Christmas 2020 – An Explanation*

I’m not sure that I’ve ever published on a Sunday before, but …well, it’s been a rum old year hasn’t it?

As we in the UK meandered along towards our first new-normal Christmas I decided that I would visit some of my favourite ‘Little Fiction’ characters, to see how they were bearing up. I had already taken Dinah and Shaw half way towards their Christmas celebrations (Green Ink on the Back of a Pizza Delivery Receipt – here) and I knew that they would reappear on the Saturday before Christmas in order to resolve a couple of hanging threads, which, in the case of Shaw, probably amount to more than you would find in the average three year-old’s balaclava (Searching for the Christmas Spirit, the second part of the Christmas episode is here). I knew that their world could not be constrained by Covid. If I’m honest, I’m not at all sure of how Shaw and restrictions would rub along at all. He certainly would find it difficult to be bound by them. I’m not even certain that he is at ease even with the restrictions imposed upon him by normal everyday life – I think that the struggle to reconcile himself to a restrictive three-tier structure might be a step too far for him. I fear that it would leave him with more than a couple of dropped stitches to pick up. Fortunately fiction does not always have to bow to reality. I don’t actually need to write these two, they just appear fully formed in my head, often newly faceted in a way that takes me by surprise. I was a little taken aback by Dinah’s tetchiness in episode seven, but as I began to write episode eight I suddenly understood. It’s baby steps with these two, in everything they do. I’m not quite sure exactly when I will drop in on them again – I don’t want them to become boring – but I will, I feel sure. Perhaps their world will have collided with our own by then. I have a ‘case’ for the new-found partners, but I’m not sure yet quite what they will make of it. When I find out, I’ll let you know.

The three old ‘pub friends’ just had to be out and about for Christmas, but I couldn’t see them spending time together in their homes, so I sent them to the pub for a quiz. (You can read Supplementary Philosophy here, if you missed it – or even if you didn’t.) They don’t mention Christmas – men seldom do. It is black-boxed alongside weakness, illness, emotions, worries and loneliness, as something to be profoundly ignored until there is not enough Scotch left in the world to drown it. I love Christmas (although, I have to be honest, I would happily forgo it completely this year for the knowledge that we would all remain well enough to return to normal next year) but I never really discuss it with male friends. Most of them think I’m odd enough already. My wife and children have to put up with my usual over-spilling Christmas spirit every year – which bubbles over, long, long before dawn on Christmas Day as I can’t resist the opportunity to eat chocolate in my Christmas pants before breakfast and drink fizzy wine with my cornflakes – and the grandkids like the fact that somebody is even less grown-up about it all than they are, but I’m always very oh-hum about it with other men. I have no idea why. A psychologist’s dream, no doubt.

I live in England’s tier three, but I think the friends obviously live in tier two, where (I hope I’ve got this right) pubs can open to some degree – even if it is just to serve freezing Australian lager and turkey sandwiches in a tatty gazebo. If not, well, it’s a Little Fiction, isn’t it? It will not be bothering the Booker Prize panel. It’s really hard to write a Covid tale because the rules always seem to change between writing and publication, but as these three are every bit as confused about what is right and what is wrong as I am – well, that’s ok isn’t it? These are a joy for me to write as I know them all so well, and they were ready for the world in a single evening.

My relationship with the bearded man is a mite more complicated. He is not difficult to write, but I am very particular about him. Somehow, it is necessary that he does not have a word out of place. None-the-less, this vignette also came together very quickly (although I then fretted over it, word by word, for much longer) and against all expectations, it has a nice pre-Christmassy feel to it. If you have read it, you may have noticed that Lorelei, too, does not live in a Covid world. I thought about dragging him into our current reality, but I couldn’t reconcile it with the ‘story’, so I decided to leave him where he was in the real world (our own world, of course, being a totally unreal one at the moment). I hope that it works anyway. (If you want to read it, A Pre-Christmas Exchange is here– if you don’t, it’s still there anyway.)

So, having visited these seven people in the run up, I wondered what I should do in the final few days leading up to what, in the UK, will be the Five Days of Christmas this year (I cannot but imagine what the stockists of geese a-laying will do with their livestock). What I crave above all else this year, I think, is a degree of normality: a world where Louise Lear forecasts the weather and Rita Chakrabati reads the news; where I put three inches on my waist over the two days, and ten years on my liver. I attempted to recreate the spirit of those days by visiting the posts that represent my Ghosts of Christmas Past: the Christmas that I used to be able to write about before the world went psycho. I became aware that I would only get drawn into the dreariness of Christmas Present should I try to write Christmas now, so in the lead in to the big day I have scheduled two Christmas posts from 2018, two from 2019 and a Boxing Day special, also from 2019. I have read them all today and they made me smile, so I hope that they might do the same for you.

Whatever you choose to do (or, dependent upon where you are, are allowed to do) over the next few days; whether it is an important celebration for you or not, I would just like to send you all my very best socially distanced best wishes. However you spend the day** I hope you all stay well and have a wonderful time.

I send you bags of glitter-wrapped boxes full of what the Beatles said was all you need.

Enjoy.

*Explaining the unexplainable.

** My wife and I are alone on Christmas Day and, I think, may be heading for the seaside which, I believe, is allowed as it is outside – although I almost certainly will not be able to buy a moulded plastic hat shaped like a breast or a penis-shaped stick of rock. Covid is killing our culture!

