sound…

Okay, so I know that I have done this before. Last year I was writing four posts a week and it was taking over my life. (You should try walking around Marks & Sparks, looking at the rows of pants and wondering ‘Can I get a post out of this?’ I even considered getting arrested for shop-lifting, just in case I could find something amusing to say about the experience.) So I stopped, briefly, and then commenced this more manageable two-times-a-week routine. I can handle this with time to spare each week. My problem is that, instead of finding something ‘profitable’ to do with my spare time, I simply write more posts. I can be frighteningly prolific – some form of literary diarrhoea – and I tend to have so many posts ‘in hand’ that I will probably have had a good four weeks off by the time that you loyal two dozen read this, and I will be raring to go again. I will already have revisited all of the things I have been unable to finish, finding no doubt that those that I can finish are not worth the effort and those that are worth the effort, I am still unable to finish.

I have no doubt whatsoever that I will be back, just as soon as I write something and think ‘that would be ideal for the blog’ but, for now, that is not the plan. By the time you read this, my beer will be in the bottles. I may even have sampled some. I have a second episode of Frankie & Benny (who are an absolute joy to write) with which I will, for now finish, as it seems to me to be as good a way as any of saying ‘adieu’…

A Little Fiction – The Unseemly Abasement of Miss Timmins

There was barely a static pair of net curtains along the whole street on the day that the police came to visit Miss Timmins. Nobody wanted to appear nosy, but they also did not want to miss out on anything that might form the basis of a succulent little nugget of scandal for some future discourse. Not that it was likely with Miss Timmins. I’m not sure that anybody actually knew her age. She looked about ninety with her straight, grey hair scraped up into a bun on the top of her head and the blue gingham housecoat which, as far as anybody could see, she never took off except for her weekly trips to the church hall beetle drive, when she wore a threadbare old cardigan over a paisley blouse of such florid hues that the bus driver insisted that she sit on the top deck for the journey home. It was rumoured that she had first worn the blouse in the sixties when, as legend had it, she had auditioned for Pan’s People, but had not got the role on account of being far too quick for Jimmy Savile. Others claimed to have seen the blouse before, in an episode of The Avengers on ‘girl behind ray gun’, whilst yet more claimed that it had once been a hotel bedspread.

In fact, what little was actually known about her had been smuggled, illicitly, out of her little terraced home by such visitors who had dared to brave the gloom and stifling heat of the spinster’s house. She had a photograph album that she kept on the table in her dingy little lounge and those that claimed they had dared to peak into it when she left the room to brew tea in the kitchen, reported that she certainly had a dancer’s body as a young woman. Unfortunately it was accompanied by the boxer’s face that continued to lower out from under her hairnet today. Whilst she had, as a young woman, a body that turned heads, it was accompanied by a face that did a similar thing to stomachs.

Vera Timmins was a woman who deplored ‘frilly’: the crinoline lady that sat astride her toilet roll was void of all fripperies and not even her paper doilies were allowed lacy edges. Those unfortunate enough to overlook her washing line reported that her underwear was never more (or less) than strictly functional. In fact some claimed that if you looked really hard, you could still see the Utility Mark stamped onto the waist band of her more-than-ample knickers. She was a thin woman and yet she somehow managed to wear nether garments that could house a pack of cub scouts. Truth be told, there were few, outside of the vicar (who could often be heard offering up the fervent prayer that it might never happen again) who were ever invited into her home. Mary Maguire was one such and perhaps the most willing to discuss the contents of Miss Timmins photograph album. It was her firm opinion that Vera had been spurned by a man in her youth – the album, she claimed, was filled with roughly torn half-photographs, some of which revealed a distinctly male-looking hand nestling on her waist – and from that moment on had decided to make herself as unattractive to the opposite sex as she possibly could. In that one respect she had been supremely successful.

