The Running Man – Twelve Months of Becoming Er…

A year has now passed since I first downloaded the Couch to 5k app, chose to be accompanied by the dulcet tones of Jo Whiley and launched myself on the village roads, a lumbering, perspiring, gasping mess. I have no doubt that not even the effervescent Ms Whiley, soothingly urging me on through my headphones, had any idea quite what she was taking on at that (or any other) stage. If I’m honest, I am quite proud of myself for persevering through the program, and not a little surprised that I managed to find the determination to do so. I’m sure that the circumstances of Lockdown must have helped in that respect: the streets were largely empty even though, I seem to recall, the sun shone a lot. I seldom ‘bumped into’ anyone that I knew and Lockdown restrictions meant that, when I did, they could legitimately move as far away as possible from me without embarrassment. This was a period when we were all too scared to share a pavement with anyone – especially if their breathing came in the kind of wheeze normally associated with the elephant’s graveyard – and crossing the road to avoid your neighbour became the norm. This was the time when the whole country’s social calendar revolved about banging saucepan lids at 8pm every Thursday. Like Global Conflict, we just referred to it as The Lockdown at the time, not realising that it would too soon become The First Lockdown when the second one started.

In the past twelve months I can definitely claim to have become more ‘er’: I am definitely not quick, but I am quicker; I am not fit, but I am fitter; I am by no means thin, but I am thinner. Ask me why I still do it and I most certainly will say, ‘Er…’. I can’t actually remember what prompted me to do it at the time, but I was one of many. The streets were full of people following the run/walk/run regime. We began to recognise one another, to wave, but most of the Lockdown Runners appear to have stopped now. Far more people are running these days, but I don’t seem to recognise any of them. Nobody appears to be quite as past it as I: they are all younger, fitter and altogether better dressed for the occasion. Some of them even chat as they run. I have to devote my entire attention to breathing without inhaling wildlife. There is nothing less conducive to a steady pace than trying to cough up a wasp.

What I most recall about the early runs is the sense of dread that hung about me as I prepared to set off; particularly on the final run of each week when I stupidly allowed myself to look at what the following week’s stepped-up regime was to demand of me. The joyous sensation of hearing the half way bell ring, meaning that I could turn around, was spoiled only by the knowledge that I now had to try and get back home without attracting the attention of a Coroner’s vehicle. I have kept myself going by setting targets. My early thirty minute runs were nowhere near 5km in length (they still are not) but I set myself a 5k course and I started to run it, trying to speed up week on week until I realised that I had peaked at a speed which would have shamed an end-of-round electric milk float, so instead I started to go further. These days I do not set goals – reaching them is such a disappointment when you realise that all you can then do is to set a new one – so I rely solely on the grim determination I have to keep going. The determination comes from the knowledge that someday, sooner or later, my body, the doctor or friendly paramedic will tell me that I have to stop and I will be able to say that the decision to stop was not my own. I will never be a good runner, but I am dogged and, for good or bad, it is now twelve months since I first found I had something to be dogged about. My anniversary run was the same as all of the others: breathless, hot and plodding, but I did it and, in a year’s time I will… er… do it all again.

My original post about starting to run, ‘Couch to 5k’ is here.
Last week’s running post, ‘Getting on with It’ is here
The next ‘Running Man’ installment, ‘Bangers’ is here.
And there are many branch-line stops on the uneven path between then and now that you can visit if you choose – just follow the links.

The Running Man – Getting On With It

I started to run during the first Lockdown because I was getting fat, I was getting creaky and, because of the restrictions, I needed an excuse to get out of the house. I continue to run, but unfortunately, I also continue to be fat and creaky. I get out of the house, but I am surrounded by a cocoon of music and perspiration which ensures that I interact with no-one, save those kindly souls who enquire about my wellbeing. I cannot speed up somehow and I cannot run further. Not even a cycle-borne outrider carrying chocolate could spur me on. I am at ‘Max’. It’s not much of a max, but I dare not creep into the red band now.

I am of an age when there is precious little to do other than to worry about the age I am: when I see news stories about amazing, ‘with it’ centurions and think ‘Wow! That’s incredible,’ before realising that it is only just around the corner for me, and my marbles are already slipping from my enfeebled grasp and rolling under the sofa, just out of reach; when every malady from which I suffer (or believe I suffer) is associated with old age; when my back tightens in direct inverse ratio to my bladder and my feet ache permanently, on the simple basis that they have to prop up the rest of me. I find myself constantly excusing my inadequacies by saying, ‘Well, I am sixty-two you know.’ I can still do everything I did twenty years ago – only not as well. My mind remains open to new experiences – it’s just that I forget what they are before I get the chance to try them.

