Getting On

I stand at the portal that will allow me entry into a new age of discovery. The doormen of Nirvana have found me to be on the list and have grudgingly agreed to let me in. There are many benefits to belonging to the club that I will shortly join: I can take tea and biscuits with my fellow sexagenarians in the designated café; I can board the bus to Rhyl with a half-empty suitcase and a clear conscience; Lord knows! I may eligible for a discount on a stair-lift or a sit-in bath. I have reached the age when I understand that I should always smile sweetly at the dentist, because to gnash my teeth at his suggestion that I need several long-haul holidays-worth of dental treatment is merely putting money in his already bulging pockets. I have attained the maturity that allows me to comprehend that the true joy of an April day by the east coast seaside cocooned within fourteen layers of thermal clothing to protect against the unseasonal scything on-shore breeze and draped in a slightly too small cagoule that herds the interminable arctic drizzle into the large drips that run around the rim of the hood before depositing themselves into the ever-swelling puddle on my crotch, whilst I push fish and chips around the paper as they congeal in front of my eyes, is the knowledge that there is no point in doing it, other than knowing that I don’t have to do it – but, shit, while I can, I will. I have begun to appreciate the myriad joys of getting older. A whole new world of revelation has opened up before me. I have entered, in short, a second phase of enlightenment and realisation.

I have opened my mind to learning, although, truth be told, most of what I have learned is how little I know. My discoveries, such as they are, are modest – they are not of Newtonian proportions. What I have not discovered would generate a ‘to do’ list that could keep Isaac and his apple occupied for a very long time. I have not discovered, for instance, what makes me (or more appositely, they being on the bottom, Australians) stick to this globe of ours. I tend to adhere to the Velcro Theory. In fact, I find myself irresistibly drawn towards the flat earth theory, simply because I do not understand why, wherever I go in the world, I am always the right way up. Hold up a football and put something on the bottom of it; what happens? Yup. If the world is actually a sphere, what prevents the Australians falling off? Forget gravity. Gravity is everywhere. It can’t even hold my glass on the table after six pints. And also, if the world is a globe, how come all the water doesn’t flow to the bottom? Never thought that through did you Pythagoras?

Mind you, I must admit that physics was never one of my strengths. I can still recall the look on the face of my teacher when he read my test paper aloud to the class, with special emphasis on the question ‘What is resistance’, to which I had answered ‘Futile’. I thought I was being endearingly amusing. He thought I was being an arse. Guess who was correct? I would never discover a new continent, even if one were to exist, because that would almost certainly involve sailing off into the unknown and, quite frankly, I have enough trouble sailing off into the known – and only then when I have double-checked the catering arrangements. And as for finding a new planet, I can barely see the television in these contact lenses, let alone an infinitesimal blob at the far end of the universe. No, the things that I have learned are of a much more personal nature. I do not know if they will make a difference to the lives of others. I do not know if they were at any time unknown to others. What I am beginning to know, I think, is what everybody else has known all along.

I have discovered that stairs are arranged singly for a reason; there is nothing to be gained by ascending them two at a time. I know that escalators move so that you do not have to. I have learned that there are only two types of shoe; those that fit and those that look good: no single pair of shoes is ever able to meet both criteria. I have learned that rows of buttons are always to be fastened from the bottom in order to avoid having one left over at the end. I have learned that hats are for other people.

I have begun to understand that there is no point whatsoever in attempting to take a photograph with my mobile phone. Nobody is even faintly interested in a close-up of my nasal hair, nor do the staff of The Raj Palace want another silent call from me. I have grown to realise that I have lost the innate ability I once had to know instantly whether an acquaintance was older or younger than I. Everyone of my age looks so very old. I have begun to understand that no-one younger than me actually sees me as younger than I am. That the way I viewed people of my age when I was my daughter’s age is exactly the way that people of my daughter’s age now view me – eccentric; mildly amusing in a ‘let’s just humour him’ kind of way, but definitely to be kept at arm’s length as the risk of slight urine/saliva contamination is ever-present and increasing. I have discovered that the only thing more annoying than a younger man in an extremely expensive car is an older man in an extremely expensive car. I have begun to realise that nobody ever gained anything from arguing (except, for some, a lucrative career). Stealth is the answer. Age gives one the time to wait and the insight to appreciate that there is absolutely no finer moment than the acutely timed ‘I warned you that would happen, but you never listen do you? Oh no. You always know best…’

I have also begun to understand that advancing age is not to be feared, it is to be embraced. Embraced for its ability to allow me clearer vision than sight. Embraced for its ability to grant me the realisation that what is right for me, may not be right for anybody else, but quite frankly, that I care even less than they do. Embraced for the realisation that my appreciation of the world around me is linked, incrementally, with the paucity of time that I have left to enjoy it. Embraced because I have no choice. Embraced because it makes me happy.