No man had been allowed to cross her threshold in living memory. The rent man, the milk man and the grocer’s boy all picked up their monies in envelopes left by the gate. She had an elderly tom cat, but that had not been allowed under her roof until the vet had removed its undercarriage. It had grown fat and lazy, but to its credit, it still managed to spray on the cushions whenever she wasn’t looking. So it was with a seismic level of surprise that the assembled net twitchers of the whole street watched her beckon the two young male policemen into her home. None could tear their eyes away. Most felt it a nailed-on certainty that the unfortunate uniformed fodder would never be seen again.

This opinion had solidified amongst those still fit enough to be standing with gimlet eye to gossamer crack when, some two hours later, they were still to reappear. Most had given up. Some had already been on the phone to Mary, but such was the intensity of her vigil, she would not be drawn away from the window to speak and as Ted, her husband, had taken her mobile to the match having left his own in the compost tub with his spare socks at the allotments, she could not both speak into the ancient handset that hung in the hall and maintain eye-contact on the front door at number thirteen. They would all just have to sit it out. She would be quick enough to report when anything happened.

In fact she missed the actual moment when the police van arrived to take the lachrymose old maid away, owing to the fact that she had, over the first fifteen years of her marriage, been on the outside of fifteen children and was not within reach of anything on which to squat in her hour of need, but, undaunted, she was outside speaking to the constable who had remained at the door even before Mrs Timmins had dragged her second leg into the constabulary vehicle. He was, of course, not supposed to pass on the information, but she knew his mother so what was the point of keeping quiet? He would have to tell his mother what he had been up to if he wanted to be fed and it was certain that half of the Bingo Club would then know about it within the hour. What harm could it do?

“It was a romance scam,” Mary Maguire told the assembled throng some time later.
“Oh, poor soul,” cooed Mrs Rodgers who, in the excitement, quite forgot that her teeth were still in the glass in the bathroom and covered Mrs Maguire’s spectacles with a fine dusting of PG Tips and simnel cake* . “She never seemed the kind did she?”
“The kind?”
“To be looking for romance. I mean, if we’re honest, she didn’t really seem to have much time for men at all, let alone be lured by one pretending to want to share her life. Did he get much from her?”
“Certainly not money. I think you misunderstand,” said Mrs Maguire, a thin smile creasing the scar where she had once been bitten by a parakeet in a Morecambe bar. “She’s been passing herself off as a forty year old male property developer. Apparently she’d been using half of an old photograph from her photo album for a profile picture, until somebody clicked that it was actually Patrick McNee without the bowler…”

*Which my spellchecker insists should be ‘semen cake’. Clearly it does not know Mrs Rodgers.

The Obstacle Race

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com

I presume that I am not alone in assuming that life is just an obstacle race in which I have been given the bum lane, where the hurdles are both insufficiently spaced and incomprehensibly high. I know that it is seldom the severity of the hurdles that causes me to baulk, as much as the regularity of them. The incessant thud, thud, thud of shin on barrier, forehead on lintel, or ego on life is what truly impedes evolution: the offside law as interpreted by VAR; the Chinese Puzzle of tangled metalwork in the unopenable cutlery drawer; the Gordian Knot in the Hoover cable. The main obstacle to the progress of life itself is the very challenge of existence; the twisted coil in the Slinky of being. I fail, therefore I am.

They say that what doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger, but it doesn’t does it? Slothing the day away in front of the TV will not kill you – at least, not in the short term – but it’s hardly going to qualify you as an Olympic weightlifter either. The truth is that what doesn’t kill you, doesn’t kill you – which, although not terribly profound, does at least have the benefit of leaving you somewhat more vital than dead. There are (many) times when there is nothing better in this world than a large glass of red, a huge slab of chocolate and a couple of hours slumped in front of Midsomer Murders, and I have little doubt in my mind that I am quite safe in their hands. If I want to find something that might kill me, I will look for a gun, or a knife, or a blunt instrument (or, if I’m still in Midsomer mode, I will smear myself in truffle oil and search for a wild boar). Given sufficient time, I guess that most things can kill you. I’m not aware of anybody ever being killed by celery, but it doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened. I seem to recall being told that the calories used to eat celery are in excess of those that you gain by eating it. Is it possible to chew yourself into starvation? If it didn’t kill you, would it actually make you stronger? I wonder how much celery has ever been consumed by Arnold Schwarzenegger?

