Back Again

My new office not yet being in service I am writing this with my laptop on my knee in the lounge as my wife watches ‘Call the Midwife’ on TV, but contrary to commonly held opinion my-self absorption does have some limits and so, prior to dropping this onto the blog and plunging back into the world of all about me I hope to catch up with everything you have been doing before this appears in all its (vain)glory. You will, by now, know if I have managed to do it.

I will therefore begin this post by apologizing for my prolonged absence. Told at 2pm on 11^th December that the house move would definitely not happen until mid-January, we actually moved on Friday 13^th December in the kind of rush normally associated with free fries at MacDonalds. We spent the next couple of weeks falling apart and are only just beginning to pull ourselves together. Hopefully, barring electrocution, drowning or insipient madness, I will return to whatever passes for normal around here very soon.

It’s not that I have stopped writing in the weeks since the move, I have actually written dozens of posts, all ready to go as soon as I was back online, but having read them through I found that they were all about exactly the same thing: the new house (problems therewith), so I’ve binned them all. I want to start the New Year with at least some degree of optimism.

We are surrounded by boxes that we currently have no inclination to unpack. My lovely new office is packed to the door with what is to be the content of the new attic which is itself currently inaccessible – hence the knee tapping. I have spent two weeks attempting to find a way to persuade the might of Mr Branson’s empire to get me back online. I have spent that time traipsing around the homes of everyone I know in a bid to hi-jack their internet. I am sleep-deprived, anxious and (thanks to an unaccustomed acquaintance with various knives and other DIY accoutrements) my hands are home to more cuts than a Conservative Party Manifesto.

I have, God knows, a great many failings but I have always felt assured somehow that my head is, at least to a great extent, perpendicular: that is that my eyes run in the same general latitude as my shoulders. I do not know what misfortune has befallen the previous DIY practitioner at this house but nothing is horizontal, everything is cock-eyed. There is not a single electric socket that follows the grout line, there is not a single cupboard that does not lean at an angle similar to the Archbishop of Canterbury’s approach to pastoral care. Whomever DIY’d before me clearly had more screwdrivers than spirit levels.

There are so many things in a house that you do not notice until after you have moved in: the electrics here are a Gordian knot of hope and betrayed expectation, the plumbing dispenses water with an abandon seldom witnessed since the Red Sea got it back together. Even the bloody house number is falling off the wall. I am uncertain exactly how many ‘snags’ can be contained within a single property, but I begin to realise that ‘snagging’ must be a very secure profession indeed.

My wife is much more efficient than me at unpacking: when things are in her way she simply moves them so that they are in my way instead. Life is like a giant game of Ludo. Everything is moving round and round. Each box is opened, scrutinized and then moved elsewhere. Mostly they are sent back to the Start, but eventually I hope that some of them will begin to make it Home. I’ll let you know…

Merry Christmas

Sorry I haven’t been around for a couple of weeks – hadn’t noticed? I forgive you – l will be back very soon, but in the meantime I just wanted to wish you all a happy Christmas and a peaceful, joyful and safe new year…

‘Twas the Night Before Christmas (with abject apologies to Clement Clarke Moore)

‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;
It should have been squeaking away at its wheel
Not laying face down and stiff in its meal.

There’ll be tears in the morn’ when she comes with his bread
And your dear little daughter discovers him dead,
But still, do not worry, she will not stay sad
When she spots, through the wrapping, that she’s got an i-pad.

The stockings we hung by the chimney with strings,
Were not for all the extravagant things:
For those they have hanging, at the end of their beds
Two giant sacks with their names on instead.

The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
Whilst visions of smart phones danced in their heads
And mummy and I, with an hour to kill,
Were fearfully reading the credit card bill.

When out in the street arose such a din,
‘Cos the people next door were trying to get in,
But the key they were trying was turning no more,
Which wasn’t surprising – it wasn’t their door.

‘If you hadn’t guzzled that last Famous Grouse,
You’d have known straight away that it wasn’t our house.’
Said the wobbling wife as she stumbled for home
And was sick down the back of a small plastic gnome.

‘It’s four in the morning,’ an angry voice cried.
‘Just shut up your racket or I’m coming outside.’
Then all became silent, except, from afar
The sound of a key down the side of their car.

As dry leaves start falling from autumnal trees,
So snow began drifting along on the breeze
And high in the sky at the reins of his sled,
A white bearded man with a hat on his head.

‘Now Dasher, now Dancer, now Prancer and Vixen.
On Comet, on Cupid, on Donner and Blitzen!’
He cried to the reindeer in tones slurred and merry,
Having just swallowed his ten thousandth sherry.

And then, for a moment, I heard from the roof
An outburst of language that seemed most uncouth,
Then a flash by the window – a red and white blur
Of fat man and white beard; of red felt and fur.

He knocked on the door when he’d climbed to his feet
And adjusted his cloak ‘gainst the cold blinding sleet.
‘Just give me five minutes to sit by your fire
And I’ll see that your children get all they desire.’