First published 16.11.2018 – and from which this whole sheboodle got a title…

Mission Statement

After a week away from the pad and pencil I thought it wise, before I once again set myself against the wordy rockface, to remind myself just exactly what I thought I was doing here so, this week, before getting down to my usual weekly process of testing your patience as far as I dare, I thought that it might be useful for me to re-view the very first two posts I ever posted on this blog: my mission statement…

I feel that I should begin my first blog with an explanation of what it is, exactly, that I intend to do over the next however long I am given: it might give you an idea of whether you are going to bother with it, and it might help to remind me what it was I had started when I return to it after pouring a glass of red and half-eating a jam and peanut butter sandwich. My intention is to observe life through the eyes of an older person – I have no choice in this, I am one – and to lay what I have seen before you in such a manner that it might take your mind off the pre-paid funeral plan for a few minutes (unless, of course, you really want that free Parker pen). I do not intend it to be about getting old, but merely the product of a mind and body that is itself slipping inexorably downhill, gathering both speed and mass, clinging on to all the dignity it can muster whilst understanding that the inevitable pratfall into the dog-shit of life lays merely inches away. I do not intend to focus solely on the experience of being an older male, but being one, it might just go that way. Just think of it as a thousand words(ish) a week window into the soul. Actually, probably less a window into my soul and more a knot-hole into my psyche. I am aware that I cannot properly see life from the perspective of someone I am not. I try, believe me, I try, but almost inevitably just as soon as I think I have got this empathy thing licked, I unwittingly put my foot in it up to my ears and, having apologised for all I am worth, write myself a note to remind me not to make that mistake again… and then lose it…

There will be, I am sure, some nostalgic twaddle; some howling at the moon; some ‘how shit things used to be’; some ‘how shit things are now’; some ‘why can’t I remember what it is I wanted to say when I started this…?’ It is my hope that people of my age may be able to wring some scintilla of truth or recognition from it, whilst those younger people amongst you may regard it as some sort of instructional tract; providing nuggets of information that you may recall at apposite times when interacting with we vintage souls (and possibly mopping up after us).

We are all getting older. Life is a one way street and we are all heading into the same cul-de-sac. The people around you can erect speed bumps and you can apply the handbrake all you like, but in the end you’ll realise that the only sensible thing you can do is to floor the clutch and enjoy the scenery. And don’t think that science is going to save you. I’m certainly not going to argue with Einstein, if he says time-travel is possible, then I’m sure it must be… but I’ve seen the films: the Captains Kirk and Picard discovered, as did Marty McFly, that even when you travel back in time, you yourself remain the same age; still getting older. Wherever you sit on the space/time continuum, you plod on, just the same. Wherever you go, you become older just getting there. So, what could be the point of going back in time if everything around you got younger whilst you continued to plough on relentlessly through your allotted span? Very little – unless, of course you’ve got an unopened pack of smoked salmon that has gone beyond its sell-by date or your egg yolk isn’t runny enough…

We all claim that we don’t feel any different to how we felt twenty, thirty, forty years ago when, in fact, we are all that little bit weaker, slower and less able; incapable of stretching without farting. Getting older is not just about what you see, what you hear and feel, but what you do and how you do it. Do you wonder how Pooh and Eeyore cope with the associated problems of sagging kapok, slackened stitching and Christopher Robin’s animalistic grandchildren; how Sherlock Holmes copes with the diminution of a giant intellect; how James Bond copes with stress incontinence? I’ll look into it.

And age is not all about loss. Age also brings us gifts: the self-knowledge that we regularly mistake for wisdom. The ability to think ‘Actually, that is not what I would do, but, let’s be honest, what does it matter.’ The knowledge that you are not going to be hanged for wearing non-matching socks and that no-one will notice if you’re wearing your pants back to front may be liberating. I, myself, have heard the siren call of primary colour trousers and Velcro shoes, and like Odysseus, I am desperately clinging to the mast of sanity, attempting to resist them. To be honest, once you’ve passed 50, nobody takes a great deal of notice what you’re wearing. Wear what you have always worn and they’ll smile sweetly and enquire whether you have actually changed that cardi at all this year. Wear something different and they’ll think you’ve had a stroke. It is better to continually keep checking that you’ve remembered to zip up your fly than to wait for someone to tell you that you haven’t. Again…

Age will gift you an insatiable thirst for knowledge. All knowledge. A desire to learn all of the things you did not learn while you were capable of learning them. Infinite curiosity will keep you alive and vital and the desire to experience will drive you crazy. If you are physically capable of doing it, then do it. You may hate it, but at least you’ve tried it and you’ll never have to do it again – like eating oysters and drinking Saké, you’ll know better next time.

The accumulation of new hobbies becomes a hobby in itself. Never tried it? Give it a go. Immerse yourself; soak it up until you’re semi-proficient; pack it up; find something new. Don’t be put off by those who might say ‘You can’t do that’. They might be right, but bugger them frankly, give it a go anyway. If it doesn’t work, you can laugh about it over a super-strength gin and tonic and spit an olive stone at the back of their neck when they’re not looking.