I am fortunate – although I would never admit it: it does not pay to give Fate a target – that my brain still works relatively quickly and my humour is, broadly speaking, still in nappies. Occasionally I think that I might be developing a mature, sophisticated sense of humour, but then I realise that such a thing does not exist: nobody laughs at ‘clever’. Sophistication is just an excuse for jokes that fail to make people laugh, despite mentioning Kant. I can ‘turn a phrase’ from time to time, but I still laugh at the skirt inadvertently tucked into the knickers.

Perhaps if growing older serves any purpose whatsoever it is in allowing you to give yourself a break every now and then. My expectations have not been lowered, but I realise that I can no longer reach them without a ladder. My chances of attaining fame, fortune and an illicit liaison with Sandra Bullock are exactly as far away as they have always been, but my ability to cross the divide is now hampered by knees, bladder and a recently developed ‘What the fuck’ attitude which means that I am reappraising the desirability of everything from money to chocolate, love to whisky, and sex on the beach to nine holes on the putting green. There remains a tiny piece of me that believes I may still be ‘discovered’, but a much larger piece that questions ‘For what?’

What age does bring is the realisation that, outside of a very small number of family members, nobody actually believes that you are in any way ‘special’, nor that the world in general will be in any particular way poorer for your absence from it (although, in my case, there may be a distiller or two in Scotland willing to disagree). In short, age tells you that what is gone is gone and what is left doesn’t really add up to much, so make the most of it while you can and if that means you have to run about a bit every now and then, well, you might as well just get on with it.

My last ‘Running’ post, ‘…on the Running Man’ is here.
My first ‘Running’ post ‘Couch to 5k’ is here.
The next ‘Running’ post ‘Twelve Months to Become Er…’ is here.

Faking It

I belatedly took a Social Sciences degree in my late fifties (some kind of mid-life crisis: the kids had done it, why shouldn’t I?) and as part of that I became familiar with a little bit of psychology, and consequently an even slimmer understanding of body language, but never mind, you know the score: what I don’t know, I make up. I am not alone in my vague cognisance of these subconscious signals: most people these days have sufficient understanding of the rudimentals to make them redundant. For instance, no liar worth his salt will ever touch his ears (or is it nose – I could be getting side-tracked by Pinocchio here) these days whilst lying – everybody knows that it is a giveaway. They will face you, they will look you in the eye, they will sit on their hands. Politicians are taught this lesson from birth, but it doesn’t really help them: you can always tell if a politician is lying, because… well, a politician is always lying. We all know that crossing your arms is a defensive gesture – although how you are meant to defend yourself with your arms folded, I do not know. Maybe it is just a warning, like the black and yellow stripes on a wasp: ‘Don’t annoy me, or I’ll sting you. In fact, fuck it, I’ll sting you anyway.’ We all know that open arms and palms means, ‘Oh come on ref, it was an accident.’

There are, however, lesser known examples of body language that are expressed, particularly within family units – and it is to these that I address this post-graduate mini-thesis. Let us imagine the standard UK Middle England Family Unit* at the Village Hall May Day Ceilidh, Barbecue and Beetle Drive. Observe the familial interactions:

The paternal pat on the child’s head following a minor public behavioural infarction – ‘Boy, are you going to get it when we get home.’
Hunched shouldered helplessness – ‘I have a plan…’
Dramatic double-take of mobile phone – ‘I’m going to say that the babysitter has had an issue with the brandy and we have to go home.’
Playful clip of son’s ear – ‘The kids are both here, why would we have a babysitter?’
Long stare at mobile phone screen – ‘Dog sitter?’
Sad shake of head – ‘When did we get a dog?’
Long, long stare at partner – ‘When we get home, I am going to eat your goldfish.’
Crinkled brow and slightly open mouthed glance – ‘I don’t have a goldfish, otherwise you could return home to the goldfish sitter.’
Stifled yawn – ‘An evening with the goldfish sitter would be more entertaining than this.’
The affectionate pat on the bottom – ‘The boy is young enough to be your son and he’s got more spots than a box of dominoes.’
The patient, forgiving smile – ‘I hate you.’
The supportive pat on the back – ‘Boy, I wish I had a knife.’