We gave him some tea and both patiently sat
As he talked about this and he talked about that
And then, having eaten the last hot mince pie
He rose and he slapped on his red-trousered thigh.

He yawned – ‘I must return to my duty
My sled is still packed with a mountain of booty.’
And then, as he turned to the door with a wave
We reminded him of the promise he gave.

‘Of course, yes,’ he laughed, his jolly face beaming.
‘But quick now, while the kids are still dreaming.
Here, look at this dolly with glass-beaded eyes
And this wig and some glasses to make a disguise.’

‘A car made of tin and a train made of wood.
This big Snakes & Ladders is really quite good.
An orange, some nuts and a new, shiny penny.’
But electrical goods he hadn’t got any.

‘You conman,’ we cried. ‘You are not Santa Claus.
If we’d known it we would have left you outdoors.
The real Father Christmas would not carry such tat.
We want top class products – and brand names at that.’

‘Our kids will go mad if we give them this shite:
There are no soddin’ batteries and no gigabytes.
They don’t give a monkeys about innocence lost;
Just leave them a bill so they know what stuff costs.’

He turned to us now and his eyes filled with tears,
‘These presents have kept children happy for years.’
We looked at the list of the rubbish he’d got.
‘You silly old fool, you are losing the plot.’

He sprang to his sleigh crying ‘Sod this, I’m beat!’
And they all flew away to their Lapland retreat,
But I heard him exclaim ‘They are never content.
Now the thought doesn’t count – just the money you’ve spent.’

And so Christmas morning descended with gloom.
The children both rose and they looked round the room
At the i-phones, the i-pads, the Xbox and games
And they pulled at the labels and picked out their names.

Then at last they had finished, all presents unwrapped,
And we sat down for breakfast all energy sapped.
‘This is lame,’ they exclaimed. ‘This day is a bore.’
‘We’ve only got what we asked Santa Claus for.’

Then they saw on the floor where the old man had stood
A doll made of cloth and a train made of wood
And happily, low-tech, they played all the day
Whilst we packed all of their i-stuff away.

First published 22.12.2018

I have re-published this today for three reasons, 1) tonight is the night before christmas, 2) it is the first Christmas post I ever published on this platform and 3) six years on, I still rather like it.

Merry Christmas everyone.

