Politics

What follows is an attempt to shake things up a little: abstract words thrown into a hat and chosen, at random, as both title and subject of a single post. I seriously don’t remember putting this one in…

In his seminal novel ‘Nineteen Eighty Four’, George Orwell foresaw a world controlled by three global superpowers (Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia) who subjugated and controlled their populations through the ever-present threat of constant war perpetuated by constantly shifting political alliances. Silly man. How could he have got the future so wrong?

We currently have three Big Brothers presiding over global pandemonium in Trump, Putin and Xi. All three of them find themselves ‘attached’ – by accident or design – to puppet protagonists (Netanyahu, Khamenei and Jong Un) although it is not always possible to be sure who has whose hand up whose arse.

Throughout the world, politics is dominated by the thoroughly untrustworthy attempting to persuade we proles that we should trust them. Honest politicians do not exist – or, if they do, they most certainly do not get elected. All politicians have the ambition to be the leader: all politicians believe they are far more important than those who elect them. Most politicians do not follow the example of Idi Amin by eating their opponents, but that may well be because they haven’t yet been given the opportunity. Most politicians are not bonkers when they start out, but they are power-hungry. They become mad when they attain power. Trump was rich, stupid and powerless but he found a way to obtain power by over-promising, obfuscating and – when facts were piled against him – lying. He is a playground bully who detests being told that he is wrong. His grip on reality – like that of his hair to his head – is getting more tenuous by the day. Putin became rich and powerful when the Communist State that he embraced so fiercely descended into chaos and he was able to ride a wave of capitalism and extortion to supreme power in the course of which he came close to bankrupting his fragmenting country before realising that, by bullying all of those around him – which he justified by claiming to be the bullied – he could unite the country behind him providing he could prevent them from finding out the truth of what was really going on. Putin is a small man with a very big chip on his shoulder and a shit-load of novichok at his disposal. If you wish to criticise him, I recommend you do so from a lead-lined room. He is as trustworthy as a bad prawn in a Vindaloo. Xi Jinping appears positively benign when compared with these two, but he came to power through the exercise of extreme corruption accompanied by a massive anti-corruption campaign e.g. by killing or imprisoning all opponents.

If the recent war in Iran has taught us anything it is that normal, everyday people have no power whatsoever. Once we are lumbered with these regimes, they exist merely to perpetuate their own existence. All governments are unpopular, but thankfully, in a few countries we do retain the right to say so. Providing we don’t get caught. These countries – like the UK, most of Europe, very little of South America and even less of Africa – are generally regarded as lapdog states as, generally, they do not possess the big sticks and, if they do, they do not control the ability to swing them without permission.

Democracy is, of course, the political paradigm: a system through which the entire population has the opportunity to exercise influence over those who would govern them except… well, a poor choice is no choice at all, is it? In England we have the choice of five major parties led by Sir Keir Starmer*, Kemi Badenoch, Ed Davey, Nigel Farage and Zack Polanski, all of them numties. The whole process could only be given more gravitas with the addition of Kermit the Frog to the list of options. ‘Truth in advertising’ would dictate that a UK voting slip should simply give a choice between ‘Dumb’ and ‘Dumber’.

Most people look to their elected representatives to oversee a regime that will address inequality, tackle impropriety and repair pot-holes in the roads. They want everyone to contribute a fair amount towards the protection of the young, the old and the disadvantaged: to nurture and to educate, to protect and include. Also, if at all possible, to reduce the duty on alcohol and chocolate¹.

In reality, the successful politician is not the one who persuades you that they will do the good stuff, but is the one who persuades you that the other will do the bad. Most people would vote for a cumquat if it promised them what they wanted. Shape an unpalatable truth as a nubile and clothe it in a transparent pac-a-mac and the world is your lobster.

Winston Churchill once said ‘The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.’ The greatest of UK politicians, Churchill was famously voted out of office immediately after guiding the nation through The Second World War, which just goes to prove that, all in all, politicians are probably no worse than the people they represent.

*Currently in name only. Few doubt that Andy Burnham will follow him: our seventh leader in the last ten years. The process never varies: get elected, get found out, resign.

1. Or perhaps that’s just me.

The Beginner’s A-Z of D.I.Y. Subversion – Introduction (part two)

I urge you, now, before it is too late, to consider what it is that has drawn you to this subversive path. Perhaps you have always harboured an urge to behave subversively. Perhaps only now, after (comfortably) more than half a century of life’s travails, have you built up sufficient resentment to act. Remember: into every life a little rain must fall. There’s always sunshine after the rain etc. etc. Except that there’s not, is there? After rain, there’s normally even more rain, followed by fog on high ground and flooding in low-lying areas. Subversion comes in many guises: think Guy Fawkes attempting to blow up the house of commons; think ringing a call centre and leaving your phone off the hook; think taking an unfeasibly long time to read all of the myriad delights laid out before you on the Starbucks menu before asking the extensively over-qualified barista, ‘Do you do Nescafé?’.

