Stopping the Trains

If Robert Helpmann had been alive today, he would be 112 years old and no less scary for it. Readers of my age – and there are some, I’m sure, who battle through this twaddle sometime between morning porridge and evening Sanatogen – will nod in agreement when I say that if I can envisage a single person reaching that age in rude and menacing health, it would be he. Mr Helpmann (actually Sir Robert Helpmann C.B.E.) played the Child Catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and, as such, was the man who terrified an entire generation. Check it out, this is a children’s film, but there, in the company of Freddy Kruger, Chucky, the Alien, Hannibal Lecter, that bloody clown from ‘It’, Damien Thorn and Herbie the Love Bug (or perhaps that’s just me) in any list of Most Terrifying Film Characters of all time, there is the Child Catcher and, I feel confident in saying, he will not have been voted for by a single person of under sixty years of age: you had to be there. You had to be the right age to be terrified to such a degree that each future whiff of Butterkist popcorn, Raisin Poppets and damp pants, each taste of Vanilla tub and wooden spoon, brings it all flooding back. This is the power of early film encounters: to imprint on the brain like a duck to a newborn duckling, like a cuckoo to a clock…

Today, in the course of my work, I was introduced to a lady who said her name was Lydia and the song began playing so loudly in my head that I had to really concentrate on not letting it come out of my mouth. The Marx Brothers films were made long before even my time, but I loved them. They, along with Phil Silvers, were my introduction to a lifelong love of comedy. I don’t know what age I was when I first saw At the Circus*, but I do know that ‘Lydia the Tattooed Lady’ had me howling with laughter. ‘Lydia, oh! Lydia, say have you met Lydia / Oh! Lydia, the tattooed lady / She has eyes that folks adore so / And a torso even more so…’ I’m pretty certain that I had no idea of what the ‘torso’ business was about, but I learned the words none-the-less and I knew then that I wanted to be Groucho. Fifty years on and it took just the one mention of the seldom heard name to fill my head with so much of the past that it, fleetingly, ceased to operate in the present.

Another film that predated me by many years was Bob Hope’s ‘The Paleface’, but the bumbling attempts of his character to remember all the instructions he was getting for his gunfight: ‘He draws from the left, so lean to the right’ left me in helpless laughter at the ABC minors some twenty years after its release. In my head I still hear that riff every time I try to write deliberately confused dialogue, but I know I will never match it. Confused I’m ok with – I could probably claim to be a natural – but it’s the helpless laughter that eludes me. So often, when I write, my mind is filled with these old films, not for the dialogue, but for the manner in which it was delivered. Who could possibly write a carping couple without hearing Bogart and Hepburn in The African Queen? When I had a pond in the back garden, I was unable to stick my arm into it without worrying about leeches. Thank goodness I have never owned a boat: I am far from convinced that I would be any good with improvised torpedoes.

In 1968 I was nine (work it out) and, as everybody told me, born to play The Artful Dodger¹. I didn’t, of course, Jack Wild did, and look where that got him. A couple of years later I was sent to auditions for the role in some stage production or another, but I didn’t stay. Most of the kids had their mum’s in attendance, wiping down their faces with a spit moistened corner of handkerchief. I didn’t have anyone with me. I went along because my then teacher asked me to do so and within five minutes I realised that I was at a serious disadvantage in that, although I could easily have been the Dodger, I certainly couldn’t act it. I sneaked away and have never auditioned for anything in my life from that day. But I still love the film and I could probably sing you every song from it here and now (although probably not in a key you would recognise). Sadly, were I to audition today, it would be for the role of Fagin or, if I’m honest, having just looked in the mirror, Bumble.

And then came 1970. I was eleven when The Railway Children² was released, but I knew even then that, despite not being even remotely a child, the star of the show was Bernard Cribbens, who contributed both pathos and comedy to the character of Perks. In ‘real life’, Cribbens was, of course, much too young to play Perks and Sally Thomsett, who played the younger sister, was actually two years older than Jenny Agutter who played the elder sister, but, you know, that’s the movie business: nothing’s really as it seems – I bet Julie Andrews doesn’t even own an umbrella. I knew none of this at the time and even if I had, it wouldn’t have made any difference. All that occupied my mind as I left the cinema was Jenny Agutter’s bright red bloomers. If I concentrate, I can still hear the hormones buzzing in my ears today, an echo of youth, like the Big Bang with fewer connotations. I have no idea what subsequently became of Ms Thomsett, but I do know that Ms Agutter went on to star in Nicolas Roeg’s Walkabout a year later, and the boy became a man – albeit one still terrified of the Childcatcher…

*The Marx Brothers at the Circus was made in 1939, twenty years before I was born. I suppose that during those twenty years, the once ‘racy’ quips of Groucho became innocent enough to be shown on daytime TV, much as ‘When Harry Met Sally’ is now. Progress…

¹Oliver! Was voted the 77^th greatest British film of the twentieth century and is most notable – as far as I’m concerned – for introducing me to Shani Wallis and the notion that girls were something that I really wanted to find out about.

²The Railway Children is widely regarded as perhaps the best Children’s Film of all time. It was voted the 66^th greatest British film of the twentieth century. The film voted as the best British film of the twentieth century, in case you’re interested, is The Third Man. My own favourite ‘If…’ is 12^th, but as neither feature either Jenny Agutter and her red drawers nor a middle-aged ballet dancer with a false nose, they do not figure greatly in my childhood recollections. But that, I suppose, is show business…

A Rose by Any Other Name

I was watching next door’s fireworks through the bedroom window, when it suddenly occurred to me that it was forty years to the day since we moved into our current home…

Our first home was a tiny, two-bedroom, mid-terrace house that we lived in for just over a year before prematurely deciding that we needed a bigger house, hopefully out in the country, where we could raise a family. As we were more than a little deficient in the monies department, what we actually ended up with was the kind of ‘project’ that meant we would be in no position to have children for some years after we moved in – we may well have had to eat them before then. We liked what we felt the house could become, although forty years on, it is yet to become it, which tells you much about our ambitions and even more about our aptitudes. We liked the village – small then, unlike the demi-town it has grown into over the last few years – and we were blind to the pitfalls of so much to do, no idea of how to do it and no money with which to employ anybody else to do it. Even a bitingly cold winter, in which a large snow drift formed in the front room, facilitated by the gaping fissures in the windows (which should have been replaced under the terms of the mortgage) and our reluctance to turn the heating on – as we needed the money to replace the windows so that they did not repossess the house – could not stop us: we had our fourteen inch black and white TV set with its metal coat hanger where the aerial used to be, we had a quantity of crocheted blankets and an ancient two-bar electric fire in front of which we huddled for warmth and cooked toast whenever the electricity was working: we were living the dream.