A Little (Christmas) Fiction – The Three Wise Men from the East

‘…And you are absolutely certain,’ said Melchior, ‘that this is the right place? I mean, I know that it is under the star, but then, truth be told, so is the rest of this village. So is the rest of this country, I shouldn’t wonder. High up, stars, shine all over the place they do. Must be some margin of error there, star-wise, that’s all I’m saying. Maybe we should check out the five star places first.’
Balthazar sighed – again. ‘None of the five star places have angels hovering over them,’ he said. ‘Nor,’ he continued, ‘are they packed with shepherds watching their flocks, donkeys and assorted beasts of the fields.’
‘Or giraffes,’ said Gaspar.
Balthazar nodded his agreement. ‘Or gira… Did you say giraffe?’
‘Yes.’
‘What’s a giraffe?’
‘It’s a bit like a tall cow,’ said Gaspar, ‘with a long neck. My cousin brought one back from his travels. Dead, mind. Same as the big tusky, grey thing. Don’t travel well, apparently.’
Balthazar stared. ‘Do you see any of these tall cows around here?’
‘No,’ said Gaspar.
‘Then in what way, pray, are they relevant?’
‘I’m not sure,’ answered Gaspar. ‘I just have a feeling that someone will find that there’s only the giraffe left to play, in the future…’
Balthazar stared manically at Gaspar, his fists tightened and his jaw clenched. A small vein squirmed like a lug-worm below the skin of his forehead.
‘Shall we go and look inside,’ suggested Melchior, summoning the slaves to help them down from their mounts.
‘And where did you come by these things?’ asked Gaspar. ‘I’ve never sat on anything so uncomfortable in my life. They smell like the inside of an old sock and they spit. What’s wrong with a horse?’
‘These beasts are our traditional mode of transport,’ answered Melchior. ‘A man’s wealth is measured by them.’
‘I,’ said Balthazar, ‘have thousands.’
‘Sooner have gold,’ said Gaspar, gripping the gift-wrapped parcel he had borne with him from Arabia. ‘Think I’d rather travel on one of them long-necked cows, if I’m honest. At least they don’t have lumpy backs. And also,’ he continued as he was helped down from the musky beast, ‘how come yours has got two lumps and mine has only got one? Know exactly where to sit with two lumps. Never sure with one: either slide off its back end or wind up dangling from its neck…’
‘Rank,’ blurted Balthazar, suddenly aware that he had brought myrrh for the baby and nobody else even knew what it was. ‘The higher your rank, the more lumps you get on your camel.’
Gaspar gave Balthazar one of his stares. ‘So,’ he said, ‘where’s his then?’
‘His?’
‘His lumpy thing. Surely you’ve brought one for him if they’re so valuable; King of Kings and all that. Must be worth at least three lumps.’
‘They’re called camels,’ said Melchior, breaking the uneasy silence. ‘And they only come in one and two humped varieties.’
‘Bit of a design flaw there then, isn’t it? I’d be inclined to have a bit of a word.’
‘A word?’
‘With Himself, you know, when we get in to worship him, have a quick word in his ear. See if he can get it sorted.’
‘He’s a baby!’
‘Got connections, though,’ said Gaspar.
The three wise men had, by now, all been brought down from their camels and were straightening their robes in preparation for their big moment. Melchior was checking his frankincense. ‘You can never go wrong with perfume,’ he thought. Gaspar was scraping camel doings from his satin slipper. Balthazar, meanwhile, was chastising his Chief of Staff. ‘‘Take him myrrh,’ you said. ‘Everyone likes a bit of a rub down now and then,’ you said. Nobody else has even heard of it. Have we got nothing else we can give Him? Maybe jewels, or something?’’
The Chief of Staff looked crestfallen. ‘We left in a bit of a hurry,’ he said, ‘if you remember. Didn’t really have much time to shop around and myrrh always goes down really well in my family.’
‘Your family the myrrh merchants, you mean?’
‘Come on,’ said Gaspar, who had by now got the worst of it off with a stick. ‘Let’s go in.’
The three wise men entered the stable and fell to their knees at the side of the manger.
‘Gawd,’ said Gaspar, peering in. ‘He’s an ugly little bleeder, isn’t he?’
‘That’s a pig, you fool,’ snapped Balthazar.
‘Really?’ sneered Gaspar. ‘One humped or two?’
‘I think, gentlemen,’ said Melchior, rising to his feet. ‘That we may be in the wrong place.’
Balthazar and Gaspar also rose, brushing the crud of the stable floor from their robes as they prepared to leave.
‘So what now?’ asked Gaspar. ‘This had to be the place. What about that star?’
‘It appears to have moved on,’ answered Melchior. ‘They have a habit of doing that, apparently.’
‘And the Heavenly hosts?’
‘They appear to have found themselves rooms at the Travel Lodge. Perhaps we should join them. Try again in the morning…’
‘But how long is it going to take us to find him?’ asked Gaspar. ‘How long do we have to keep looking?’
‘Who knows,’ answered Melchior. ‘Could be days. Could be weeks, years…’
‘Could be,’ said Balthazar, ‘millennia…’

First Published 24.12.2019

I’ve usually tried to publish at least one specifically ‘Christmas’ post each year – often many more. I have also tried to give Christmas Episodes to each of my recurring fiction streams, but this year I think that I probably need to look somewhere else for the Christmas spirit. Just in case I don’t actually find what I’m looking I thought I’d give a re-run to this festive story from 2019. It makes me smile and seems, to me, to hit the right note…

Wibble

It’s been a bad day. I have come this close to supporting a crippled donkey, within a whisker of accepting my free Parker Pen for simply enquiring; I was no more than a flat mobile phone battery away from being the owner of my very own fuss-free cremation. Where my mind is usually engaged in detailed navel-gazing, I now find it staring into the middle distance. When the muse leaves me – and it has at this moment proper buggered off – I somehow find myself gawping at daytime repeats of ‘The Detective Story that Time Forgot’ on a TV channel that should – if there is any justice in this world – have viewing figures that hover near the lower end of single-digits. This is the life of a disconcerted sixty-five year old whiling away his days whilst staring at a feint-lined sheet of A4, blank but for a single pencil word that could well be ‘wibble’, with not one further word or concept between his ears.

This almost entirely virginal sheet of paper has been staring me in the face for three days now. It’s not usual. In my life, clean slates are despoiled by something in the order of 600 – 1,000 words every single day, even if, when strung together they make no sense at all, like a random page from ‘Ulysses’, a news interview with Donald Trump or ‘Timon of Athens’. Even when my head is empty, I find a way to fill paper.

Of course, in reality my head is not entirely empty: it is occupied elsewhere. Whilst action is minimal with regards to the house move, possibilities are broiling. There is currently no chance that we will move before Christmas, yet simultaneously there is a distinct possibility of moving before the weekend. We are bouncing around like a bunch of pixels in a 1970’s video game. Our lives are packed into boxes where they may, or may not, remain for weeks. We cannot get a removal company, but we can get a large van in which we may be able to ferry ourselves back and forth like some kind of political hot potato. Fortunately distances are small and one of our daughters has a reasonably empty garage that we can use as a mid-way staging post. Should the move happen, it will be a high pressure day and I fear I will stagger through it with the appearance from afar of Norman Wisdom on a runaway horse.