Whatever subversive action you decide to take, even if it is just sticking your tongue out at someone when they’re not looking, somebody is almost bound to take exception to it. If they react badly, you will find yourself in ‘a situation’. At this point adrenalin will kick in. You are unlikely to experience the fight or flight dilemma as you will be too busy running away. Whatever you do, always make certain that you have a suitable means of escape. Bicycles are excellent, but only if you are heading downhill. If you plan to escape by public transport, always ensure that you know the location of the easy access stops.

Broadly speaking, subversives fall into two categories: a) those who consider themselves torchbearers for the right and good – enemies of injustice and inequality – warriors for a righteous cause and b) those who would really quite like to get their name into the newspaper. Many of those who fall into category a) will enter into politics, whilst many of those who fall into category b) will also enter into politics. The Houses of Parliament are the subversive equivalent of the elephant’s graveyard. Politics is the domain of those who have lost all conviction – or at least home to those who have sued the press for releasing details of their convictions. Subversion is simultaneously the enemy and the father of politics – whilst politicians are often simultaneously the father and employer of any number of tax-deductable children. Winston Churchill remained subversive throughout his political career but then, so did Tony Benn and Jeremy Corbyn and look where it got them. For most, subversion and political success are mutually exclusive – in much the same way as hand-knitted cardigans and sexual excess. Indeed, for the majority of subversives, subversion and normal social intercourse are also mutually exclusive. Show me a subversive with friends and I will show you a liar. Subversion, like golf, is a group activity in which no member trusts any other member; consequently, most D.I.Y subversives also become solo subversives. After all, what is the point of other opinions if they do not agree with your own?

Somebody once said that 99% of all subversive activity takes place between the ears. They obviously associated with different subversives to me. 99% of what goes on between the ears of the subversives I have met is… well, zilch, quite honestly …and the other 1% involves sexual exploits – 99% of which are fictitious.

Remember, subversion is not all glamour. Che Guevara was indeed glamorous, but not until after he was dead. If you want glamour, you are reading the wrong blog – look elsewhere – there must be one somewhere about existing purely on the calories extracted from cigarettes and cocaine.

I do not seek to persuade anyone that committing subversive deeds could in any way be seen as a desirable course of action. Indeed, I consider it imperative to advise against any activity that may, in any way, be associated with terrorism or extremism and which might, ultimately, lead to the suspicion that it was me who placed the fake dog-dirt in the butcher’s doorway. Amateur subversion seldom involves killing your enemy – although it may necessitate tying his shoelaces together. If you are happy living your life as a friendless bozo, perpetrating small acts of subversion whenever and wherever the opportunity arises distil from this such succour as you are able – then, for God’s sake, go out and get yourself a life…

Letting Go

As I get older there is an ever-growing list of things I no longer do for myself, jobs that everyone advises me it is much wiser to get a man in for. I am still not used to it. With the exception of plumbing – at which I am particularly inept – I have spent a life stumbling through almost every facet of driving myself crazy by taking months to do a job that anyone half-proficient would complete in a weekend. I decided, as time wore on, that it made more sense to allow people who know what they are doing to do what has to be done. Quicker and, in the long run, cheaper. The problem is letting go.

Doing things myself ensures that, however inexpertly they are done, they are nonetheless done as I want them. Tradespeople do not necessarily follow my plan. The right way is not necessarily my way. Let me talk you through it. We currently have a paved area at the back of the house that is being relaid. If I was doing it the procedure would be more or less (allowing for the odd trip to Accident & Emergency) as follows:

Lift existing slabs, breaking a large number in the process and trapping my fingers enough times to ensure that my nails turn black and fall off into my tea.
Dig out the area and flatten – at least flatten out the first bit until my back starts to ache, at which time a slight roughing over with a garden fork becomes the norm. Any buried stones should be removed at this stage. Should, but in reality, if they prove to be anything other than mildly intransigent, they will probably be hammered into the ground with whatever comes to hand. Whatever refuses to hammer down will have its top chopped off with a spade at the beginning of an arc that concludes with my ankle, and another trip to Casualty holding another plastic box filled with my own body parts.
Mix sand and cement in the correct ratio – or as near as. As I never have enough cement and usually only the wrong kind of sand, this mix can vary from slab to slab, especially as I do not have a mixer and am forced to mix by hands with, I must admit, varying degrees of diligence, meaning that the last few slabs will be set on a bed of sand with a handful of cement chucked on top.
Check that the surface is level. Invariably it is not. Whack each slab with a wooden mallet. Look in dismay at the wooden implement which turns out to be a huge metal lump hammer erroneously left (by the pixies) where its wooden counterpart should be.
Pausing only to bandage head, pick up the fragmented slab and replace it with one of a slightly different thickness. Make note to check Public Liability Insurance and buy ‘Hazard Warning’ tape when next in DIY store.
Realise that I must now cross the newly laid slabs in order to get back inside the house. In the certain knowledge that all will be ok if I stand only in the centre of each slab, I discover – not for the first time – that I am completely wrong.