Anyway, that’s what I’m going to do. Join me. If I cannot persuade you to laugh in the face of danger then at least I might encourage you to snigger in the ear’ole of adversity.

First published 15.11.2018 when I was not yet sixty…

Don’t Laugh at Me (part three – the joke)

We had a joke at school that went “What’s the difference between a duck? One leg’s the same as the other.” The joke being, of course, that there wasn’t one. The joy was purely for the teller, to be found in the puzzled look of total incomprehension in the eyes of the ‘audience’. We would tell it over and over, often to the same people – all part of the ‘fun’. It has stuck with me all my life and I think about it whenever I write something that is just not funny – so quite often. There is something altogether more reassuring about thinking, “That’s exactly the way it is meant to be: the joke is on you,” than “What I have just written is utter shite.” I am guessing that we all know someone – it may even be you – who revels in telling the same joke again and again, knowing that everyone will laugh because… well, because nobody wants to be an impolite tosser do they? Who’s going to be the man that says “You told us that joke last week – and it wasn’t funny then”? Habitual joke re-tellers tend to be the life and soul: they have lots of friends. They might be big.

Besides, we all do it from time to time don’t we? Everyone repeats jokes, it’s just a question of remembering your audience. The great Billy Connolly once did consecutive shows without repeating a single joke. Such talent is rare (unique, I would argue). Most comedians repeat material night after night – the jokes remain the same whilst the audience changes.

Jokes can be nuanced: fashioned by surroundings and circumstance, and such light and shade is not necessarily appreciated by the audience. As a youth I often drank in Working Mens’ Clubs and I am pretty sure that a Friday evening comic might have been told exactly where he could stick his nuance. Thankfully the days of jokes that need a target have largely gone: men can still gently snipe at women, women at men, and everyone at politicians, but stray into misogyny or racism and you, quite rightly, will get the reaction you deserve. (If you do get laughs, you almost certainly have mistakenly wandered into a Reform UK meeting.)

Anyway, nobody tells jokes any more, do they? The days of “A man walked into a bar…” are long gone, as are the Englishman, Scotsman and Irish man jokes as, since Brexit, nobody is particularly keen on spending time in the company of the Englishman. Jokes that do need a target will only work when the teller is, himself, the target. Self-flagellation pretty much guarantees laughter. If you have a particular peccadillo, of which most of the audience is aware, so much the better. Making a fool of yourself is always an acceptable way to get laughs, as long as you haven’t done it all in front of the same people before – and if you have, well, you can always become a politician… or a duck.

I’m not good-looking, I’m not too smart
I may be foolish but I’ve got a heart… Don’t Laugh at Me (‘Cause I’m a Fool) – Norman Wisdom (Seskin/Shamblin)

N.B. If you have read right through this week, then thank you. I do realise that this week’s posts have not exactly been my usual fare (although I do also accept the possibility that is exactly why you’ve read them right through.) If you have enjoyed them, don’t worry, I’m sure there will be more to follow in time. If you haven’t liked them, don’t worry, it will never happen again… Next week I hope to return to something a bit more like normal and the week after… well it’s long way away isn’t it…

Don’t Laugh at Me (part two – films and TV)

…Outside of Bruce Forsyth and Jimmy Tarbuck on Sunday Night at the London Palladium there was little in the way of stand-up comedy for we pre-teens in the late sixties and early seventies. TV is what we had and, by and large, that meant old films…

…My first great comedy love was Groucho Marx: I would watch late-night Marx Brothers films on TV long after what should have been my bedtime – always after Match of the Day and The Odd Couple, long after my parents had departed for the night. My earliest memory of laughing until I cried was at ‘Lydia the Tattooed Lady’ (At the Circus). Groucho was inherently funny, although, unlike most of the comedians mentioned in part one of this piece, he relied heavily on script, particularly for the snappy one-liners for which he became so famous. Without doubt in my mind, the king of the one-liner was Bob Monkhouse, a comedian who would, himself, never claim to be intrinsically funny, but who had the quickest mind of any I have ever seen. A great joke writer and the writer of one of the greatest ever one-liners: “People laughed when I told them I was going to become a comedian – well, they’re not laughing now…” – a great comedian, but definitely no clown. Taking up the baton from Groucho, my next great film love was the giant talent of Mel Brooks, most particularly in the films he made with Gene Wilder*. The Producers, A Silent Movie, Young Frankenstein, Blazing Saddles, these were films that reduced me to a blubbering wreck. Mr Brooks was decidedly (and wilfully) non-PC even back then – Lord knows what the censors would make of any of his films now. I don’t suppose a single one of them could be made today – which is sadly why the world has got itself into the kind of state it is in…

