…With ravine, shriek’d against his creed

Photo by Polina Tankilevitch on Pexels.com

…I awoke this morning to find a single black olive in the centre of the patio. It was not one of ours. I wondered where it might have come from. We have bungalows to either side of us, both of which are more than an olive stone throw away, and a cemetery behind us – I don’t see the olive being launched from there. It must, I thought, have been dropped by a bird, but I could not think either of a bird that would think about carrying an olive nor, possibly more intriguing, who might fill their bird feeders with them. This is not St Tropez! And the olive was un-nibbled. If it had been carried there by the resident squirrel, surely it would have ventured just a little taste before abandoning it. (I love olives, but I have many friends who would sooner squat bare-arsed over a nettle patch than chew on a single cracker laced with tapenade, even though most of them have never tried it.) It had to be a bird, and if it was a bird, it would have to be a crow. Nothing else around here would get it off the ground. We have a few crows roosting in the tall trees that surround the graveyard; one of those could easily have dropped an olive-sized object into our garden and thought “Oh bugger. It’s not worth the bother of picking it up. I’ll have my Martini without one,” but where did it come from? My wife suggested somebody’s bin and, despite the fact that even the most buffed-up corvid is unlikely to be able to lift the average wheelie bin lid, I decided to accept the bin/crow theory as the most likely given all the available facts.

I don’t much care for crows having watched on helplessly last summer as a solitary bird pillaged a long-cherished blackbird’s nest and took the chicks, one by one, up to a nearby roof where it ate them, knowing full well that I was there – its little beady eye was firmly fixed on me – but comfortably out of reach. It was a challenge – we both knew it – and it won hands-down. I understand the value of crows in carrion clearing: without them we would be knee deep in squashed hedgehogs and farmer-dumped badgers, but this was seriously outside of its job description. I am a lifelong veggie, I can’t even eat beetroot because it looks too bloody, but I would have ripped the little bugger apart if I could have got hold of it at that moment. The pain of it boils in me even now. I have spent much time since we moved here scanning the McQueen borders in an attempt to find a solitary representative of the local murder* to chase away, although to be fair, I have yet to see one actually set down on our own little corner of this sceptered isle.

So it was, that I ventured out into the garden on morning crow patrol and spotted the last mortal remains of a blackbird on my lawn. When I say last, I really do mean last because except for a fairly neat, but widely spread circle of feathers there was nothing, not even a beak, for his family to bury. How they would identify the body, I have no idea.

My first thought was to accuse a local feline perpetrator, but we are unusually devoid of cats around here, besides, I have some experience of catkill and it usually far messier than this with the more indigestible bits and bobs of the victim scattered hither and thither for me to retchingly clear away. This looks far more like a bird-strike: the detritus of the devastating impact of a large raptor left behind, but the prey itself flown away for consumption – like the aftermath of a teenage visit to a McDonalds Drive-Thru – but this is an English country garden, not the wide-open backyards of Carolyn or River, and there is little room for the strike of a hawk. The lack of space in the vegetation that grows between our fences is exactly what makes this such a safe haven for the prey species with which it is stocked – or so we thought. We have an ever-present buzzard who soars over us, but I seriously doubt that he would be able to manoeuvre into the space we have to offer without clipping his wings on the trellis.

Our garden has dozens of the smaller birds: tits, sparrows, robins and the slightly larger blackbirds. We also have wood pigeons, ducks and, of course, the ever-watching crows. I wondered, could they be our killers? Well, according to Google, crows do hunt adult blackbirds – they are opportunists who will eat almost anything they can turn their beak to (with the possible exception of olives) – so it is possible, which also makes it possible that I now like them even less than I did.

As I type this I am watching a little robin friend flit to and fro into the hedge in front of my office window, his beak full of nesting material which he drops only long enough to admonish me if I interfere with his work by walking through the gate, and my eyes cast up to the garage roof where the crow sits and watches. It reminds me of ‘Death’ in a pack of tarot cards. I try to formulate a plan to protect the powerless, but it is easier said than done. Perhaps I need to Whatsapp somebody in the American government…

Unlike the area surrounding the homes of the brilliant bloggers mentioned above, our garden does not offer sanctuary to groundhogs, skunks, or deer. Even my failing eyesight allows me to clearly view the decay in the fence panels to all four sides without moving from the centre of the lawn. (Indeed, it is impossible to leave the centre of the lawn without falling off the edge.) Our garden stretches as far as the eye can see, only because the fences prevent you seeing further, but it does offer space for hedgehogs, squirrels and birds. We have mice – a brief scan of the shredded cushions we carelessly left in the shed will affirm that – but I am yet to spot a cat prowling the garden. Our friends in Canada have bears and caribou; we have slugs and piggy beetles. It must be some sort of evolutionary offshoot: back onto 10,000 acres of Indian Savannah and you have elephants on the doorstep; curate a little garden in England and you may find signs of shrew-ingress if you are lucky. Yesterday I was excited to find a centipede. We are surrounded by nature, but it is all in miniature.

Which brings me to one final, but inescapable possibility: pixies. We almost certainly have them somewhere in the nooks and crannies of our little patch and whilst I do not see them as hard-eyed, cold hearted blackbird killers – that is far more likely to be the elves – they are just the sort of miniature being that I could imagine carelessly dropping an olive on the patio. Although it would be quite a big deal for an pixie, protein-wise, so I suppose they might well be back to look for it.

I’ll keep my eyes peeled and let you know…

…Who trusted God was love indeed
And love Creation’s final law
Tho’ Nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravine, shriek’d against his creed… In Memoriam – Alfred, Lord Tennyson

*The collective noun for crows – but you knew that, of course.