That Moment

It’s that moment in an i-tunes playlist when a song begins that, not only do you not remember including, you actually do not recognise at all. It is the point on a journey that you have made almost every day for forty years, where you pass a house that you could swear wasn’t there when you drove past this morning. It is the moment when you realise that they have inserted a whole new chapter into a book you have read a thousand times. It is the column of figures that you add up incorrectly a thousand times, making the same mistake on each occasion. It is the point at which you realise that you are perfectly capable of missing the same thing a million times. It is the peeled onion in the fridge that was definitely not there this morning.

I don’t know what it is called, this moment – I don’t even know where it lurks in the shadows of the psyche – but it never loses its capacity to startle. It rests occasionally, biding its time until it knows that it can catch you fully unaware, before dumping its big one on you – the dentist’s appointment that you’ve had for ages, the coat you’ve always had (it’s even got last year’s poppy in the lapel), the scar from an injury you cannot recall – and then it amuses itself trickle-feeding a thousand little surprises into your life over a number of weeks, before it falls back to sleep for a while.

Once it has started its little game, nothing is ever where you’re sure you left it; no instance is quite as you remembered it; nobody’s name is the one you’ve been using for the last fifteen minutes. Don’t worry; this is not ‘forgetfulness’. This is not me descending the slope (yet) towards ‘who are you?’ and ‘where do I live?’ This is something far more calculated. This is what the pixies do when they get fed up of nicking my socks.

The difference is subtle, but I cling to that difference if it might hint that I am not going daft. It does not centre around absent-mindedness – about things that I have lost – it is about things that suddenly appear where they didn’t use to be. It is about the moment you find half a maggot in a just-chomped apple; it is about the message that appeared on your phone cancelling an appointment only after you got there – that wasn’t on your phone when you set off, but somehow found its way into yesterday’s messages; it is the scene in the film that suddenly appears, explaining what you have not understood for years; it is the hole in your pants that wasn’t there when you put them on.

These moments are not even new to me – I have had them all my life. You must all have written a word – a word that you have written a countless number of times before – only to realise that you don’t know how to spell it. Try thinking about how you walk if you want to discover that you no longer can. Try to think about how to swallow whilst you’re eating.

If you’ve been around here for any time now, you might recognise the symptoms, you may already have deduced that I’ve been moving the photo’s again: a thousand crystal clear 6x4inch memories, crisp as the day they were made. Familiar and comfortable… and then a time I do not recall, a place I do not recognise, full of people I do not know, and yet

I am there, right in the midst of them. Was it a moment, so awful that it has been consciously excised from my memory or, perhaps, one so banal that it has simply faded away beneath some kind of shabby-chic chalk wash – with all the accompanying certainty that when all the chic has been washed away, just the shabby will remain. The only thing that convinces me that I am not going mad is that my wife is also on the photo, and she can’t remember it either. Some night that must have been!

Photographs should not be like that, should they? They should be a physical manifestation of a memory – like a scar, but less annoying in the cold weather. If you don’t recall the location in which a photograph was taken, then you should never be on it. Particularly in the company of other people who don’t recollect the occasion either. Obviously we will both remember sooner or later (she sooner, me later) and wonder at our ability to forget such a thing. And then, with a self-deprecating ‘tut’ we’ll put the photo away with a final glance – at which point one of us will say, ‘Hang on a minute though. I don’t remember that castle being there…’

Getting On – A Year Two Reflection

This is the photo that accompanied my very first blog. I used it here because a) I’m lazy and b) it serves as a reminder that it is never too late to start again.

Having quietly slipped past my second anniversary on WordPress last month I have been paying a little extra attention to what it is I am doing here exactly. My last post was titled ‘Nostalgia’ and I worried that this is what my blog has become. That is not what I intended it to be. I intended it to be forward looking – although as all drivers will know, it pays to look behind you before you move off – nobody wants to pull out in front of the juggernaut that is The Past. There is nothing quite so unnerving as being surprised by yesterday.

The blog is, and always has been, intended to describe life as it appears through my eyes. New life through jaudiced old eyes. It has, of course, been shaped to some extent over the past twenty four months by the blogs of others – inkbiotic, for instance, keeps me constantly entertained with her brilliantly personal view of the world – I would like to write like her but whilst imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, it is still something that I have to vigilantly resist. As much as I would like to be able to describe the world as she does, I think that admiration is good, but plagiarism is generally frowned upon. So if you continue to read this rag-tag collection into year three, you will get just me – I’m sorry.

I love the process of writing these posts because they allow me a space within which I can take a proper look at myself – and attempt to do something about it. If I have the tendency towards pomposity, it gives me the perfect opportunity to pop it. Nobody buys The Beano for sincerity. I try very hard to keep my opinions to myself. Everyone is entitled to opinions. Everyone is entitled to not be bothered by those of others if they choose. Opinions are easily manipulated. I am not sufficiently assured of the verity of my own opinions to want to fight for them. I’ve never been much cop in boxing gloves. My nose is much too big to be spread across my face. My opinions are there, you will be able to divine them if you choose to, but they are my own. You might even be able to change them, but you will never know. I might say that ‘proper’ dark chocolate is the best, but I’ll still be eating Galaxy.

