Making Lists

Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash

If I was asked to chronicle the principal achievements of mankind, ranked from 1 to 10 as they affect my own life, then number one would be list-making. Without a list to compile, my entire existence is a hollow sham. I have physical lists and I have mental lists, the former hitting the shredder more often than the gas bill and the latter evolving and mutating, like the flu’ bug.

Favourite Song is a list that swirls and contorts itself inside my head, metamorphosing with every other record I hear on the radio. With a, ‘Oh yes, that is the best song ever’ the list rearranges and reorders. Some songs never leave, but rise and fall like the Sale posters at a furniture store. To accommodate the many hundreds of songs that now constitute my top ten, I have had to devise sub-divisions – some of them so niche that they have disappeared up their own crannies before being fully formulated.

I am the same with films. I don’t really do proper grown-up films. Concentration is an issue. My mind skits around like a drunken baby on ice: Animation (‘Up’ or ‘Toy Story’?) Rom-com (‘Love Actually’ or ‘Notting Hill’?) ‘British’ Comedy (‘Full Monty’ or ‘Brassed Off’?) Sci-Fi (‘E.T.’ or ‘Close Encounters…’?) Adventure (‘Star Wars’ or ‘Indiana Jones’?) and Supernatural (‘Omen’ or ‘Exorcist’?). I am not a huge fan of ‘gore’, so my favourite horror films tend to be those in which, for the most part, insides remain there – preferably, they feature Abbot and Costello. There is, of course, a separate category for Monty Python. In a rare nod towards the kind of films that are watched by normal, rational adults, I would like to find a category for ‘Shadowlands’ which presented itself to me as a kind of film-acting masterclass, but it is impossible to have a list of one, so it will just have to accept the ‘lifetime achievement’ award instead (And yes, I have realised that these films are all very old.)

I am even worse with TV, with each genre having a thousand subtle sub-divisions, allowing my current favourite to be my all-time favourite without displacing my previous all-time favourite, which falls into a slightly different sub-category because the titular detective does not have personal issues and there is no internal conflict within the team. I cannot begin to bore you with the sub-divisions involved in my comedy lists – except to say that no comedy this year (or possibly forever) has affected me as much as ‘Mum’.

My friend Lizzie at school had a constantly evolving ‘P.I.H’ list which intrigued me. I kept asking her what it was, but she would never tell me, other than I wasn’t on it, ‘however, if I kept on pestering her about it…’

I would love to be a classical music lover, simply so that I could have a Liszt List – or even a lover of French beds, so that I could have a Lits List…

I do not have a ‘bucket list’ because, quite frankly, devising a list of things that I wish to do before I die forces me to face up to the inevitability of death and I’d sooner ignore that for as long as I possibly can really. Anyway, who needs more than one bucket?

Which (eventually – I’m sorry) brings me round to the kind of list that first set me off along this mental mystery tour: the ‘To-Do List’. I have just realised that whenever I go anywhere, I always start a ‘To-Do List’, and that list always begins ‘pants and socks’ – like I’m going to go anywhere without them.

Whatever flashes into my mind has to be written down immediately – the alternative being several hours wasted further down the line attempting all manner of mental yoga designed to help me remember what it was I meant to write down and why I didn’t do it. It is why I still have a calendar hanging over my desk. I could enter my ‘To-Do’ items onto my phone, but, by the time I had worked out how to do it, I would have forgotten what it was I wanted to do. By the time I managed to retrieve them, the day would have passed. Paper and pen are much safer for me.

Ah yes, ‘writing’, there’s an item for my ‘principal achievements’ list… and I suppose, if I think it through, it has to come before ‘making lists’ itself. But which came first, I wonder, the paper or the ink?

The human animal differs from the lesser primates in his passion for lists – H. Allen Smith

I’m very much into making lists and breaking things apart into categories – David Byrne

We like lists because we don’t want to die – Umberto Eco

Me and the Crossword

There was a time when the crossword was my daily fix. When I never missed the opportunity to add to Mr Murdoch’s inestimable fortune, purchasing a small shrub’s worth of paper every day, just to get my hands on the six inch square that I wanted. By and large I’ve broken that habit now. It became crazy in the end: I often made the mistake of reading the news as well. Now I would be happy if I never read a newspaper again.

Sometimes though, when I have the time, I still reach for the crossword book and I give it a go. I do like The Times crossword. It is a challenge that, for the most part, just eludes me. Sometimes I finish it in hours rather than days and sometimes I would not finish it if you gave me an infinite number of monkeys with an infinite number of Scrabble tiles to chuck at it.