For the more advanced observers amongst you, I refer you to the couple we all know, perma-smiling, everybody’s friend, centre stage:

He stands with his arm casually, but patriarchally draped around her shoulders whilst (there are subtle vocal signals to look out for too) telling everybody within earshot – he may be an estate agent: everybody will be within earshot – how much he loves her. He has had an affair.
She stands facing him with both arms around his waist, staring up into his eyes, telling everybody within earshot – she is the mother of two children who just will not do as they are told: there will be many – how much she loves him. She has had an affair.
They both maintain a permanent physical bond, always in one another’s arms, telling anyone who will listen – by now, just the poor bloke in the embarrassing apron who cannot leave the Barbecue to top up his lukewarm German wine – how much they are in love. They have both had an affair.
Any of the above accompanied by the news that they are to renew their marriage vows in the Caribbean. They both have had an affair and neither of them wants to risk forfeiting their pension.

There are, of course, many, many more sub-conscious (or even unconscious) bodily postures to be studied that can reveal far more about us than we ever anticipated divulging (particularly at the school gates) but, at the same time we have to be wary: we have all become increasingly aware of how easily we can be led up the garden path by them: think Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, Abbot and Costello, Blair and Brown, all oozing the body language of best buddies: eye contact, occasional bodily contact, laughing at one another’s little jokes, asking the solicitor to find some way out of it… Not accidental fraud, but deliberate obfuscation: a syncopated posture of diversion; physiological misdirection; non-verbal malfeasance. We are becoming acutely conscious of the subconscious signals we emit, and are all capable of taking steps to hide them – now so deeply ingrained that we may do so completely unconsciously (oh dear!). Now, I’m not suggesting that these bodily signals are all misleading, just that they can be faked, and if there’s one thing that we humans are really good at, it is faking it, even if we can no longer remember what it is we have to fake…

*Two teenage children, each with an axe to grind and bedding crying out for incineration; Mother and Father, mid-thirties, claim to each drink fourteen units of alcohol per week, but actually stop counting by Monday teatime; one designer dog (we used to call them mongrels) that cost more than the family car and is responsible for infinitely more pollution.

The Writer’s Circle #18 – As It Is

Frankie stood before the Circle assuming the general demeanour of a schoolteacher in charge of morning assembly, a smile (as always) tracing his lips. He held a very small piece of paper – suspiciously like a beer mat – with a small number of felt-pen bullet points scribbled across it, fading and merging together into something that could possibly keep a psychiatrist happy for months. It was his turn in Phil’s little game. Autobiography. If only he had a story to tell…

“Memories. Strange things, memories: eccentric things. Like a film you half-remember – never having made it to the end. A sense of deja vu in eveything you do. As memories increase, so they diminish; gaining clarity, but losing detail, except for those you choose to cherish. Selective things, are memories: recalling good that wasn’t there, forgetting bad unless it was comic. Past lives becoming clichéd anecdote. Six billion people becoming Frank Skinner.

Recent memories, now they should be easy. Easy to remember. Easy to recall in sharp, focussed detail. Edited, like the news, in full colour flashbacks. Accurate, like a page from The Sun. But they’re not. Why do we have such a problem with today, when yesterday seems so easy? Why do we stand at the toilet door, flies undone, wondering why we came in here, what’s this doing in my hand? Why should this be when you can remember exactly what you were doing fifteen years ago – same thing, probably.

Old memories, really old memories, seem frighteningly clear. At once graphic and vague. Dream-like in a way. A few sparse facts, reality in there somewhere, couched in hope and marshmallow. Could-have-been’s, would-have-been’s, should-have-beens becoming history. Becoming solid fact. The foundation stones of your current-self conjured from the air and built into a maze, with no way in and no way out. Just dead-ends and U-bends.

Some claim to remember their birth. The whole trauma. The terror, the cold, the pressure and the relief. Remember the smack on the arse that welcomed them into the world and the pat on the back that heralded departure.

For most of us, life is a scattering of random, unfocussed voices and images. Sentences plucked hap-hazardly from a book and reassembled to form some pattern of a life. A certain toy; an early potty triumph; the smell of an elderly aunt forcing a kiss. Of laughing, of sitting, of standing and walking. Of setting fire to Uncle Bill’s trousers. Such memories are clear and private. You. Your memories, all your own. Tiny rivulets, running alone, down a crowded window-pane, separate and unmolested, bur heading, none-the-less, inexorably towards the pool of life on the caravan window-sill.

So, how do you even start to decide what to put into an autobiography? How do you determine which memories are real and which are ‘received’: instances you only ‘think’ that you remember because you’ve heard them discussed so often. ‘Remember the time that you…?’ until eventually you do. Even if you didn’t. Memory is a mirrorball and wherever it is viewed from its reflection is different – particularly if it’s at four a.m. in an Ibiza nightclub. It is a goal in a football game: for some it is a work of genius; for some a bit of a fluke; for many it is unjust and for others it never happened. Some see the clarity of every move, whilst others see nothing beyond the centre circle because of the fourteen pints of pre-kick-off lager that are buzzing across the frontal cortex and casting the kind of fog that stops aircraft taking off.