Every house here had a garage and every garage had a car – in our case an ancient Vauxhall Viva with rather more rust than bodywork and a petrol tank that was almost entirely water-tight as long as it wasn’t filled above half way – we were on our way to the good life. We knew that as soon as we had restored the house to its original ticky-tacky 1960’s glory, we would move onwards and upwards, to somewhere better and brighter, and we will, sooner or later, I am sure. We had the asbestos central heating pipe removed before we needed specialists to do so and we swept the dust from the floor with brush and pan. We fitted new windows ourselves – gluing two standard 4×4 units together because we couldn’t afford a bespoke 8×4 – and were thrilled to find that we could open them even after we had glazed them – as long as it wasn’t hot… or cold… or raining… We fitted the front door which we still have today. It is to insulation what a sieve is to water conservation. When it opens, every other door in the house slams shut. It is about to be replaced and I’m not sure how I will manage with the new one. I have grown used to the draughts. I know exactly where they are coming from.

We were so happy to be here: I am a council estate boy, born and bred and here I was living in a village with a stable* at its centre! For the first time in my life I saw horses that were not attached to a totter’s cart. People rode past our door on them. They were dressed in tweed and spoke a language I barely understood. I was so impressed by them: they were a symbol of true country living, so you can imagine my joy when, after being in the village for just a few days, one of these giant beasts deposited a very large pile of its doings right in front of my house. This shit was indisputably mine! I ran to my bucket and spade. It was a happy man who strode into the kitchen a couple of minutes later to display my gently steaming bounty to my wife who, it must be said, was less than impressed. After a short period spent screaming, she eventually calmed down sufficiently to instruct me – rather abruptly I felt – to remove it from the kitchen.
“What the hell do you intend doing with it?” she asked.
“I’m going to put it on the roses,” I answered.
“We haven’t got any roses,” she said.
“…Can we get some,” I asked.
Her voice took on the quiet, tolerant tone that I have since come to dread. “You have to rot it down,” she said.
“Rot it down?” I queried.
“Rot it down,” she nodded.
“But it’s shi…”
“Colin!” she warned. (It was forty years ago and we barely ever swore back then.)
“Are you sure?” I asked. “Perhaps we should look it up.”
Now, this was a time, many years pre-internet. Google was something that the sink did when the drain needed rodding. If you needed to know something, you went to the library and found a book that just might have the answer you sought – if only you could find the page it had it on. We needed gardening advice and that was available only through a gardening compendium or a bona fide gardener. I could have written to ‘Gardener’s Question Time’ on the radio, but it would have taken ages to get a reply. I might as well just let the poo-poo rot.

“Maybe we could ask the lady at the village shop,” I said, suddenly blinded by the light bulb flashing over my head. “If we bought a rose…”
We had a village shop back then. It sold small amounts of absolutely everything. You could probably buy a bucketful of horse shit there. You could definitely buy a rose – she would dig you one out of her own garden if necessary. She would know what to do. These days we have only the Co-op and the punctured youth behind the checkout would be highly unlikely to be able to solve my excrement conundrum.

It transpired that the manure had to be ‘well-rotted’, that being one step on from common-or-garden rotted, and one step down from putrefied, and whilst that was happening we had our newly purchased rose to keep alive. We didn’t really have the money to waist on a floribunda back then, so having bought it, the pressure to keep it alive was intense. We manage to do so and even, over the years, bought it a few friends for company, but, my my, roses are hard work: greenfly, blackfly, mildew, black spot, Blind Pugh… there was so little to which a rose could not succumb and as our little garden established itself over the years, roses ceased to be a part of it. Forty years on we have only one rose, a giant rambling specimen that forms part of the back hedge and is remarkably thorn-free. (I’m sure we bought it as a rose, but I have my doubts.) The whole garden has evolved over the last forty years and, I think, has matured nicely, unlike the horse shit which, to the best of my knowledge, is still rotting down somewhere in the field behind us…

And that’s what set me off, the smell of manure. We get it sometimes. I think the farmer has a little ‘countryside machine’ – you know, like the supermarkets use to introduce the fragrance of freshly brewed coffee and newly baked bread to the aisles, but with the smells of the countryside – so that even as we become increasingly urban, we are still able to experience the authentic country odour of yesteryear: dung, pig and cow parsley. I opened the door to the scent and saw there, bang in front of my house, glisteningly fresh, a giant pile of horse’s doofahs. I strode to the rode. “Can’t you control that bloody animal?” I shouted at the fast diminishing rump. “Somebody will have to clean that up.” But nobody did…

*The gloss soon went off when I found out that the horses were used by the local hunt. However, the influx of townies, like ourselves, into the village soon put a stop to that barbaric palaver. These days the horses just plod around with an assortment of helmeted children and Barbour-clad adults on board. They still shit on the roads, but nobody ever picks it up…

As Man’s Ingratitude

Having cut along every conceivable dotted line on my body in the pursuit of the autumnal pruning regime: sticking plasters over every jolting puncture wound and binding each twingeing muscle in the aftermath of preparing the garden greenery for winter, the time has now come to pack and store away the various wood and metal gewgaws that litter my small square of England’s green and pleasant sward during the summer months. I have alerted the relevant emergency authorities, Elastoplast have gone on to twenty-four hour shifts in preparation and my wife is laying in a darkened room with a dampened cloth over her eyes. Wrapped within sufficient thermal insulation to keep a dormouse snugly at the South Pole, I will venture out into the garden where the garden bench that has spent the entire summer gently divesting itself of various arms, legs and backrests will stoically resist all attempts at disassembly. Muttered oaths and whispered threats will, on past evidence, prove wholly ineffective and the subsequent search for the axe will serve merely to unearth approximately sixteen new strains of fungi in the garden shed. Global Warming and the consequent threat of flooding the streets of York precludes the possibility of burning it, so the bench will be left to complete the decomposition at which it has heretofore excelled.