Liberation Day

I cannot be the only person in the world (can I?) who turns on the news every morning wondering “What has he said now?” I don’t remember a time when the news has been so dominated by the ill-considered utterances of one man – in particular this one – who is now openly discussing a third term, something that, I think, would require either a change in the American Constitution or a coup (and he’s already tried that one). I don’t believe that it’s too easy – even for an all-powerful president to change the country’s constitution, but there must, I suppose, be ways to circumvent the law – and we know how good he is at that. From this side of the world, the only thing more scary than the prospect of a Trump third term is that of a Vance first one.

It seems that the perception of politicians is completely different at home and abroad. We are certainly not strangers to the ‘hapless leader’ syndrome. I think in the US, both the man Boris himself and Nigel Farage (who, I must point out for the sake of my own sanity, has never been voted into any position of power in this country – yet) are well regarded. Much less so here. I managed to live through both Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, but the possibility of a government led by Farage makes my blood run cold and leaves my incredulity repeatedly banging its head against the borders of infinity. We have suffered enough humiliation already. On this side of the ocean we hold ex-president Obama in the very highest of regard, but I think perhaps this is not entirely the case in America.

I studiously try to avoid sounding off about politics in other countries because, truth be told, it is none of my business, but when it begins to materially affect me (and everyone else around me) then perhaps it’s ok to vent a little now and then. (You are completely forgiven if you treat it just as seriously as my wife does.) Trump is very much more feared than respected over here – but perhaps that’s what he wants. I can only guess that his hats do not say ‘Make America Great Again (by Stabbing Your Staunchest Allies in the Back)’ only because they are not big enough to fit it all on. Hearing him say that ‘often our friends are the worst’ smarts a little, particularly for a country like ours which has always stood – and individually fallen – alongside our American friends.

It is no longer ‘the love of money’ that is the sole root of all evil; the protection of it has an equally devastating effect. At least the people of the Ukraine, fighting to resist the restless paranoiac violence of Vladimir Putin will be relieved to know that the rare-earth minerals that Donald Trump plans to take as reparation will not carry a tariff – unless you count human life.

Repeated allusions to making Canada (the world’s second largest country and ninth biggest economy) the 51^st state of America are, I presume, mischievous but nonetheless belittling to the Canadian people; the much more aggressive claims on Greenland are scary. If America were to succeed in these two aims it would be the biggest example of expansionism the modern world has seen, and the thought of Russia and China just smiling it through is absurd: maybe Taiwan and Finland are the price we have to pay for tit-for-tat acquisition. Anyone familiar with George Orwell’s ‘1984’ understands the terror of a world totally dominated by three permanently feuding superpowers, Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia. Presumably Mr Trump has not read it – I’m not sure if it has ever been published as a picture book.

I’m pretty certain however that as the 51^st state, Canada would be entitled to sufficient electoral college votes to ensure that Charles Aznavour would have a better chance of a third term than Donald Trump (I would have said Marcel Marceau, but he’s still trying to fight his way out of that damned invisible box) and presumably Greenland would – as the largest island in the world – have aspirations to elevate itself above 52^nd state and would seek to leapfrog Hawaii. No matter, the UK’s position as America’s lapdog, willing to snarl on demand, will be unaffected.

Most of us who have the privilege of living in a democracy know the dilemma of choosing to vote for the least worst option: it is how democracy works, but of late, the ‘me first’ culture has become the dominant ideology throughout the democratic world soon, I fear, to be superseded by ‘me alone’. We live on a planet where the rich and powerful become ever richer and mightier, whilst the weak – particularly those with ‘natural resources’ – are subsumed. At least we will all be able to visit Donald’s Gazan Riviera, just as soon as he has managed to deposit all of those pesky Palestinian people (I refer to the ‘you and I’ type people, of whom there are millions, and not the Hamas idiots whom I hope will have a special place in hell reserved for them for what they did on just that one day). At least there should be no shortage of bunkers on the golf course.

I am the world’s weakest swimmer, but I regularly go to a local wrinklies swim session*: no lanes, just plod up and down at your own pace trying, where possible, to avoid the small eddies of suspiciously warm water. Some of the stronger swimmers (always the ones with reflective swimming goggles so that you cannot see into their soul) defiantly swim in a straight line with no deviation for circumstance, leaving the weaker swimmers (except for, I must admit, the bloody-minded ones like myself) to zig-zag all over the pool for fear of getting in the way: travelling twice as far, but getting nowhere. In my internal little fantasy world, the weak get to swim in a straight line because it doesn’t matter to the strong, who should be the lifeguards and not the sharks. They do not make the sea a safer place by puncturing the wimpy kid’s lilo.

Now, I cannot pretend to understand the politics of America nor, if I’m honest, anywhere else (including the UK) but I would seriously like to think that many Americans did not want their country to become a Putin appeasing, ally-abandoning, economy strangling behemoth when they voted for Trump. They wanted someone to stand up for their own country – of course they did – but not to spit on the shoes of their allies. Everybody needs friends – even if they’re weak ones. Madness is all that thrives in isolation.

Everything contained in this piece is opinion. It is entirely my own, and many other opinions are both available and equally valid I am sure. Life is not about agreeing, but accepting…

As ever, when I write a piece like this, I have to publish it without too much pause for consideration, otherwise it would never appear. It’s a serious topic (and this is a very long post – I’m sorry) but humour is in my nature and I hope it doesn’t appear to be just too flippant. More to the point, I do not seek to upset or antagonise anyone. I know that I have very dear readers who have proudly voted for Trump and will have perfectly good and honest reasons for doing so (perhaps they still feel that the possible alternatives were worse) but the right to disagree without rancour is ingrained in my soul, and yes, I do remember when we elected the ethereally empathetic Margaret Thatcher (oddly for three terms) who made a concerted effort to drain the entire world of all compassion. The vagaries of our voting systems – our ‘first past the post’ and USA’s ‘electoral college’ – ensure that the government we get is seldom the government we voted for. It’s the price we have to pay for having a say. Harold Wilson – a former UK prime minister (twice) remembered by history as being inept with a capital Liz Truss – once said that 24 hours was a long time in politics. We have at the time of writing 1,310 extremely long days to come before the next presidential election, and then what I wonder? Maybe he’ll tell us on the morning news…

*I did. They closed the pool down this morning with no warning and many thousands of pounds of membership fees in their pockets.