I don’t suppose that life is straightforward for anybody all of the time, and I’m not certain that I would want to live such a life anyway. Life is a trifle crammed full of petty annoyances and tiny triumphs, but garnished with moments of despair and overwhelming joy. Both (like Ant & Dec) make the other bearable. Is it even possible, I wonder, to experience joy if you have never suffered pain? Does chocolate not give such pleasure to someone who has never tasted okra? Do you have to experience Starbuck’s coffee before you can appreciate a good malt whisky? (If you want my advice, avoid the Starbuck’s and hope for the best.)

Some people, of course, are unhappy all of the time (they are called Belgians) but most manage to find some degree of happiness even in the most difficult of circumstances: the macabre East End Humour of the blitz; the ironic cheers of losing football fans; the audience at a Roy ‘Chubby’ Brown concert. We all have bouts of self-pity, but they tend to grind to a halt when you catch a proper look at yourself and realise how pathetic you appear. It’s not easy, after all, to take yourself too seriously when nobody else does.

And I know that you understand by now the way that my brain works, and I swear that I can hear you thinking (a useful addition to my armoury, as my ears are increasingly reluctant to hear actual noise) “So, what’s your point?” or, probably more appositely, “What’s your problem?” and, if I’m honest, if you had asked me that five hundred words ago, I probably wouldn’t have known. That’s the way it works: I start to write and about mid-way through my allotted thousand words, I begin to realise exactly what it is that I am writing about. (Not always though. As you are fully aware, I am perfectly capable of making it right to the end without ever properly understanding what it is, exactly, that I’m writing about.) Well, some of you – those who have been ‘fortunate’ enough to have suffered the horrors of School Sports Day – will understand the main problem with obstacle races: when you’re on a flat bit, you lose all perspective. When you’re between obstacles, all that you can actually concentrate on is the hessian sack/bean-bag/hula-hoop/despotic whistle-bound deputy head teacher torture that lies ahead. Anticipation of challenge (and, per se if you’re me, humiliation) to come, swamps all notion of well-being.

You begin to imagine that the only rationale for experiencing peaks is to make the troughs look deeper. When you’re at the top of the hill, all that you can think about is the inevitability of falling to the bottom. When you’re at the bottom, then all you can think about is the pain of hauling yourself back to the top. Age is erosion: it eats away at the sharpest pinnacles and dumps the bits it has chewed off at the bottom of the troughs. With the apex flattened, you get to maintain balance there for much longer. When you plunge to the bottom, you find that it is not as deep as it used to be and that it is full of the echoes of the peak before.

Life is an obstacle race in which everyone has been given the bum lane. However much you are dreading hauling yourself into the vacant potato sack, those either side of you are dreading it just as much. Should you be lucky enough to emerge as last person standing, then your only responsibility is to help everybody else to get back to get back in the sack.

Weak orange squash in a coloured plastic beaker and home for tea.

Ah life…

Pompous quote of the week: ‘I’m indifferent to puddings because I’m no longer a child’ (David Nicholls – author). Just remember guys, if ever you fancy a tiramisu at your favourite Italian restaurant, you’re just being immature.

A Little Fiction – Conversations with the Bearded Man (part 6) – Newark

I had never actually tried to seek him out before, he had always found me, and if I’m honest, I had no real idea of where to start. I wandered the streets for days, sat on buses, drank in pubs. I retrieved his petrol can from the back of the shed, but it held no clues: it was rusty and the last few drops of the petrol it had once housed had long-since absorbed into the softly rotting floor. I couldn’t remember the last time I had even seen a metal petrol can. ‘Only him,’ I thought. There would be a reason for it of course, some kind of message about strength and fragility. I would ask him – if ever I found him.