Metal benches, chairs and tables are not, unfortunately, quite so accommodating. They require careful deconstruction in order that they can be carefully packed away through the winter months allowing for easier disposal of the rusted remains in the spring. The liberal application of WD40 to the nuts and bolts should allow easy removal. Should, but does not. The separate elements remain fused as one by a layer of binding oxidisation and the oily layer from the spray merely accentuates the fact that the spanner I have for the job just doesn’t quite fit. It is imperial, whilst the bolts are metric. Or the other way around. I have no idea how you can tell. One way or another I have removed more knuckles than I have fingers – that total not necessarily being the number I started with – and (if you will forgive me) completely rounded my nuts. I would hacksaw them off, but the hacksaw is still conjoined to the garden bin where I left it last year. I have an electric jigsaw that would effortlessly cut through them, if only it had not cut through its own cable with similar ease the last time I used it. I will return to this particular problem once I have found my big hammer.

Having already removed most of the mirrors that are dotted around the garden I must now remove the shards that remain fixed – either too tightly or too loosely, I am never sure – to the walls. I approach the problem forearmed with such a variety of Pozidrive, Phillips, SupaScrew and Flat Head screwdrivers that Wickes – should they be able to see them through the various layers of paint they have been used to stir – would probably throw in the towel. Unfortunately, whatever screws I have used quite clearly require a completely different model. My attempt at removal with a claw hammer, although unsuccessful at loosening the screw, does remove the mirror and the lower third of a finger that, truth be told, I use very rarely anyway. I am relieved to find that the two mirrors I affixed to the fence are no longer my responsibility as they currently lay, still secured to the larch lap panels, in next door’s pond.

My previous attempt at mending the ailing garden gate ensures that no burglar can now enter our premises from that direction. Unfortunately, as I appear to have fixed the new hinges to the latching side, it also means that I cannot put the bins out. In order to facilitate the necessary revamp I conducted a careful search for my hammer which was subsequently found propping up the sagging rear corner of the shed. Having carefully removed it, replacing it with a brick that, until that moment was blocking the bigger of two mouse holes, I set about trying to get the handle back in it. What I needed was a hammer, but… Having used the brick instead I was thrilled to find that the shed lurched no more than forty five degrees without it. I will reset the clothes pole as soon as I have found some means of opening the shed door to get at the spade. Having spent the entire evening reattaching the wobbling hammerhead to the hammerstick-thing with gaffer tape, I intend to tackle the ‘gate conundrum’ tomorrow. Should I move the latch to the hinge side or vice versa? If I leave the hinges where they are, I will have to move the little hook that holds the whole thing, when it is capable of being opened, back against the garage wall. Without it, I recall, the gate does nothing but flail itself to death. I am tired of hammering the gate post back into the wall.

The final pre-winter garden task is to move all pots, tubs and planters under cover for the duration. The cover, in this instance, is the greenhouse. It is also partial. Such broken panes as do not have black plastic bin liners sellotaped over them have been replaced with variously assembled pieces of hardboard, cardboard and, in the door, a piece of mirror that gives me a terrible fright each time I open it. None-the-less the greenhouse is a wonderful refuge for all the bulbs and rhizomes that, having survived and wilted through the summer, need somewhere to go and quietly die. The smell of the greenhouse in Spring speaks volumes about the fragility of life. The crackling sound under my feet speaks volumes about the fragility of glass.

And so, like the rest of nature, the garden is prepared for the travails of winter. For months ahead there will be no tinkling of water-feature, no twinkling of solar lights and no inkling of why everything else, including the lawn, has turned to brown sludge. Come the Spring, after a dark eternity, new green shoots will appear everywhere I don’t want them to and every plant that I treasure will snap when I go near it. As soon as the clocks go forward, I will retrieve a large bag of six inch nails from the back of the garage and see if I can get another year out of the garden bench…

Blow, blow thou winter wind. Thou art not so unkind as man’s ingratitude – William Shakespeare

Idle Hands

Surely I should have learned by now that having time on my hands is never a good thing, that idle hours are never well spent. My own idle hands clicked onto ‘Reader’ and typed ‘Humour’ into the search bar. It’s been a long time since I found a new blog to follow and my latest crop of followers clearly don’t want me as one of their own, or if they do, they obviously think that I am somebody else: somebody with even the slimmest chance of making an income out of this waffle. I scanned down the page of the ‘humorous’ blogs on offer and reminded myself that dealing with crushing disappointment is all part of the human condition – at least if you are me. Firstly, I did not find a single blog that could in any way, be described as humorous, unless my grip on the English language has become even more tenuous than I feared. As far as I could see, most of them were there because they had the word ‘Humour’ as a tag. If this is the way that tags work, then I am very tempted to tag my next post ‘Get £1,000,000 of free cash by clicking on this blog.’ I see myself with thousands of new, albeit disappointed, readers.