Dinah & Shaw 2

It had taken Dinah a little time to settle into the job and to adjust to Shaw’s more eccentric work practices, which he claimed were based upon the Chaos Theory, but were in fact, way more chaotic than that. He could be very grumpy at times, although he could also occasionally be very sweet. On balance, she preferred grumpy. When he was being sweet he brought her things that she could never possibly want – last time it was a four-legged star fish that he had just found on the beach (explanations were requested as he was supposed to be looking for a hamster in Birmingham, but none were forthcoming) together with a bowl of water, a sachet of salt from the café below and the instruction to ‘See if you can make it better.’ It didn’t get better. It got smelly. At least when he was grumpy, she wasn’t given decaying invertebrates to resurrect.

Shaw was generally grumpy when he had a case to solve. Although most of the time he was employed by people hoping to relocate missing pets, what he generally found were lost people, most of whom had no idea they had ever been misplaced in the first place.

Whenever they were out together, Dinah found herself tagging along at distance, either struggling to keep up or asking passer’s-by whether they’d seen where he’d gone. It didn’t help that he would never tell her where he was heading. It didn’t help that he never actually went there anyway. She grew tired of tramping the streets with the photograph of a misplaced ginger cat only to find that Shaw had spent most of the day in the pub chatting to a man from Builth Wells who had no idea his wife was looking for him – in fact, had no idea he had a wife. Often that did at least give him one thing in common with the woman to whom he was subsequently introduced, who either had no idea she had a husband or, if she did, mistakenly thought it was the man with whom she had been living for the past forty years. A grumpy Shaw would waft away any discussion – he knew that they belonged together and if they claimed never to have met before, well, they were obviously mistaken and, by the way, had either of them seen a ginger cat? By the time that Dinah found him, Shaw had normally mellowed in the face of the liquid hospitality of the happy couple and persuaded his cat-less employers to accept that they were not suited to cat ownership in the first place, which often left Dinah with a homeless moggy and blisters that made her extremely tetchy.

‘You really should relax more,’ he would say. ‘Take things as they come. Why don’t you go and buy yourself a drink.’ Shaw never had money. He never got paid and he never paid for anything. Dinah found that she spent most of her time trying to persuade clients who were searching for a precious pooch to accept that they should pay the bill for a service that far from reuniting them with a beloved pet, had merely introduced them to the son that they had never had. They were seldom persuaded by Shaw’s admonition that ‘You can get a dog anywhere’ and quite often unhappy to find someone they had never met before living in their spare bedroom. Dinah tried to remind herself not to get too obsessed by it all, it was just a job – except it wasn’t, was it? You get paid for a job. You have regular hours and days off. Your employer seldom, if ever, asks to borrow your shoes so that he can go down to the corner shop in the clothes he has slept in to get milk. Particularly since the shop’s owner had threatened to set the dogs on him if he didn’t pay his tab. A normal employer does not wander out to get milk on Monday and return on Friday with a packet of flatbreads and a chinchilla. Without your shoes…

…It was no use in asking him where he’d been, he never answered. He just handed over a matted clump of bills and muttered, ‘Pay these will you?’ before falling asleep in the chair. Dinah sighed, ‘With what, Shaw? With what?’ She unfolded the papers and laid them out on the desk, attempting to find some kind of chronology to them, except that they were not bills. They were merely scribbled notes in Shaw’s erratic hand, each detailing in one word or two the failings that she regularly attributed to him. On the last one he had written ‘I will repay you somehow. Would you like to adopt an elderly gerbil?’

Against every screaming instinct, Dinah allowed the faintest of smiles to flicker across her face. She shook her head and flicked the switch on the kettle. ‘If you’re making tea,’ said Shaw without opening his eyes, ‘We’ll need milk…’

First Published as A Little Fiction – Return to ‘Another Unfinished Novel’ 06.06.2020

This was my first return to these two and they fell into place so easily.

All That I am Able to Rattle from Between My Ears on a Monday Morning

I have recently discovered a new blog to read and in tribute to Riddle in the Middle’s brilliant 40 Things for Friday I give you (and I hope she will forgive me) my own tribute to her bloggy baby, although I very much doubt that, even if I live to 100, I will ever be able to find forty interesting things to say about my entire life – let alone a single day – and I fear my own point of view may be a little more jaundiced than her own. Anyway, I’ll give it a shot; let’s see where it goes…