Tradespeople do not work that way. They have the right equipment; they level the ground with a digger; they flatten the hardcore with a whacker; they mix the concrete in a mixer; they know what they are doing and so I feel that it is incumbent on me to keep an eye on them. My input is seldom welcomed. My wife’s occasional demands for specific outcomes which, whilst not always appreciated by me, are even less generously embraced by those who know what they are doing and do not need instructions especially when transmitted through the media of sad old git. The desire to check on progress at the end of the day is overwhelming. “I’m not sure that I would have done it like that,” is a thought that is seldom far from my mind, as is the realisation that it is because they have done the job properly.

In the past I have flooded, electrocuted, pierced and generally turned myself into human carpaccio so often that the realisation that there are things I really should not attempt is no longer a painful one (certainly not when compared with the reality of actually doing it) but the recognition of the fact that I am no longer physically capable certainly smarts. The day-after pain of I really shouldn’t have done that at my age almost overwhelms the smug satisfaction of knowing that – despite all advice to the contrary – I did give it a go and so the knowledge that I will have to pay somebody to put it right is not nearly so distressing.

In our younger days we did not have the money to pay to have things done. If we didn’t do it ourselves, it didn’t get done and I think that is almost certainly a good thing. The various scars dotted across my body serve as a useful aide de memoire as I get older. If ever I was tempted to try to lay a new patio myself and needed a reminder of the correct way to do it, I could glance at my bent and battered fingers and recall exactly how it shouldn’t be done. Life is an education. Letting go of the lessons is not always easy…

The Beginner’s A-Z of D.I.Y. Subversion – Introduction (part one)

This is not a terrorist handbook. If you are scanning this post at random whilst pretending to peruse some far more worthy thread, you need not be concerned – it is highly unlikely that you will receive a knock on the door from a shady-looking character with a rolled-up umbrella and a GCHQ security pass hanging from a purple lanyard around his neck. You can read on in relative safety. You are unlikely to find yourself on the receiving end of a polonium enema just yet.

Perhaps we should begin with a definition. My hastily Googled enquiry offered this – Subversion: the undermining of the power and authority of an established system or institution. I see it more as the art of being a bloody nuisance. Like stretching Clingfilm over the toilet bowl, it seldom ends well. I tend to think that the aim of undermining the entire established system might be a slightly ambitious one for a long-in-the-tooth loner. I am happy to discuss subversion in all of its forms, from hacking the Pentagon computers to leaving a drawing pin on the Bowl’s Club Secretary’s chair, but I urge you to consider – those on the receiving end of acts of subversion do not necessarily share your healthy regard for democratic rights and may just call the police if you continue to shout rude words through their letterbox – worse, they might just open the door and chase you.

Subversion is a gift for life. The desire to subvert is there from birth. Any parent will recognise the look on a baby’s face as it widdles on the changing mat or poos in a freshly changed nappy. The urge to subvert grows with the child. School brings unrivalled opportunities: bird whistles behind a raised desk lid; innocently made smart-arse remarks during class discussions; getting lost on the way to classes; falling to sleep during them… all of the things that teachers most love. In adulthood, the opportunities to act subversively occur daily. I am not talking about the kind of actions that could cause physical harm; I’m talking about the slight discomfort of a rubber band on the back of the neck, a dried pea in a brogue, an unpicked seam in the underwear… And I’m not necessarily thinking about actual physical irritation, I’m thinking mental too. I’m thinking about moving the most expensive suit you can find onto the Bargain Rail at Next; I’m thinking about casually pretending to pick up a loose bolt from the floor near the railings at the top of the Eiffel Tower or producing your own bottle of tomato ketchup at an oyster bar. It might sound like little more than a practical joke, but it will put a bat up the nightie of a) the multi-nationals, b) the French and c) people who insist on eating raw molluscs in public.

Subversion that results in violence is often linked with religion. Religion is, in my opinion, not something with which the subversive should become involved. Too often, the incorporation of subversion and religion can lead to shed-loads of anguish and not a little bloodshed – just think back to the Sunday school outings of your youth. If you are decided upon a career in religious subversion, there are other websites out there for you, although I would not necessarily recommend accessing them on your mother-in-law’s laptop.

I am no connoisseur of violence – I haven’t queued for a bus in years – but I am aware that some factions quite like it. I am a firm believer that blood is designed to remain within the body. As far as I am concerned, a pool of red liquid around a person’s feet can only spell trouble – unless it is being lapped up by the cat, in which case it probably spells strawberry sauce. I would certainly never encourage risky behaviour: life and limb are not designed to be exposed to danger. Extreme pain is nature’s way of telling you to stop whatever it is you are currently doing, even if it is just sitting cross-legged on a concrete floor. The only advice I can offer is that violence is seldom the answer (unless, ironically, the question is ‘what is seldom the answer?’).