…And I became, as all boys of my age, a complete devotee of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, staying up late to watch the show (Tuesday evening I seem to remember – my parents were never over-authoritarian over ‘bedtime’ and often left me watching TV downstairs long after they retired for the evening, secure in the knowledge that there was bugger-all to watch but the test-card after midnight) memorising entire sketches for repeat performance at school the next day. I started to write ‘comedy’ at a very early age because all I wanted to be was the new member of the MP team. John Cleese was, of course, the figurehead, but never my favourite Python. He is an inspired clown, in the tradition of Charlie Chaplin, who always seemed to me to have to work just a little too hard to make it look like fun. He found his apogee as Basil Fawlty in a truly brilliant and tightly scripted comedy masterpiece (Flowery Twats anyone?) that played to all of his strengths and carefully wrote out all of his weaknesses: his ‘loftiness’ and ‘pomposity’ were played for spectacular comic effect, and his ‘bubbles’ hilariously burst by (I believe) the script contributions of Connie Booth.

In fact I most enjoyed the final series of Python – yes, the one without Cleese – because it played into the hands of my own comic hero, Michael Palin. This series was very much the precursor to Ripping Yarns, the best (in my ‘umble opinion) of all post-Python endeavours. Palin is simply funny and he has the humility and approachability that is conspicuously absent (in the public persona, at least) of Mr Cleese. Eric Idle (the George Harrison of the Pythons) shone brightly in Rutland Weekend Television and via The Ruttles became king of the comic song – so heavily featured in the most recent Python reunion (2014? Surely not…) – and crucial to film and stage endeavours. As for Graham Chapman, delightfully (and drunkenly) bonkers, sadly we will never know what more was to come from him…

Behind the closed door of my bedroom, the only TV being downstairs, a huge part of my comedy upbringing was via the long-lost comedy LP, listened to over and over again until every word, every nuance, was learned by some kind of osmosis – foremost amongst them being Monty Python Live at Drury Lane, Jasper Carrot’s Beat the Carrot, Rabbits On and On and Best Of (purchased solely for the inclusion of the seminal Magic Roundabout) and, of course, the wonderful (and, at that time, otherwise unbroadcastable) Big Yin Cop Yer Whack For This and Raw Meat for the Balcony – proving once again that great comedy could be heard and did not necessarily have to be seen**. I wonder if anybody listens now?

*The one AND ONLY Willy Wonka.

**QV the magnificent Milligan and The Goon Show.

I’m not good-looking, I’m not too smart
I may be foolish but I’ve got a heart… Don’t Laugh at Me (‘Cause I’m a Fool) – Norman Wisdom (Seskin/Shamblin)

Sharing the Laughter

The amazing Hunt Emmerson cartoon that announced Our radio series in The Radio Times – long ago, before Time was born.

I try to write pretty much every day: it is my thing, it is what I do, but I cannot deny that I have always found my greatest joy in writing with other(s) – especially when they laughed at my contributions. When they come up with a line that is better than your own, it simply spurs you on to come up with another yourself. The laughter associated with continually topping one another becomes infectious and addictive. I have reminisced on these pages before about the great joy of writing with my (almost) life-long buddy Chris (Crispin Underfelt) and laughing so much as we repeatedly ‘trumped’ one another’s jokes that we then had to take a few days apart to ‘get something down on paper’. We worked seamlessly because we both knew our strengths: Chris was the ideas man, whilst I just twatted about with the words. Together we came up with a thousand one-liners per hour. I jotted down as many as I could remember and ‘worked them up’. Sometimes Chris would fly off in another direction – anywhere from project B to Z – before project A was finished, other times he would doggedly stick to an idea long after I had given up hope. There were times, of course, when Chris would serve up a flat ‘No’ to lines that I thought were great and, as the person who generally did the typing, I would sneak them back into the script only to have them vetoed again at the next read-through. Similarly I would leave out lines I didn’t like, only to find that Chris’s own notes clearly showed that they were in. It always worked for the best and I don’t recall us ever falling out.

I have a boxful of scripts from that time that I flick through now and again and they always make me smile. Like all such things, it is impossible to revisit that time – we wrote a million sketches for the kind of shows that no longer exist – but that knowledge does not mar the joy of what we did then. Through the radio show – which we were absolutely certain would be our big break – TV sketches and a sadly ill-fated musical using the songs of ‘Hello Cheeky’, we operated as a single being: he was up when I was down, he was full of certainty when I was full of doubt. He always made me laugh and I always had a pen.