Secondly – and I must be honest, by far the more distressing aspect of my trawl, this blog hadn’t even made the cut! Now, I realise I am no Oscar Wilde – I miss that particular qualification on so many counts – but come on, surely I should be able to get myself onto a list that is otherwise filled with ‘What is the basic fundamental of joke construction?’ and not a single ‘Why did the chicken cross the road?’ This is a very small pond, belly laugh-wise, and I cannot even get myself hauled out in a very broad net. I fear my goose – along with all hope of golden eggs – is cooked. I have ‘Humour’ as a category for God’s sake! What on earth do I need to do? (OK, if you’re going to be picky, I concede that including a joke or two might help.)

I have spent my life attempting to wrangle some kind of joy out of words. Most of the time the words have put up a pretty good fight. I know from very long experience that on the rare occasion I am truly happy with something I have written, a sober read-through the following day will see it hurtle towards the bin. Writing alone is the process of making a hundred jokes that nobody else gets whilst completely missing the one that everybody laughs at. There is nothing more joyful than finding that ‘killer line’ and nothing more soul destroying than seeing it die a death. There is joy to be found in writing with another discordant soul, laughing at the other person’s jokes and realising that you can add to them. Joy is in reading through an idea you had and hearing laughter exactly where you thought it might be hiding. I have laughed so much during long-ago writing sessions with the wonderful Mr Underfelt that I have feared for my health and my sanity – something I have never done in the last thirty or so years of writing alone. (Laugh, that is. I fear for my sanity on a daily basis. If I ever manage to find it, I will give it a very stern talking to.)

Solitary writing is a form of self abuse – although without quite the same sense of guilt or fear of blindness. It is all about the release. It is all about the disappointment. It is all about the ‘I’m not doing that again.’ I never think about writing: I just write. Like everybody else with an enthusiasm that dwarfs talent, I know that I will get it right one day. Like everybody else who waits for the day that they will get it right, I wait, and write.

I know that many of you are far more professional in your approach than I. On the one occasion that I wrote a novel, I meandered through the first half of the book, found the ending, went back to the beginning and then slowly drew the two together. I never had a plan, it just sort of worked itself out in a way that all of the top publishers of the day described as utter tripe. Only in sit-com did I ever have a beginning, a middle and an end in mind, because each episode is really just a single joke and the trick is just in holding the attention long enough to get there. Normally I had given up the ghost myself long before I reached the end. My dialogue just wouldn’t follow my plot. The phrase ‘It’s almost there, but…’ is the one I will have chiselled on my tombstone.

For the last three decades I have passed my time banging out this kind of fol-de-rol. Generally I start with the first line – I know what you’re thinking, but let me explain… I have a bookful of them. I write them down constantly. A million first sentences with absolutely no idea of where they are going. Often I sit down and leaf through the book until something catches my eye. Always I will have something on my mind, although I seldom know what it is, and it somehow attaches itself onto what I have written and, hand in hand, the two of them wander off towards the horizon where, if I am lucky, I catch them before they fall over the edge. Comedy is the gift of a flat earth. I can agonise all day over a single sentence, or I can find myself with a thousand words on paper and no real idea of how they got there. Either way, it makes little difference unless I can find a way to search for them that does not include the word ‘humour’. (Before you suggest it, I have tried prefixing with ‘Vain attempts at’, but I’m still not there. In fact I have just typed my name into the search bar and I still do not appear to exist. How closely this blogosphere mirrors life.)

The Devil makes work for idle hands, so the saying goes. I’ve always thought that the Devil probably had the best jokes. I wonder where he keeps them…

The Eternal Circle

Those of you who were with me on Tuesday (The Seventh Seal) will have found me in my usual state of angst, on that occasion about my inability to corral my thoughts along a predictable path from cogent beginning to rational end. Indeed. those of you stubborn enough to have stuck with me these last few years, through thin and thin, will be painfully aware that narrative thrust is not, figuratively speaking, my ‘thing’. I prefer to let my mind wander a little, to find its own way through my daily travails, in the hope that I can catch up with it sooner or later and corral it into a last sentence that ties in with all that has come before, that neatly bundles all the threads together and arrives both unexpectedly and yet as expected at ‘The End’. My style of writing involves little in the way of planning and a great deal in the way of staring out of the window whilst drinking coffee. I begin each little farrago with the conviction that it will wind up (or down, I’m never sure) if not in the same place then at least on the same page (see figuratively speaking above). That each piece has a dénouement of sorts is as surprising to me as everybody else. That beginning and end should fall into any kind of order after taking a waltz around my cranium is nothing short of a eiraclm. So…

The shower is up and was, briefly, running. You may gather from that sentence that this is no longer the case. It remains up, but it is no longer running. Not, I should point out, the shower’s fault. The reason that it is currently in an ongoing non-functional scenario is actually the fault of the new shower-screen which, having spent the short time since its erection leaking like a sieve, is currently back in its box and awaiting collection. (Fortunately I kept the box because I am old and I know how these things go: they go up, don’t work and come down again, whereupon they have to be returned to the supplier in original packing.) It will be ‘up-picked’, I presume as the result of using a dyslexic Cantonese/English translator, when the new one is delivered, except it won’t, because the carriers know nothing about a new one, as they have only the paperwork for a collection and nothing on the van left to deliver other than a gross of left-handed socks for a shop in Wolverhampton. This does not concern me: at some stage, when we are not in, the new screen will be delivered and left next door with a slow-cooker intended for somewhere in Hemel Hempstead. The new screen will go up without incident and will leak in a whole new range of places.

Built-in obsolescence has reached such a stage that things are now obsolete before they are built in. The expectation is that things will not be as expected. Modern life is all about managing disappointment. In days of yore you could rely on a washing machine lasting until the very day after the guarantee ran out. Then they changed the law: goods, these days, are effectively guaranteed to last as long as they can reasonably be expected to last. It is impossible to plan. You have to spend hours researching the reasonable lifetime of a tumble dryer before you can work out when to get the man in. You have to be aware of the expected durability of a cooker before you make a note of the local takeaway’s number. Things will last just as long as expected, and if they don’t, well, what do you expect? To tell the truth, I did expect the shower screen to keep the water out – or in – somewhat better than it did. If I’m honest, the shower made less of a puddle without it. It strikes me that, if you buy a computer, it is easy to argue that it might not be powerful enough for you and the expectation could be that it might go out-of-date very quickly, it is less easy to maintain that a shower screen is meant to be porous.

