A Pied-a-Terre of Yellow-Glossed Metal – The Van Beside the Sea (and Will There Be Cockles Still for Tea?)

May Bank Holiday U.K. Monday 6th May 2019

A little longer than usual, today’s ramble, as I possibly won’t have the opportunity to post on Monday. Please feel free to read this in two parts so that you’ve got something to do over the bank holiday (when I know you will be at a loose end). Alternatively, you could try reading the paragraphs in a different order. You could try reading them back to front. I’m not sure if it will make that much difference: my grasp of basic grammar isn’t what it was so you’ll probably find the syntax is better that way anyhow. If I’m honest, you could probably drop all the words into a bag, shake them up and pour them out onto the table and it would make just as much sense. I’m sure some of you will remember caravans like ours – although they may not have been yellow and the little Perspex roof vent may not have leaked quite as much…

So… I was talking to a friend the other day about the new static caravan that he was thinking of buying. He had access to a website so vibrant and colourful that it would, with the addition of a Pathé newsreel and a Felix the Cat cartoon, have comprised an entire afternoon’s entertainment in my youth. He also had a shiny, full-colour brochure carefully furled in his sweaty palm and was anxious to share its content with me. At forty feet by thirteen feet (the size of a small cathedral) this de-wheeled beauty featured three double bedrooms – one of them en-suite – with separate ‘family’ shower room and W.C., ‘luxury’ fitted kitchen, central heating and double glazing. It was decorated and carpeted to a standard that would have had Sir Elton John checking his purse and… well, it started me thinking – or, more correctly, it started me remembering…

When I was a child, my grandparents had a static caravan. It was sixteen feet long and about seven feet wide. It was painted yellow. Their greatest pride was that it was not made of hardboard. It did not have a bathroom, shower or W.C. It did not have electricity, it did not have water. It most certainly did not have central heating or double glazing. It had a fitted kitchen that consisted of two gas rings and a plastic washing-up bowl. It was mostly waterproof and it contained a stack of ‘Astounding Tales’ and ‘Amazing Stories’ magazines. We went there every weekend between March and October for the greater part of my childhood and its memories are imprinted upon my mind with the clarity of the glossy brochure I was shown by my friend. Let me talk you through a weekend…

Straight from school on Friday evening and onto the bus. My grandparents did not have a car. Nobody I knew had a car. There was only one car on our estate. I never saw anybody driving it, but I did often see the owner polishing it. He worked for the council… The bus took a two hour meander through the Lincolnshire Wolds to the East Coast. My grandad told me that there were Indians (the ‘Cowboys and Indians’ kind) in the hills and I always looked for them. I still do.

Upon arrival in Cleethorpes (Pearl of the East) we boarded a local bus which took us part-way to the caravan site. From the bus we walked about a mile along the sandy path that skulked moodily in the shadows of decaying coastal flood barriers and grass-pocked sand hills. It was a much longer walk at the beginning and end of the season when there was so much more to carry. Bedding inadvertently left in the ‘van’ through the winter had a tendency to turn to mulch before spring so, twice a year, everything that could either rot or rust was transported to or from the caravan via a combination of bus and schoolboy legs. Except for the very height of summer, this walk tended to take place in the pitch black of storm-tossed night, illuminated by a one-candle-power battery torch. How fantastic it was, after the long, sea-speckled hike, to fling open the caravan door and smell the damp of home. The main feature of a weekend in the caravan was damp. In the morning the inside of the van was dripping with condensation. If ever the small gas fire was lit, folded-up newspapers were placed along the window bottoms to collect the water as it formed and ran down the inside of the glass in rivulets. Many a happy hour was spent running a mental ‘book’ on which of two similarly sized drops would reach the sill first and be roundly absorbed by page three’s carefully folded appendages.