Maisie and Margaret are Cooking

I don’t think I write enough women, so I decided to introduce you to these two…

“Hello, erh…”
“Maisie? It’s me, Margaret. Are you alright? You sound distracted.”
“Yes, sorry, I didn’t realise it was you ringing. I wasn’t looking at my phone. I’m in the middle of cooking my tea.”
“Ooh, what are you cooking?”
“Fish fingers and oven chips.”
“Very nice, although I’m not quite sure it actually qualifies as cooking does it love.”
“Doesn’t it? Why?”
“Well it’s all frozen isn’t it.”
“When I take it out of the freezer it is, but by the time I put it on the plate it’s cooked.”
“Not exactly Masterchef though, more warming up than cooking, isn’t it.”
“It’s only for me Margaret. Obviously if I had visitors I’d ditch the tin of mushy peas and have frozen instead. Bread and butter probably.”
“Scampi I imagine, if it was the Mayor.”
“Probably get the best plates out if it was the mayor, put the ketchup in one of those titchy bowls with a spoon.”
“I’m not sure the Mayor would care for your ketchup, Maisie. No point in being Mayor if you can’t demand Heinz. I suppose he’d probably send his people around beforehand to check your condiments.”
“His people?”
“Oh yes, I’m sure he’d have ‘people’. They’d have to check everything out, wouldn’t they? Probably insist on Bird’s Eye fish fingers too… And they’d want to give your air fryer a once over I imagine.”
“I haven’t got an air fryer.”
“I’ll lend you mine if the Mayor’s coming.”
“I’m not sure that I’d know how to use it Marge. I’m probably better sticking to the grill.”
“Oh it’s easy Maisie, you just turn it on, put the fish fingers in and ten minutes later they’re burned to a crisp. Couldn’t be easier. I use mine every day. I haven’t eaten anything that isn’t black in months.”
“So you can cook anything in them?”
“Yes, I do Scotch Eggs in mine.”
“Scotch Eggs? That’s fancy. I didn’t realise that you were such an Episcopalian.”
“Do you mean epicurean dear?”
“I don’t know, is it something to do with fish?”
“All food, I think. Food and drink.”
“So Molly Wormhole is an epicurean?”
“No dear, Molly Wormhole is an alcoholic. She’s not really bothered about food: Coq au Vin perhaps, but without the coq.”
“Dear old Molly, her husband was a funny sort wasn’t he?”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, he always wore shorts didn’t he, whatever the weather.”
“It was something to do with his army days wasn’t it?”
“That’s what he always said, but to my certain knowledge he served the whole of his National Service in Aldershot on account of his feet.”
“His feet?”
“Flat. I saw him once without his shoes on. Like two giant slabs of nougat they were.”
“I would have thought that would make him good in the desert, Maisie – spread the weight, like a camel.”
“They couldn’t get boots to fit him apparently. It’s why he always wore those bloody sandals.”
“I think he was buried in them.”
“I’m not surprised. I wouldn’t have wanted to be the one who had to take them off.”
“Molly insisted they took his toupee off though. Scared me to death when I went to see him laid out. I thought they’d embalmed the wrong man.”
“I never understood why he had a ginger wig. I remember him from school. He had dark hair then.”
“It was in the sale I think. He was a very mean man.”
“I always wondered whether he had picked it up secondhand… from Frankie Howard possibly.”
“Molly hated it.”
“I’m not sure that it was just the rug she hated, was it?”
“He was a very difficult man.”
“Difficult, vain and welded to his sandals. I wonder what she ever saw in him.”
“He was different when he was young.”
“He must have been because you could often catch Molly sober back then.”
“Yes dear, but she never had the best of taste in men.”
“Ooh, not a dating epicure then?”
“More of an omnivore where men were concerned was our Molly.”
“I suppose she must have an air fryer then.”
“What?”
“You said you can cook anything in them.”
“Right… Well… I imagine everybody’s got one except for you dear. Now, how are your fish fingers going? I don’t want you to burn them.”
“No, Margaret, they’re not burning. They’re still frozen. I appear to have forgotten to turn the oven on. I did turn the hob on though: my mushy peas are now more crusty if I’m honest. Black and crusty.”
“Actually, now you mention it, I think I can hear your oven timer going off.”
“It’s the smoke alarm I think.”
“Oh dear, can you turn it off?”
“I’ll take the battery out.”
“Is that wise dear, if you’re going to cook in the oven?”
“I’ll use the microwave.”
“I’m not at all certain that you can cook oven chips and fish fingers in the microwave: won’t they go soggy?”
“It’s not necessarily a problem is it, with my teeth?”
“Your teeth? What’s wrong with your teeth?”
“I appear to have misplaced them when I was searching for my phone.”
“When I rang? You said you were distracted because you were cooking your tea.”
“Oh yes. Thank goodness I didn’t turn the oven on.”
“But why did you take your teeth out in the first place?”
“Well, I often take them out when I take my bra off straight after ‘Countdown’, it’s one of the benefits of my limited diet, isn’t it? I’m perfectly happy to ‘gum’ fish fingers and chips.”
“Of course. Well I suppose you’d better go and find them then dear.”
“Yes, I will. I’ll speak to you tomorrow Margaret.”
“Ok Maisie. We’ll speak then. Goodnight.”
“Goodnight…”