More likely, of course, is that it will not go ahead and we will spend Christmas in a houseful of boxes, none of which come gift-wrapped: no tree, no tinsel, no twinkling lights. Christmas, like a drunken Humpty Dumpty, has fallen between two stools and if we try to pick it up, we will just end up with sticky fingers. This is a strange kind of limbo with panic woven through it and in response my brain, never the most reliable of units, has slipped into neutral and despite revving beyond sake limits, is doing so to no effect whatsoever. I am a spinning top, aware that if I slow down I will topple over, so I spin on, getting absolutely nowhere but remaining somehow upright; sucking in orphaned bears, free biros and frill-free cremations as I go.

Wibble…

Worrying Away Anxiety – an Idiot’s Guide to Stress Management

I am very aware, my age being such as it is, that of the many things queuing up to call my number, stress is at the very head of the line. Even with regular medication my blood pressure is similar to that inside Mount Vesuvius on the morning of August 24^th 79AD. If my head explodes it will, of course, not smother an entire community, but it will make quite a mess of my hat.

I try, to the very best of my ability, to manage my anxiety level; to keep worry within survivable parameters, but that in itself is a very stressful business. People cannot understand how I manage to stay calm: I cannot care. The answer is, of course, that I do care – just not quite as much as I care about the prospect of sudden death. I am an Olympic standard worrier – I am never without it – but worry is far gentler on the heart than panic. I see worry as preparation. When the very worst happens, I will be ready.

Worries change in nature as you get older. As a young teenager I worried that I would never have a girlfriend. When I eventually got one, I worried that I might never get another – which inevitably made the foundations of that relationship a little shaky. I think I was probably a terrible boyfriend although – to be honest – never for long. Young ladies of my acquaintance usually had an uncanny ability to see right through my hidden shallows. Whilst nothing ever really happened to persuade me that my teenage anxieties were not completely justified, I somehow managed to totter through them as I got older. In my prime there was nothing I couldn’t worry about; I was so good at it. I could turn a molehill into Everest, a mole into a tumour and the creaking of a floorboard into death-watch beetle in the blink of an eye. The best thing about ageing is that the anxieties life throws up at you no longer arrive from ‘the broad spectrum’ but all come from the same two very specific sources: age and illness. It makes them so much easier to keep your eye on.

Mortality never loses its ability to stress but, as one gets older and the inevitability of it all presses down on everything you do, the immediacy of the worry fades somehow. Death ceases to be the cause for concern, but the manner of its arrival – and your own departure – begins to taunt instead. The desire to believe that death could, in any way, be a pleasant experience is a delusion we all embrace.

I have always known myself to be a worrier, but I was unaware of a stubbornly high blood pressure until I foolishly attended an age fifty MOT at the doctors, when I discovered that it was almost as high as my cholesterol. Years of subsequent strict diet and exercise regime finally convinced the guardians of my continued existence that the pressure cooker-like conditions that prevailed within my internal arrangements were not entirely of my own doing. The blame for that lies firmly at the door of my deceased parents and, should the possibility exist, I will be talking to them about it at some time in the future.

I settled into a pattern of pills and diversion until my prostate gave me something completely new to fret over. The not-so-little bugger has given nothingness a new door to knock on, but I have grown ever more practiced at pretending that I am not at home – and I don’t want the bloody Watchtower anyway.

Now – and I realise that you knew this was coming – two things that do not rub along in an at all neighbourly fashion are the need to remain calm and buying a house. You will, I have no doubt, be able to equate the stress quotient placed upon the shoulders of someone who has been banging on about a single house move for as long as I have. You cannot fail to notice that I am still bloody well banging on about it. We are now well over six months on from the moment when, having found a buyer for our house, we made an offer on the one we wished to buy. Prices were agreed and offers accepted quickly and since then, the bugger-all that has happened has begun to stretch off into the kind of distance that could very well find me absent from it. In short, I begin to fear that I may not outlive the stress of watching a highly educated bunch of solicitors attempting to simply work it out. It does not seem to me – a non-rocket scientist – to be rocket science: four homes, four families desperate to move between them and… I have grown tired of trying to work out exactly what it is that is currently holding everything up. It has been before us in the chain, it has been after us and, should my blood pressure get any higher, it may end up all over us. A moving date within this year has become a very remote possibility and thus, after the Christmas/New Year dust has settled, we are very likely to be approaching the eight month marker since we first started hoarding bubble-wrap and ferrying the serried commercial victims of down-sizing to the charity shop.