First job on arrival; put out the gas cylinder and light the lights. The lights all had ‘mantles’ – a very thin, lace-like structure of what appeared to be sculpted talcum powder. They were always broken. The lights wouldn’t work without them and the spares were impossible to find without light. They were impossible to fit without light. To tell the truth, they were impossible to pick up with or without light. Not that it mattered, the matches, like everything else, were always damp. Eventually, after much muttered grandparental swearing, the few functional lights were lit, the van was bathed in a sepulchral orange glow and the kettle was on. I loved the kettle in the caravan. It whistled. The kettle we had at home didn’t whistle. Mind you, it didn’t leak either.

In order, I think, to distance me from the National Service brogue of my grandad’s language as he attempted to cast light into the gloom, I was despatched to get the water for the kettle. Drinking water was collected from a standpipe in the middle of the site, in a large container that had a little tap at the bottom. We were quite a long way from the standpipe and, the container being almost as tall as myself, I was only able to carry it back with a very small quantity of water in it. Mostly I dragged it and got mud up the tap. Hot water was fetched from the toilet block. Now, I don’t want you to think that the toilet block had hot taps. It did not. The running water in the sinks was cold. What it had was a slot that took a penny and a tap beneath it that then dispensed a bucketful of hot water. Unless someone had been there just before you, when it dispensed a quarter bucket of lukewarm water. Much time was spent watching the toilet block from the caravan window, gauging just the right time to get the most hot water for your penny. This, I should point out, was an old penny; one twelfth of a shilling (of which there were twenty to the pound) and the size of a dustbin lid. A penny would buy enough sweets for the whole weekend, three pulls on a one-armed bandit or some warmish water to wash in. No shower, no bath, just enough water for a ‘strip down wash’ and one last rush to the toilet before bedtime. No ‘facilities’ in the van; not even chemical – no space. Not even anywhere to put a po’ unless you used the wardrobe.

And the bedrooms? No, none of those. Two narrow ‘settees’ to one end of the van were where children slept. A curtain separated these two sagging bunks from the double bed that was formed by laying the cushions from the daytime sofas across the benches that flanked the table, and the table top itself (in retrospect, not the most hygienic of arrangements). And then lights off, to drift to sleep to the sound of the rain on the caravan roof. Always rain on the roof…

Saturday morning cast whatever light it could muster through the tissue-paper curtains and illuminated the caravan’s interior from earliest dawn. This was the moment when you realised that you needed a wee and that there was no way of getting out of the van without stepping on the occupants of the double bed that now lay between yourself and the door. You watched and you waited until the partition curtain was drawn back so that damp clothing could be wrestled on and, as the kettle merrily hissed on the stove, you took the full-bladdered, doubled-up lope to the toilet block with your slab of Wright’s Coal Tar (a large, yellow bar of soap: I have no idea whether it was actually made from coal tar, but given that this was a time in which you were told that smoking was good for the lungs, it is entirely possible) a damp flannel and an even damper hand towel. Rain or shine, hot or cold; it didn’t matter.

Saturday, prince of days, was the day for trooping off with grandad: a bona fide war hero with an ever-burning pipe wedged under his splendid RAF moustache, the smouldering embers illuminating his vaguely rum-pocked nose on each wheezy inhalation. A grandad it was a boys dream to spend time with, and a whole Saturday in which to do it.