Sometime ago, the wonderful Calmgrove speculated that I write from a starting point, via bullet points, to a pre-destined conclusion. I wish he was right; that I could be so organised. I would love that to be the case. Sadly, it is not. I actually set off from my point of departure with no real perception at all of where I am going until I reach the end which, ironically, is generally very close to the beginning. I don’t go via bullet points because once I have started to wander, I can seldom find my way back. Somehow, as each post reaches its natural end, the conclusion dangles itself in front of me and I grab it. There is no alchemy – just Pixies.

I would like to write shorter. I love what dumbestblogger does, for instance, but I’m far too full of hot air. Words just spill out of me. I can’t help it. Everything I have to say gets draped in hundreds of the bloomin’ things. Whenever I do manage to write short, I proofread long. My red biro additions often have a higher wordcount than the original draft. The first rewrite is when I add most of the ‘jokes’ – the second rewrite is when I take them out again.

I do like the Little Fictions strand, I’m actually quite proud of some of those little stories, but they’re much harder work. They require pre-thought. Beginning, middle and end in a thousand words is, for me anyway, never easy to achieve. Sometimes I can hook into the mind-set much better than others. When they disappear for a week or two, it almost certainly is because I don’t have a story to tell, or if I do, it starts to drag on beyond ideal blog length*. I enjoyed resurrecting the Odds and Sods of the last few months, but I think they have run their course. They are not really the me that writes this stuff today. I remember the man that wrote these things and he was nice to visit, but his cynicism gets me down. I have managed to get him to lighten up a little. He’s barely depressed these days.

Personally, I really enjoyed writing the early pastiches of Sherlock Holmes, James Bond, Winnie the Pooh etc, but nobody ever read them. I don’t know if they felt that they were not original. More likely just not funny. Poetry is always the most successful thing to post, but it is such hard work. I am so tied to the rumty-tum of scan and rhyme that I drive myself mad with them. If I can get in and out, pinching a laugh in four lines, that’s great. If not, I find myself trying to maintain order in something that creeps on inexorably to Iliad length, with even less idea than Homer of where it’s all heading. Besides, there are so many, so much better at it than I: crispinunderfelt, james, obbverse, scribblans and many more. The list is depressingly long.

My favourite part of the platform is without doubt the ‘chat’ of the comments boards. So many great people from all four corners of our benighted globe (eh?). When I started this, I thought that what I wrote was very parochial. I didn’t expect anyone from further abroad than Watford to get it. If I am honest, I was extremely doubtful about Londoners. What I have found is that my ‘readers’ come from all over the world, a high proportion from USA and India. I absolutely love this – the opportunity to ‘talk’ to people and not just listen to what the news tells us. To know that we are all uniquely similar is incredibly comforting. The realisation that happy, jokey ‘conversation’ is the universal language is a joy to me**. How to stop wars? Just let people talk. It’s not rocket science. The problem is that those in power like building rockets.

Anyway, my two year anniversary allowed me the opportunity to decide whether I wanted to push on for a third year and, all in all, I think I will. Hopefully you might hang in there too. The Monday and Friday posts have finished with the end of Lockdown #2, but they might be back when I find myself out of work in March and almost certainly firmly ensconced at the back of a vastly corpulent, post-covid unemployment queue. Having been in work non-stop for well over forty years, I have not quite got myself adjusted to that one yet. Being out of work might well give me new experiences to write about, but I hope it won’t last until anniversary three.

If it does, I’ll try to improve my poetry and I promise to burn the red pen…

*The magical distance that experience has taught me, no blog is ever read beyond.

**Thank you Boo, Shaily, Herb and everybody else that I know I’ve forgotten.

Nostalgia

Unless I am living, unsheltered, beneath the silent, star-lit canopy of the ever-expanding universe (I have never done this) and beyond the reach of all civilization (indoor toilets) I shower at least twice a day. I never take a bath. When I was very young I remember my father saying something about sitting in your own dirty water. Of the very many truly strange words of wisdom that my dad shared with me over the years, this one, for some reason, has imprinted on my brain like a hot fork on a marshmallow. It is always with me, like a phantom dog: I never know it’s there until I tread in something it has left behind. If ever I am forced to take a bath, I feel the need to shower both before and after. (I have just read that through and I can confirm that what you are thinking is correct. It is odd. I am currently waiting for the knock on the door from Her Majesty’s Weirdo Protection Squad – I will go quietly. They have my number.) Today I took a bath.

Baths, according to my wife, are just the ticket for bad backs. I have a bad back. I was reminded of this whilst moving the furniture in the midst of my wife’s current post-Lockdown redecorating fervour, when someone shot me in the lumbar region. I think. It felt that way. I crumpled to the floor and waited for the second, fatal slug that would put me out of my misery, but it never arrived. There was no blood. What there was, was a large fluffy blanket of Pins & Needles that covered the entire lower half of my body and something (I know not what) twisting, corkscrew-like, through my spine. Everything functioned as it should, although accompanied with the kind of bright flashes of crippling pain that remind you that, back in the day when you were fit, strong and a bleedin’ know-all, you really should have listened to those who told you to be careful. Oh, come on, who actually bends at the knee when picking up a box?