Chris is a natural performer and he began to drift in that direction as I plodded along writing a number of ‘close but no cigar’ sit-com pilots whilst continuing to contribute articles to any one of a number of humour magazines (all now gone – not my fault I swear) that would pay me for what I did. I am never happier than when sitting at the computer banging away without a care in the world (or, more often than not, an idea in my head) but I always miss the thrill of showing Chris the labours of my week (will he/won’t he laugh?) listening to his jokes, marvelling at the scope of his ideas, shouting at one another until we are hoarse and sharing the laughter…

Now, in case you are wondering why this piece seems out of place and out of time then, yes, I will admit that I have written it in the hope that Mr Underfelt might read it and be spurred on to give you one or two recollections of his own – of our time writing together, of his early attempts at stand-up, and of his own theatre productions of ‘Bouncers’ and ‘Little Shop of Horrors’ , anything. (There are, by way of explanation, links to numerous previous posts scattered throughout.) Maybe he’ll even tell you of our little trip to Hull to see a play called ‘Moose’ and an ill-advised stop to ask some young ladies on a street corner if they could tell us where to go. They did…

Senses Working Overtime

There are, for most of us, certain sounds that we will never forget. For those of us lucky enough to have children, it might be their first angry little cry; it might be the moment-stretching shriek of past catastrophe; it might be that strange sound that you get inside your head when you just know that something is broken. It might be a song that was playing when you first met your partner, or the one that your grandmother used to sing to you. It might even be the sound of your friend rolling from his cinema seat in gales of laughter at the sight of Mr Creosote exploding after ‘just one more mint’*.

I am of a generation that can be transported back to the Saturday Morning ‘Pictures’ by the merest scent of Butterkist popcorn, Westler’s Hot-Dog sausages and farts. I cannot hear the name Flash Gordon without ducking to avoid the thwack of pea-shooter projectiles (usually soggy balls of Izal toilet paper as nobody could afford to waste perfectly good dried peas) on the back of the neck. The smell of wet clothes, chlorine and fear immediately transports me back to schoolboy showers: a freezing, white tiled gauntlet to run.

Thousands of people have been robbed of their sense of smell by the recent Covid epidemic. You will probably be able to find a queue of people happy to attest to the fact that I have never had any taste, but I wonder how my memory would cope with no smell to fall back on. I presume that all those things I had forgotten prior to their reappearance after an olfactory trigger would be lost forever. At least bus journeys would be much more comfortable.

A life without smell would be difficult enough, but I cannot begin to comprehend how it must feel to be permanently deprived of either sound or vision. The prospect is – as I am sure many will want to point out – no laughing matter. I could not agree more… except… well… if we, as a species, were not able to find humour in even the worst of happenstances, what would we do? Humour is what makes us human. We can anthropomorphize all we like, but the truth is that we are the only species (on this planet at least) with a sense of humour. (The same cannot be said of ‘a sense of disdain’ which cats appear to have mastered very well indeed, thank you very much.) It is this humour that allows us to ‘rise above’ the challenges posed by what could be, in other circumstances, debilitating loss.

Humour bubbles up from human beings even when we feel that it should not. Go to almost any funeral, however sombre, and you will at some point hear laughter. As a boy I spoke to a Second World War amputee who had lost a leg to a landmine. He remembered the flash of pain, the realisation of what had happened and he remembered screaming out ‘My leg, I’ve lost my leg!’ He also remembered, from the near distance, hearing one of his comrades shouting out, ‘No you haven’t, it’s over here’ and he remembered laughing and knowing that he was going to be ok. Of course this was twenty years later. Time might have knocked the corners off a little bit, but it does pose the question of when humour is appropriate and when it is not.

My own feeling (for what it is worth) is that humour is not a weapon, it should never be used to wound. (Those who are accused of not being able to take a joke, should probably not have to do so – and those who persist in making them should probably be offered counselling or, at least, have a bat shoved up their nightie.) Yet I also know the importance of ‘Hitler Gags’, for example, on morale in that dreadful mid-century episode. Even twenty years later it was not unknown to hear the strains of ‘Hitler has only got one ball…’ across the school playground. Thankfully the days of personal abuse as humour have gone, and if they haven’t, they bloody well should have, but they do seem to have been replaced by a culture of taking offence at absolutely everything which might, in the future, make the world a very sombre place indeed – and certainly not the place for a waiter to offer what is clearly an extremely obese and troubled man one mint more than he could possibly hope to eat…

*An unforgettable afternoon at the cinema with the ubiquitous Crispin Underfelt and ‘Monty Python’s Meaning of Life’.

And all the world is biscuit-shaped
It’s just for me to feed my face
And I can see, hear, smell, touch, taste
And I’ve got one, two, three, four, five

Senses working overtime
Trying to take this all in
I’ve got one, two, three, four, five

Senses working overtime
Trying to taste the difference ‘tween a lemon and a lime
Pain and pleasure and the church bells softly chime… Senses Working Overtime – XTC (Partridge)

N.B. If any of you found this in your mailbox on Monday – as did I – I apologise. I do not know how or why and I really don’t expect you to read it again!

Life Is A Minestrone

There is something about a restaurant that exponentially increases the risk of making an absolute tit of yourself. I have both worked and eaten in them and, as you might expect, I have never passed up the opportunity to wear the metaphorical nipple on my forehead.