The first sip of a cold coffee when you didn’t realise it had gone cold.
Over-crispy toast that sprays the whole room with crumbs at the first approach of knife and butter.
The realisation that poached eggs exist in only two states: excessively runny and over-cooked.
Why does the Trade Descriptions Act not apply to peanuts?
Marvel at our need to constantly create new words for things that have existed forever: ‘she’s ghosting him’ – she can’t be arsed to talk to him; ‘he’s catfishing her’ – he’s talking bollocks and she believes him; ‘he’s gaslighting her’ – the man’s a complete twat.
Comedy without laughs becomes Comedy/Drama.
“Occasional Light Showers.” Pissing it down.
Why are all baby animals cute – except for pigeons? Squabs are not cute. Not even their own mother’s could find them cute – which is probably why they feed them third-hand street vomit.
No other coffee tastes like the first of the day – except, perhaps, the second.
All chisels are sharp enough only to remove the pieces of wood you do not want them to.
People who seek to excuse lack of knowledge by saying ‘It was before my time.’ Dinosaurs were before my time, but I still know they existed.
In films, no-one ever uses toothpaste on their toothbrush: they never have foamy saliva dripping from their chin or running down their forearm. Is this the true magic of Hollywood?
“…We are sorry you are still waiting. Our telephone operatives are all busy at the moment. Your call is important to us, but we will hang up the second you get through…”
TV Breakfast News in times of international turmoil. Apparently there is a kitten in Chippenham that can ride a skateboard.
Whatever you do is not good enough.
Whenever you do it is not soon enough.
Whatever you do not do will be immediately apparent.
It is easier to think in a hat.
I worry about decaffeinated coffee: it keeps me awake at night.
You can own a million screwdrivers, but you will never have the right one.
People who do not drink alcohols say “I do not drink.” People who do not eat chocolate do not say “I do not eat,” although, honestly, they might as well.
Life is a journey written by David Lynch.
There is no justification for a pink bedroom.
There is no milk in the fridge.
There is no 25.
Decide to make a list of my ten most pressing anxieties, but it is too stressful.
“The higher you climb, the further you fall” although you are far more likely to be able to afford a parachute.
Marmite.
Misaligned underwear.
Suddenly shocked by my hatred of every single indicator on the coffee machine other than ‘Ready’.
Cheese and cake (not cheesecake).
Cheesecake.
The Free World being led by an orange Oompa Loompa.
Is a psychic supermarket counter intuitive?
Even the bluntest chisel will remove your knuckle.
Life and Death.
Love and Peace.
Red wine and chocolate.
Whisky and oatcakes.
Cagney and Lacey.

“Take the Third Exit from the Roundabout and Curse the Fact that You Cannot Count Whilst Driving…”

I am a decent, relatively confident driver – solid and reliable is the summit of my aspirations – but driving would never make it into my list of favourite things to do. I drive because I have to. I take no pleasure in it. I love where I live, but driving is a necessity for all but a trip to the local Co-op or a walk around the cemetery. The practicalities are straightforward enough and I am competent and safe – I am a clipboard carrying man in a hard hat and steel capped boots – but I don’t believe I have ever got into the driving seat thinking, “well, this should be fun.” Put me behind the wheel of a car bearing supermarket-bound wife and two child-seated grandchildren whose tablet batteries have run out and my ennui takes on the proportions of an AI-controlled articulated truck in a snow storm.

It’s not actually as much about driving, as it is about drivers: it seems to me that approximately half the country’s population are brain-dead prats and every single one of them drives a car. Badly. Tin soldiers encased in steel; flat-track bullies in armoured casings.

There should be an entire branch of psychology dedicated solely to drivers. There is something deeply tribal going on here. Close to where I live is a village. In this place no driver ever acknowledges another who stops to wave them through; voluntarily give up your right of way and you will be met with stony indifference. It is an attitude that I have only ever fully witnessed in that one small place. It is a startlingly localized phenomenon. Is it passed from instructor to pupil, from mother to daughter, from father to son, from dickhead to dickhead? Are they like it out of the car? It must be fun queuing in the village chippy, it must be a happy place to walk the baby through the park.

And this is no backwoods, hillbilly community. It is a fairly large village full of shops, pubs, coffee shops, community centres and even a library, just five minutes out of the city. This is not the setting of ‘Deliverance’. It is a localized peccadillo.

Peccadilloes are, of course, something that almost all drivers have. Certain ways of doing things, certain attitudes that that we carry on our sleeves like Cub Scout badges. The UK is an island chockfull of roundabouts (the traffic circle kind, not the painted wooden horses) and my own personal bugbear is drivers who do not bloody signal before taking the exit immediately prior to the one I am patiently sitting at, prat-like, expecting them to go straight on. I impotently yell ‘Signal!’ but to absolutely no avail. I then sit for approximately three hours whilst every single vehicle on the road exits at the same turn without bloody signalling. Eventually someone will signal left, but they will actually go straight on… There is not a single driver on the roads in the UK who does not believe that every other driver is a complete bozo. “Why’s he doing that? Look, look, he’s doing it again. What is he playing at? He’s just an accident waiting to happen.” To be fair, most of us do not believe that we are the best driver in the world, just that we are better than everybody else.

I tend to be very aware of my own limitations (which are, in fact, virtually limitless) and consequently spend much time actively attempting not to piss-off other drivers. I drive (more or less) to the speed limit and (more or less) to the road conditions. I signal my intentions in advance of my manoeuvres. I do not even touch my mobile phone whilst driving. I never eat Kentucky Fried Chicken. (Ever!) Having driven for nigh-on fifty years, preferring on almost all occasions to drive into a parking space even if it is a bus journey away from my eventual destination (I instinctively feel more comfortable moving forward) I have recently discovered that I have a real aptitude for parallel parking in the tightest of spaces, providing – and here’s the rub – that I slot into the gap at the first attempt. If I get it even slightly wrong I feel obliged to drive away, sell the car and assume a new identity in another town. A second attempt is always going to be worse and the exact same people will still be watching.

I once traded in a car at a local dealership and, having carefully looked over it, the salesman said, “The bodywork is flawless. Are you one of those people who park in the empty bit of the car park, miles away from the store, just to make sure that nobody bumps your car?” I answered, truthfully, “No. I am one of those people who parks in the empty bit of the car park because it is easier to find a bay that I can get into without driving backwards. Give me forward motion every time.” He laughed. He thought I was joking. I wasn’t.

I adhere to my opinion that I am a competent and safe driver. I drive because I have to, not because I want to, and even though I am almost certainly better at it than just about everybody else I know, I would probably prefer not to be…

Dinah & Shaw 1 – The Interview

‘Are you absolutely certain you know what you are doing?’ said Dinah, aware, for the first time, that she was gripping the seat rather more firmly than was strictly necessary. Shaw thought for a moment. He raised his eyes to the roof, without moving his head and breathed in sharply.

‘Certain is a very strong word,’ he said. ‘Can we ever truly be certain? I’m not sure…’

‘But you have a pretty good idea, right?’