More than a year had passed since the last time we spoke and much had changed – and yet it was the same. I had made contact with my soon-to-be ex-wife and we had spoken, almost exclusively without rancour. Well, she at least, had spoken without rancour: I had been my usual petulant self, but against all odds we had managed to remain in one another’s company for more than an hour without once resorting to violence and name-calling. It had not physically changed anything: she was still well on the way towards becoming my very ‘ex’, but the absence of desire to kill after our encounter was exactly the kind of progress I thought that I should report.

Also, I now had friends – even if I wouldn’t want to be seen out with them in daylight. We went out together, or more precisely, we met up at the same place every Friday night in the bar of The Harrows for a few pints, a volcanically microwaved prehistoric meat pie and a quiz. We never won, but we always got through the evening without major ructions and, as loathe as I was to admit it, I looked forward to the occasion, even if the quiz master did insist on calling us ‘the sad bleeders in the corner’, when our actual name “Archimedes’ Crew”, was quite clearly written at the top of our answer sheet. More progress to report. My life had become, if not exactly good, then at least bearable at times. Never-the-less I knew that there were still pieces of the jigsaw missing and, instinctively, I felt that he had them.

So it became my habit whenever I had the opportunity to sit for a while, empty my brain (a frighteningly simple exercise) and then just see where my legs might take me. I did things. I did theatres, museums, football matches, bus trips, weekends away – all alone, all in the hope of being found, and as each day, week and month ticked away I became increasingly convinced that my final meeting with Lorelei was already in the past. The little diversions became a way of life – just something I did – but as they became more and more habitual, the feeling of emptiness and disaffection began, once more, to chip away at my soul…

…The rain, although not heavy, was as persistent as a text-message reminder from the dentist and more than a match for my cheap, Ebay kagoule. I couldn’t tell you why I had chosen Newark to visit: it was easy to get to on the train and it had a castle and a river, but as the icy cold precipitation soaked through every one of my manifold, yet inadequate, layers of clothing forming a puddle in my crotch that, despite its location, still succeeded in being a good ten degrees colder than the surrounding temperature, I couldn’t think of anywhere else that I less wanted to be. I picked my way across the market place, along the glistening cobbles, sensing the slick, unsteady surface through the wafer-thin soles of my saturated Converse, towards the dim yellow light that beckoned me from the windows of the pub in the corner, when I became aware of a small crowd gathered around a figure on the floor. Instinctively I pushed my way in, feeling the burning imperative of the recently acquired St John’s First Aid badge in my pocket and found myself looking down on a familiar, bearded face. He looked up and beamed a greeting smile. “I knew it would be you,” he said. “Thank you everybody. I know this man. He has training. He’ll help me across to a seat in the café there. I’m sure I’ll be fine after a few minutes in a chair. I’m so very grateful for your help. Thank you.” And all I could do was wonder why on earth he wanted to recover in the café instead of the pub.

I helped him to his feet. “How?” I asked.
“I just slipped on the cobbles.”
“I mean,” I said, “how did you know it would be me?”
“Well I don’t know anybody else here,” he said.
“But how did you know that I’d be here?”
“I didn’t… Did I?” He looked confused. Painfully aware that the pub was just next door, I led him into the café and sat him at a vacant table. The waitress was with us almost at once. She was all concern and fret.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” she asked. My companion assured her that he was. “Okay,” she said, finally content, “As long as you’re sure. I’ll get your tea. What would you like love?”
“Coffee please.” The waitress bustled away. “Do you come in here often?”
“I don’t think I’ve ever been here before.”
“So how did she know you wanted tea?”
“I always have tea. Now,” he said, “why did you want me?”
“I didn’t! Well, I did, but…”
He was looking around the room, breathing in his surroundings, reading the walls like he was in a museum. “It’s so important to be open to the new, don’t you think?”
“Yes,” I cast my own narrowed eyes around the twee yellow chintz palace, “but ‘the new’ can be pretty boring as well, can’t it?”
“I suppose so. I always think about see-saws. You want excitement on one end, then you’ve got to put excited on the other. If you want to sit at the bottom end just staring up at nothing happening, then it’s best just to stare. If you’ve got nothing to contribute then you can bounce as hard as you like, you’re always going to end up on the ground with the business end wedged under your chin.”
“So you’re telling me that I can only get out of life what I can put into it, right?”
“Am I? Oh…”
The drinks arrived at the table and, having poured Lorelei’s tea – milk first, one sugar – the waitress fussed away to her romantic novel behind the till.
I sipped at my coffee, which smelled great but tasted like it was a virtual stranger to the coffee bean. “I don’t think I always try very hard.”
“I don’t think you have to try too hard,” he said. “Just try.”
We drank in silence. Somewhere unseen a cuckoo clock marked the hour and, instinctively, the waitress, Lorelei and I all looked at our watches.
“Well, I suppose I’d better get going,” said my companion, rising slowly to his feet. I noticed, for the first time the bruise on his head.
“Are you sure you’re ok?”
“I think so,” he said. “But it wouldn’t hurt to check on me now and again, would it?”
“How?”
“Oh, don’t worry, it’s easy enough. You can let me have my petrol can back some time.”
“It’s rusted.”
“I know…”