Obviously there are things that you know you remember: school reports, test certificates, marriage certificates, birth certificates, scars and unrequited loves that never fade, but there are also so many things that you know that you don’t remember… possibly. Ask anyone to tell you a story of a time you have spent together. If they begin with ‘Do you remember when…?’ then you won’t remember. If you have to look it up in the local paper, then it really doesn’t count. If you have kept a diary for the whole of your life, then an autobiography is a viable option, but otherwise, you are relying on a threadbare memory and the embroidered recollections of others. The camera may never lie, but it seldom tells the absolute truth. Look at your passport photo: the customs officials will be immediately alerted if you do not look deranged. If you are looking for the truth, then read a biography, preferably written long enough after the events to mean that there can be no other ‘first hand’ recollections of events, suggesting not only that your account is wrong, but just possibly stolen straight from David Niven*.

Nobody writes an autobiography in order to be hated. Autobiographies may tell unpleasant stories, but they will never leave the author in a bad light. “OK, I mugged the old lady, but you have to remember that there was no love to be found at home. We came from a one TV house. Every day was a battle between one of our five-a-day and a Sherbert Fountain. The old bag had a smart phone that she couldn’t use and all I had was a pay-as-you-go Nokia: she deserved everything she got…”

I’ve never kept a diary. I don’t think that I’ve got a story to tell. If I wrote an autobiography it would be 90% fiction – so, in that way, no different to any other autobiography – my life as I would have liked it to be: high on redemption, but light on historical accuracy, like ‘Braveheart’, but without the tartan. But not now. In a few years maybe, when I am much closer to death: when I can hint at the possibility of senility rather than egotism. For now, I’ll keep my memories to myself – and I’ll let you have them only when I’ve properly made them up… So, gin anyone…?”

*David Niven wrote two wonderful autobiographies ‘The Moon’s a Balloon’ and ‘Bring on the Empty Horses’ both of which were ripping yarns of the highest order, but were notoriously filled with many misappropriated recollections and apocryphal tales – like a chat with grandad, but without the rum.

The Writer’s Circle started with ‘Penny’s Poem’, here.
Last week’s episode ‘New Beginnings’ is here.
Episode 19 ‘Natalie’ is here

Zoo #30 – Chimpanzee

The chimpanzee would be a fool,
To turn his brain to making tools:
To evolve himself to number one,
Far better if he made a gun.

I’m always puzzled by why, exactly, we became what we are whilst chimpanzees did not. They have brains, they have opposable thumbs, they are bloody minded and, at times, blood thirsty – why are we the ones with the overdrafts? Why do whales allow themselves to be harpooned, why do dolphins get caught in fishermen’s nets? They must know something we do not – and God help them if we ever find out what it is…

I have just realised that chimpanzees also appeared in week 12 (although a completely different rhyme) of our little glide around the zoo. You know what it’s like, constantly finding yourself back at a cage you’ve already seen…

A Working Man

Having ‘retired’ at the beginning of the year I, like the majority of our benighted nation, have spent the last few weeks at home, doing things that I have been putting off for months, but in two weeks time I start my new, part-time job and, having worked full-time without a break for the last forty plus years I suddenly find the prospect quite daunting. I was adamant that I was not going to return to ‘pressure’ situations and my new employer assures me that this will not be the case. There will be no pressure in what I do – except that there will be a thousand new things to learn, and it occurs to me that it is a long time since I last did that. Am I still capable of learning, not an odd thing – how to peel an onion without crying, for instance; how to pull my socks up without putting my back out – but many, many new things, all at the same time? I am seriously concerned about it.

Have you ever stopped to think what you have learned recently? ‘Every day’s a schoolday’ is my mantra. I love to learn. I learn new things – all of them useless – every day, but I learn maybe one new thing at a time, not dozens, and I am increasingly aware that my brain is now operating a ‘One in, one out’ policy. Every time I learn how to set an electrical gadget, I forget the name of one of the grandkids. I look at those grandchildren and I realise how much they learn each and every day. They have brains like sponges, I fear mine is probably more like a pickled walnut: the content just as unpalatable. Pickled walnuts are soaked in vinegar, and we all know what that does to conkers. (I have only once eaten a pickled walnut*. It tasted like pickled coke**. I could not think of a single sane reason why I would ever want to repeat the experience.) Will I be capable of learning even the rudimentals – which key goes where, which button rings the till, which button sets the alarm off – let alone the more complicated stuff: whose turn is it to make the tea, who has milk, who has sugar? My brain is very good at what it does – at least that’s what it tells me – but how will it be at doing what, to date, it has not done before?