I suppose I would not be the first person to succumb to lack of movement should I shuffle off before this whole thing resolves. I have begun to realise that it might well be easier to tie down an ambulance than to book a furniture removal lorry, and considerably less stressful…

A Little Fiction – The Unseemly Abasement of Miss Timmins

There was barely a static pair of net curtains along the whole street on the day that the police came to visit Miss Timmins. Nobody wanted to appear nosy, but they also did not want to miss out on anything that might form the basis of a succulent little nugget of scandal for some future discourse. Not that it was likely with Miss Timmins. I’m not sure that anybody actually knew her age. She looked about ninety with her straight, grey hair scraped up into a bun on the top of her head and the blue gingham housecoat which, as far as anybody could see, she never took off except for her weekly trips to the church hall beetle drive, when she wore a threadbare old cardigan over a paisley blouse of such florid hues that the bus driver insisted that she sit on the top deck for the journey home. It was rumoured that she had first worn the blouse in the sixties when, as legend had it, she had auditioned for Pan’s People, but had not got the role on account of being far too quick for Jimmy Savile. Others claimed to have seen the blouse before, in an episode of The Avengers on ‘girl behind ray gun’, whilst yet more claimed that it had once been a hotel bedspread.

In fact, what little was actually known about her had been smuggled, illicitly, out of her little terraced home by such visitors who had dared to brave the gloom and stifling heat of the spinster’s house. She had a photograph album that she kept on the table in her dingy little lounge and those that claimed they had dared to peak into it when she left the room to brew tea in the kitchen, reported that she certainly had a dancer’s body as a young woman. Unfortunately it was accompanied by the boxer’s face that continued to lower out from under her hairnet today. Whilst she had, as a young woman, a body that turned heads, it was accompanied by a face that did a similar thing to stomachs.

Vera Timmins was a woman who deplored ‘frilly’: the crinoline lady that sat astride her toilet roll was void of all fripperies and not even her paper doilies were allowed lacy edges. Those unfortunate enough to overlook her washing line reported that her underwear was never more (or less) than strictly functional. In fact some claimed that if you looked really hard, you could still see the Utility Mark stamped onto the waist band of her more-than-ample knickers. She was a thin woman and yet she somehow managed to wear nether garments that could house a pack of cub scouts. Truth be told, there were few, outside of the vicar (who could often be heard offering up the fervent prayer that it might never happen again) who were ever invited into her home. Mary Maguire was one such and perhaps the most willing to discuss the contents of Miss Timmins photograph album. It was her firm opinion that Vera had been spurned by a man in her youth – the album, she claimed, was filled with roughly torn half-photographs, some of which revealed a distinctly male-looking hand nestling on her waist – and from that moment on had decided to make herself as unattractive to the opposite sex as she possibly could. In that one respect she had been supremely successful.

No man had been allowed to cross her threshold in living memory. The rent man, the milk man and the grocer’s boy all picked up their monies in envelopes left by the gate. She had an elderly tom cat, but that had not been allowed under her roof until the vet had removed its undercarriage. It had grown fat and lazy, but to its credit, it still managed to spray on the cushions whenever she wasn’t looking. So it was with a seismic level of surprise that the assembled net twitchers of the whole street watched her beckon the two young male policemen into her home. None could tear their eyes away. Most felt it a nailed-on certainty that the unfortunate uniformed fodder would never be seen again.

This opinion had solidified amongst those still fit enough to be standing with gimlet eye to gossamer crack when, some two hours later, they were still to reappear. Most had given up. Some had already been on the phone to Mary, but such was the intensity of her vigil, she would not be drawn away from the window to speak and as Ted, her husband, had taken her mobile to the football match having left his own in the compost tub with his spare socks at the allotments, she could not both speak into the ancient handset that hung in the hall and maintain eye-contact on the front door at number thirteen. They would all just have to sit it out. She would be quick enough to report when anything happened.

In fact she missed the actual moment when the police van arrived to take the lachrymose old maid away, owing to the fact that she had, over the first fifteen years of her marriage, been on the outside of fifteen children and was not within reach of anything on which to squat in her hour of need, but, undaunted, she was outside speaking to the constable who had remained at the door even before Mrs Timmins had dragged her second leg into the constabulary vehicle. He was, of course, not supposed to pass on the information, but she knew his mother so what was the point of keeping quiet? He would have to tell his mother what he had been up to if he wanted to be fed and it was certain that half of the Bingo Club would then know about it within the hour. What harm could it do?

“It was a romance scam,” Mary Maguire told the assembled throng some time later.
“Oh, poor soul,” cooed Mrs Rodgers who, in the excitement, quite forgot that her teeth were still in the glass in the bathroom and covered Mrs Maguire’s spectacles with a fine dusting of PG Tips and simnel cake* . “She never seemed the kind did she?”
“The kind?”
“To be looking for romance. I mean, if we’re honest, she didn’t really seem to have much time for men at all, let alone be lured by one pretending to want to share her life. Did he get much from her?”
“Certainly not money. I think you misunderstand,” said Mrs Maguire, a thin smile creasing the scar where she had once been bitten by a parakeet in a Morecambe bar. “She’s been passing herself off as a forty year old male property developer. Apparently she’d been using half of an old photograph from her photo album for a profile picture, until somebody clicked that it was actually Patrick McNee without the bowler…”

*Which my spellchecker insists should be ‘semen cake’. Clearly it does not know Mrs Rodgers.