In case you want to catch up on the rest of this tale, the first Conversation with the Bearded Man is here.

The previous conversation to this (#5) can be found here.

Episode 7 is now here: A Little Fiction – Conversations with a Bearded Man (part 7) – Helpline

Food for Thought

I eat when I’m stressed. I eat when I am unhappy, I eat when I am unwell, and I eat when I am agitated. Unfortunately, I also eat when I am happy, I eat when I am well, and I eat when I am calm. I have what I believe is known as an unhealthy relationship with food, which, in my case, means that absolutely everything I would choose to eat, is unhealthy – especially in the quantities in which I eat it.

Now, I don’t want you to think that everything I eat is unhealthy; it isn’t. I eat loads of healthy shit, but given the choice I probably wouldn’t. If I could find a way to persuade myself that a diet of chocolate and peanuts would get me past my next birthday, I would go for it. Who on this earth would choose to eat broccoli if it wasn’t good for them? Analyse it: is it pleasant to put into your mouth? No. Does it taste good? No. If it was bad for you, would you still eat it? No, no, no.

This is what chefs do: take a bunch of stuff that you wouldn’t normally put anywhere near your mouth and mix it together in such a way that you think, “Well, that looks almost good enough to eat.” So you do. There is a whole tranche of TV cooks – ok, there’s Nigella Lawson – for whom the whole process of preparing a dish is to make the final shot of her eating it as close to oral sex as possible: “Right Nigella, we’re doing courgettes et poivrons dans une sauce tomate et vin rouge au basilica, so how would you like us to prepare the vegetables?”
“Oh sod that, just give me the courgette. I’ll eat it whole. You’ll need lots of cameras…”

This, I suddenly realise, is the true essence of modern cookery: take something that is basically inedible, but good for you (this is, of course, a constantly shifting page) and mix it up with something – anything – that will tempt you to put it in your mouth, and with this fleeting realisation comes the hint of a way ahead for me. A pathway. Here’s the plan…

Make a list of things that are beneficial to your health, but are basically not anything that you would ever want to swallow – okra, calabrese, swede, kale, an insurance salesman’s promises.
Make a list of things that you can’t stop eating, despite the knowledge that (until general medical opinion changes – e.g. next Wednesday) they will almost certainly kill you – chocolate, butter, cream, fudge and obfuscation.
Devise manifold ways of covering various items from list one with those from list two.
Make a TV show and publish a lavishly illustrated book.
Wonder about how you are ever going to spend all that money.

Simple.

Let us consider the humble potato. Potatoes are eaten in a number of ways: they might be baked and served with lashings of butter, mashed with lashings of butter, roasted in something rendered off an unfortunate goose, or cut into small batons and fried. Without the application of fat, potatoes are seldom eaten.