I worked in a posh restaurant long before I ever ate in one and the vast majority of the things I served, I had never eaten. After I had spent what felt like weeks transferring bread rolls from one bowl to another with a fork and spoon in one hand, and the other behind my back, I could silver-serve a Dover Sole off-the-bone without dropping a single flake onto the diner’s lap, yet I had no idea that tartare sauce was not served with smoked trout. (Did you?) I did not know that ‘Would you like stuffing?’ was not the ideal way in which to enquire whether the lone elderly spinster at table seven would like Sage & Onion with her guinea fowl. (It is properly called ‘seasoning’ apparently.) I certainly did not realise that the putrid smelling grouse I was asked to serve was meant to smell that way – nor that the salmon was not. I come from a beans on toast family, yet I was serving caviar and foie gras with little idea of why anyone should want to eat them. (In that respect, at least, I am still the man I was.)

I did, back then, learn that I liked Stilton cheese, smoked salmon, avocado and, best of all, the chef’s zabaglione, but I also learned the folly of setting up an entire Dinner Dance service left handed* – to be discovered by the head waiter about two minutes before we were due to appear with the appetisers. I blamed insufficient oversight – everybody else being at the pub – but I had seldom before been hauled over quite so many coals. I met my wife in that restaurant, and – quite literally – lit her lamp: a little spirit contraption which kept one dish warm whilst you served another. Even now I have hands that can bear ridiculous temperatures – usually after I have put the wrong bowl in the microwave. Oh, and I also met Mr Underfelt there: the country’s only breakfast chef with (apparently) no access to an alarm clock.

I have since eaten in many opulent surroundings, but still the vast majority of my dining out experiences have been more ‘mass catering’ than ‘haute cuisine’. It suits me. Until I met my wife I had never really gone out for a meal at all other than holiday camp buffets and a rare birthday Wimpy, but I have since made up for it by making a total arse of myself in a complete range of gustatory settings. I have spilled, dribbled, dropped and broken with the best of them.

One particularly painful memory is of a late teenage visit (my first) to a highly thought of Indian Restaurant in town with my eventually-to-be wife. (It is almost fifty years ago, yet the back of my neck is prickling even now as I think about it – I cannot tell you the esteem in which I hold my wife for sticking with me.) The downstairs seating was all taken, so we were shown upstairs where islands of unworn carpet revealed where tables had been moved to cover threadbare patches. The lighting was subdued, e.g. most of the bulbs had blown, which was just as well because, if I’m honest, the meal looked much more appetising in the dark. Because we were young I think, we were basically deserted by the waiting staff who concentrated on the bigger tippers below, so we ate what we could, paid what we owed and left as quickly as possible. Descending the half-lit stairs without, I should point out, a drop of alcohol inside me, I tripped and fell the entire distance of the staircase, colliding at the bottom with a full ice bucket, the contents of which was thrown over half the restaurant. Wordlessly the waiter picked me up and I exited to a stunned silence that exploded into laughter the moment the door shut behind me. Bad enough, but I then had to return to retrieve the heel that had broken from my very best platform shoes in my uncontrolled descent. I am sure that today the restaurant staff would fear being sued, or at least pilloried on social media, but back then we were young and all they wanted to do was to let me limp out of the place as speedily and quietly as possible. I was not damaged and, to my wife’s great credit, she did not once laugh at me on the long limp home. My dad, ever the resourceful man, nailed my heel back on the following day and all was well.

My dining needs are modest. I like a nice place to eat but I rarely go in for posh dining these days because, although I am old enough to realise that my money is every bit as good as anybody else’s, I don’t really feel that it is fair to put the staff through it. I could probably single-handedly bankrupt any establishment with white table linen. My wife carries a plastic poncho in her handbag in case I ever order spaghetti. I am capable of launching an undercooked carrot a distance that might well interest The Guinness Book of World records and am unerring in dropping anything covered in white sauce slap-bang onto my black trousered crotch. I don’t eat meat these days, which is probably just as well, because if I ever ordered guinea fowl, I fear I know exactly where the head waiter would advise me to stick the ‘seasoning’…

*I am in constant battle with the part of my brain that is meant to help me to distinguish left from right. Inevitably, it wins.

Life is a minestrone
Served up with parmesan cheese
Death is a cold Lasagne
Suspended in deep freeze… Life Is A Minestrone – 10cc (Stewart/Creme)

Brass

I am writing, as I almost always do, with music playing and, at the moment it is the most recent CD by a lady called Judie Tzuke (If you know her at all, you will know her from 1979’s ‘Stay With Me Till dawn’, made before, I have no doubt, many of you were born, but she has been producing superb music ever since.) and I was whisked away by a track called ‘White Picket Fence’ partly because it is an excellent song, but also because it features a brass band (Except it doesn’t: it does feature a trumpet, a flugelhorn, an oboe and a flute, but they are all played by the same person. It sounds like a brass band though and you can’t have everything these days can you?) and I do love a brass band in a ‘rock’ song.