Now, regular readers of this blog (if you are one such, you might wish to take a long, hard look at yourself) may remember that this is not the first time I have suffered such back spasms (see ‘Back to the Future’ from July 2019 here) but, somehow, they do not happen often enough for me to be ready for them when they arrive. They always take me by surprise – grab me when I’m not looking and flick me with a spoon before I can prepare myself. Today they hit me whilst I was in the process of moving boxes of photographs which are stored in a cupboard in the corner of a soon-to-be repainted guest room. You, like me, may have visited this cupboard before (‘A Cupboard Full of Memories’ in June 2019) the last time I trawled through this Kodacolour past. Today, the pain struck me before I had the opportunity to wallow in the nostalgia of the 6×4 snippets of my yesterdays, although my melodramatic slump to the floor was accompanied by the silent flutter of an old school photo. It was lodged at the back of a recently excised drawer where my grandson had left it some time ago after asking me what the world was like in black and white. I tried to explain that the world of my youth was in colour, it was only the photographs that were monochrome, but he wasn’t falling for a tom-fool story like that one! Who did I think I was kidding? I must admit, my seven year-old self and my class of contemporaries do have the general demeanour of something that belongs in a museum. We do appear to come from a different world to the one we now inhabit, and there is a hint of desperado about us all. I look at the photo and I remember most of the faces; I remember some of the names – although I’m not at all certain of how they fit together. (I tried to recollect as much as I could in ‘The People We All Went to School With’ this time last year.) Clothes and haircuts are all vaguely reminiscent of ‘The World at War’. I think Woolworth’s must have had a run on plastic sandals in the preceding week. My own ensemble of sandals, long socks, shorts, checked shirt and sleeveless ‘V’ neck pullover would appear to have been chosen on the strength of being all that was clean. Most of the boys have hair, so I presume the nit-nurse had not been around for a while. The teacher, whom I do not recall, looks like a broken woman.

Of course, back then, a shower would not have been an option. I do not recall encountering a shower until I went up to grammar school at eleven when, with all the other boys, I was thrust under a cold one after ‘games’ as it was ‘good for our development’. It was ‘character-building’ apparently, although quite frankly, I would have given almost anything not to build such a character. It was like a freezing, tiled tunnel of hell from which you tried to exit with all haste*, especially as there was generally some psycho waiting at the end with a wet towel and, if you didn’t get out quickly, your clothes were liable to join you in there. Schoolboy showers were somewhat like I imagine prison showers to be (although a little lighter on the sodomy, perhaps); something to be survived and forgotten. You did, occasionally, encounter warm showers at the public swimming baths but nobody ever went in those because… well, you know.

Anyway, life moves on. A class full of tough, resilient little bodies becomes thirty five disparate adults with bodies that become daily less tough, less resilient. Backs become somehow more brittle. More prone to saying ‘enough is enough’ every now and then; more prone to taking you out at the knees.

So, I lay in my bath until it started to get cold. I read my book. Nobody brought me whisky to ease my pain, but it was ok generally: I didn’t hate it. And then it was time to get out. And then I remembered why I’d gotten in… How do you get out of a bath with a bad back? Well, you don’t, for a while anyway. You lie there considering the possibilities. You run some more hot water. You regret only bringing the one book. You regret not getting yourself a whisky before you got in. And then finally, when your skin begins to crinkle like an ironed plastic carrier bag, you haul yourself up and out with a groan that, whatever Ridley Scott would have you believe, may well have been heard in space.

And then you have a shower…

*School in a nutshell. My Grammar School recollections – such as they are – appeared in ‘The Never Diminishing Bond parts one and two’ in May of this year.

I’m cutting branches from the trees
Shaped by years of memories
To exorcise their ghosts from inside of me – David Sylvian ‘Nostalgia’

Odds and Sods – Dear Colin

This was written at the height of the Cold war – Reagan and Thatcher were determined to rattle the Soviet cage and the threat of nuclear holocaust seemed ridiculously close. For those of you (I imagine most) who do not remember what that felt like, it felt like this…

***

I saw a famous Agony Aunt on the TV yesterday and, whilst it was not a particularly edifying experience, it did provide me with one or two interesting tit-bits to mull over. For instance, did you realise that most letter writers really do claim to be writing on behalf of a friend; that the majority of letters are sent by men and that, in this particular woman’s experience, despite the fast changing nature of our modern world, the character of the problems she is asked to address remains just the same as it has ever been? Well, it made me wonder…

Dear Colin
Before the nuclear ‘accident’ I was a normal teenager with a pregnant partner, 32 years my senior, who was married to somebody who, quite honestly, is just not coming back. Since our re-emergence above ground however, I have found myself increasingly disturbed by her tendency to lose limbs at inopportune moments and have, thus, found myself increasingly distant from her. Especially since she has been requisitioned by the Ministry of defence and deployed as a lighthouse. I am now in a stable relationship with my neighbour, Geoff, and we are very happy together, despite the obvious disapproval of our neighbours, who have recently become hermaphrodite and will no longer share a bathroom. My question is this: we both wish to have children. Will this be possible?
Jeremy

Dear Jeremy
Almost certainly. Frankly you both have as much chance of conceiving as any female survivor.

Dear Colin
I am a fairly average looking guy: four foot two, one good eye, a nostril that works almost all of the time etc, but I do have problems in attracting members of the opposite sex. My mother says that it is because of my teenage complexion problems, and that once the zits have cleared up, girls will start to look me in the face again. Is she right?
Lonely

Dear Lonely
Spots? How on earth do you find them amongst the scabs, flaking skin and running ulcers that constitute a healthy complexion? The only people I know without spots are really no longer bothered by it. High radiation levels are almost certainly good for the skin. I suggest that your problems might lay elsewhere. Cup your hands over your nose and mouth, exhale and then inhale sharply. Has your nose stayed on? That is a good sign. May I suggest that you visit your doctor and ask him to perform a sperm count. If you have some, and they are not too badly deformed, I suggest you make yourself a placard to that effect; I can almost guarantee good results (unless you are Belgian). If your sperm count is low, try moving to Brussels.