Now, I must admit that, to date, my early attempts at food fusions have not been wholly successful. The Okra in Chocolate Sauce, for instance, was not terribly palatable initially and, after I experimented with the addition of peanut butter, had a most unfortunate colour and texture, reminiscent of slugs in gravel. I still remain uncertain what to do with the broccoli, but I’m thinking that salted caramel might be the way forward – it’s trendy, it’s salty, and it looks like the middle layer of a Mars Bar: what’s not to love? As long as there’s enough of the sauce to mask all traces of that flaccid dendroidal brassica’s malevolent tang (Hint: there is never enough of anything to mask its malevolent tang) then I must be on to a winner. N.B. broccoli is actually slightly less loathsome when uncooked and even more so when uneaten. I have tried everything I can think of with kale (up to, and including, Walnut Whip) and I have discovered that there is absolutely no way of making it even mildly pleasurable to eat. The nearest I have got is by sautéing it lightly in butter with garlic and white wine, before throwing the whole lot straight into the bin.

For many people, taste is a visual thing: if it looks good, they will eat it. These people have never eaten a whelk. Specialist food photographer’s have many tricks to make food look appetising on the page, from spraying with water to dousing in oil. For myself, I cannot think of a single foodstuff that doesn’t look better with a glace cherry on top. If God had not made apples look so alluring, we might still be residing in the Garden of Eden. Mind you, I can’t help but feeling that long, long ago, a million-times removed antecedent of today’s oyster must have looked at itself sans shell and thought, ‘well, nobody’s ever going to want to eat me,’ but people do – generally overweight business men attempting to seduce a much younger and terminally disinterested secretary with a plate of half-dead molluscs and a plastic cupful of warm champagne, before going home to a wife who does not understand him* and children who view him only as a peripatetic wallet. I have looked a shucked oyster in the face before now and, I promise you, the last thing it made me think about was sex. The first thing it made me think about was where I could hide it that wouldn’t stain the carpet and smell strongly of dead bi-valve the next time the central heating was turned on. Evolution gave oysters the protection of looking as though they had already been eaten – and that they didn’t agree with whatever did it. If only God had made apples look like oysters and taste like okra, we’d all be in a better place.

And if he’d made chocolate healthy, I wouldn’t have been so stressed in the first place.

*She does. That is why she has just spent the afternoon in the company of the vet’s de-worming assistant, hake and chips in the gazebo and PG Tips for two under the duvet.

A Little Fiction – Ancient Greeks (The Meaning of Life #3)