‘I have a good idea of what I’m doing,’ he said after a pause that was just a beat too long for Dinah’s liking. ‘Only by dint of the fact that I am doing it. Whatever it is that I am doing, I know that I am doing it. Whether I’m doing it correctly, well, that’s a whole different bucket of frogs. Besides,’ he ploughed on, having gained the kind of momentum that, like the Queen Mary at full steam, meant that stopping was both protracted and cumbersome. ‘There are no prizes for doing things right.’

‘I think you’ll find there are,’ said Dinah.

‘Well, yes,’ agreed Shaw after a pause for reflection, ‘but not necessarily the kind of prize that we would like…’

Dinah pushed hard on a brake that did not exist on her side of the footwell. ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ she squawked, aware that any prize, however fanciful, would be preferable to an untimely death. ‘Do you think we could possibly stick to the right side of the road?’

Shaw peered exaggeratedly into the distance. ‘Well yes,’ he replied when, eventually, he was happy that his point had been made. ‘Which side would that be?’

‘Just choose one that doesn’t have vehicles hurtling towards us,’ she shrieked, attempting to fold herself into the glove compartment.

‘I mean,’ continued Shaw, ‘it’s all subjective, isn’t it? There is no right or wrong is there? Only opinion…’

Dinah swallowed hard. ‘I would really rather like it if you went along with the majority view. At least,’ she said, ‘until you manage to drop below a hundred miles an hour.’

Shaw glanced down at the dashboard dials. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘that’s what that is… What’s that flashing?’

‘I think it is a tiny piece of the car’s AI that has managed to retain its sanity and is questioning why you are still in third gear.’

Shaw gazed questioningly at the gearstick. ‘It’s not automatic?’ he asked. Dinah shook her head in answer, as a rigor-like grimace fused itself to her face. Shaw, uncertain of how to approach the gear change, lifted his foot slightly from the accelerator and the car began to slow a little. Dinah peered out from between her knees. ‘Where are we going anyway?’ she asked, hampered only by the fact that her tongue had become welded to the roof of her mouth.

‘I’m, not certain,’ said Shaw. ‘I normally decide that when I get there.’

‘So, how do you know when you’ve arrived?’ She persisted.

‘Well, if I wasn’t there, I’d be somewhere else, wouldn’t I?’ Shaw looked at her as if it was, just possibly, the most stupid question he had ever been asked.

Dinah blushed slightly; embarrassed but affronted and, therefore defiant. ‘So, what if you arrive somewhere that you’re not meant to be?’ she asked.

‘Not meant to be?’ Shaw, again, looked confused. ‘Where you are,’ he said, ‘is where you are meant to be – although not,’ he paused for effect, ‘not necessarily where you had aimed to be.’

‘But how then,’ Dinah groped on, ‘do you know that you will find what you’re looking for?’

‘Looking for?’ Shaw, himself, looked alarmed now. ‘Who actually ever knows what they’re looking for?’

‘But your advert,’ said Dinah, hunting through her pockets for the scrap of paper. ‘It says that you specialise in finding things: missing people, missing pets…’

‘I do,’ he protested. ‘Although what I find is not always what I thought I was looking for.’

‘But how do you know what’s lost?’

‘We’re all lost,’ he answered. ‘Somehow…’

Dinah eased herself back into her seat, happy, for the first time, that the car was travelling at a reasonable speed and roughly in the same direction as all the other vehicles. This was without question the weirdest job interview she had ever been on and, having assumed some kind of self-control, she decided that it was time to get a grip on the conversation. ‘So,’ she began, ‘if you don’t know where you’re going or how you’re going to get there, why do you even need an assistant?’

‘To assist me,’ he replied, deliberately trying to inflect an unsaid ‘Doh!’ into the words.

‘To do what?’ she persisted.

‘Whatever I’m doing.’

Dinah realised that she was on a road to nowhere and tried a new tack. ‘What’s the rate of pay?’ she asked.

‘Pay?’ Shaw was shocked. ‘What for?’

‘You advertised for an assistant.’

‘I know,’ he said, ‘but not an employee.’

‘You expect somebody to assist you for free?’

‘Only for as long as they want to.’ He passed her a mint which she unwrapped and placed in her mouth, deep in thought.

‘Erm, I thought,’ he said, only a little petulantly, ‘that you would unwrap that for me.’

‘Oh,’ she mumbled, fishing the sweet out of her mouth. ‘Do you want it?’

He looked at it in her hand, glistening with saliva, and was tempted, but, ‘No,’ he replied. ‘It’s fine.’

Dinah, meanwhile, had made a decision. She realised that somehow, via a process she did not fully understand, she had, herself, found something for which she did not realise she was searching. ‘Alright,’ she said. ‘I’ll be your assistant.’

‘Good,’ said Shaw, now taking the half-sucked sweet from her and popping it into his own mouth. ‘But, in future, you’ll have to be a bit more careful with the mints…’

First Published 14.01.20 as ‘A Little Fiction – Excerpt from Another Unfinished Novel’ because that is what it was.

Dinah and Shaw became my favourite recurring characters but each time I decided to write a new episode I found that I had to re-read what had previously happened to them and then wait for them to come back to me. I like the way their story has developed and I hope you might too. I will run the whole story over the next few Wednesdays, by which time they will almost certainly have given me another tale to tell…

A Life Far Too Ordinary

I have led a life far too ordinary to ever write – or more truthfully, sell – an autobiography. Whilst ordinary happens to me all the time, there is a distinct absence of the extraordinary in my day to day existence. The sheer volume of humdrum in my story is probably the most notable thing about it. I am deeply boring. My peaks and troughs have all been firmly within normal bounds.