So now I’m back in the bath – not ‘this second’ now, you understand, as my laptop has a battery life that is measured in zeptoseconds and has to be plugged into the mains, making it less than ideal for in-bath use, unless you’re writing a piece about the practical effectiveness of defibrillators – and, as much as I appreciate I am taking a risk by stating this, you know where you are with a bath. The water (unless the bath is full of children) stays in it. So constantly reliable is the bath that Archimedes was correctly able to assume that he displaced his own weight in water – and also that it would be cold before he managed to top it back up. It is not the bath’s fault that the towel is always out on the banister nor that the grandkids need a poo the second you settle down in the bubbles, and the downstairs loo is out of use until you can get the teddy bear out of it. Baths have a single function: hold water – much like the bladder which, at my age is far less dependable.

At which point I begin to consider the built-in obsolescence of body parts. What is the reasonable lifespan of my lungs, my heart, my kidneys? (I decided to leave my liver out of this – it has quite enough problems of its own.) Do I need to book the paramedics for the day after my seventieth birthday? I know that medical science has moved on, but what of flesh and blood? Are we destined to see out the balance of our lives waiting for spare parts? Are the ones we have obsolete? Does everything fail at once or can I expect my brain to outlive my lights? Will I be told that I’d be much better with a new one, or will they tell me that they don’t make them now like they used to? And then, of course, we face the inevitability of asking the obvious question, the one to which none of us actually wants to know the answer. Because that is the ending that nobody wants to see coming…

The Seventh Seal

‘Explaining a joke is like dissecting a frog. You understand it better, but the frog dies in the process.’ – E.B. White*

My greatest failing as a writer, I think, is that I get easily sidetracked by the desire to make sense. (My second greatest weakness is that I continue to think it acceptable to describe myself as a writer. I have, in the past, painted many a ceiling, but I have never viewed myself as Michelangelo.) I have a gift for vacillation matched only by my tendency to forget whatever point it was I wished to make before I decided I didn’t want to make it. My finger is so rarely on the pulse that I have no idea whether what I write is alive and well or ready to be minced and pressed into a burger. I try to keep things as simple as I can because, if I’m honest, I’m not much good at tying up loose ends: my macramé skills are not now what they never were then and even as a boy scout with an impeccable woggle, my clove hitch left much to be desired.

I now (or, if I am truthful, at some point in the past, as there is always a considerable lag between writing this stuff and publishing it, giving myself the time to consider who I might have offended, how I might have offended them, what is, or isn’t, funny and why) inhabit a body in which all of my various bits and bobs appear to be engaged in a battle to determine which can fail first: a battle which my teeth are currently winning hands down. (Or is it my hands, teeth down?) In days of yore, dental hygiene was a vigorous business; buffing and scrubbing my way to the kind of white and uniform pegs that I never actually achieved: this is the result of a youth spent opening beer bottles with ill-equipped molars and repeatedly swilling my tonsils with super-strength black coffee. My mouth now resembles a church graveyard from a Hammer Horror film: tombstones lurch at erratic angles, pieces drop off with a haphazard regularity that always takes me by surprise, there are gaps with something (I have no idea what – could be spinach) growing within them. I expect Iron Maiden will book it as a concert venue some time soon.

I find this deterioration incredibly depressing. Even more troubling – because I can no longer gnash my teeth in anguish – is the knowledge that it can only get worse. However much I have the frontage repaired the infrastructure continues to crumble. My mouth contains so much mercury that I am an inch taller in the summer.

Age, unlike life, does make sense. Surely it is perfectly acceptable for stuff to stop working when it is no longer needed. Why worry about retaining teeth when all you really want out of life is a bowl of warm soup and a slice of bread to dip in it? The heart does not need to pump so strongly, to pump blood hither and thither at a pressure adequate enough to stop the arteries collapsing like an Italian government, when the body in which it assiduously oscillates does little but sit in front of the radiator and moan about the buses. What is the point in nature making efforts to retain 20/20 eyesight when the most dangerous thing you are ever likely to encounter is the doormat? Who needs hearing when the telly turns up so loud? Might as well let everything slide a bit – you’ll be dead soon enough.

Except, most of us are not prepared to simply slide off into our evermores without at least a small amount of resistance, are we? We accept age, but we don’t surrender to it – unless, of course, avoiding it requires an awful lot of effort. It does become increasingly difficult to put too much endeavour into confronting the inevitable, but most of us are determined to put up at least some degree of fight. Like Cnut (King Dyslexic I) we cannot hold back the tide, but we can soak up a lot of it into our socks. Age will teach us new tricks: you cannot stop a speeding truck by standing in front of it, but you can deflect it slightly by standing to one side and throwing drawing pins. You cannot avoid Death, but you can stall him a little with chocolate and banana skins. Chess, for me, is not an option – I get confused by the little horses. Could Death be tempted into a game of Trivial Pursuit – I feel I always stand a chance with the inconsequential? (I’m sure that my assumption that Death is male must be due to a 1960’s upbringing and Max Bygraves on the TV.) Keeping the brain active, that’s the thing, isn’t it? Sudoku, Countdown, Crossword, Pointless and Only Connect: keeping the brain vigorous is surely the only way of stalling dementia – although after thirty minutes of the delightful Ms Coren-Mitchell’s show, nobody can honestly avoid feeling that they must have something seriously adrift between the ears. It is like listening to a Scott Walker CD – the conviction that there is something not quite right with at least one of you is overwhelming.