Dear Colin
I am pregnant and very worried. Last week I went for a scan and the baby looked like a three-legged dwarf dromedary. Is this normal?
Worried

Dear Worried
Yes.

Dear Colin
Before the accident my husband and I enjoyed an excellent sex life (often with one another) but as the nuclear winter has dragged on and on, the frequency of our lovemaking has dwindled away to never. I have tried all I can think of to rekindle his desire, on occasions going completely naked under the lead peignoir, but to no avail. We are the only two people currently breathing in our bunker, so I am certain he is not having an affair. Have you any ideas?
Frustrated

Dear Frustrated
First of all, check that he is alive. A cheap and simple way of doing this is to wave the front page of the Daily Mail in front of him. If he jumps up and walks away, muttering darkly, he is alive and well. If he shows interest in what it says, lure him to the door and lock him out, he’s really not worth the bother. If he keels over to one side, his tongue lolling loosely from his mouth, his body limp and glowing, then I wouldn’t worry about warming his slippers any more.
If all else fails, move to Brussels and keep an eye open for a frustrated man with low sperm count.

Dear Colin
I voted Green at the last election, marched for CND and moved to a Nuclear Free Zone, yet, when the balloon went up, I still had to watch my nylon bathroom curtains melt, the garden shed explode in a ball of flame that scattered my gladioli over the best part of five counties, and my cat fly right across the road, landing on top of next-doors breakfast bar, three feet from his tail. Who can I sue?
Confused

Dear Confused
Quite frankly, I don’t think you stand much of a chance with the government as, technically, they no longer exist. CND are pretty well beyond reproach and as most of our armed forces have had their molecules evenly distributed across most of what used to be the free world, they will be very hard to track down. Try the local council, but expect a long wait as it may take quite a while to track down a judge who is sufficiently ‘with it’ to operate in the current situation – but then, it always did…

Dear Colin
Since the conflagration I have met a very nice man. He is all I have ever wanted: good looking, kind, honest, generous and with almost all of his own nose, but my mother will not let him in the house. What should I do?
Unhappy

Dear Unhappy
Persuade your mother that she is looking peaky and that she could do with a good lungful of fresh air. That should do the trick.

Dear Colin
In the months since the holocaust I have had a terrible problem with my ‘thing’ – or, to be more precise, my ‘things’…

The Running Man Fellowship

In my younger days I rode a motorbike. Outside of Shanks’s* it was the only mode of transport available to me that didn’t involve being shouted at by the bus driver because I didn’t have the correct change, and I loved it, even though it made me more familiar than I would truly like with my problematic relationship with the physics of gravity. It gave me a freedom I had not really felt since my early days of bicycle riding (heading off into the unknown, armed with nothing more than a penny packet of crushed crisps and a half bottle of Tizer). Provided I had the money for petrol, two-stroke oil and a good glug of Redex, I could go to the coast, I could ride alone and I could ride with my friends. Mostly, as adulthood crowded in on me, I rode to and from work. In the winter it got very cold and I went everywhere in multiple layers of clothing. Inner-gloves, under gloves, under gauntlets. I wore so many layers around my ‘middle area’ that I couldn’t drink anything, knowing that the peeling required in order to be safely able to pee could take hours. I have never felt so cold as during my 6am winter rides to work, but still I loved my bike and I continued to love it until a frosty morning face-slap into a tree which left me in hospital having various parts of my face reassembled (I always feel that asymmetry is desirable in a face, don’t you?) with, what on a cold day, feels like a child’s Meccano set. When I left hospital I learned to drive a car and dreamed about the warm freedom that a car would give me – just as soon as I could afford one. Sadly the heater seldom worked on my first car (a three-tone – gold, rust and filler – Vauxhall Viva) and the passenger side window wouldn’t shut properly so, more pipe dreams, except that I loved that car and my wife actually cried when it eventually went to the great crusher in the sky…

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, I was thinking about the motorbikes this morning when I ran because I remembered the ‘fellowship’ that I felt as part of the bike riding community. All other bikers waved, all other bikers spoke. Old spoke to young and passed on their bikey wisdom, the young tried to grow a beard and dreamt of losing a front tooth. If you broke down, you knew that the next bike to come by would stop to help. And suddenly I realised that my new world of running was a little the same. I cannot pretend that I love running, but I do miss it if I don’t do it. It does give me a certain sense of freedom and is one of the few times when I can step outside, anytime from September to May, without feeling cold. I smile and acknowledge everybody that runs towards me: old, young, experienced, gasping, we all share a cheery, red in the face ‘hello’ as we pass. I imagine that if I break down, the next runner-by will stop to help me and if I run into a tree, well, at least it won’t be at quite the same speed. I am a member of a new fellowship, and I now have the hi-viz to prove it.

*To go by Shanks’s Pony – To Walk

The previous running diary instalment ‘The Running Man and the Dogwalkers’ is here.
The next running diary instalment ‘The Running Man and his Playlist’ is here.
This whole sorry saga started here.