I suppose – as these things tend to do – that it started with the Beatles: All You Need Is Love and Golden Slumbers notably feature brass band ensembles but I am going to throw three different hats into the ring as the finest examples of rock (or folk/rock) / brass band hybrids. They are to be enjoyed, loved and, in the case of the last one here to be buried to. (Is it a recent innovation that funeral songs should always be heartening and essentially optimistic? I’m pretty certain that, when I was a boy, they were all slow and profoundly depressing. I remember (a very early memory) when Churchill died and the dirge went on for days without break. OK, he was a great man, but surely he would have enjoyed a bit of Satchmo or something as he was horse-drawn around the capital.)

I perhaps need to explain at this point that, being the age I am, I have no idea how to embed videos into posts, so I’ll just have to link the titles to YouTube videos, but hopefully you have the patience to try them out. I promise it will be worth it.

I presume it is probably a very British thing to do – brass bands being not only very British but even more specifically, I think, northern. These three bands/performers are most certainly English, even though one of them hasn’t lived here for decades. (Richard Thompson, despite being quintessentially British, lives in New Jersey.) If, by the way, you want to learn more about brass bands – and at the same time Britain of the late seventies/early eighties – I cannot do more than recommend the wonderful film Brassed Off for your entertainment and education (If you can find it, I seriously recommend that you give it ninety minutes of your time).

Anyway, here we go back to my three hats… has anyone seen the ring?. Hat One is Sad Captains by the glorious Elbow. I have seen Elbow many times and they never fail to be amazing, but on the tour to accompany The Take Off and Landing of Everything (the album from which this song is taken) they were accompanied by a small brass and string ensemble and this song was magical. This is the album version and it is truly lush. It could easily have been my funeral song, but I would hate people to think that I was a Captain. Sad, everyone knows…

Hat Two is I Want To See the Bright Lights Tonight by Richard & Linda Thompson. I have seen Richard Thompson many times, but always solo and although brilliant – there is no other guitarist in the world quite like him – I have never seen him perform this song. The version here is (again) from the album, because although there are many excellent live versions available, this is the only one with the brass band in all its glory. Definitely not a funeral song, but almost certainly on my list for the wake.

Hat Three, When An Old Cricketer Leaves the Crease by Roy Harper*, will definitely be amongst my funeral songs – even though my best friend insisted on telling me for years that I hadn’t played cricket for decades and had left the crease long, long ago. Sad, reflective, yet ultimately uplifting this is one of music’s great lyrics – telling simultaneously a simple tale of both Village Cricket and Human Mortality (not the easiest of combinations to master) – and the brass is perfect. Again, I have seen Harper many times and he does cover this song brilliantly live (there’s a live version here and, take a look, there’s my Bearded Man** in the very flesh) but without the brass band it’s just not quite the same. (Although I now have a confession to make. I have just listened through all of my clips and, if you don’t have time to listen to them all, then I can only recommend that you at least listen to the live version which, despite the whole premise of this post, features no brass at all. Harper is aural Marmite, but if you like him, you will love this***.)

I know this is a very different post for me – all will return to normal on Monday, I promise – but I hope you enjoy the songs and, of course, if any of you can point me at any more, I would love to hear them…

*The only non-band member to ever sing lead vocals on a Pink Floyd song (‘Have A Cigar’ on ‘Wish You Were Here’) he also provided backing vocals on Kate Bush’ ‘Breathing’ and was, of course, the ‘subject’ of Led Zeppelin’s ‘Hats Off to (Roy) Harper’.

**No coincidence that I had recently seen him when I wrote the first incarnation of The Bearded Man.

***Silly Mid-On, BTW, is a field position.

Scrubbing the Doors

Today I started to scrub the kitchen cabinet doors. There are many of them and it is – and always has been – a brute of a job. It is, nonetheless, one I have carried out a thousand times, but today marked a new staging-post, because today I did not finish the scrub down in one go, today I gave in half way through. Tomorrow I will finish the scrubbing, providing my arms do not ache as much as they currently do and I can shake the pins-and-needles out of my feet. I feel as though I have bowed to age a little today – although I did also certainly tip my hat to abject boredom.

I struggle to actually complete anything these days if it can’t hold my attention – age has robbed me of my ‘coast’ button. It seems to be all or nothing now, with ‘nothing’ almost inevitably having the upper hand. If my brain is not fully engaged, it tends to turn the body off. (I hope that it will not yet adopt the same attitude to breathing.) It appears to slip into a mode not unlike a buffering TV – although with a lot less swearing. There was a time when I could have a perfectly productive day without once engaging the brain, there was so much I could do without conscious thought. These days, if I can’t bring the brain along, then I don’t go to the party – although, I have to be honest, I’m not certain that I am ever missed.