It is just so frustrating when I cannot see the path that the clue has led me down. When, finally having given up the ghost, I read the answers and think “What? Why didn’t I see that?” Although not as bad as when the answer is a word which I just do not know. “Obviously I was never going to solve that clue, but why didn’t I know that word?” I begin to wonder if other people have noticed the hole in my vocabulary: “Odd, isn’t it, that he never uses the word ‘squrrox*’, do you think he doesn’t know it?” I feel eyes boring into my soul. I curse the inadequacies of the state education system. I begin to search for ways to drop my newly-found phonic into conversations. It is now locked into my dictionary – and it will probably never come up in a crossword again.

And that’s a strange thing, isn’t it? Leave the crossword, walk away, and when you return to it, a solution that has eluded you for hours will pop straight into your head. How does that happen? Is there a portion of the brain that is working on the answer even as the rest of it slips into neutral? Given that most of my brain is stuck permanently in neutral, shouldn’t that make me a crossword whizz? Weird also is the way that you can sometimes know the answer without understanding the clue – or, perhaps that’s just life…

Here’s how the crossword book works for me. First thing is to turn to a new page: I never return to an unfinished grid from the previous day; it merely reminds me of the abundance of my inadequacies. Generally I read right through the clues in order before finding that I cannot answer any of them. I do it again. I decide that my future possibly lies in The Sun’s Quick Crossword. I read through the clues again, searching for key words that might alert me to an anagram. Eventually I will find an answer and then other words begin to slot into place. And then I reach the point where I am looking for words for which I have every other letter and still no idea of the whole. It is a peculiar type of word-blindness and more frustrating than I can begin to tell (particularly with the paucity of my vocabulary). Normally, I look at a stream of letters and spaces: E_E_E_T_R_ and the answer is elementary. Simple. Stick them in a grid and throw in a cryptic clue and it all goes to cock. Normal lexicographic services are abandoned. One of the ‘down’ answers must be wrong. There are no words with that letter sequence. No wonder my teachers thought I was a dunce.

And that leads me, naturally enough, to those who solve the crossword within minutes. Those who complete the grid whilst waiting for the traffic lights to change on the drive to work. Those who do not have gaps in their education; missing pages from their dictionaries; brains that function only intermittently – flashing brightly every now and then, but mostly whirring ineffectually, and I wonder what joy is there for them other than being able to tick off a new P.B. in their diary?

Frankly, I’m not sure that I care. I will continue to toil, sporadically these days, fruitlessly on. And, on the odd occasion that I succeed, I will sit back, content in the knowledge that, given the way my brain is going, I may have just done something that I just will never achieve again.

And I’ll try to work out whether that is a good or a bad thing. There must be a clue in there somewhere…

He respects Owl, because you can’t help respecting anybody who can spell TUESDAY even if he doesn’t spell it right; but spelling isn’t everything. There are days when spelling Tuesday simply doesn’t count. (A.A. Milne) ‘The House at Pooh Corner’

* Squrrox is the word wish granted to Dan Milligan by the author in Spike Milligan’s ‘Puckoon’.

Possible Hobby #3 – Home Brewing

close up photo of two people toasting with red wine — Photo by Skitterphoto on Pexels.com

As we get older, many of us begin to look for new hobbies with which to occupy the time not taken up with Eastenders, X-Factor and the making of soup from yesterday’s assorted leftovers and, as the government seeks to raise the revenue gained from the sale of alcohol to such a point that one would need a very stiff drink indeed before even considering the purchase of one, many are turning to home brewing.

Home brewing is an absorbing and enjoyable hobby. Drinking home-brew is not. Never-the-less, thousands of otherwise sane and reasonable people spend many hours each week mashing fruit, adding yeast and standing back whilst it turns itself into something green and combustible. In this modern age of home-production, recycling and composting, it has become the green hobby of choice. There are literally hundreds of books on the market offering help and advice to the would-be brewer. Unfortunately, they all leave out the single most important piece of advice – don’t bother.

STARTING OUT – If you have purchased the standard range of books and followed all the advice, then you will have more glass vessels, plastic tubing, jars of chemicals and empty bottles than you can shake a stick at. The first thing you need to do is to throw everything into a cupboard and lock the door. Leave them there for at least a month while you try to think of a more sensible hobby; perhaps rope-less bungie-jumping. If, after a suitable pause for thought, you decide that you really can’t resist the lure of cheap and delicious wines, then go to the supermarket.

PICKING THE FRUIT – Don’t! Get somebody else to do it. Ignore everything the books tell you about buying only top quality, clean and sound fruit. Rotten fruit is cheaper and it squashes easier. The blanket of mould that forms over it within a few hours can easily be destroyed with the use of a liberal handful of the chemicals from your cupboard. The resultant brown sludge lurking in the bottom of your bucket is called the must, I don’t know why, but it’s the basis of all homemade wines. If this doesn’t discourage you then nothing will.