I have learned in these last few years that fingers cannot be taught new skills beyond a certain age and that no amount of pain and perseverance will lubricate the transition between G and E⁷ without dislocating ancient knuckles. I have discovered that no matter how hard I try to concentrate, the computer will still get me in checkmate within fourteen moves, even on ‘beginner’; that no matter how closely I follow the instructions on the macramé kit, all I ever make is a knot; that no matter how prepared I feel at the beginning, I will always be left with a piece of wood that ought to belong somewhere when I have constructed my latest bookcase.

It’s the knowing, isn’t it? Do you want to be sound of mind, but feeble of body, or vice versa? I cannot decide: I cannot make up my mind and yet, even if I could, I am aware that it would make not one jot of difference. What will be will be. What fails, fails. What persists, persists and no amount of reading books you do not understand will change that. There’s no point in trying to make sense of it. Don’t let the Devil lead you into a cul-de-sac of rationalisation, unless, of course, you are confident that he is going to be the one who can’t find his way out. And if he does manage to button-hole you into a game of chess, make sure that you are fully acquainted with the rules before you start. Try to understand how come the clergy slide around the board ineffectually, approaching everything obliquely, never tackling anything head on (oh, hang on…); how come the little horses manage to turn in mid-air when they’re jumping over things and, come to that, how come a castle can even move in the first place. But don’t fret too much about it: it isn’t good for you at your age and, after all, it’s not as if your life depends on it…

*I included this quote because it was the starting point for today’s ramble. That it did not, in the event, go anywhere near where it was intended to go is entirely par for the course. I am sure I will return to the theme in the future – although not necessarily when anticipated…

Christmas Future

I realise that this is a little premature, but there is so much admin to get through these days – scanning the internet, matching gift and price with impecunious aunt and miserly cousin, making allowance for the additional time involved in shipping deliveries without lorry drivers that means that you will not know that something is out of stock until some time in March, not to mention the simple logistics of finding somebody with an open fire who is prepared to let you shove your note up their chimney in the certain knowledge that it might play merry hell with their flue. You may be well ahead of me, but my Christmas planning starts here:

First on everybody’s list of things to do before ‘the day’ is the traditional visit to ‘Ye Olde German Xmas Fayre and Market’ in the only town in the county without a single car parking space and a train station that stands a two-hour yomp from your destination. The burning disappointment of this event is a seasonal rite of passage as fundamental to the occasion as kneeling on the glass baubles and attempting to get the dog to cough up the turkey wishbone. You will be surrounded by so many desperate people that you will not notice that your credit card has gone missing until you attempt to use your absent mobile phone in order to report the drunken Santa for swearing loudly at the Elves. Fortunately, this state of penury will insulate you against the temptation to buy hand-made penis-shaped Christmas baubles, felt Santa hats with flashing lights, a novelty scarf that plays ‘I Saw Mummy Kissing Santa Claus’ and which unravels before you reach the nearest bin, gluhwein that both looks and tastes like drain cleaner and a hot dog that is only one of the two – and that isn’t hot. Female toilet arrangements that involve a single portaloo and a queue that would take a week to clear even if the flush was working. Male arrangements that involve a bush. By the time you manage to find your way out of the yuletide melee, you will have sore feet, three full squirts of tomato ketchup down your crotch and the conviction that the withered Christmas Special turkey ‘n’ bread sauce bap at the Rat & Cockle is maybe not so bad after all. The bottom will have fallen out of your bag for life, the flicker will have gone out of your L.E.D candle and the sparkle in your eye will have been caused by a faulty glitter canon and will require four hours in Casualty to get it removed. YOGXF&M is traditionally held at the beginning of November and may be cancelled if the weather is not perfect e.g. cold and raining. It is no place for children. The pall of shattered-illusion hanging over the event will be visible from Mars.
Second on the list is the traditional trip to Poundland in the search for gifts for all the people you do not like but who always insist on sending you something inappropriate for Christmas. It is best to choose something that will not survive unwrapping as it cannot then be re-parcelled and sent to you next year. Remember that in most cases, the packaging will be far more robust than the contents. Cheap chocolate is always an acceptable gift, especially for diabetic friends, who will have the perfect excuse for not touching it. This can also be a suitable occasion on which to purchase a whole pack of Christmas Crackers that do not ‘crack’ and feature a range of gifts all of which will result in a trip to A&E with the baby, and a joke that didn’t quite survive the translation from Taiwanese.
Update your Christmas Card List. Begin by crossing out all of the people who did not send you a card last year, all of those with whom you have agreed not to exchange cards, all of those who you have completely forgotten ever having known and all of those who laughed when your knickers fell down in the Parent’s Sack race at last summer’s school sports day. Do not attempt to personalise the message in each card as it will only lead to confusion when the cards are placed in the wrong envelope for delivery to a thirteen years out-of-date address. Leave them in the box with the intention of getting them in the post before the last posting day. Throw them in the bin when you next find them in April.
Prepare the sprouts. Christmas sprouts require at least eight weeks cooking before they go in the bin.
Plan the Christmas Menu. Don’t forget the practicalities: how big a turkey can you fit in the oven; how big a turkey can you fit in the bath when it hasn’t defrosted by Christmas Eve; why do the pigs always throw the blankets off during cooking; why does grandad always manage to get a cocktail stick wedged under his top set? Properly planned (e.g. ordered through ‘Just Eat’) Christmas dinner can be a stress-free experience. Lock anyone with whom you may have a difference of opinion out of the kitchen – or preferably the house – and never attempt to follow grandma’s traditional recipe for anything: it is a doomed enterprise and the recriminations will persist for years. If you plan to set fire to the pudding make sure that Uncle Derek has insured his wig.
Write down – or preferably print so that there can be no mistakes – your own Christmas Gift List. Include all makes and specifications. Do not be vague. ‘A nice perfume’ in the hands of a vindictive aunt may well be something with which you would strip down pine furniture. ‘A box of chocolates’ will have a petrol station price ticket and a sell by date from the 1980’s. If you want a bottle of gin that hasn’t come out of an enamel bath in a disused car battery factory state the make. Include a number of inexpensive alternatives, but not so many that your spouse can get away with buying one.
Take all necessary steps to eliminate stress. Sell the cat, farm the kids out to relations, feign illness and, if at all possible, move without leaving a forwarding address.
Do not buy in so much alcohol that you think it safe to start drinking it beforehand, but also do not be tempted by last year’s advocaat. It may look innocuous, but at heart it is twelve month old custard with a garnish of British Sherry.
Find blanket to pull over head until second week of January.