I wonder if I should somehow test it, maybe force it into doing a Sudoku, learning the chords to ‘Stairway to Heaven’ on a ukulele, making sense of the gas bill. I’m good at quizzes, but I always have been, I need a new mental challenge. How much of a stretch would it be for me to sit through an entire episode of ‘Eastenders’ without searching for something more interesting to do, e.g. researching how to pickle a walnut? I can only hope that my need to understand everything that I find puzzling is a good thing, that it shows that I am still curious, and not that I am stupid. Everything is a puzzle to me, but I know that curiosity does not necessarily equate to intelligence – I have looked it up. I am curious about how the universe works, but I do not understand any of the workings of it. Forget The Big Bang, I do not understand how come all of the planets do not just sink down to the bottom. (Also, come to think of it, where is the bottom? If there is no up and down in space, how on earth do you avoid spilling your gin?)

I still find the same things amazing now, as I did as a child: a butterfly, a snowflake, the way that animals find their way home from the other side of the world, the way that paint always drips in exactly the one place you don’t want it to. I have stopped trying to understand politics, but that is only because I have grown to realise that there is nothing to understand. It would all be so much easier if I could choose what to forget every time I manage to remember something new: the name of my next door neighbours, ‘In’ – the atomic weight of plutonium, ‘Out’; the names of the people I will shortly be working with, ‘In’ – the nicknames of the people I went to school with – ‘Out’; anything even vaguely important, ‘In’ – the kind of pedantic crap my mind is full of (‘aitch’ not ‘haitch’, ‘may I’ not ‘can I’, ten thousand incorrect uses for the apostrophe, ‘we were’ not ‘we was’) ‘Out’. It’s the knowing what to let go of, that’s the problem. I‘m sure there’s a place in my brain that is set aside for making such decisions – I’ve just got to clear out the junk so that I can reach it.

*Just for the record, I have never eaten a pickled conker – that way lies madness.
**The stuff you put in furnaces, not the stuff that makes your teeth drop out and your manly chest drop to just below waist-level.

The ‘Mistake’ Rack (part two)

The main thing about the ‘mistake’ rack is that albums do not make their way onto it over a period of time: they do not move there because I have grown bored of them over the years, or because I seldom play them any more – I have many, many CD’s and some of them get played very rarely, but when they do, I still love them. ‘Mistake’ rack albums are different. They are destined to be there. Back in the days of Andy’s Records they would have had appropriate labels on them: ‘This album may not be anything like as good as you think it is going to be.’ Sometimes I have been given them, sometimes I have bought them on the strength of one great track, sometimes I was just looking for something new. However they came into my possession, I just knew that we were not meant for one another. I am not saying that they are, necessarily, bad albums – just that, all in all, they would have been better not to have been made…

So, having paused only for fortification in a glass of 40% proof, I continue my trawl through ‘The Shelf with No Name’. Next in line, and the most recent album on the shelf is ‘Amulet’ by Circa Survive (2017). I was led to this partly by a brilliant Roger Dean-esque cover, which is every bit as good as Alisha’s Attic (part one) is bad. The album is very polished, but so soulless that not even the devil would want it. This is a band that very badly wants to be Rush, but sadly seldom gets past amble, playing the kind of music you would expect to hear piped into the toilets at a prog-rock convention. It came off the shelf only very briefly. It is back there now.

If you can imagine cutting and pasting little bits from every great rock album by every great rock act into a single album and still ending up with something interminably boring, well, that brings me onto the next album on the shelf, because that is exactly what Thirty Seconds to Mars managed to do with ‘A Beautiful Lie’ (2005). It is an album that is far, far less than the sum of its parts. Waiting for one track to end, knowing that there is another one to follow is actually painful: not so much a question of where one tracks ends and the next one starts as why they bothered? It is like throwing every fruit you have ever liked into a liquidizer and switching it on only to end up with a brown, tasteless sludge. Every little bit of this album detracts from every other bit. The album sold by the bucket-load (the bucket, in my opinion, is where it should have stayed) and won plaudits galore as well as awards, which just shows what I know. Like deliberately banging your head on the wall, the only fun to be had from this album is when it stops. Back on the shelf.