STARTING TO BREW – The books will tell you to add sugar and yeast to the must and to syphon it into a demijohn. This is impossible. The must is as thick as jelly and sticks everywhere. If you try to suck it through a tube, you will probably give yourself a coronary. Use a ladle and a funnel and be prepared for your hands and feet to stick to everything for at least 48 hours. Presuming that you still wish to continue after this, simply bung the demijohn with an airlock and put it somewhere warm and out of sight. As the wine begins to brew, gas will begin to bubble through the airlock. The books will tell you that this gas (carbon dioxide) is odourless – it is not. When you open the cupboard door then you will know what it is to smell a marathon runner’s sock.

FACT – It doesn’t matter how much room you leave at the top of the demijohn, the wine will always bubble up through the airlock and rot the carpet.

MATURING THE WINE – When it stops making a mess, then the wine has probably stopped fermenting. Don’t bother buying a hydrometer, they are unnecessarily complicated. If it removes paint, then the wine is ready. If it leaves a sticky brown patch or glues your hands together, then it is also ready. Now is the time to syphon the wine off the lees (sludge) and into a clean demijohn. If it is clear, then there is something wrong, it is probably water – check in the cupboard for a bucket full of rotten fruit. If it is extremely murky with a fluorescent scum on top, then it is normal. Ignore the presence of insects, they are probably dead. Now is the time to cork the demijohn and hide it somewhere dark to mature.

FACT – It doesn’t matter how long you leave it, homemade wine never has long enough to mature.

BOTTLING THE WINE – When the wine is fully matured, i.e. when it is almost clear enough to see through and any submarine fragments are below half an inch in diameter, then it is time to bottle it. Don’t worry about using the right type of bottle, you will after all, be far too embarrassed to show anybody the end product anyway. A word of warning though – some plastic bottles are liable to melt when filled with corrosive liquids e.g. Dandelion Hock, so go for good strong bleach bottles. Ignore advice to label your wines with details such as type, date etc. Home brewers are notorious bores and no-one will want to know.

FACT – There are no medium home-brewed wines. They are all sweet, sweeter or hallucinogenic.

SERVING THE WINE – My advice is don’t. Your friends will probably never speak to you again – they may not be able to. If you really feel that you must serve it, then do so by making it into a punch. It is easy to blame the cloudiness on the other ingredients, such as orange juice or Vim, and the strange flavour onto sour fruit and a new herb you are trying.

Never make exaggerated claims for your wine. Do not, for instance, claim that it is ideally suited for consumption with a good, strong curry, if you actually mean that it will remove lime-scale from most porcelain surfaces.

A SHORT GLOSSARY OF HOME-BREW TERMS:
• WINE – The drink of a home-brew enthusiast.
• WHINE – The sound of a home-brew enthusiast.
• NOSE – The smell of a home-brewed wine.
• TEMPORARY BRAIN DEATH – The effect of a home-brewed wine.
• ACID – Any home-brewed wine that is not sweet.
• SYRUP – Any home-brewed wine that is not dry.
• NORMAL – Any home-brewed wine that is not clear.
• BEER – Home made wine with a head.
• ALE – Home made wine with a head and bits in.

There are better things in life than alcohol, but it makes up for not having them. Terry Pratchett

A Paean to the Simple Joy of Pen-Pals

I find myself wondering whatever happened to pen-pals? I presume that they may all have been killed by this interconnected world of ours, crushed under the wheels of Mark Zuckerberg’s little leviathan. Who needs a pen-pal when you have over a million virtual friends in bedrooms the world over?

I, like almost everyone of my age, had a pen-pal. For a short while anyway. They were arranged by the school I think. Usually French, German, or if you were for some reason particularly unpopular with the teachers, Belgian. The idea was that you wrote to one another in your native tongue so that you each had to translate what you had been sent before you replied. Eventually, if all went well, you would meet up and exchange tales of teenage derring-do in a sort of non-verbal Esperanto of signs and gestures (and we all know how good the French are at those). If he was French (we were all very carefully paired with members of our own sex I recall) he would get off with your girlfriend and when, in the fullness of time, you went to his, you would discover that his père was a Marseille docker who, in order to make you feel as uncomfortable as possible, insisted that you fed exclusively on sewage-sifting bi-valves, terrestrial gastropods and the rear limbs of amphibia for the week.

Not that I, personally, ever got that far… Generally I found it in me to scrape together a twenty word reply to my new pen-pal’s multi-page airmail missive, which I then didn’t post as the postage was almost exactly a week’s supply of Bazouka Joe bubble gum. Now, I’m not proud of my indifference, but in truth, I fear that my Euro-counterpart would have gained little from a ‘conversation’ with me that would not have served merely to deepen his cross-channel sense of distrust and puzzlement.