The Beginner’s A-Z of D.I.Y Subversion – A Hastily Assembled Explanation

This little guide began its life as a commissioned article for a magazine that sadly sank without trace before its edition made publication. (A fate for which, having become a regular contributor, I must accept a reasonable share of blame.) Anyway, ‘Hey-ho’, I still had the copyright and so I published in my blog ‘The Gentle Art of Subversion’ in two parts during December 2019 and later as ‘The Beginner’s A-Z of D.I.Y. Subversion – Introduction’ (parts 1 and 2) in January 2022, by which time I had decided that it would expand beautifully into a lavishly illustrated (pen & ink) book with a foreword by a Chinese cyber-hacker, Michael Portillo or the bloke from the local petrol station who wears odd socks, a nylon toupee and barks like a dog every time he is asked whether he can ‘change a tenner for coins to use in the johnnie machine in the gents’.

It proved to be difficult to write and, because of my liberal use of footnotes, almost impossible to format for WordPress, but nonetheless I plugged away, initially through letters A to D and later E to F until I was finally fully demoralised by the fact that absolutely nobody was reading it. The specific reasons for my disappointment were two-fold, firstly because I believed that its episodic nature might mean that anybody could hop on board whenever the mood took them, and catch up if they felt so inclined, at their own convenience, and secondly because I liked it: it was exactly the kind of tosh that I would read myself. Anyway…

Inevitably (due, largely, to the ‘Published this day in the past’ gizmo that has recently appeared in my stats) I re-read it recently and thought ‘You know, I’ll give that another go.’ And so I will, although whether it will be published weekly, monthly or (altogether more likely) sporadically, I do not yet know. What I have decided is that if I re-publish the existing sixteen parts over the next few weeks it might give me the opportunity to a) gauge the reaction (if any) to it and b) to get my head back into the required space. In the meantime I will rootle through the encyclopaedia and carry with me the certain knowledge that when (and if) it is completed I will almost certainly have to employ somebody who is much more proficient than myself at formatting in order to make it readable in any other way. Of course that, alongside the looming issue of letters ‘X’ and ‘Z’ lays far into the future, but as the gentle art of subversion is something that we all develop as we get older, it should, for now, feel perfectly at home here…

For those of you who are about to scan these pages, open-mouthed with disbelief and indignation, I offer my fulsome and unconditional apologies. I am a man of a certain age and my command of the ‘gender-neutral pronoun’ is not great. In short, outside of using ‘he/she’ throughout the text (unwieldy and itself open to misinterpretation) I have found myself floundering in the post-prepositional sentence phase and have tended, consequently, to flit between the two main gender-specific options available to me. Furthermore, I fear that I may have somewhat overloaded with ‘he’, ‘his’ and ‘him’ to the detriment of ‘she’, ‘her’ and (er…) ‘her’. Let me explain. There are many, many female subversives out there – I have met many of them – but few who would require the information offered in a guide such as this. The truth is that the majority of those reading this guide will be male. Men need help. And as a man, this is the best I can do to help them.

I understand that most men will require the services of the gender-dominant fifty percent plus of the population in the pursuit of their long term objectives, but outside of providing the old man with an odd flask of hot tea and clean pants every Wednesday, most will keep their heads down and observe the futility of failed action and impotent rage with a wry detachment. If you are a woman reading this guide in an attempt to understand what is going on between a man’s ears – well, now you know. It’s not pretty, but at least, thanks to all of those gender-specific pronouns, you will know that I’m not talking about you …

The Walking Man

During, and for a time after, the covid epidemic and its numerous associated lockdowns I started to write about my attempts to run. If you read the posts (which started with Couch to 5k and rounded off with a number of Running Man episodes) you will know that running was something I willingly endured, but never enjoyed. Since I stopped running I have gone through spells of swimming, cycling and gym-going before washing up on the shores of what I like to call exercise these days: walking football and walking (without the football). I have become The Walking Man, not (yet) the walking boots, rucksack and kagoule kind of walking man, but the weather’s dry and I’ve got a spare half hour so I’ll take a quick skulk around the village kind. The 10,000 steps a day kind, rather than the cross-country trek kind. My little excursions generally begin and end at my house and seldom veer far away from proper pavements.

Walking is exposing: if you were to find yourself being chased by a lion, you would have to lope up to speed before you could even think about getting away and, somehow, when you are walking there is nowhere to hide. People barely perceive runners and dog-walkers, but old men wandering aimlessly about the village tend to attract attention. I sense that even people who know me have begun to fear that I am casing the joint for a gang of International Housebreakers. Or worse… People who just amble around on village paths without hiking boots, waterproofed headwear or Kendall Mint Cake must be odd, right?

My immediate reaction is to make myself even more noticeable, e.g. nobody so obviously weird can possibly be actually weird, can they?. I say ‘Hello’ to everyone I encounter: to the dog-walkers, who consider me very peculiar because, well, because I’m not walking a dog; to the pram pushers who consider me exceedingly strange because I am talking to someone who is obviously well outside of my own demographic – i.e. not nearly so close to the final goodbye; to the elderly women who ooze ‘Don’t even think about trying to mug me sunshine, I did Jujitsu at the W.I. this morning’, and the elderly males who recognise a commonality, but are too focussed on remembering that they need cat littler from the Co-op to stop and chat. Not even those who are on a similar rambling course to my own attempt to disguise the fact that they find it very curious that I am doing it too.