Next in line is The Flaming Lips ‘Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots’ (2002), an album that I really feel I should like, but I’ve tried and I can’t. It doesn’t help that the melody from track one (Fight Test) is lifted straight from Cat Steven’s ‘Father to Son’. It bothers me. I have checked the cover to see whether it is credited, but it is one of those bloody awful booklets that is either designed to confound all attempts at reading it, or very shoddily printed. The cover is littered with critical praise and five star reviews, yet the record is nothing like as good as it thinks it is. This is the class swot. This is the album that stands in front of the class and says, ‘Look at me’. This is the record that your parents point out is so much better than you. I don’t know who Yoshimi is, but I’m pretty sure I’d like to flick him/her with a wet towel. I played this CD all the way through to give it the chance to change my mind. It didn’t. Back on the shelf.

Kula Shaker’s ‘K’ definitely has moments, notably in the singles (a common theme) ‘Hey Dude’, ‘Govinda’ and ‘Tattva’, but the rest of it sounds uncomfortably like a bunch of middle class public school boys who want to be The Stone Roses. It’s ok for a little while, but then… actually, it’s not ok for a little while. It’s dispiritingly tedious. The overall sound is of a band whose independent financial means ensured that the music didn’t really matter. It’s a bit of an ‘in-joke’. On the ladder of aptitude, they are many, many rungs above me, but, if I’m honest, that’s nothing like enough and, sadly, I can still hear them. Rather than a ‘Curate’s Egg’, this is an Easter egg of an album: cool cover, plenty of glitter, but, ultimately, hollow. It’s back on the shelf.

Finally, we come to an album that it kills me to see there: Iggy and the Stooges ‘Raw Power’. I know, I know, please let me explain. I am a life-long Bowie fan. This album was released in 1973, having been rescued from the record company bins and cleaned up by Bowie at the mixing desk*. Along with The Sex Pistol’s ‘Never Mind the Bollocks’ it is the very best of punk. Over the years I have played the grooves off the vinyl twice and so eventually decided to buy the re-issued CD, which was re-mixed by Bruce Dickinson and Iggy himself, who did not like the buffed-up edges on Bowie’s mix. Fair enough, except in re-mixing, they merely seem to have returned it to the kind of sound that nearly blocked its release in the first place. It sounds as though the whole thing is being played through a child’s megaphone with a sock in it. They have maxed out everything available to them. They have borrowed an amp from Spinal Tap and turned it up to 12. Everything is buried in a fuzzy, messy growl of tinny electrical noise that drives me mad. There is rough, and there is rough. I love this album, but the CD has gone on the shelf because every time I think about playing it, I just go downstairs instead and play the worn-out vinyl. Age has made that a little fuzzy too, but I remember how it used to sound before Iggy tried to force it through a tin box filled with horse-hair and feedback and so, as long as I still have the old vinyl, the CD stays on the shelf with all of its friends…

Once again, I must point out that the opinions expressed above are all etc etc etc. Before you are tempted to be upset by anything I might say, just remember how worthless my opinion is. If you feel that you can give me the key to unlock the joy in any of these albums (or indeed those by The Levellers, ARZ or Ben Harper that I never quite got round to mentioning) I would be delighted to hear from you.

*Whilst transposing these two posts onto WordPress (yes, I do still write with a pen on paper) I played Bowie’s three great career-rescuing productions of the 70’s: Lou Reed’s ‘Viscous’, Iggy’s ‘The Idiot’ and Mott the Hoople’s ‘All The Young Dudes’ and the world became a better place. Now, where did I put those glittery flares?…

The Mistake Rack (part one) is here.

The ‘Mistake’ Rack (part one)

I always wanted to be Charles Shaar-Murray*…

These two articles (part one and part two) are somewhat atypical of what I normally try to entice you into reading on a Tuesday but, you know, different times, a change is as good as a, wossname, rest and all that. If you don’t like part one, I feel it only fair to warn you that you are pretty unlikely to like part two, but don’t give in, the rest of my twaddle is the same as ever and there will be no part three. All the same, I would love to know what you have on your own Mistake Rack…

This is a little bit of a trawl through some of the CDs I have bought over the years that have never quite cut it for me. They have coalesced into a motley collection of ‘the unwanted’ on a rack that is, for most of the time, hidden from sight. I played each of the albums as I wrote about them, desperately hoping that they would somehow magically change my mind: that having listened to them again, I would feel obliged to remove them from ‘The Mistake Rack’ and put them back in the light, where they belong. It has added up to one of those days that I will never get back…

It started because the startlingly awful cover of Alisha Attic’s ‘Alisha Rules the World’ (1996) caught my eye and I couldn’t resist popping it on the player. The singles taken from it are relatively passable and there are faint echoes of Alanis Morissette hidden away in there somewhere, but I am left with no idea whatsoever of what possessed me to buy it. It’s not actually offensive, it’s just… I’m sorry, I drifted off there. ‘Not as bad as I remembered’ would probably be the best review I could give it, which I’m not sure they’d thank me for. I made it through to track 3, which is probably more than it deserves. Will it be back in the player any time soon? No. It’s back on the shelf, but while I’m there…

Next to it I find River City People’s ‘Say Something Good’ (1990) which I bought on the back of the lead single ‘What’s Wrong With Dreaming?’ They subsequently had a huge hit in the UK with a cover of ‘California Dreamin’’, which is the fourth track on the album and as far as I got. The band had the good sense to split up after this and, as far as I can see, have not intruded upon the public consciousness since. Good decision. It, too, is back on the shelf.