For the more romantic among us, the ideal method of gaining a new pen-pal relied upon the launching of a sealed bottle onto the bosom of the dun-brown waves of the English Channel. Unfortunately the chances, always slim, of it being picked up on some exotic foreign shore by someone with an innocent interest in your favourite edition of Smash Hits and a desire to swap postage stamps appears to have diminished somewhat over the years. Far more likely you will find yourself corresponding with somebody that wants to plunder your bank account rather than find out what you had for tea on Friday. In any case, I think that the whole business of lobbing a glass vessel (or even worse, a plastic one) out to sea these days would be considered, by and large, to be environmentally unacceptable. Let’s be honest, if you walked out today to find a hundred billion bottles washed up on the shore, you’d probably be more concerned about contacting David Attenborough’s agent than replying to Sting.

Which brings us back round to the internet: the true home of the Voyeur and the Conman, the Predator and the Weirdo, and probably not the best of places to search for someone to help you with your French Oral. Besides, the cosy one-to-one no longer seems to exist – nothing, it would appear, is worth sharing, if not with a group. The ballpoint tête-à-tête of a pen-pal correspondence has been replaced by the megaphone yell of a political rally and, in our contemporary paperless society, the art of writing a letter on gossamer stationery to someone you have never met, who speaks a different language and wants only to know if your girlfriend is fit, has disappeared as swiftly as the thousand words you didn’t save before going to bed…

A Possible Hobby #1 – Golf

When I first began this little taradiddle one of my avowed intentions was to investigate the range of hobbies that might be open to me. Since then, I have done little about it. Having recently published a post about the TV program ‘How?’ (and finding out that you are almost all too young to remember it) I have decided that the time has come to make the effort. So here we go, possible hobby #1: golf.

Generally speaking, I am not the kind of person I would expect to be best received in golfing circles. I will never find my name atop the list of ‘must-have new members’ for any newly-elected golf captain. Whilst I have any number of single gloves (usually on account of losing one on the bus) I do not possess brightly checked slacks, tartan socks or a Pringle sweater. I cannot engage in earnest conversation about the horsepower of my car, as I do not know it. I do not own a Pied a Terre in Southern France; I do not keep my business afloat single-handedly. In short, I am not the ‘right stuff’.

That’s not to say that I have not had a go at bashing the gutta percha around a third division golf course every now and then. I did, at one time, gather together a ramshackle collection of car-boot-sale golf clubs and a golf bag, known to one and all as the Tardis, due to its Brobdingnagian scale, which meant that, with or without clubs, it required two men to lift it. I even managed to acquire a pair of jumble sale golf shoes for £1, which had probably seen sterling service when they were manufactured, sometime around the First World War. I suspect that the kind of bunkers they were designed for were not lined with sand.

We played on the kind of courses that had eighteen holes only if you went round them twice: where the bunkers were generally lined with builder’s rubble and the most difficult hazards to avoid were the stray dogs; where the fairway was separated from the rough simply by dint of the fact that it was possible to walk on the fairway without getting nettle rash above the knee; where the greens were identifiable only because they had a flag in them and the mole hills had been flattened with a spade. Some of them had water hazards, but these were generally associated with leaking urinals. They were the kind of golf courses that necessitated the invention of new rules e.g. if your ball lands in the middle of a cowpat, it can be abandoned and the next shot can be played with a new ball, without penalty, from anywhere shit-free in the general vicinity.

I always lugged around a carrier bag of golf balls, simply because I generally lost so many of them. They were of a type that were found by dog walkers and, if I was able to orientate the teeth marks to the right side, they could auto-correct my natural slice. They did make putting tricky though. Mind you, little more than the rabbit droppings to be fair.

Anyway, those golfing days, such as they were, are now over. Golf clubs have either closed or become gentrified, and I am not great at the observance of arcane rules. I am always polite and I have no problem with dress codes, but the social pretention associated with some of these places is off the scale. There are only so many times that I am able to explain that, yes, the little Ford Fiesta is my only car and no, I really don’t have a problem getting to the house in it once I have turned off the road and onto the driveway in the snow (my driveway being approximately three feet longer than my car) although it is also fair to say that my golf bag will only fit into my car with the back seat down and the passenger seat pushed so far forward that my golfing partner requires at least five holes grace in which to straighten out his/her back. Golf is a fine game, but not one for which, if I am honest, I am temperamentally suited. It’s fair to say that, by and large, golf clubs and I are probably better off without one another.

Besides, I’ve just been in the shed and discovered that the mice have taken up residence in my golf bag, the wheels have fallen off my trolley and the clubs themselves have been wedged under the lawn mower with the result that I could probably chip around corners with them. Any future association I am likely to have with putter and ball will probably involve ‘mountain’ clad tunnels, spinning windmills and the knowledge that I have, at last, found my level.

Golf is a good walk spoiled. – Mark Twain

The Haphazardly Poetical – A Poem About Inventing

Inventions

I blame the weather.