The man in the lovat Cavalry Tweed suit drained the last of his pint, loudly belched a beery fug laced with peanuts and bumptious pontification, and turned expectantly towards the man in the moleskin waistcoat who had barley sucked the froth from his own drink. “Your round, squire, I think,” he said.
“Bloody hell,” said Moleskin. “You got a shift on didn’t you?”
“Yes, well, as Archimedes pointed out, a man is only as heavy as the amount he can drink. You, my friend, are bordering upon reedy.”
“Eureka!” said the man in the Meerkat T-shirt as he painstakingly attempted to remove shards of Cavalry Tweed’s eructation from the head of his stout.
“What does?” said CT, tapping his glass impatiently.
“Eureka. It’s what Archimedes said after he sloshed his bath water all over the bath rug.”
“No, you my friend are mixing him up with Aristotle when he discovered logic: my glass is empty, therefore it needs filling. ‘I think, therefore I am.’”
“Descartes,” muttered moleskin, gathering up the glasses and heading, reluctantly to the bar. “It was Descartes who said that – ‘cogito, ergo sum’- not Aristotle.”
CT chuckled loudly. “Cogito, ergo sum,” he said, means ‘like clockwork’. It is actually the motto of Wolverhampton Wanderers Football Club. Didn’t they teach you nothing up that posh boys school of yours?”
Moleskin bridled. The hairs on the back of his neck rose in a villus concert. “I did not go to a posh boys school. I went to a state grammar school.”
“Of course,” said CT. “I forgot. So,” he continued, “how many girls were there?”
Moleskin passed a twenty pound note over to the barman. “My point,” he said, quietly contained, “is that it was not a posh boys school. It was simply a boys school.” He placed the three glasses onto the table a little more heavily than was strictly necessary. “You did not need to be posh to go there, you simply needed to be able to demonstrate a certain level of education…”
“…Attainable only to those who did not have to be up at sparrow’s fart to do their paper round and thus supplement the family income,” sneered CT.
“You never had a paper round!”
“Not for the want of trying, sunbeam. They were all taken up by you posh boys whose dad’s took them round in the family Volvo. My battered old hand-me-down bike did not conform to the corporate image.”
“Corporate image? It was a local paper shop. Mr and Mrs Singh would not have cared if you went round on a pogo stick as long as you got the papers delivered. You never got a round because you were bolshie even then.”
“Didn’t he have a principle of some kind?” asked Meerkat.
“Mr Singh? What kind of principle?”
“No, Archimedes. Didn’t he have a principal? Something about a solid object displacing its own weight in water…”
“Common mistake,” said CT. “Firstly, what Archimedes invented was the screw – everything was nailed before he came along – and secondly, when you put something in water, what it actually displaces is its own volume in water e.g. drop an elephant in your average bath and you’re going to wind up with suds on the downstairs carpet.”
“Unless the object was absorbent, I suppose.”
“Not many absorbent elephants around though,” chuckled Moleskin.
“That,” said CT, “is where you are mistaken. All elephants are absorbent due to where they live in the desert. It’s why they have humps…”
The man in the moleskin waistcoat opened his mouth to object, but his attention was taken by the man in the Meerkat T-shirt who was taking peanuts from the packet and dropping them into his pint, where they floated on the, as yet, untroubled head. “How come,” he said, as he tried to get the last few peanut shards from the packet “those huge boats don’t push all the water out of the sea?”
“Well, they do, in a manner of speaking,” said CT. “They cause the tides, don’t they.”
“No they don’t,” said Moleskin. “That’s the moon.”
“The moon?” laughed CT. “The moon? Have you gone mad? Might cause a bit of sloshing around, I’ll give you that, as the Earth goes around it every day, but not the tides. Have you ever been stood there when a big boat goes by? That’s where your waves come from sunshine. That’s the tides.”
Meerkat looked on solemnly as the salt slowly flattened his beer and the disappearing head lost its grip on the nuts which sank to the bottom of the glass. “I don’t think I fancy a cruise,” he said.
“I must admit,” said Moleskin, “I never quite understand why they don’t turn over, those big liners. There’s so much more above the water than below it.”
“Kaleidoscopes,” said CT.
“Kaleidoscopes?”
“You must have seen them. Set ‘em spinning and they’ll balance on anything. Send them scuttling along a piece of string or whatever. They never fall off.”
“Do you mean a gyroscope?” asked Moleskin.
“Or a cat,” suggested Meerkat.
“A cat?”
“They don’t fall off things, do they? And…” continued Meerkat, his face suffused with triumph, “…and they always land on their feet.”
“Are you suggesting that ships have feet?”
“No. Don’t be stupid. What I’m suggesting is that if you filled ships with cats, they’d never fall over. Man’s best friend and all that…”
“That’s a dog, surely.”
“Dog’s don’t always land on their feet,” said Meerkat after a short pause for thought. “Also, only one life. Cats are nine times more cost-effective. You don’t have to keep replacing cats.”
Cavalry Twill and Moleskin lifted their glasses in unison and drank in quiet contemplation as Meerkat tried to retrieve the peanuts from the base of his glass with a knife.
“Where would you put the passengers?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, if you filled the ship with cats, where would you put the passengers?”
“They would have to share.”
“Except for those who are scared of them, of course” sneered CT, staring directly at Moleskin.
“I am not scared of cats,” he replied. “I am allergic to them. They affect my breathing.”
“Yes, it’s always difficult to control your breathing when you’re terrified.”
Moleskin drained the beer from his glass and thumped it down on the table in front of CT. “Like when it’s your round,” he said.
The man in the Cavalry Twill glanced casually at his watch, drained his own glass and rose to his feet. “Good Lord,” he said. “Is that the time? Must get on. Carpe Diem, and all that” he said. “God is a fish…”

The Meaning of Life #1 can be found here.

The Meaning of Life #2 is here.