As a runner you become used to feeling invisible: nobody thinks that you are doing something strange because they don’t even notice that you are there. They may swerve slightly to avoid sweaty bacterial fall out as you pass, but they are completely deaf to your wheezy greetings. When you are walking, the very act of ignoring you takes far too long to seriously consider. By and large a greeting requires some form of response and that is often couched in a quizzical ‘Why aren’t you running?’ kind of look, and an obvious desire for people to distance themselves from any association with the slow-motion weirdo.

But here we are, life and time go on and, whatever the drawbacks, walking remains my way forward – particularly as walking backwards is not to be encouraged at my age. As the summer draws on it becomes a more attractive, enjoyable prospect, in a way that running never did. I am likely to remain a walking man until time takes a further toll and the blundering progress of The Shuffling Man becomes the story I have to tell…

My Couch to 5k posts ran from May to August 2020, with a brief return in 2021. I dropped in a few ‘running’ posts through the next few months until I started to regularly publish Running Man posts from November 2020 to June 2022 with a further brief return in May 2023. I imagine they are all fairly easy to find should you wish to (just search ‘running’) but I’ve attached a few links below just in case. I’ve looked back on quite a lot of them and they tell me a lot about epidemic and the world as it recovered. A common theme seems to be illness – almost certainly linked to covid and I realise that running gave me the time I needed to think my way through a difficult time, but it was exhausting and I don’t see me doing it again…

Couch to 5k (30.05.2020)
Couch to 5k (10) – They Think It’s All Over (03.08.2020)
More Random Running Thoughts (13.08.2020)
Man on the Run (29.09.2020)
The Running Man Plods On (09.11.2020) started a run of Running Man posts which continued until The Running Man – The State of Play (14.06.22)
The Running Man on Thoughts of a Return (03.05.23) reveals that the bloody virus still had the power to pop back into our lives from time to time almost four years on, but furthermore illustrates that I did not allow it to alter my fundamental attitude to running as a means of escape – although it did make me question how badly I wanted to get away in the first place…

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About the Human Body

I know that human skin is self-cleaning (almost certainly courtesy of The Ladybird Book of the Human Body, Look & Learn or similar) but I also know that it is not very good at it. In fact, I do know people for whom the whole arrangement has irretrievably broken down. Dirt, like energy, cannot be destroyed. It merely moves from your body to your sheets. Besides, if I understand it correctly, skin does not actually clean itself, it merely dies and drops off, taking the muck with it – although in my experience, seldom quickly enough.

Fifty percent of household dust is dead skin (I hesitate to think too deeply about what constitutes the other half) and it is estimated that the average adult could fill an average-sized bungalow with sloughed dermis during a lifetime. If you don’t believe me, look inside your sock after a long walk.

The human body is an amazing thing – I certainly wouldn’t be without mine – and I thought that it was about time that I took a look at exactly how remarkable it actually is. (Not by using a mirror you understand. That is not an amazing thing. That would be of interest only to an Eskimo who wanted to estimate how many candles he would be able to make from it.) I undertook extensive research (five minutes on Google) and this is what I found:

If laid out end to end the blood vessels in your body would stretch out to 100,000 miles and you would be dead. About two thousand gallons of blood are pumped around the body every day, enough to fill around eight average baths – although I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it.
The brain, like the North Sea, is eighty percent water – although the other twenty percent is not the same. It – like a geriatric’s love life – is more active during sleep.
The strongest muscle in the body by weight is the tongue. I can think of nothing to say about that which would not result in my arrest if ever I set foot Alabama.
The nose can distinguish over a trillion different scents, at least a million of them associated with feet. Noses can be educated to detect hundreds of different aromas in a single glass of wine – although not, unfortunately, pretentious bullshit.
The small intestine is approximately twenty feet long – although it can feel like inches after a Mexican meal.
A sneeze can travel at up to one hundred miles per hour: ten miles per hour quicker than the hand bearing the tissue.
The average human body contains enough carbon to make nine hundred pencils and enough fat for seven bars of soap, which explains why most men think about sex far more often than they think about washing their hands.
Humans are the only animal to blush – and almost certainly the only one with reason to.
The fastest growing hair is in the beard – which is why your granny has to shave so often. Irrespective of speed of growth, beard hair is left standing by nasal hair which, in my own experience, can attain the girth of a tree-trunk overnight.
In thirty minutes your body produces enough heat to boil half a gallon of water. Presumably, if you were to lay in a cold bath for long enough you would eventually be able to have a long, hot soak without troubling the boiler. Stay there a little longer and you could probably cook a lobster.
The average person has 67 different species of bacteria in their belly button. The average five-year old has 67 different species of bacteria on everything they hand you.
Babies cannot shed tears until they are about one month old – but boy do they make up for it afterwards.
Humans have fewer genes than a tomato. Donald Trump has fewer brain cells.