When I am trying to concentrate, the part of my brain that is not involved will often wander off and find something else to do. I am dropping this little poem in here – I was going to say as a bonus, but that implies it has some value, so I’ll just say as an extra – simply because it was written almost subconsciously as I attempted to muster the rest of my cerebral troops into line and thinking about what I wanted to say in ‘Reinventing the wheel’. It is all total nonsense of course – but then so is life most of the time – and it tells a little bit of the story of the previous blog: this is what goes on in the rest of my head if I try to make myself concentrate. I thought I’d just slip it in whilst no-one was watching…

The doo-dah on top of the thingamabob
Is joined by two pins from the side,
To the oojamaflip with the red flashing knob
That’s almost as long as it’s wide.

The boot at the top of the gasket
Is joined by a bundle of wire,
To the loop on the side of the spindle
Which is why it won’t go any higher.

If you just take a turn on the handle
Then the cogs and the wheels will all spin
And the tap that dispenses the water
Will magically turn it to gin.

The thingy will slice you some lemon
And ice will come out of the hole –
A pull on the lever for tonic –
And olives will land in your bowl.

But maybe your taste is for whisky,
Just toggle the switch on the floor
And the wosname will pour you a stiff one
Whilst the oatcakes come in through the door.

And if all that you want is a coffee
There’s already a doobrie for that
And although I didn’t invent it
I can point you to where it is at.

Although, in my head, I have made this,
In my room there is nought by the wall.
The handle just opens the cupboard
And the wosname does nothing at all…

I hope you won’t hold it against me…

The Haphazardly Poetical – An Appreciation of Poetry

Reinventing the Wheel

Invention

So, today’s folderol is down to Inkbiotic. During a recent ‘conversation’ she suggested that I should invent something, and I haven’t been able to get the idea out of my head ever since. (I should point out that in that same comment she did, herself, suggest the invention of Kaleidoscope Windows – an idea that is so inspired I know that anything I propose will not come close to matching it but, hey ho, sitting back and doing nothing will butter no parsnips, so failure, as usual, is my starting point.) Now, I should start by saying that I can think of hundreds of things that should be invented: gardening gloves with a built-in sensor that will warn you when you are about to plunge knuckle-deep into a subterranean mound of cat crap; a device that shuts down the phone if the user spends too long on it without a break (i-phones already have one – it is called the battery); sunglasses that remove glare whilst still allowing you to see; sensors that activate an ejection platform under anyone who stops at the top of an escalator – what I can’t think of is how you actually go about inventing them.

The first obstacle is IT. For a start, I make a point of never trusting an acronym. They are generally invented to make the hostile sound more friendly. I am not exactly IT-phobic, just inept. I deal with all IT issues in the same manner:
1. Turn off the device
2. Unplug the device
3. Shout at the device
4. Walk away from the device, making threats against its very existence
5. Return after a while, turn it on and hope for the best.
In this I am almost uniquely unsuited to the invention of anything that requires the use of micro-circuitry. I can safely leave Messrs. Google, Microsoft and Facebook to subjugate us in that respect – I must find another field to furrow.

Which brings me to the purely mechanical – and here I am faced with a whole new set of difficulties. Add ham-fistedness to ineptitude and you are on your way. Engineering is not one of my strengths. I made a car out of Meccano once, but the wheels kept falling off. It sloped to the left at an angle of forty five degrees. The little nuts kept falling off the bolts and lodging between the floorboards. I was fifty. We didn’t have floorboards. God knows where the little nuts have gone.

At the most basic of levels, there are things that I simply do not understand (and not understanding the most basic of scientific principles must be seen as something of a stumbling block tossed into the path of true invention): why don’t huge cruise ships, with tiny underwater hulls and huge skyscrapers on top, just fall over? If I put ice in a glass of water, it cools it. So how does melting sea-ice contribute warming oceans? Why is the magnetic North Pole not at the Actual North Pole – have they fallen out? I still don’t understand why the tail doesn’t hit the ground when an airplane takes off.

So, we dismiss anything even vaguely technical. I will not be inventing the remote control bath because:
1. I would not be able to get to grips with the remote control and constantly changing the channel on next-door’s TV every time I try to take a bath is probably not the best route to neighbourly harmony
2. My grasp of the basic principles of plumbing is about as great as that of the ‘plumber’ who recently mended our downstairs loo without reconnecting the pipes.

We are left with the possibility of reinventing something that has already been invented. Refining, perhaps. Re-assigning, if we’re lucky. A bit like recording a cover version of a great song – fine for anyone that hasn’t heard the original, but otherwise, what’s the point?

Even then, I’m not certain that my imagination works in that way. Would I look at a wedge of wood and think ‘I bet that would be a good way of keeping a door open’ or would I think ‘cheese – I fancy some cheese’? My imagination is vivid, but not always reliably so. Given some construction materials, an electric motor and a spot by the seashore would I think desalination plant, or would I think Crazy Golf Course? (I think you know the answer.)