Which brings me to The Seahorses’ ‘Do It Yourself’. 1997 and The Stone Roses were no more, John Squire formed The Seahorses and they released the single ‘Love is the Law’. Who wouldn’t buy the album? I so tried to like this. It has some really good moments, but in the end it is more up itself than all of Oasis’ post-‘Morning Glory’ albums put together. Love is the Law is the fifth track and, if I’m honest, my attention was seriously flagging by the time I got to it. I tried to remember where the really good moments were, but it would appear that someone had stolen them. Shame. Back on the shelf.

Tasmin Archer’s Sleeping Satellite (1992) next and who can deny, a great song? The album has two further stand-out tracks (Lords of the New Church and In your Care) but they are not enough to lift the whole collection above turgid. This is a record that has no idea of where it is heading and yet still lacks the conviction to get there. The satellite is snoozing in the midst of an infinite void. An album that has no identity – at least not one that you’d want to spend any time with. Back on the shelf.

Next? OK, well here’s where I really start to make enemies. The Verve’s ‘Urban Hymns’ (1997). I bought this album at the time when there was much discussion over which was the best album of all time, this or Radiohead’s ‘OK Computer’. Truthfully, I don’t believe there could ever be a best of all time because it is all so dependent on time and place. In any case, who knows what’s to come? To my mind, however, OK Computer is a very fine album indeed whilst Urban Hymns is not. Despite some great songs, as a whole it is nothing more than one long, terminal moan. I made it through to The Drugs Don’t Work, but only because I was out of the room clipping my toenails most of the time. This is one of the few albums I own that actually annoys me. It is like Chinese Water Torture. The first few seconds are fine, I can live with them, but after a while, oh dear me, no… I develop the irrational desire to strangle the CD player. If I had this album on vinyl, I would scratch it. Back on the shelf.

In ‘Closing Time’ and ‘Secret Smile’ (1998) Semisonic had two of the big hit singles of the late 90’s. Unfortunately the album does not stretch beyond those two great songs. It is hard to warm to an album that is so knowingly eighty percent filler. Shortly after its release I heard a critic say that the problem with Semisonic was that they were not nearly as good as they thought they were. With hindsight, they were not even as good as he thought they were. There is a definite element of not being bothered about this album. It has the same sense of image over substance as fat-free ice cream. Like a ballot box in China, there really is no point in it at all. Back on the shelf.

*NME (New Musical Express) journalist of my youth.

This started out as a much longer piece, which would have tried the patience of a saint. I cut it in half and even then, as a single piece, I felt that it had the same potential to hold your attention as an interview with Van Morrison, so I have split what remains into parts one and two. I can’t actually vouch for it being any more interesting this way, but at least you won’t be bored for quite so long. I can’t help but notice that the nineties don’t come out of this bit terribly well. I’m not sure whether I was less discerning back then, whether I was more keen to give anything a chance or whether it really was a decade of dross. I am also fully aware that some of you might really like these albums. I’m sorry. The opinions herein are mine alone and so, I really wouldn’t worry about them…

The Mistake Rack (part two) is here.

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.

Home Shopping – A Rant

I have no idea what my dad would have made of it.