That doesn’t mean that my life hasn’t been enjoyable of course – I wouldn’t have been without it – just not the kind of life that anyone would pay to read. Not the kind of life that would entice Michael Sheen into yet another biopic. Anyone bright enough to read, would also be bright enough to know that they didn’t want to read that. I was a child – a boy child – of the sixties. I have broken more bones and lacerated a greater percentage of my outer casing than I would care to mention, but no more, I fear, than anyone else born at the death of the 1950’s. I was too young for free love in the sixties. By the time I was ready for it, it almost always cost money. Cinema tickets did not come cheap. Toffee Poppets did not grow on trees. Marketing-wise I made the basic mistake of not being gay. Gay child of the sixties would have had a much more saleable story to tell.

I did not ‘do’ drugs – largely because, by and large, I could barely be trusted with a Sherbet Fountain, and my musical talents ensured that I was not good enough to make it into a band even in the seventies. I wrote a few funny lines – I feel sure that I did – but I never had the courage to stand up on a stage and tell them. I was never confident enough in myself to be somebody else. My fanciful mind believes that I would have made a great comedian or actor, but reality assures me that primary school teacher would probably have been beyond my aptitude.

I got married, stayed married, had children and now grandchildren. I love my wife, my children and my grandchildren and they, in turn, tolerate me. If I had a cat it might allow me to feed it. I have almost studiously managed to avoid finding myself cast in the role of innocent bystander to any matter of great import. If I was in an Agatha Christie plot, I would be the one who was killed in error, to put everybody off the scent. I would be the butler who didn’t do it.

I have survived three lockdowns, six James Bonds, nine Star Wars and I have never had therapy, but no-one will ever remember it. Honestly, I have no desire for notoriety, but a little notability wouldn’t go astray. I can’t help but wonder how it must feel for the world to know your name. I suppose it depend on what it knows it for. Invent penicillin and history will smile upon your memory. Accidentally tread on Judi Dench’s toes or knock Miriam Margolyes from her mobility scooter and you will not be looked upon with such favour. Most of us are much more likely to be remembered for inadvertent mishap than for intentional philanthropy.

Will history remember my name? Almost certainly not unless there is some kind of mistake at the DNA testing lab. Will my eventual passing make the news? Unless I am run over by a smashed David Attenborough in a stolen Porsche I fear not. My worries are of infirmity rather than infamy. I’ve done my best to make something of my life, but in truth, it’s really been nothing to write home about…

How It All Works

I anticipated a certain level of toil associated with the house move, but didn’t quite comprehend the 24/7 nature of it all. Wiring, plumbing, building, repairing, decorating is only just getting into full swing and my life, from getting out of bed to falling back into it is dominated by it, and the To-Do List stretches off into the distance, far longer than the recollection of any tasks completed. I am sixty six years of age. I said to my wife this morning that I want to be done with all of this by the time I reach seventy. She laughed. Not in a good way.

Perhaps I can explain how it all works. This morning it was my intention to paint ceilings. I got out paint brushes and rollers, I covered every conceivable surface with cloths just before my wife said, “Can you just change the hinges on that door before you start?” I didn’t say “I started bloody ages ago!” I said “Of course,” and set about it. Three hinges per door means that I can change one at a time without having to take the door down…

…Although the screws came out of the frame easily enough, I could not remove them from the door. I tried a full range of cross-head screw drivers, I tried a slot-head, I tried hammering, I tried a thin sheet of rubber between screw head and screwdriver, I tried swearing, I tried impotently jumping up and down on the spot. Eventually I did manage to remove them (slightly oversized slot-head tapped gently into the screw, since you ask) having first taken the door down from the frame and this is what I found: the screws, having obviously seen service though a number of re-hangings had, understandably, worked a little loose and the solution that offered itself to my predecessor was glue. A screw with PVA between its threads and the wood that surrounds it is surprisingly difficult to remove. Nine of them is a trial too far. The anticipation of a further eight doors so affixed fills me with dread.

But that’s for another day because half of this one has now passed and I have not yet set brush to plasterboard. It can only be a matter of minutes before my wife appears and says “I thought you were going to paint those ceilings this morning.”

The door that came down, by the way, having been previously planed beyond the thickness of its skeleton frame at the bottom, resembles little more than a textured hardboard and corrugated cardboard sandwich with the crust cut off. If The Big Bad wolf should come to call, he’d better be careful that he doesn’t inhale too deeply before he huffs and puffs or it may well fall in on him. And yes, I know that I exaggerate. It is an internal door: the wolf would not be blowing on it. And he could blow all he liked on the actual front door. If he can get the key to work he is a better man than I.

Anyway, having glued matchwood into each of the previous screw holes, I hung the door back up. It opens. When it is not open, it shuts. I don’t suppose that you can really ask for much more from a door.

The ceilings will have to wait until tomorrow now or, if I am forced to refit the handle to the door – which could possibly lead to a full roof reconstruction or, more likely, severe recriminations resulting from the discovery that I have fitted it on the hinge side – sometime next year. At least, I hope, some time before I am seventy…

Harry Potter and the Deathly Shallows

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The world is full of prequels, famous characters in their youth, but there are few examples of authors revisiting their creations in their dotages. I have tried before (with Sherlock Holmes, James Bond and Winnie the Pooh) to get my foot into this particular franchise door. Perhaps if I can avoid litigation, the time is right to try again…

…Harry Potter stared forlornly at the damp patch on his crotch. Tentatively he mopped it with his finger and tasted. Coffee. Thank God! How he hated these stupid Muggle cups. They had no idea that you were taking a little nap. In fact, he hated everything about Muggles if he was honest. They were so… basic. He wondered why he had bothered to spend the early years of his life fighting Voldermort and his ilk instead of seizing power from the non-magical buffoons. It would have been so easy: a quick inanimatalus and the whole primitive lot of them would be helpless. Obviously, being half Muggle himself, it would prick his conscience a little bit but… no, actually it wouldn’t at all.