First published 15.04.2022

In retrospect, I feel that I should probably have given this tale a little longer to develop, but I am always very conscious that these tiny tales do not run on too long – few enough people make it all the way through anyway!

Coming Soon (Or More Likely Not) to an E-Reader near You – A Warning

So, here’s the thing: having almost certainly decided to reduce the blog to two new posts per week, I began using some of my newly acquired free time writing a new novel (I know, who knew there was an old one?) and if I’m honest, I like the way it is going; it amuses me. The problem is that this book is a follow-up to the previous one which, I now realise I have yet to do anything with. I have long-since grown tired of attempting to find publishers or agents who are willing even to pass a cursory eye over the kind of stuff I write – I believe that the genre of humorous fiction officially died with Tom Sharpe – and I have no desire to trek back along that road of summary rejection one more time. I am much too old to go in for self-publicity – my sell-by date passed years ago. I will, I suppose, eventually rouse myself to publish on Kindle and subsequently forget all about it whilst I settle fully into writing episode two. It is a total waste of time I know, but it beats sitting in front of the telly every night with a packet of Garibaldis and a tartan blanket, dribbling gently into a mug of milky tea.

It will come as no surprise to any of you who have made a habit of reading my witterings to learn that this presents a whole new avenue for me to explore. I understand that the manuscript will require re-formatting, which given that I have the IT skills of an over-sugared amoeba might just prove to be a little bit of a challenge for me. I think I will enjoy creating a cover – although Lord knows how – but I worry that all of the assorted housekeeping associated with preparing the old stuff may mean that writing the new stuff might find itself shuffled into the scarily distant future and I am not happy with that. (It is important, I feel to make the distinction here between the future [a very long time indeed] and my future [not].) I have no great desire to leave behind a written legacy of unread treasures, and my yearning for a life filled with sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll has long been superseded by a desire for woollen socks and Arctic Rolls. Never-the-less, my mind struggles with the imperative of getting the boring stuff out of the way in order that the fun bit can make some kind of sense so, perversely, book two continues to trundle on its way – by turns amusing and frustrating me – whilst book one lurks, unre-formatted, in its computer folder, having been read by no more than half a dozen press-ganged souls or, dependent upon what software has covertly wormed its way onto my pc, several million people in China and Russia. The brief enthusiasm for getting it out there evaporated quicker than a fireside whisky once the writing had been done.

Book One is called ‘Clean’ – a tale populated with characters totally devoid of any redeeming features, from which none emerge with any kind of credit: let’s call it ultra-realism – and Book Two – which features the same cast of unreformed ne’er-do-wells – is currently entitled ‘Clean Break’, so you can probably understand the need for book one to be read before book two, but I know that I am unlikely to attend to the practicalities of this because well, if I’m honest, I’m bloody useless and the writing of the second story is sucking me in like quicksand whilst the realities of doing something about story one weigh down on me like a hip-flask full of whisky at a Methodist wedding. Perhaps I can format this new book so that it is written in an appropriate manner for Kindle, but I would do so in the certain knowledge that by the time I have stirred myself into reformatting book one, the criteria will almost certainly have changed, and anyway, if I like the way that book two eventually sloshes to its conclusion, I will already be half-way through the first draft of episode three (possibly ‘Clean Away’, ‘Clean Slate’ or, depending on my mood ‘Fifty things you Never Knew About Microbes’) by then. It is the way I work.

The point is (oh yes, there is one) that I originally decided to reduce my bloggy output by one third with the intention of giving myself some extra time in which to decorate the new house, but as the move keeps getting kicked by the solicitors ever further into the long grass, the book has filled the time vacuum and will, when the paint brush is finally pushed into my sweating palm, be clogging up the ever expanding spaces between neurons. Getting book one ‘out there’ may well prove to be even more tiresome than ‘two coats of white across six ceilings’ and book two will find itself with nowhere to go, at which point a return to three posts per week will almost certainly follow. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you…