A Paean to Inertia

Photo by Polina Tankilevitch on Pexels.com

For the first two months of this year whilst I was not posting I had the kind of ‘viewing’ figures I had only previously attained at the height of a particularly virulent sugar dream, although conversely I had very few ‘likes’ and even fewer comments because, I assume, our little robot friends don’t find this kind of rambling nonsense their cup of Darjeeling, despite the fact that they appear to have read each of my previous 1,088 posts at least three times a day for weeks on end. Since I have started to post again the stats have fallen dramatically. By my calculations, if I was to start to publish six posts a week my readership would assume the depth, if not the inverse volume, of a black hole – a vortex into which you would all risk being drawn by association. I cannot risk that. You have, after all, done no harm to me. I do, however, currently find myself writing far more than it is possible for me to accommodate here in a single post per week, and despite the presence in my life of many other, ultimately pointless, authorial projects, I began to think that I might well start to publish twice a week again, if only for a while: until my capacity to assemble seven hundred words of waffle on the theme of who-knows-what deserts me and the world, having made it all the way to hell in a handcart, kicks back and puts a bat up the nightie of all of those in charge. But then came the realisation of how fraught with unseen consequences such an enterprise might prove to be.

I would have to change ‘my days’ for a start. Wednesday feels like a great day to post because I associate it with the middle of the week for most Monday to Friday workers – a day for which, trapped as it is between two weekends, a little diversion (particularly one that does not involve remorse, regret or losing your wallet in mysterious circumstances) is generally welcomed and I don’t think that I want to move away from that at the moment. If I was going to seriously contemplate posting twice a week, I feel as though I would need to schedule something for the weekend so a regular Tuesday and Friday regime would probably be the way it would have to be. I like a bit of routine.

During the last couple of weeks I have rediscovered an old way of working and, coincidentally unearthed a completely new one. In my pre-retirement days I would carry paper with me at all times and I would jot down notes throughout the day. A single day’s outpourings could often result in a complete post, often – due to my scattergun approach to storytelling – needing minimal editing, although not all of them made it through ‘to air’ because, as limited as my capacity for self-analysis is, I do recognise puerile when I see it. It is alarming how often the content of my brain resembles something written by Enid Blyton on an acid trip. I do keep the unused posts ‘on file’ for a little while in case other ideas get a little sparse, but it doesn’t take long at all before I realise that saying nothing is very much preferable to running the risk of sounding like Donald Trump’s hairdresser after they have inhaled rather too much setting lotion. I have started to carry paper again…

My new discovery however is that, given a simple fact or anecdote to relate, I can now simply sit down at the laptop and do it immediately without recourse to paper, pens, caffeine, wine or chocolate. (Ok, I admit to exaggerating about the last three. I have attempted to treat my body as a temple, but the bugger has started to fall apart on me so, quite frankly, it is going to have to learn to stand up for itself.) It gives my posts a certain immediacy (bad grammar, bad spelling and total lack of narrative thrust) they did not previously have. So, a return to posting two or three times a week is certainly doable: It takes no more than five minutes of watching the news on TV to realise that very little in this world is at all rational and, as much as I often feel that I must be from another planet, I understand that I am actually part of this reality and therefore in writing about it, I don’t have to make sense either. It is a relief if I am honest.

Away from blogging, most of what I write has some semblance of plot: a pre-defined direction of travel with a beginning, a middle and (usually) a thoroughly unsatisfactory conclusion. I generally have to buckle on my ‘big boy pants’ before settling down at the keyboard to re-gather the threads of something previously started: I need to remember where I am, where I am going and why. Even the absurd requires a certain kind of logic. I can do it when I try but I do realise that despite all contrary temptations, I recognize the pressing need to finish what I have started elsewhere before I increase my output here. Maybe the extra down-time will enable me to weed out some of my more sickly contributions before they plop into cyberspace – although in retrospect it is probably unlikely. A return to the twice-weekly reportage of mediocre mundanity could well still be the way that this eventually develops, but – despite an ego shouting in my ear that what this wholly illogical world actually needs is more of me – I think that for now I will continue to limit myself to a singular literary whinge per week. I don’t imagine the bots will like it very much, but frankly if it saves us all from being drawn into an interstellar abyss, it’s probably a price I am prepared to pay…

Ironically, this post has taken the longest time to write having found itself in and out of the bin on numerous occasions whilst I grappled with the problems attendant with a piece that has substantially changed track along the way, meaning that the ending (which I liked) had nothing to do with the beginning which has now found itself in the middle of a piece about something else entirely. It has become a little bit of a paean to inertia which, now I come to think about it, is very apt…