…But for now, Harry needed to find his wand and correctly recall the drying your trouser crotch spell. Last time he got it just ever-so-slightly wrong and damn near blew his own cock off. “Ginny! Ginny!” In the past Harry had used the Fetch! spell to bring his wife to him, but she didn’t smile upon it these days. Her reaction was not pretty. It had taken him months to learn to blink again. Somehow, over the years, she had seemed to have lost track of the fact that he was The Special One.

Ginny came into the room polishing what may well have once upon a time been some auxiliary part of a dragon. Harry shuddered to think what she might use it for. Her hair was white now, fixed in a tight bun on the top of her head, but her temperament had retained its former fire. She looked at Harry’s trousers. “Oh Harry,” she sighed. “Not again.”
“No,” he said. “It’s coffee. Taste it, you’ll see.”
Ginny’s face darkened. If he thought he was going to catch her out like that again, he had another think coming. “Surely you can deal with that yourself,” she said. “Where’s your wand?”
“I can’t find it.”
“Let me see.” She rummaged in the cushions behind him and retrieved, along with the TV remote control, half a tuna mayonnaise sandwich and his upper dentures, his withered stick of a wand. “It never does what I ask it to these days,” he said.
“I’m not surprised,” she replied, wiping it on the hem of her housecoat. “It’s full of earwax. Why don’t you use a cotton bud like everyone else? There, try it now. And tidy yourself up. Ron and Hermione are coming to watch the football with you.”
“Football?” thought Harry bitterly. Whatever had happened to his beloved Quidditch?
“It’s a total nonsense, Harry,” Ginny explained for the thousandth time. The rules don’t make any sense. If it all comes down to catching the Golden Snitch, what’s the point in all the other malarkey? It’s pointless, like Instagram. Now, sort yourself out before Her Royal Highness gets here.”

Harry toyed with the idea of simply laying the Invisibility Cloak across his lap, but he knew that Hermione would spot it at once so, with a sigh, he turned his wand into a hairdryer and dried his trousers. It was probably as close as he got to excitement these days.

Hermione and Ron entered as they always did, with the faint whiff of pompous bullshit. Never mind, Ron had brought Butterbeer – which was fine if mixed with vodka – and Hermione always cheered Ginny. Gin also always cheered Ginny and Hermione always came bearing gin.
“Has he been drying his trousers without taking them off again?” she asked, whilst her wand sliced the lemon and opened the tonic.
“Yes,” said Ginny. “How did you know?”
“He used the wrong spell again. There’s something moving down there and I’m pretty sure it’s not him.”
“It would take more than a spell,” said Ginny and they both laughed so much that the ice shattered in their glasses. Hermione took a long drink and sighed.
“They didn’t get everything wrong, the Muggles, did they?”
“Not quite everything,” said Ginny cradling the memory of the time she had had to clean dog shit from her shoes without using magic. She could still smell it in the tip of her wand. “Do you still see your parents? Have they still got that little dog?”
“Well no, not really these days. On account of them being dead and all. You know what it’s like with Muggles. They can’t seem to stop themselves from dying. As for their dog, they lost it years ago. Straight after your last visit strangely…”

“Ah,” said Ron. “It’s so good to get a day off.”
“Yes,” said Harry. “It must be. What is it you do again?”
“Don’t you remember?”
“Well I… It’s definitely not acting, I know that!”
“I work for The Ministry of Magic.”
“But you are spectacularly bad at it Ron.”
“I know, but family ties you know.” He tapped his nose. A rabbit fell out of it. “Anyway, I retire in a few months. Get my pension. Hang up my wand.”
“I should hang on to it if I were you,” said Harry. “You might need to burn it to keep warm.”
“We’ll be ok. Hermione’s parents got their memories back after the war – or at least Hermione’s version of them – and they couldn’t wait to leave her their dental practices.”
“Is there money to be made there?”
“She’s about to offer pain-free, drill-less procedures. We’ll clean up – just as soon as she gets all of those NHS louts off the books. Do you want another Butterbeer Harry? Shall we have a snack? Do you want a Fizzing Whizbee?”
“I wouldn’t say no, old friend,” said Harry, struggling to his feet. “You pour and I’ll just… open the window.”
“There’s no need for you to get up, Harry. You’re a wizard remember. Just use your wand.”
“I don’t think it’s wise, Ron. I tried to get it to unwrap a Mars Bar for me last week and it well nigh circumcised me. I think it’s possessed.”
“I seem to remember that they’re all possessed aren’t they? You just need to be more careful where you point it.”
“That’s what Ginny keeps telling me. Her wand automatically defaults to ‘Mop’ every time I go to the bathroom. I don’t know why: I never pee on the floor. It never goes further than my slippers.”
“Strange to think that we’re as old now as Dumbledore was when we were at school.”
“I never really expected to grow old. Did you Ron?”
“Well, not after I met you I didn’t. I never expected to make it out of school. All that business with Voldermort. I never really understood what it was all about if I’m honest.”
“Couldn’t make it up,” said Harry.
“I suppose not,” said Ron.

Hermione, as radiant as her advancing years and half a bottle of gin would allow, appeared at the door and signalled to Ron that it was time to go. She leaned heavily on the wall and muttered something under her breath. A bright, white light flooded the room. Harry and Ron fell back onto the sofa.
“Ooh, pardon me,” she said.
“Sorry Harry,” said Ron. “She has no bloody control over that wand when she’s got gin onboard. I’d better get her home before she starts making potions from your drinks cabinet again. Do you remember the last time?”
“I do,” said Harry, staring forlornly at his smouldering slippers. He ran his fingers over the scar on his forehead. “I don’t know what she gave to Ginny, but I had to beat her off with my broomstick.”
“I keep telling you Harry, you should use your wand.”
“Nothing like big enough, Ron.”
“Your magic used to be so powerful back in the day, Harry. Whatever happened to it?”
“Age, I think Ron. I don’t mind really, my life is much easier now, less unpredictable.”
“Yes, it always felt like someone was just making it up as they went along didn’t it? Oh well, it’s all behind us now. anyway. I’d like to say that it was fun while it lasted, but it wasn’t really, was it? Thanks for having us round, it’s been a good night. I’d better get Hermione home before she does some real damage.”
“See you soon Ron.”
“Yes. See you soon old pal. Oh, and by the way, you might like to check out your trousers: I think you might have spilled your Butterbeer…”

…And just in case you’re reading this Ms Rowling, I apologise for what I have just done to your wizards, but they really did deserve it…

Snake Oil

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My wife’s approach to treating viral rhinitis (which is still a common cold) involves decongestants, antihistamines, paracetemol, and more fluids than you can shake a stick at, whilst mine involves only caffeine (am) and whisky (pm). I try very hard not to wallow in it all too much, but colds are so relentless. Individually the symptoms are seldom enough to knock you off your feet, but cumulatively – incessantly – they nag away at the very bones of you. It is viral water torture. It wears you down.