Frankie & Benny #12 – Coronary

“…Benny, my old friend, how are you feeling?”
“I have been better Francis, I must admit, I have been better.”
“You’re looking better than you were… when you came in, you know.”
“Well that will be, old chum, because I am no longer having a bloody heart attack. It will be because I no longer have a fifteen stone paramedic tap dancing on my chest.”
“He saved you life Benny.”
“I know, and I’m obliged, I just wish he could have done it without breaking all my bloody ribs. I don’t wish to sound ungrateful here, but couldn’t he see that I’m an old man?”
“Well at least you’re not a corpse my friend. It didn’t look good back there.”
“I know. I wonder what brought it on?”
“The heart attack?”
“No Frankie, I mean the French Peasant Uprising of 1358… of course the heart attack.”
“Well, you were on your second pie of the day.”
“Is that enough to bring on a heart attack?”
“I don’t know. Some of those pies have been in the warmer so long they could cause Bubonic Plague for all I know. I suppose the specialist will tell you.”
“Is that the woman in the pink trainers?”
“Could be, why?”
“She said with my diet and alcohol intake it’s a miracle I didn’t die years ago.”
“A tad harsh. What did you say?”
“I said that when I was younger, my diet was considered ideal.”
“And?”
“She said that when I was younger, smoking was considered good for the lungs, sugar was good for the teeth and rickets was for sissies. She said I should wake up and smell the roses. She said I should change my diet, get more exercise and drink less.”
“And you said?”
“Is there any chance of a heart transplant instead? A twenty year-old, teetotal heart should keep me going for years.”
“And she said?”
“‘Hearts are precious things, Mr Anderson. We don’t waste them on old timers like you. Just try to look after the one you’ve got.’ She said that if I behaved myself I could have years left in me yet.”
“So are you going to do that then? Are you going to behave? I mean, you’re a pain in the arse and all, but I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“Maybe I could restrict my pasty intake a bit. I’m nearly eighty Frankie, I’m too old to change now. Nobody lives forever do they?”
“Indeed they do not my elderly friend, indeed they do not.”
“Besides, you need to think about it too. I’m not that much older than you, you know.”
“Three years Benny, three years. It doesn’t seem much at our age, but when we were at school…”
“We were in the same year at school.”
“I think you were held back.”
“I bloody well was not! We started school together on the same day. You always tell people that you’re three years younger than me, but you’re not. What year were you born?”
“1945.”
“And I was born in 1944.”
“So you are at least one year older than me.”
“I was born in December and you were born in January: it’s barely a month. Where do you get three years from?”
“You were always old for you age.”
“I was more sensible than you.”
“Three years more sensible.”
“Yes, well now I’ve had a heart attack for my pains and you’ve had…”
“…to sit in that corridor for two days without a change of pants. I’ve had a permanent wedgie for the last twenty four hours.”
“You sat out there for forty eight hours?”
“Of course I did. You’re my oldest friend Benny, besides, you had my front door key in your trouser pocket and they wouldn’t let me search for it. I asked the nurse if she would have a bit of a rifle through your kecks and she said that there wasn’t sufficient hand sanitizer in the hospital for her to risk that. She said that if she got five minutes she would set fire to them and rake through the ashes when they’d gone out.”
“They were clean on!”
“Mm, but they weren’t clean off, as it were.”
“…I can’t even remember what happened.”
“You remember years ago when we went to the cinema and Ursula Andress came out of the sea in a bikini? Well your face kind of went like it did back then and you gurgled.”
“Gurgled?”
“Yes. Well you were two parts of the way through a pie at the time, so I didn’t think much of it until you fell of the stool. To be honest, I wouldn’t even have thought too much about that if it hadn’t been so early in the night.”
“So you phoned an ambulance?”
“Well, I phoned them, yes, but they didn’t come. Apparently the paramedics remember the last time they got called out to The Travellers so they refused to come again without police protection.”
“And the police?”
“They, Benny my friend, also remembered the last time they got called to the estate. They wanted the army calling out.”
“So how did I get to the hospital then?”
“I couldn’t leave you on the floor, could I?”
“You carried me?”
“Are you mad? I’m no spring chicken myself you know, and let’s be honest, you take a bit more lifting than you used to… I pushed you round in a wheelbarrow. It’s a wonder I didn’t have a heart attack myself.”
“People let you push me round here on your own? Nobody offered to help?”
“Most of them thought you were pished to be fair, although I must admit that if the Bible were being written that night, it would contain the Parable of the Totally Indifferent Samaritan.”
“How long did it take you?”
“About twenty minutes, but I did nip into the offie for a scratchcard on the way.”
“You left me dying in a wheelbarrow while you bought a scratchcard?”
“I got one for you as well.”
“Oh well…”
“You didn’t win mind.”
“You scratched my scratchcard?”
“Well I wasn’t sure that you’d… you know. You kept moaning ‘Don’t let me die Frankie. I’m not ready to die…’ You’ve always been a bit of a moaner.”
“Frankie, I was in a wheelbarrow… dying.”
“I didn’t know you were dying. I thought it was wind.”
“They’ve fitted stents!”
“Oh well, that’s good then. So are you all better now?”
“I’m going to be ok I think. I just have to be careful. The specialist said I shouldn’t drink anymore.”
“Any more? Was she talking volume?”
“I presume so.”
“So a small glass is preferable to a large one?”
“That is what I assumed, yes.”
“And she never mentioned Wagon Wheels?”
“Not by name, no.”
“Good, because I’ve got a hip flask and Wagon Wheels in my bag. Come on now, sit up Benny, we’ll drink to your health my friend. Cheers…”

For your information, ‘the offie’ is the Off-Licence: a shop for the out-sales of alcohol and Wagon Wheels are large chocolate covered mallow-filled biscuits.