Like everybody else, I have ‘chores’ (by definition ‘tedious but necessary tasks’) that must be done, during which the physical effort of carrying them out is dwarfed by the mental strain of persuading the brain to remain, at least in some small degree, alert: sufficiently engaged to allow me to get things done, but not so bothered that it starts to think about strangling me. Take my ‘cleaning days’: these typically involve dusting, hoovering, mopping and all-surface washing, and are tedious beyond belief. Getting through usually involves wall-to-wall loud music, grandad dancing and heart-chilling quantities of chocolate. But they are long days and my brain takes leave for much of them: it is away on the beach whilst I am fluffing cushions. My wife has mastered the art of asking whether I have carried out specific tasks in the sure and certain knowledge that I won’t have a clue. I might have been there, but my mind wasn’t. It was somewhere far more exciting. It didn’t need a mop, it didn’t need a hoover, it didn’t need me.

My brain has far more fun than I do, so it now has a price to pay: I refuse to take part in all the dreary elements of life without it going through the torment as well. If I have got to be there, so has my brain. If I have to sit in the doctor’s waiting room, it has to concentrate on the nonsensical subtitles attached to the news; if I have to sit on the bus, it has to process the sights, sounds, smells and what passes for conversation; if I have to go shopping, it has to be ready to chat to the checkout operative at the end. I don’t ask it to do anything I haven’t done myself, I just insist that it stays awake for it.

So tomorrow I will finish scrubbing the kitchen unit doors and my brain will keep me company, although I can’t help but think that I am somewhat biting off my own nose (Is that even possible?) in order to spite my face, because if it is ‘present’, then so am I, and frankly I would rather not be…

Getting Things Done

I am no builder and I certainly do not seek to criticize what I do not understand – what I am about to describe may be the only proper way to do it – but today whilst ~~staring idly out of the office window~~ working at my laptop I have had the opportunity to watch a builder working on the house behind us. He had a fascinating and unchanging routine with a pleasing rhythm to it that lulled my senses and calmed my fractious spirit:
1. Take a single block off the pallet and place it close to where it was to be laid, at the opposite end of the building.
2. Leave trowel with block.
3. Walk whole length of new building to pick up bucket.
4. Walk back to block and pick up trowel.
5. Place trowel in bucket and walk to gobbo* hopper, at the original location of the bucket.
6. Remove trowel from bucket and place near hopper. Fill bucket with gobbo.
7. Cross building with bucket to previously placed block.
8. Return to hopper for trowel.
9. Lay block.
10. Search for spirit level – find it where trowel used to be.
11. Level block.
12. Look at block from distance.
13. Look at block from side of hopper. Leave spirit level there.
14. Consult mobile phone.
15. Start again.
Now, at no stage did he actually stop what he was doing (except for tea breaks and lunch obv) but neither did he vary it. He never, for instance, laid out a number of blocks at once, he never filled his bucket with more gobbo than was sufficient for a single block, he never left his trowel or spirit level where they were needed. The routine was so regimented, I figured that it must have been taught to him: this is the way that blocks had to be laid. I can’t argue, I have never laid a block in my life, but I do have a friend who is a bricklayer and he gets paid for the number of bricks he lays each day. I don’t see the above routine being particularly fruitful, salary-wise.

The impression is that he had been told ‘Look busy, but don’t do too much.’ Perhaps they didn’t want the house building until it had a buyer. It did also occur that it might be a ‘Health and Safety’ issue: don’t leave blocks laying about – trip hazard; don’t carry too much gobbo in the bucket – heavy lifting risk; don’t do more than one thing at once – brain overload threat, but the more I watched him, the more I became certain that it was just the way that he did things. (I also noticed that he was working, whilst I was drinking tea, dunking biscuits and staring out of the window, but that’s another story.) All over the site people were working in pairs – one laying and levelling, the other fetching and carrying – but he worked alone, presumably not tolerated by, or tolerant of, others. Throughout the day, more blocks and gobbo were delivered, but always left as far away from where he was working as possible.

I tried to see how old he (or she – it was hard to tell) was but so swaddled was he/she in various hi-viz layers, balaclava, hard hat, what might have been a beard, but also could have been a pet cat, that there was no way of telling. It could have been an old person working at maximum capacity or a young person doing just enough to avoid the sack (or, of course vice versa). One way or another, I couldn’t take my eyes off him/her (I even timed my own tea breaks to coincide with his** flask-visits, which meant that I also spent all afternoon having to stop for a pee.) which at least taught me one very valuable lesson: from tomorrow I am going to have to start writing with the blinds down, or else I’ll never get anything done…

*Builder’s mortar – I have no idea why.

**For ease – and to stop this blog hitting an all-time wasted pronoun count – I am going to settle on it being a ‘he’, if only because he appeared to have no friends.