Odds and Sods – One of My Socks is Missing

Many years ago, I wrote for a magazine for whom the TV personality and very funny writer Dr Rob Buckman was regular contributor and ‘star turn’. I cannot remember the whys and wherefores, but his copy did not turn up one week and the editor published an apology, (I think it was called ‘One of Our Doctors is Missing’) stating that he had lost him. I put pen to paper, for a ‘Dear Editor’ piece, in case the good doctor was unable to contribute the following week, but he returned and it was never used. Looking at it now, I’m not entirely certain it would have made the grade in any normal circumstances, and I was certainly not sufficiently enthused by it to rewrite it for another occasion (although I am almost certain to have paraphrased myself here and there thereafter) but reading it back it does have moments – although of what kind, I’m not entirely certain…

I have begun to understand your dismay at misplacing Dr Buckman. Fortunately, he is not the funniest writer in the world. (How could he be?) O.k, o.k., so I did once become so short of breath whilst reading Jogging from Memory that my wife had to pat me on the back with what felt like a severed leg – it means nothing. Personally I put it down to asthma, or hay fever, or something… He’d know.

Be honest, the absence of the good doctor’s one thousand words, well chosen though they might have been, will not bring down the magazine. (Will it?) Besides, he can’t be far away, it is my understanding that ‘media personalities’ such as he, seldom go anywhere that might leave them more than a couple of hours away from Fortnum and Mason’s or their personal hairdresser. No, what should concern us here is not the fact, but the manner of his disappearance.

It is strange, indeed, that he should vanish into thin air at the very moment that an apparently recent photograph of him appears in The Radio Times. More curious yet, that he is advertising a series of medical programmes in which he is to appear. If our Dr Buckman has suddenly vanished, then who is this? Is he, perhaps, an identical twin? Has he been drawn away from the world of the printed word by the lure of some strange demonic force? (Money?) These possibilities must be addressed.

Postulating on the paranormal is not something to which I devote much time these days – not since my little incident – but I feel that we must now consider such matters; particularly if there is any chance of reaching Dr Buckman’s column through a stiffly permed old lady called Doris. We have all seen these aged mediums on TV. They usually appear on the early morning magazine programmes explaining how, with the help of Ludwig Van Beethoven, they were able to sit down and knock out his 76^th symphony over a cup of Earl Grey and a Malted Milk. Presumably old Ludwig’s hearing has improved since his death; he seems to hear whenever these women call. ‘Is there anybody there? Hello Mr Beethoven, can you hear me? I wonder if you’d help me knock up a quick minuet for our Beryl’s fiftieth birthday next Thursday? She’s always been a big fan of yours: loves you in that tea advert. She loves the fact that you cut your ear off for the woman you love. That was you, wasn’t it? Anyhow, it would really make her day…’ and up he pops. Surely any half decent Doris would be able to reach an actual living doctor in this way.

I am always impressed with the number of well-known dearly departeds who are willing to act as spirit guides on these little enterprises. Chinuckchook, last of the Mohicans; any one of the Emperors Napoleon; Henry VIII… Can you really be certain that Atilla the Hun didn’t speak with a Birmingham accent? Perhaps in death, as in life, there is some kind of ethereal pecking order. Graham Norton holds a peak time séance and he gets Chopin, no sweat. A new Fugue possibly. Me, I’ve only been to a séance once and I got an apprentice medium and Des O’Connor as my spirit guide. I tried to tell my Doris that he wasn’t dead yet, but she wasn’t to be persuaded. She had made contact with him on several occasions apparently and during that time he had never made any mention of still being sentient. The nearest we got to a symphony was ‘Dick-A-Dum-Dum. She did have an ectoplasmic manifestation, but I think that might have been the gin. She told me I had a blue aura. She was wrong, I have a red Vauxhall. Perhaps Doris is not the answer after all.

There are other puzzling things going on; things which simple deception cannot easily explain: the blatantly impossible. Take, for instance, the strange cases of inanimate objects springing suddenly to life, e.g. John Major, and objects that move without any visible means of support or propulsion (see Brexit). I remember many years ago, the old London Bridge disappeared and turned up in the middle of Arizona. Perhaps we should look for Dr Buckman there.

These things baffle me. There has to be a logical explanation, and yet… I remember Uri Geller. I still have a bent fork in my drawer – although there is some doubt as to whether it bent of its own accord or got stuck in the runner. I have tried to watch David Copperfield, but have never remained conscious through an entire show. I do seem to remember him making the Statue of Liberty disappear one time. A doctor would be a piece of cake.

No, those of you who know me, will know, also, that I am not normally given to such equivocation, preferring in most cases to blast away at the bush with a weapon of immense calibre rather than beat about it, as I now appear to be doing. I have to admit that I am worried. Strange things are occurring. I need advice. I have questions, all in need of answers. My mind is open, although I think it is probably only fair to point out that my wallet is firmly closed.

Perhaps it is the mystery surrounding our errant columnist that has forced me to question those things that I have never before considered. Try this for a start: why, when assembling my easi-bild ™ woodette ™ Welsh Dresser (not a product of Wales) do I never notice that the vital grockle-joint pin is absent until it is half constructed and I dare not breathe on it for fear of collapse and further injury to the cat, who has never been the same since the incident with the wardrobe. Why, when the instructions claim to be in English, do I find it easier to follow those in Urdu. Why are all the pieces upside down and back to front; drilled in all the wrong places? Why does my pen never run out until I am in the middle of an important form and then with a blot the size of South America? Why is the only other pen I can find a different colour? Why does my best friend’s laptop never develop its fatal flaw until I borrow it?