Most of the early, truly important inventions: fire, the wheel, metal smelting happened by accident, and I have loads of those. Leave me in a room with a hammer and you will quickly comprehend the full implication of the ‘Chaos Theory’. A thoroughly inebriated Thor could not compete with me on the mallet mayhem front. However, even though Watt accidentally invented the 3.15 from Clapham Junction whilst attempting to make a cup of tea and Fleming stumbled across penicillin after being slightly reckless with his cheese sandwich crumbs in the laboratory, they both had some element of genius in order to take their discoveries further.

So, here’s my Big Idea. When I was a child, you could buy ‘X-Ray Specs’ with which – they claimed – it was possible to see the living skeletons of those around you. In fact, they were simply a pair of cardboard glasses with cardboard ‘lenses’, each of which had a tiny pin-hole at the centre of the spiral that was printed upon them. To say that they didn’t work is obvious. To say that you were much more likely to see portions of your own skeleton after falling down the stairs whilst wearing them, probably equally so, but they provided the seed from which my big invention has grown. I have invented spectacles that do let you see through people: not what’s inside them, but what they really mean. Wear them and no-one will ever be able to lie to you again. Now, how cool is that?

OK, that’s my bit over: the big invention has been, er, invented.

Now it’s just up to you to make it work…

To invent an airplane is nothing. To build one is something. But to fly is everything. Otto Lilienthal (Manned flight pioneer)

He’s a germ free adolescent, cleanliness is her obsession
Cleans her teeth ten times a day
Scrub away, scrub away, scrub away the S.R. way Germ Free Adolescent – (X-Ray Spex) P. Styrene

Making A Hobby Out of ‘How?’

I don’t know if any of you will remember it, but when I was a boy there was a program called ‘How?’. It featured Fred Dinenage, who did daft things; Jack Hargreaves, who did ‘country’ things; Bunty James, who did ‘girl’s’ things (different times, different times) and another man, whose name I cannot remember, who, to my recollection, kept electrocuting himself. Now, why this has come to my mind is that, as the show’s title implied, this show told you how things worked and also how to do things. These things we would, I suppose, class as hobbies and it is hobbies I have been thinking about for the last few days, because people keep telling me I need one. I say ‘I’m fine, I have a hobby’: I’ve got you dear reader, but they tell me you’re not enough, I need something more tangible. Something I can make or (pray excuse me) do.

Now during the course of my ramblings these last few months, I have looked briefly into what I suppose might be described as the most likely of ‘old man’ hobbies: D.I.Y. and gardening, and it’s fair to say that neither of them really hold any appeal for me. What I’m looking for, I think, is something rather more challenging than collecting stuff, but rather less dangerous than climbing rock faces. I do not suppose for one second that my long-held interest in whisky tasting will be allowed to develop into a hobby. I took Art at ‘A’ level (which means, basically, that I know how to draw a bus station and colour it in) so I guess that might be an option. When my mum died, I bought myself paints, brushes, canvas, an easel. They have lain unused ever since. Perhaps I’ll give painting a go. My Art teacher at school always told me that I had a special talent – at least I think that’s what he said.

My problem is that I am, by nature, solitary. I’m ok in a group setting once I’ve got to know everybody, but meeting everybody for the first time is torture. Remembering them for the second time is worse. The only way I could ever join a club would be to go along with somebody who is already in one, so that I could slowly skulk my way into the group consciousness. Once I am part of ‘a team’ I am fine, it’s the introduction phase that scuttles my equilibrium. I have dallied with golf in the past, but I have no talent for it and, anyway, it is far too stressful for me. Other folk, who are far more skilled than I (skill in golf is indicated by lack of dress sense) have a tendency to be both impatient and patronising. I try to make it a rule never to play sports with anybody whom I would like to kick on the shin during the normal course of events.

Despite many pleasant childhood days spent on the riverbank with my father, I have never understood the pull of Angling. I do not see me spending my twilight hours spearing carp through the hard-palate; taking a selfie of myself with them before throwing them back from whence I have just tugged them. Especially when armed with the knowledge that somebody else is going to try to do just the same thing to the poor little buggers the following day and – well, a fish’s memory being what it is – probably succeeding.

Anyway, the point is this: if any of you do remember ‘How?’ and can remember any of the things they did (except the electrocution ones) please let me know. It might be time to give them a go…

Gardening – a brief guide (part three – the rot-ables and the rustables).

ash blaze bonfire burn
In addition to plants, bushes, stones, ants and cat-poo, the garden is also home to some slightly more ‘architectural’ features. In the final part of our little guide, we will take a look at things, other than your bedding plants, which do not grow…

Barbecue – What’s not to love about a summer barbecue? (Answers on a postcard please.) Metal or brick, charcoal or gas? Matters none: by next spring everything that is metal (including tongs, fish slices and those long, pointy forky things that you never quite got round to washing last year) will be rusted. Everything that is not rusted will be coated in a thick layer of congealed fat, soot and gristle. Last year’s charred leftover sausage and burgers will remain welded to the grill as not even the rats will eat them. If you really must eat charred meat and lukewarm potato salad, always do it in someone else’s garden – preferably with the St John’s Ambulance in attendance.