Superpowers

Frankie squatted down with his back against the redbrick wall, his knees pulled up to his chest, his fingers entwined and white at the knuckle behind his neck, his eyes screwed tightly shut. The noise around him was deafening even through the barrier of toilet paper he had managed to cram into his ears before playtime, but he wasn’t actually as aware of that as the voice inside his head yelling at the children to quieten down, even though he knew they never would. He didn’t really need them to. He didn’t even want them to. He just needed to step back from it. If he faded far enough away into the background, then the noise would no longer exist. Frankie could make that happen. That was Frankie’s superpower.

With the noise turned down, Frankie was able to think much more clearly. With his eyes and ears shut tight and his back to the wall, he could join in all of the playground games: the push and the shove, the running, the climbing, the tag and the chase – he was the virtual schoolboy. When played behind his silent wall, he loved football, he was good at it. He was Messi. It was as if the threadbare old tennis ball was tied to his boot and none of the other kids could push him away from it. Except for Maureen Jackson who was bigger than him – much bigger – and super-keen on inveigling him into a game of kiss chase that was both diminutive in the size of its teams and liberal in its interpretation of the rules. Once engulfed in Maureen’s over-zealous embrace it was entirely possible that they would never make it into school dinners again.

Not that that was a great concern. Even on his ‘quiet table’, tucked away in the corner of the hall, down by the wallbars, surrounded by the smell of socks and baked beans, he was engulfed by a discordant riot of sights and sounds that he found it impossible to process. Not even the foreknowledge of Spam fitter, lumpy mashed potato and tinned tomato, chocolate sponge and pink custard could calm his mind. Not even his superpowers could shield him on a pilchard day. That was the day of the headteacher’s study, a glass of weak orange squash and a biscuit that looked like a sheet of cardboard filled with flies. He didn’t mind flies. At least they didn’t try to kiss him.

Frankie enjoyed lessons at school, even if they often meant sitting alone. He was really good at spelling, and at maths he was second-to-none, but he wasn’t quite so good at sitting round the table and building with straws. He wasn’t good with scissors.

Mrs Cook, his teacher, often sat with him whilst Mrs Cass spoke with the rest of the class. She smiled a lot, Mrs Cook, and Frankie loved her. She helped him to understand the words he did not know and when he didn’t want to drink the warm, playtime milk, she didn’t force him, but she always left it there in case he changed his mind. He never changed his mind. Superheroes don’t drink milk. They drink acid or something like that. They eat girders. They can turn down the noise with the blink of an eye.

If he’d had the choice, he would have been Spider Man. Spiders can hear through their legs. If he was a spider, he would wear thick trousers. Jimmy told him about the spiders. He said they also have loads of eyes. Dozens, he said. A thousand, he said, like the night. Frankie didn’t understand that. The night doesn’t have eyes at all. The night is pitch-black, isn’t it? If it had eyes, it still wouldn’t be able to see. In the dark. Frankie liked the night. It was like the world was wrapped in cotton-wool; soft and mute like a swan, but without the capacity to break your arm with a flap of its wings. Sometimes Jimmy told Frankie that the two of them were put together because they were the same, but sometimes he said it was because they were different. Frankie wasn’t always sure that Jimmy really meant everything he said. Sometimes he made him mad and sometimes he made him laugh. He told jokes that Frankie didn’t understand – his favourite was ‘What’s the difference between a frog? One leg’s the same.’ – but it never really mattered because Jimmy didn’t understand them either. His jokes were their little secret. Nobody else got them. Nobody else even heared them. He never said them out aloud: that was Jimmy’s superpower.

The boy who never spoke and the boy who didn’t want to hear, two wise monkeys, faced playtime together, squatted down with their backs against the redbrick wall, their knees pulled up to their chests, their fingers entwined and white at the knuckle behind their necks, their eyes screwed tightly shut. The school bell rang and the two boys rose as one, for once welcoming the clanging cacophony. Side by side they joined the ragged ‘snake’ of children meandering its way back into class. It was afternoon, and ‘quiet play’. The two superheroes took their places at the big table in the centre of the class, alongside all of the other children. The voice inside of Frankie’s head was unusually still. With a wink, Jimmy told him a silent joke and together they laughed. Frankie smiled at Maureen and, hesitantly, together they began to build a house of bricks, whilst Jimmy, clearly happy, faded slowly away…

A Little Past Before the Present Kicks In

Having been absent for a little while I thought I would ease myself back into the swing of things by doing a little reading. Amongst the pieces I first read was Milkshake Footbaths by the wonderful Dumbestblogger (who is anything but) and it led me to read both this piece from my own past archive and the piece it refers to in the first paragraph. I repost here simply because I plan to get back into the saddle soon and just reading these through has made me recall that I shouldn’t really worry too much about what I am going to write about as nothing much makes sense these days and what I have to say, even less so. Gibberish is the New Philosophy. So I’ll see you soon, refreshed and maladjusted as ever, and in the meantime I wish you sweet dreams one and all…