My wife says that I am becoming paranoid. Perhaps she is in on the plot. I never heard of Lenny Henry going off for an interview in a pair of black socks which turned into a pair of one black and one red socks, the moment he crossed his legs. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I do not recall hearing about Keanu Reeves buying a blue-ray player the very day before Netflix. Everything I have becomes useless at the very moment I want to use it. No, I have made my position clear: I am not ready to attribute these strange happenings to some weird, supernatural force. Well, I will certainly need a lot of persuading… I think…

I have my own theory. Not as illogical as blaming the interfering hand of the supernatural. Not as popular, perhaps, as blaming evil spirits. No, the truth is startling, but no less true for it: the Martians are after me.

I know. I know what you’re thinking. ‘Why him?’ Well, I have a theory about that too. Dr Buckman put them up to it…

NB – I dropped the Brexit reference in as I typed this up, because it fitted so neatly.

Amongst a great many other things, Dr Buckman wrote two books (‘Jogging from Memory’ and ‘Out of Practice’) both of which I still have, I still read and are timelessly, brilliantly funny. I very much doubt that they are still in print, but if you can find copies of either, I cannot recommend them highly enough…

The Tiny Black Hole at My Shoulder

In addition to the super-massive Black Hole that lurks at the centre of our galaxy, biding its time (ok, let’s, for now, just presume that time does exist) waiting its chance to devour us all, there is, I have worked out, a very tiny Black Hole located somewhere near my left shoulder. It is the only logical explanation I can offer. You see, things disappear. I have them in my hand, I put them down and when I return to them, they have gone. I used to blame mischievous sprites, Imps, borrowers, but this is the age of rational science, I am a grown-up and I need to look for a more reasonable scenario.

Not, I have to admit, that this perceived schema is without its difficulties. Things that disappear do have a tendency to reappear at a different time, in a different place. I’m not entirely sure that happens with Black Holes, whatever the size. I believe that nothing actually ever emerges from a Black Hole – although they must get full eventually I’m sure. (I’m not!) I envision a Black Hole as something like an astral waste disposal unit, sucking up stars instead of leftovers, and we all know what happens when they get full…

Anyway, in the same way that the pull of a full-sized Black Hole is so great that it does not even release light, this tiny one on my shoulder hangs onto my thoughts: what I was just about to do, why I was about to do it. Like my possessions, my thoughts have a habit of reappearing where and when they are least expected. Maybe, as well as being astronomically vital to the equilibrium of the Universe, Black Holes are also major pillars of anarchy – essential to the fundamentals of The Chaos Theory (that is my life). I remember reading that everything that is consumed by a Black Hole is compressed by the gigantic forces of gravity, so that the Earth would be squashed down to the size of a golf ball, but would remain the same weight. Now, I’m uncertain of what, exactly, Black Holes are made of, nor, to that point, have I any idea of why they do not consume themselves, but my word, if they’re doing what the scientists tell us they should be doing, they must be very heavy by now. I can’t quite work out why they don’t all just sink to the bottom of space. Also, forgive my ignorance, why don’t they suck in all the zero-mass space that surrounds them and therefore expand like a balloon, getting less and less black with every inhalation of lighter-than-air?

Perhaps this is what is happening with the tiny Black Hole at my shoulder. Perhaps the sheer vacuity of my daytime thoughts is forcing it to release its grip on some of my actual plans and intentions at a different time (again, if you want to understand how that is even possible, you must talk to someone whose knowledge of the astrophysical extends beyond the mastery of child-proof lids) and a different place. Thus, when I go upstairs intent on doing who-knows-what (certainly not I) do I reach the top with no idea whatsoever of what set me on my way – although it returns to me three hours later when I am on the bus and can do nothing about it. Similarly, it would explain why, when I put down the TV remote after muting some politician or another, I find it three days later in the fridge, under a carton of yoghurt whose Best Before Date preceded the Moon landings. (Incidentally, how does a product that is essentially gone-off milk go off? Is there, perhaps, a fundamental scale of gone-offedness of which I am unaware? Maybe there is some kind of explanation available of how one knows when a Stilton has gone mouldy. Is there, in essence, good bad and bad bad?)

I am (despite what you might believe) an adult and I now realise that I cannot place these disappearances at the feet of The Borrowers. For a start, I have concrete floors – substantial excavations would be required, possibly involving heavy machinery, in order to provide them with a subterranean hide-away in my lounge – and, anyway, there are no mouse-holes in my skirting boards for access. Borrowers are not to blame. What, in any case, would they hope to make with giant keys, a mobile phone and a guitar-shaped bottle-opener? (The bottles do not need to be guitar-shaped, you understand. I think it possible my language skills may have been swallowed, together with my other slipper.)

In fact, it has just occurred to me that CERN spent some considerable time – and doubtless large, but ever-diminishing mountains of lolly – attempting to create a mini Black Hole some time ago. I do not know if they succeeded, but I have heard nothing of the Large Hadron Collider for some time now. Could it, perhaps, have gone the way of all of my astrophysical understanding? I can hear it now, saying (in French, of course) ‘Typical! Bloody typical! You work all your life. Tear your heart out for them. Give birth to them, and what do they do? Swallow you up, that’s what they do. Sacred blue, it’s dark in here. I’m sure I’ve put on weight…’ I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it doesn’t turn up in my sock drawer before the week is out.