Bonfire – The only reason most men will ever willingly venture out into the garden. Everybody loves a good burn-up. It is advisable not to light a garden bonfire when neighbours have windows open or washing out. Burn at night: it will be seen for miles and every male in the neighbourhood will appear with something wooden to burn and a bottle of something warming to drink. Safety is paramount: always wear thick, flameproof gauntlets, a protective visor and non-flammable leggings – or don’t. Position the fire away from sheds, fences, trees and children. Always check beneath the fire for hedgehogs – preferably before lighting. Never start a bonfire with petrol – I don’t know why. In my experience, bonfires generally take about two hours to light and two weeks to extinguish.

Compost heap – In these days of ecological consciousness it is imperative that a garden has a compost heap on which to put vegetable peelings, dead plants and grass cuttings. It should be situated in an area behind the shed, preferably closer to your neighbour’s house than your own. The vegetable matter within the heap will decompose and form an evil-smelling brown slime that both looks and smells like nothing you have ever bought from a garden centre. Cover it with thick plastic sheeting and try to ignore the flies. Leave undisturbed until the neighbours complain – then move.

Fences and hedges – A useful method of promoting conversation between neighbours – often very loudly. The main thing to remember about fences is that they are never in the right place. When they fall over, they are always yours. Hedges, on the other hand, are unlikely to fall over, but their roots are much more likely to undermine next-door’s conservatory and block the drains of the entire neighbourhood.

Garden furniture – Plastic, wood or metal. In Spring and Summer, garden furniture will turn your garden into an open-air lounge/dining room. In winter it will turn it into a ‘how do we get all this lot down to the dump?’ conundrum.

Garden ornaments – Statues, birdbaths, sundials, unidentifiable chunks of rock – when installing a heavy garden ornament, rigorous preparation of the ground is essential to ensure that the ornament does not lean grotesquely and fall. Garden ornaments always lean grotesquely and fall eventually unless propped up with old spades and broom handles. Do not worry, it doesn’t matter. The sundial will, in any case, be orientated in such a way that it only gives an accurate time for Saigon. After fixing it in place, you will find that it is in permanent shade anyway. The birdbath will be full of something green and stagnant that not even thirsty birds will touch. Despite what the salesman may have told you, a large chunk of ugly rock will always be a large chunk of ugly rock, wherever you put it.

Greenhouse – Basically a see-through shed. During the summer the greenhouse will contain mildewed tomatoes, withered cucumbers and brown, slimy lettuces. During the winter it will contain all the rubbish that won’t fit in the shed. Greenhouses are the ideal environment in which to grow fruit and veg varieties that are not hardy enough for our fickle climate. In the greenhouse they will remain protected from frost and wind and will die within minutes if not watered continually. Three things you must always remember about the greenhouse:

1. It is not a house
2. It is seldom, if ever, green
3. It is glass. It will break in excessive heat; heavy rain; lying snow, and the presence of children.

It is possible to replace glass with polycarbonate panels which do not break. They do however turn a strange opaque yellow on being exposed to sunlight, shrink and fall out. In my experience, the average greenhouse will usually comprise a haphazard combination of glass, polycarbonate and black plastic bin-bags. It will be filled with dead plants, but will be better next year.

Shed – A dry, generally wooden, store in which to protect your gardening tools and to raise the local mouse population. The smell, when you open the door, is probably a putrefying toad. The content, by volume, of the average garden shed is generally far greater than the volume of the shed itself. (If you don’t believe me, just empty one out and then try to get it all back in.) A correctly maintained shed is much like Dr Who’s Tardis – except that where the Tardis contains an almost infinite variety of rooms, interconnected through a veritable labyrinth of dark-cornered corridors and secret passageways, the shed contains shit. Also the Tardis doesn’t leak. A shed, like its close cousins the loft and the cupboard-under-the-stairs, has an almost unrivalled capacity for the accumulation of ‘stuff’ for which you have no further use. The shed differs from a greenhouse in that things do grow in it. They should not be touched without thick rubber gloves and should be burned when the wind is blowing towards somebody else’s house. Remember that all electric equipment stored in the shed over winter will blow up the fuse board and melt the fillings in your teeth next spring.

Tools – Most gardening tools (hand or electric) secateurs, hedge-clippers, spades, forks, lawnmowers, negligently placed rakes – have the potential to remove chunks from the unwary user. Keep them as blunt as possible. Broken/rusted garden tools should never be thrown away nor, if possible, replaced. When anything electrical gives up the ghost, cut off the flex and store it in the back of the shed. Everyone does it. No-one knows why.