If you like these two old boys, you can find previous conversations at
Frankie & Benny #1
Frankie & Benny #2 – Goodbyes
Frankie & Benny #3 – The Night Before
Frankie & Benny #4 – The Birthday
Frankie & Benny #5 – Trick or Treat
Frankie & Benny #6 – Christmas
Frankie & Benny #7 – The Cold
Frankie & Benny #8 – Barry
Frankie & Benny #9 – Vaccinations
Frankie & Benny #10 – Anniversary
Frankie & Benny #11 – Dunking

A Little Post about Blogging – How Things Work

It’s an odd way of going on I know, but occasionally I write something that I really want to like, but for one reason or another (alright, usually for one reason only: it is rubbish) I just can’t. With most sub-standard posts – and there are many – a swift click on the ‘delete’ button, the single most used key on my keyboard, is al that it takes to rid my mind of them. A coffee or (if there is a ‘Y’ in the day) a whisky and a chocolate bar and I am ready to go again. Like all ailing software, my brain is washed of all detritus by a simple reboot (unless it has a virus, in which case it becomes fully engaged in feeling sorry for itself, at which point all scheduled tasks are put on hold and 111 is added to speed-dial). Every now and then these pieces just fall onto the page, blithely unusable, but refusing resolutely to vacate the synapses, clogging the gap between neurons with something that pops into my consciousness, like Sandra Bullock, whenever I let my guard down: I have to deal with it.

I do so by printing what I have and leaving it where it cannot be ignored. I lay my little 4-colour Bic biro (the single greatest invention of the second millennia) across the paper, ready primed on green, while I try to pretend that it doesn’t matter to me, at which point I decide (obviously) that actually it really does, and try to massage the words into some kind of shape (generally an amorphous blob) crossing out, moving, re-writing, adding, subtracting, adding again until it is impossible to make any sense of it, at which point I transcribe the whole sorry lot back onto the computer, print it up again and click down the red refill on the pen. (This whole process is intensified by a factor of approximately one million if I am attempting to write ‘a poem’, in which case I can spend up to three weeks fretting over a single word – usually the name of a biscuit – from a stanza that will almost certainly be completely deleted just as soon as I find another rhyme for ‘spanner’.)

By this time the post will most certainly have moved some distance from its original form: it may well have evolved a new ending which requires an entirely revised introduction and, perhaps, a mid-section that does not rely quite so heavily on the reader’s knowledge of Fourteenth Century Ship Building. It will no longer be funny, but the syntax will be less familiar to scholars of the Rosetta Stone. Red pen follows the same ‘add, subtract, move and rephrase’ routine as green, but in an altogether more ‘modern’ way: any jokes that remain are underlined and scrutinized in order to remove all possibility of causing offence and, on the basis that there is always someone desperate to be affronted, subsequently drained of all life and humour. Following a red re-writing – which can, by the way, take several weeks and three ethics committees to complete and deplete a pen refill by anything up to an inch – the now tattered document will read like an instructional briefing at the local morgue and could only be made less interesting if read aloud by Alan Titmarch. Transcribing the mess back onto the computer is like tip-toeing through a darkened room, the floor of which is strewn with Lego mousetraps, but eventually – in the brief moment that it agrees to connect to the network – the printer whirrs into life and the pen clicks onto blue…

It is generally about this time that I realise that I actually preferred the original version, but that I no longer have a copy of it due to my habit of shredding everything I do after I have despoiled both sides of the paper, the majority of which comprises the ‘b’-sides of official communications, red bills and ‘letters to self’. By this time, reading through the piece is like being forced to listen to a euphonium concerto after accidentally scrubbing ‘Stairway to Heaven’: it is like discovering that your copy of The Complete Works of Shakespeare was actually written by Dan Brown. I will often attempt to rewrite passages that I have long-forgotten and cross out everything that does not easily slip into my chosen category of ‘humour’ in order that I do not find myself being sued by someone who has read every word I have ever written but has never laughed once – especially given the deplorable condition of my grammar and capitalization bordering on the cavalier (Cavalier?).

Blue re-writes can involve much soul-searching, but more regularly feature something red which tastes as though it may have been strained through a docker’s sock and some kind of dry-roasted peanut induced mania. Another new beginning or ending may have been appended, making – like a Russian history lesson – a nonsense of everything that lies between. Blue edits are overlaid on green and red computer versions and a final reprint allows me to throw the kind of jokes that killed the humour periodical at it – in black ink, because favouritism is never a good thing. (Perhaps now is a good time to reveal that I have four of these 4-colour Bics on the go at any one time and use them in strict rotation – or would, if only I could work out which is which.) Having exhausted all four inks there is, after all, very little left for me to do to improve a post which will almost certainly find itself gathering binary dust in the depths of my Documents File for the rest of its natural life, except that it is, after all, one of those posts and I need it close at hand in case I ever find a different colour to write it in and having just read it through again, well, it’s really not so bad now I come to think of it…