Anyway, the point is, I sat down here some time ago, with something very important to relate to you. I am sure that I had it all carefully mapped out in my head, but somehow it has wandered off and is, by now, lost somewhere, staring at trees. I can no longer find it. I have nothing to guide me and, other than the fact that I have just discovered my mojo in an otherwise empty phone case, no clues with which to reconstruct. Sooner or later, I will be forced to go back down the stairs, into the room where I first thought of it and my thread will be waiting for me there. I’ve a bit of a feeling I might have left my Black Hole with it…

Odds and Sods – Tesco’s and the Devil

This is another poem that was written for reading out aloud. I’m not exactly certain why, but it always makes me think of Jake Thackray. It’s silly and pointless and just the way it should be…

I was in the checkout queue at Tesco’s – Friday last
When the Devil approached me and said,
“Before the die, for your future is cast,
Let me give you an option instead.”

“I will give you three wishes, with a full guarantee
Not to limit your statutary rights.
I’ll throw in a bottle of egg-nog for free,
If you order by Saturday night.”

“I just wanted a small tin of tuna,” said I.
“And a few custard creams for my tea,
But I can’t help myself and my trolley’s piled high
So I don’t think I’ll manage your fee.”

“I don’t want your money,” Beelzebub said.
“Your soul is the normal receipt.
Most people I speak to don’t need to be led,
So come on now, don’t drag your feet.”

Well, I have to admit, the temptation was great
‘Cos I never had much time for soul.
To tell you the truth I always preferred
Some reggae or plain rock & roll.

“Buffoon!” cried the horned one. “You great stupid prat!
We’re not talking Diana Ross.
It’s your spirit I’m after, so make up your mind –
Tell the truth, I just don’t give a toss.”

Well, the checkout girl had started to sigh
She was filing her nails with a will.
When the Devil ate up my pre-packed Birds-Eye extruded fish crumb and dehydrated potato meal in a pot for one with individual sachet of tomato ketchup,
She stretched for the bell on her till.

The security man made a big, big mistake
Well, you don’t push the Devil around.
He just tapped his trident on the mock parquet floor
And opened a hole in the ground.

The guard and his cap just plummeted down
And were braised in the fires of Hell.
Then the Devil turned round and he grinned when he said
“Those Hob-Nobs would go down quite well.”

He said, “It won’t take long to finish this pack
So please make your mind up by then.”
Three wishes were quite a temptation to me,
But really I needed about ten.

I wish that I knew all the lottery numbers
An hour or so in advance.
I wish I could dance without looking just like
A hedgehog has died in my pants.

I wish I could cook a soufflé
Or whip up a sex on the beach
I wish I could fly, I wish I could draw,
I wish that success was within reach

I wish I was taller, with much longer arms
So my hands reached the end of my sleeve.
I wish that I didn’t have the sneaking suspicion
That people cheer up when I leave.

I wish that I wasn’t the sad kind of person
Who finds falling over funny
But most of the time, I wish most of all
That I had an abundance of money.

So I turned to the Anti-Christ, prepared to say `Yes’,
But he’d gone with my Dairylea spread.
He’d decided he didn’t have use for my soul,
But the girl at the checkout instead.

By now there was no way to reach her conveyor
So I wandered on out through the aisle
And walked past another security guard
With what I hoped was a confident smile.

If the point of this story is hard to decipher
I’m sorry, you see I’m not sure,
But a sixteen stone, 6 foot 2 inch store detective
Arrested me outside the door.

So, if you meet the Devil in Tesco’s
And this offer to you should be made,
The only advice I can give you
Is to make sure the shopping’s been paid.

Zoo #6 – Spider

Though we tried so hard to hide her,
Tried our very best to guide her,
To a space that’s open wider,
Still she looked around and spied a
Teeny weeny little spider –
Sad to say it terrified her.

A true story. We were on holiday in Northern Cyprus. The apartments were new and recently opened. On the second night I was cleaning my teeth when my wife screamed. I ran through into the bedroom as she was running out. When I finally calmed her down with the application of gin and pretzels, she told me that there was a mouse in our bed, under the pillow. I went through and, sure enough, there was a little tail peeping out. I went into the kitchen to grab a pan and returned to catch it. I lifted the pillow and discovered that the ‘tail’ was, in fact, the leg of a tarantula! Panic set in as I did not want to try and catch it, only to let it escape under the bed, so I went for help. The man at the reception followed me back to the room, his eyes full of ‘Oh you English’ amusement when I tried to explain how big this spider was. I showed him into the bedroom, lifted the pillow and he flipped. When I eventually calmed him down – I had to buy more gin the next day – we carried the pillow outside together and shook the giant spider off. It wandered away un-phased and the man from the reception tried to climb the wall. The following day men in full protective suits arrived and sprayed the undergrowth all around our apartment. A week later, as we packed to go home, we found the spider’s spouse behind the curtain…

Like ourselves, I’m sure you will not believe that there are tarantula’s in Cyprus. Look it up, you’ll find that there are.

Now, you’d think, wouldn’t you, that such an experience would ensure that my wife was in no way scared of the tiny little fellas that we get scuttling around our house in the UK? Well, you’d be wrong…