It was a feature on our local TV news today, showing a man having an engagement ring delivered to his fiancé by a grocery delivery robot that finally tipped me over the edge. Yes, you read correctly, a grocery delivery robot. A robot that delivers groceries. Who knew that such a thing existed? Who ever thought that this could be a good idea? I can see the planning meeting now:
‘So, what we do is when somebody phones up with an order, we pack it into this wheeled receptacle and it finds its own way to their house.’
‘Really? Who programmed the satnav, because if it’s the same person as did my car, it can’t get me to Birmingham without going through Hull? What’s the range of this thing anyway?’
‘Well, at the moment it’s about two hundred yards…’
‘Two hundred yards? Just across the road then. At least I suppose there’s no chance of it going to Hull.’
‘No, actually it can’t cross roads. Can’t manage the kerbs.’
‘Right, so the shoppers have to live within a couple of hundred yards from here and be on this side of the road?’
‘Initially, yes.’
‘Initially?’
‘Yes.’
‘…Just how lazy are these people?’
‘It’s not intended for the lazy, you’re forgetting the elderly and the infirm.’
‘Wouldn’t it be easier to just send a robot round to pick them up and bring them here?’
‘Well I…’
‘And when you say ‘wheeled receptacle’, excuse me for asking this, but in what way is it different to a dustbin on skates?’
‘It’s a very hi-tech piece of kit.’
‘Right. What’s to stop other people taking all the groceries?’
‘You need a secret code to open the lid.’
‘Or a can opener, presumably.’
‘It’s all very secure. It’s been tested.’
‘Really? So tell me, what is the code?’
‘Well, it’s 0000 at the moment. There’s a slight hitch in the software. IT are looking into it.’
‘Fine, so we send out our dustbin on wheels…’
‘It’s not a dustbin on wheels! It’s a robotic delivery system and it’s super-smart.’
‘…we send out our super-smart delivery robot, providing it’s not going further than the corner and it doesn’t have to tackle a kerb, around to a house that’s thirty seconds away by foot, and it spits out its contents to anyone who’s bright enough to try 0000 in the keypad. What makes you think that it will get there anyway?’
‘Sorry?’
‘What makes you think that anybody that sees it coming will not just stick it into the boot of their car and Sellotape it to the lawnmower when they get home?’
‘Well, we have to go on the delivery with it for now.’
‘For now?’
‘For now, yes. It’s not good with dogs. IT are working on it. Soon it will be able to go on its own – providing it doesn’t rain…’
‘Well, that all seems fine with me…’

You do have to question why anyone would think it a good idea to have their engagement ring delivered with the groceries anyway. Let’s face it, having your ring scanned into a bulk order with a Savoy Cabbage and a six-pack of baked beans doesn’t always add up to the most memorable of romantic gestures, does it? And I’m not sure of how much of a ‘catch’ it makes him, this man, co-opting a toothless Dalek to do his dirty work. I imagine the family asking’ ‘Did he go down on one knee?’
‘Don’t be silly, it’s a robot. Robots don’t have knees.’
‘I meant Derek*.’
‘Oh Derek, no he was too busy trying to re-open the lid, because it had closed on his humus.’
‘No big proposal then?’
‘No, but I did get a big jar of Marmite and a box of tampons.’

What I really want to know is where do these people live? If they’d have sent a robot out carrying food where I was brought up, it would never have made it out of the car park. It would have been mugged within a hundred yards. Its wheels would have been nailed onto a wooden go-kart and the motor fastened onto grandad’s wheelchair within minutes. Even if it did, by some miracle, make it to its destination, it would most certainly be empty and in urgent need of critical care. They would have to send it out with robot bodyguards if it were to stand any chance of going about its duties unmolested. They would need to arm them. Doesn’t seem such a cute way to get your engagement ring delivered now, does it? Let alone your four-pack of rhubarb yoghurts and a pound of sprouts. It is only one step away from Terminator. A robot assassin in charge of your Clubcard. How long before they’re fitted with a little voice-box to say ‘I’ll be back,’ after each delivery?

I believe that Amazon are planning to do a similar thing with drones. Brilliant! There is nothing quite as thrilling as the knowledge that your birthday present has just brought down a commercial airliner. We will all have to fit little landing strips at the bottom of the garden. ‘You can’t put the pond there; it’s where the drones land.’ You would have to build a little island for them to land on. Like China in miniature. At least it might stop the cats taking them out the moment they touched down. Mind you, depends on the size of your pond, I suppose. Nobody wants to have to don the waders every time the post arrives. And who’s going to fly the bloomin’ things. If it’s the guy who drives our local delivery van, I may never leave the house again.

I suppose it’s a good thing to find a new way of doing things. I’m not sure that I ever actually ‘popped the question’ to my wife. I think it was just a mutual decision. We chose a ring and it seemed a shame to waste it. Mind you, we had a much more limited range of robots to choose from back then. Robbie the Robot from ‘Lost In Space’ and I Speak Your Weight machines on railway platforms were about as far as it went. Oh, and the vending machines that stole your tanner and never dispensed the chocolate until late at night when the rest of the world had gone to bed and the station master got a hatful – that’s what my dad always said happened anyhow… I’m not quite sure what he would have had to say about grocery delivering robots. Sadly, he’s no longer here to ask – although my wife keeps looking at me and saying, ‘Oh yes he is…’

*I don’t know whether his name is actually Derek, but if it isn’t, it should be.