Every space in my head has become filled with Lord-knows-what. I am robbed of so many of my senses: vision, smell, hearing, taste, common… my brain has taken timeout. I can’t think sensibly, I can’t perform the simplest of tasks without major cock-up. Most of all, I can’t bloody breathe. My nose is closed to all in-coming traffic. I walk around, mouth open, gormless looking, a low grumbling moan escaping from me interminably. In short, I am a man with a cold and I feel duty bound to tell you all about it.

I don’t get colds very often – at least I didn’t. Could this be the watershed preceding the slide into decrepitude: a snotty descent into frailty? What other ailments are waiting to crowd in on me? My prostate long-ago declared itself as one of an old man, but what next, heart, lungs, kidneys, liver, knees, hips, brain, shame? Should I worry? Would it help? Should I take precautions? I labour under the misapprehension that all damage was probably done years ago. Nothing I can do about it now. I try to exercise my brain – although I always keep it on a long leash – and my body. I’m sure that I should drink less and eat better, but kidneys? What should I do for them? I know nothing about kidneys except that they are what you always picked out of a steak and kidney pie.

At sixty odd years of age I realise that everything I love (chocolate, cake, whisky, wine and sloth) is bad for me. What is good for me is everything else: roughage, broccoli, multiple lengths of a freezing cold public swimming pool, drinking water – not from the swimming pool – walking, gardening, monitoring bowel habits. Suddenly I am expected to take note of everything that works less well than it used to. Was a time that I could pee up the wall. These days I’m lucky if it makes it further than my toecaps. I know that salt is bad for me, but life has taught me that I should take everything I am ever told with a pinch of it. Everyone has an ulterior motive.

One of the very few things that has improved with age is my bullshit monitor. I can smell it instantly – and there really is a lot of it about. Politicians extrude it. It seeps from their skin. The same is true of what we now refer to as influencers: people with little or no discernible talent who seek to make a comfortable living out of enticing the weak and the gullible into their world. Make them feel as though they have a ‘gang’ to belong to. To make them feel that however straitened their circumstances they really must have whatever it is the gang leader is being paid to persuade them to buy. They do not influence, they sell snake oil. They are persuaders. They are your friend. They are prepared to say “I can see that you are depressed and lonely. Don’t be alone. Come to me. I will look after you. What you need to make it all alright is this revolutionary new mascara. Just click on the button below and everything will seem better…”

I have faced the repercussions of snake oil myself. Our predecessors in this house were persuaded to have an electrical device fitted which our electrician described in exactly those words. The concept was to save money by restricting the voltage available to all electrical devices in the house. In reality it just meant that nothing electrical worked properly. It must have cost hundreds, if not thousands, of pounds to have fitted, and it achieved absolutely nothing beneficial. Quite the reverse. They will have been persuaded of its efficacy by an influencer – or, as they were known in my day, a salesman. A man – and let’s face it, they are normally men – for whom the word ‘moral’ has no practical meaning, but appears in his lexicon only as the antithesis of ‘profit’.

It could well have been flogged by the same man who persuaded my parents to have their perfectly watertight roof painted with a substance* that would stop it leaking for decades to come. I went to visit them, unaware of the transaction, to find them with a bright orange roof and numerous tiles missing. The tiles were small, square clay ones, quite unusual and difficult to source I imagine. I asked my mum if they had paid for this ‘service’ (of course they had – in cash) and where she had ‘found’ the cowboys who had done the deed. It transpired that she had been visited by an influencer who persuaded her (in common with all the other elderly and vulnerable people in the street) that it would be three times the price if they had to go away and come back again: “Might as well do it now.” “They’re just across the road at Mrs Doo Dah’s**” said my mum. I pulled myself up to my full five foot seven and marched across to confront the entire posse there. They couldn’t have been nicer. “Yes mate. We noticed some were missing. Told your mum. I’ve got some at the yard. I’ll replace them tomorrow, no charge.”

I phoned my mum the next day and she confirmed that they had indeed done as they promised and, despite the fact that they had Tangoed her perfectly good roof, my faith in human nature was somewhat restored. Less so when I visited my parents the following weekend to find that whilst her house was now fully tiled, Mrs Doo Dah’s roof was noticeably short of the requisite number. “I don’t think she’s very happy with them,” said my mum, “but she can’t get hold of them on the phone number they gave her. Doesn’t exist apparently. Such a shame, I was going to give them a call to see if they do double glazing…” I never did find out how much it had cost and the colour washed off with the first rainfall, but my mum remained convinced that they had made her perfectly good roof watertight. As far as she was confirmed, the snake oil had worked perfectly.

And snake oil is, of course, exactly what most cold remedies are: pointless and costly, but if you believe in them enough, they might just bring you some relief. For myself, I prefer to stick to the medically proven. None of those hick cure-alls for me. A hot toddy at bedtime, a raw onion to gnaw on and a dirty sock tied around my neck, I take myself off to bed secure in the knowledge that I will be much better in the morning…

*Paint, as it turned out.

**Not her real name.