Gardening – a brief guide (part two – the creepies and the crawlies).

In the twenty first century, many see gardening as a salve to the stresses and pressures of modern life. Unfortunately, like all ointments, it is host to many flies. In part two of our Bank Holiday Gardening guide we take a look at some of the nasty little beasties that seek to inculcate themselves between you and back-garden pleasure…

• Ants: occupy a place at the very apex of social living – a single ant has no value to the colony other than that of an (ultimately dispensable) part of one giant entity that functions as a unitary being and always pops up in the middle of your lawn just the day after you’ve mowed it; once a year spewing out a million winged beasties that infiltrate every nook and cranny in your house before dying in your knicker drawer. In my experience ant nests can spread for several kilometres and the vast majority of ants within them are immortal: they cannot be killed by any means known to man or woman, so don’t drive yourself mad, just put up with them, but don’t sit on them. They hunt in packs. Whilst a single ant nip will cause you little in the way of discomfort, a thousand of the little buggers practising synchronised munching on your scrotum may be slightly more uncomfortable. You will not need to make note of where they nest: they considerately leave huge bare patches in the lawn for your guidance.

• Caterpillars: will strip your most treasured garden plants and vegetable crops of all greenery within seconds. They are nothing more than a peripatetic bowel with a mouth at one end and an anus at the other and yet… they turn into beautiful butterflies – which of course lay eggs that turn into more caterpillars. It is an inexcusable sin to deliberately kill a butterfly – try it, even the dog will hate you – so you’ve got to try and get them whilst they’re still eggs. They are microscopic and laid in their thousands – so good luck with that. They hatch in their thousands too and even if you were able to remove them all from your treasured brassicas, what would you do with them, short of employing a flock of genetically engineered tits to feed them to their horribly mutated chicks? Remember, each little leaf-shredder is a potential butterfly. It does not do to be caught popping them. Anyway, by the time you have spotted and removed the advance party, it is too late, the battle is already lost – there will be far too many to drop over next door’s fence. My best advice is to fill your garden with plant varieties that they will not eat: plastic should do.

• Earwigs: not exactly certain how much of a problem these shiny-shelled, weaponised little fellows are, but thanks to my grandma, they scare the bejaysus out of me. Do they really crawl into your ear whilst you sleep? Can you really only get them out by offering them apple? Just exactly where do they lay their eggs?

• Greenfly: these little buggers suck the very life out of your plants. They appear from nowhere and in their millions; they breed with a rapidity that rabbits can only dream of and they’re farmed by ants! A simple spray of washing-up liquid and water will do for them – I’m not sure how. Perhaps it makes the plants slippy. Also, ladybirds eat greenfly. Encourage ladybirds in any way you can (I don’t know – you’ll have to work that one out for yourself). I understand that native ladybirds are themselves being eaten by marauding hordes of foreign ladybirds, but, since I’ve no idea how to tell them apart, there doesn’t appear to be much I can do about it. They will just have to take their chances and wait for Brexit.

• Slugs and Snails: ok, if pushed I would have to say that I dislike slugs more than snails if only because snails are at least a little more aesthetically pleasing: they do not, so much, resemble something that has been eaten and subsequently regurgitated by a liverish barn owl. Snail shells are quite pleasing in the rain – until you step on a full one and the sound leaves you also feeling like a liverish barn owl. Like the caterpillar these little eating tubes (both armoured and slimy) have voracious appetites. They will strip anything green as soon as you turn your back on it. Finding ways to combat slugs and snails is the gardener’s number one preoccupation. Some swear by copper strips to keep them at bay; crushed eggshells; salt; barbed wire; watchtowers; tiny, but heavily armed nematodes. The sole of a sturdy gardening boot works particularly well I find. Simply venturing out into the garden on a damp and drizzly evening and collecting them all in a plastic bag can be remarkably rewarding – especially if you have a bonfire going. It is not considered ecologically sound to poison the little buggers with slug pellets, as this will also poison the hedgehogs and birds that feed upon them – although I would question, ‘where were you before I put the pellets down? If you’d been doing your job properly, I wouldn’t have needed the pellets in the first place…’ French people eat snails, although they call them escargot, so that they don’t retch. Snail’s eggs are also considered a delicacy – although you do have to cut the toast ‘soldiers’ very small indeed…

• Wasps: not to be confused with bees which, whilst also capable of delivering a healthy sting, are not nearly so vindictive. Bees make honey and pollinate flowers. Wasps get pissed on rotting damsons and sting you repeatedly for the sheer bloody hell of it.

• Weeds: The only green things in your garden that are not killed by weedkiller.

• Woodlice: piggy beetles we called them when we were children. Tiny little armadillos that pass their time away chomping on rotten wood and trekking across your mushroom carpet the first time you invite the posh in-laws to dinner.