The Big Lad

Wayne Fleet was ‘a big lad’, everybody said so. At five he towered above his mother, by seven he was head and shoulders taller than his father who, although by his own admission not a tall man, had hoped to retain at least a modicum of physical authority over his son until he reached his teens. As it was, by the time he was eight, he was able to carry his father under one arm and, humiliatingly, easily open all manner of jars and bottles that had left his father defeated. His life, and those of everyone around him, was dominated by his stature, and his parents found themselves summoned into school on a regular basis for a short chat with the principal to discuss the progress of their son. “It’s not just that he’s big,” he said on what transpired to be the final such occasion “it’s just – can I be frank? – he’s fucking huge isn’t he? He’s cost the school a fortune in new furniture and he’s wrecked more of the children’s titchy toilet seats than I would care to mention. Mrs Entwistle – she teaches young Wayne ‘Music & Movement’ – swears that his over-enthusiastic attempts at gymnastics have undermined the foundations of the entire Art block and Miss Hyman – I know, most unfortunate given her profession – his biology teacher has downright refused to teach him about ‘the birds and the bees’ on the grounds that he already shaves daily and – her words not mine – ‘if his private parts are anything close to being in proportion to the rest of him, I would not want to be held responsible for the damage he might cause with the dreadful thing once he learns what it can be used for.’” (Privately, Miss Hyman, knew full-well how ‘popular’ Wayne would most probably prove to be with the village girls when he was older, and recognised the disappointment they would feel if – in the trouser department – he did not turn out to be proportionately ‘blessed’. In fact, looking at Wayne, Miss Hyman could not help but think of her own fiancé, Jack Tiddler and, wistfully, imagine him with something more epically proportioned than the little pee-pee to which she found herself so frustratingly betrothed.) “The thing is,” continued the principal, ‘the staff have held a bit of a whip-round and have raised between them sufficient funds to pay for Wayne to attend a more suitable teaching establishment. It has an unblemished reputation in preparing its pupils for life in the army – a career path for which young Wayne appears eminently suited. He starts on Monday. I will drive him there myself – providing I can borrow somebody else’s car…”
“You mean you’re sending him away to a boarding school?” asked Wayne’s mother on the verge of tears (whether of joy or of sorrow even she was uncertain).
“Oh, most certainly,” said the headmaster. “We felt it better for all parties to put a reasonable distance between us. Nobody wanted to run the risk of him coming back here… that is… we felt it would help him settle more quickly if he did not have the false hope of resuming his education here, although he is, of course, always welcome to visit,” he continued, fingering the letter of resignation he had recently completed. “After suitable notice of course.”
“And we don’t have to pay?” asked his father.
“Oh no, certainly not,” replied the head. “Unless you want him to stay on over the school holidays.”
“I’ll work overtime,” said his father.
“Will it improve his career prospects?” asked his mother.
“He’s almost certain to be accepted into the Infantry,” beamed the head. “He has all the intellectual skills required and I imagine he will be an absolute wizard with the bayonet…”

“I’m going where?” Wayne asked his parents later that evening.
“It’s called St Cripps,” said his father cradling an Estate Agent’s pamphlet on his knee. “It’s more suited to your abilities than your current school. I’m sure that once you’ve settled, you probably will not want to come home at all.”
“But will there be other boys like me father?”
“Almost certainly not…”
“Well, will you visit?”
“Do you promise not to arm-wrestle me?”
Wayne nodded.
“Possibly,” said Mr Fleet. “Once you’ve settled.”
“Ok,” said Wayne. “I’ll give it a go.”
“Well done. I’m sure you’ll love it,” said father.
“But make sure you sleep on your back,” said mother.

In fact young Wayne did neither of these things. Heeding his mother’s well intentioned anti-sodomy advice he attempted to sleep on his back, but his snoring was so fearsome that the other boys in his dorm began to wedge things in his mouth as he slept. It began with rolled up socks and tennis balls, but they proved so ineffectual that it was not too long before he found himself waking up with a pillow wedged between his jaws and gaffer tape holding it down. It was not until the pupil in the bunk below him admitted to stealing the entire school stock of Blue-Tack to shove both into his own ears and down Wayne’s throat that Wayne was moved into his own ‘room’ at the bottom of the school field, where he was able to sleep peacefully on his side, surrounded by the gardener’s tools and sacks of something that reminded him of home. And he did not love the school. He hated it. He excelled at the military training, on one occasion simultaneously breaking his opponent’s arm and his instructor’s back during a particularly energetic bout of unarmed combat, but his heart was not in it. He was provided with more food than was required even to power his own gigantic frame – mostly because the other boys refused to eat it – and he was popular with his classmates who called him Quasi and used him as a solo scrum in house rugby, but despite his aptitude for barely controlled violence, he knew that the military life was not for him. Deep in his heart Wayne had only one ambition and that was to return to his old school, to Mrs Entwistle’s Music & Movement classes and eventually, if all went well, to the Royal Ballet as principal – if unusually large – dancer. After all, he’d always looked good in his mother’s tights and of one thing he was sure, there was no more certain way of finding general societal acceptance than by becoming a ballet dancer. In his imagination (there was no space in his little shedroom for reality) he performed a pas de deux with a glamorous ballerina. It went well, she did not break.

He began to plot his return…

I wrote this for my great friend Chris (Crispin Underfelt) who loves a ripping yarn, in the hope that it will help to encourage him back to his Thompson’s Lost Plimsoll saga