Although At First Vicious, Viffers Do Not Contain Any Calories…

I am used to waking with some weirdly disassociated phrase or sentence banging about at the forefront of my cerebellum, desperate to get out before wakefulness blocks any means of escape. (I have written about this before in a short piece from June 2019, There Is No Means of Testing This Hypothesis, but the Fact Remains That the Dog Has Three Ears, which you can read here and from which I nicked the photo at the top of this post) These little phrases, fleetingly available to me only in the very moments of waking, trapped, like Steve McQueen was not, on the barbed-wire fences that separate conscious from unconscious, disappear from view as the morning’s more immediate uncertainties kick in: ‘What day is it?’, ‘What time is it?’, ‘Who am I?’ and ‘What on earth has died in my mouth overnight?’ This morning the little nosegay documented atop this post clattered through into my conscious mind, refusing, like a spoonful of yesterday’s cold mashed potato congealed in the bottom of a bowl, to be dissipated by the cold-water swirl of dawn, and hammered around until I wrote it down. It did not need to be so conscientious; I could not shake it off now even if I wanted to. It is stark and it is precise: I remember it word for word. It has somehow imprinted itself onto some neuron or other (Do I mean neuron? Is it synapse? I can never remember.) that has strayed off into some darkened recess within my cranium, where it should not be; taking up the private parking space, no doubt, of the whatever-it-is that should be remembering the PIN number for my credit card. It has become impossible to forget. It is still pinging around the cortices of my brain like the little ‘table tennis ball’ in the video games of my youth.

I remember the phrase, I hear it still, but I do not recall the context and, because of that I have no idea of what I was banging on about at the point that daylight punctured my nocturnal bubble. I presume that the words are meant to be reassuring: ‘Don’t worry, Viffers are safe to eat,’ but I can’t be sure. Is it, perhaps, a warning: ‘They have no calories and are, therefore, of no dietary value’? Well that really rather depends on where you stand on celery, doesn’t it? Does food without calories serve any purpose other than to make you crave food with lots of them? Perhaps I am mistaking lack of calories for something else – like lard – and lack of calories may not mean that foodstuffs are deficient in dietary value – just taste.

Initially I thought that I understood what I meant by ‘vicious’ – fiery, as in chilli, or Gordon Ramsay when yelling at the powerless – but now I’m not so sure. What if I meant feisty – as in something alive – if it continued to be vicious, it would have to be alive wouldn’t it – which carries quite a different meaning. Who eats living beasts? Well, pretty much every carnivore except humans if you think about it. Was the sentence spoken by an animal? If so, who gave it rational thought and, more to the point, have I been sleep-anthropomorphising again? Slightly difficult to imagine a weasel, for instance, issuing such a warning to its offspring (although I can, for some reason, imagine a cat doing so). Besides, if it was about to be eaten, it would have every reason to be a little spiky wouldn’t it? Anyway, if it was a living thing, it would contain calories surely. Am I wrong in thinking that anything that consumes calories must, itself, contain them: that a miniscule part of everything you consume becomes a constituent part of you? That when all is done and I am being loaded onto the little steel trolley that will wheel me along to my fiery goodbye, they will find me to be sixty percent chocolate, thirty-nine percent alcohol and one percent cauliflower?

Perhaps it is a good thing. Perhaps whatever-it-is is being encouraged to eat whatever-it-is by whatever-it-is because it has no calories. Perhaps obesity is a growing problem in the weasel world.

But if I was right in the first place, it would be a warning wouldn’t it: a little voice saying, ‘Don’t eat that chilli: it’s volcanically hot. By the time you’ve quenched the fire in your mouth you will already be dreading the consequences elsewhere.’ Or what, after half a dozen pints, most men would consider a dare. As my dad would say, ‘I think they put something in it up the brewery.’ The consumption of beer makes men uniquely susceptible to autosuggestion: ‘You would never be stupid enough to do that.’ ‘Oh yes I would!’ Let’s face it; no Indian Restaurant has ever sold a Phaal to anybody sober. It is on the menu merely to allow the waiters to get their revenge on Stag Parties – and quite bloody right too.

On balance, I am most inclined to adhere to my warning theory. I like a nice moral ending to my dreams. But then, I know, as usual, that you were there way before me, we are still left with one unknown. That this has not occurred to me until now as even being an unknown, may tell you a little of how my brain works – or fails to do at times. Anyway, what I have to consider now is what, exactly, is a Viffer? It is not a mispronunciation of something else, of that I am certain. The word was very definite. I was clear on it when I wrote it down, I am clear about it now. Something tells me that I knew what a Viffer was when I wrote it down, but it is equally adamant that I will never know it again. Unless, perhaps, the Buddhists are right and after a dotage spent chomping celery, I am one day reincarnated as a weasel.

Revisiting Old Friends

Well, here we are approaching the third anniversary of what started out as a once-weekly method of purging my brain of all of the gibberish that had formerly been paid for by the editors of magazines that, one by one, had ceased to exist. Humour, it would appear, was no longer a laughing matter – at least if you wanted to pay the bills. My intention was to fill a little time and continue to write these little nosegays, until such time as fate – preferably in the shape of an astrakhan-collared magazine proprietor with a big, fat wallet – came a-knocking at my door promising a pound a word and a double spread every other Thursday. It never came. My brain is a febrile thing: if I do not keep removing the litter between my ears, I run the danger of setting fire to my hat. One blog a week became two, became three, became four and, for a short while five or more; all of them new, most of them intending to be funny, some of them even succeeding…

Of late, I have found myself struggling for fresh ideas: how to fill my pages four times a week without constant repetition. In that, I think if I am honest, I may have been failing. I recognise the signs: this is not so much the black dog of full-blown depression as the slightly gloomy Siberian Hamster of disaffection, but none the less, it leaves me with nothing much to say and no diverting way in which to say it. I need to find another distraction. To write, perhaps two blogs a week, maybe even one, but with a quality control department somewhat elevated from the British Leyland department it has become, giving me the chance for my mind to go elsewhere between times. Perhaps I will re-visit some ‘old friends’ and finish long-abandoned manuscripts: polish and submit the radio series, books, plays I have written with little view to ever pursuing production or publication. It’s ages since I’ve had a decent rejection slip to brood over…

Meanwhile, I will still be around, but maybe not so frequently. I hope that you appreciate this once in a lifetime chance to get a little less of me. Make the most of it before I change my mind (again)…