So, plan for the day:
1. Dig lugworms from the beach with which to fish for dabs: little flat fish which were, to my recollection, not unlike tiny plaice or large squashed goldfish. Best thing about them; shallow fried in a little flour, they barely tasted of fish. The beach at low tide was full of lugworm casts and, after the many fishermen had been digging, resembled a First World War battlefield. I think it’s illegal to dig for them now without a licence.
2. The fishing was done at a brackish ‘creek’, a fast running tributary of sorts at the very end of the river which remained after the tide had drawn the main body of water into the distance, beyond the muddy flats, and into the sea. It involved a simple nylon line with a hook, a lead weight and the aforementioned lug worm. There was little skill involved except in casting the hapless, skewered worm out to sea without shredding your ear, and pulling it back in a few seconds later with a flapping dab at its end. The fishing was easy – always successful – and after a suitable time had passed, the creek swelled in size until it mingled with the incoming tide and boy, grandad and bag of fish were forced to retreat. I swam the creek a few times during the summer holidays – it was always deep and fast-flowing – but if you got your timing right, once on the other side you could wade to what I now know is the Haile Sand Fort. If you were lucky, and could pick your way through the barbed wire in time, you could climb up the base and walk around it. You could cast your eyes into the misty distance and look out for the German fleet; scouring the surface of the deeper water for the tell-tale periscope of a German U-boat… If you were unlucky and your timing wasn’t great, it was a frantic paddle/swim back to shore before you drowned. I still bear the scars of bare-footed scrambled retreats across concrete base covered in razor-sharp shells. I don’t ever recall being asked what I’d been doing. Times were different. Adventure was part of growing up for a boy – even if it involved the risk of death.
3. Cockle beds were exposed in the sandy flat river bed/sea shore at low tide. The cockles lay a few inches under the surface and were easily located from the little bubbles they blew through the wet sand from time to time. Presumably evolution, being what it is, will eventually recognise the success of non-bubble blowing cockles and they will suddenly become much more difficult to locate. They were dug and sifted through a big sieve – once again leaving the shore like a nightmarish wartime no-man’s land. I’m pretty sure that digging cockles is no longer allowed without a licence…
4. The marshes were green with samphire I remember; it took minutes to pack a carrier bag and was easy work as long as you kept moving. If you didn’t, you could sink up to groin level in the smelly, sandy gloop in seconds. I can’t see that you need a licence to collect samphire now, but to tell the truth, it’s probably much easier and less messy to collect it from Waitrose.
5. Grandma would soak and prepare cockles and samphire and gut the fish whilst the ‘men’ had a cup of tea and a butty and snoozed away the morning’s exertions. (I know, I know. I cannot be held responsible for this. These were very different times.) The memory of Saturday tea time: fresh boiled cockles, samphire with pan-fried dabs and the smell of stewed socks lives with me to this day.

…And then, after a quick change into smarter ‘evening’ clothes, a wander through the caravan ranks for an hour in the on-site ‘Amusements’. A few pennies in the slots if I was lucky and then Prize Bingo. A tanner in the slot lit one card. The adults played two. Four corners or a line; vertical, horizontal or diagonal for a single ‘win’ and the full-house for two. With a bit of luck you could save up enough wins over the season to replace the leaking kettle or the padlock that secured the Calor Gas container for what added up to little more than the cost of a new caravan over the season. And always to the chip shop on the walk home; the heady scent of a salt and vinegar laden caravan lingering around my nostrils as I began my descent into sleeping bag enveloped oblivion …

So passed the Spring, Summer and Autumn weekends of my childhood – in a happy, damp, vinegar-sodden tin box with all of the modern facilities of a cardboard tea crate. Sunday was tidy, clean and stow everything away until the next weekend. Long walk, short bus journey, long bus journey, short walk and home. Bath night. School in the morning…

…So, I sense you pondering, what exactly is the point of this self-indulgent twaddle? Well, truth is, it’s not all twaddle: it depends which way you choose to look at it. It could be a business plan. Glamping – is that really attractive to the over-somethings? No, I don’t think so. But give me a field and I will give them a no frills holiday experience with all the lack-of-utilities they could possibly wish for – all shrouded in the cosy, if damp, glow of nostalgic yesteryear and a quarter bucket of lukewarm water…

To Infinity and Beyond – The Northern Lights and Associated Wonders.

beb77ff8-4e7a-4afd-a31e-772298639167

A few weeks ago we spent a few days in Finnish Lapland. Our hotel was on the bank of a huge frozen lake and in the evening we tramped out towards the centre of it in search of The Northern Lights. There was very little light pollution and the sky was cloudless. We stood in awe in almost total darkness as the lights grew and swirled and illuminated the night sky (photo above). After a while I sat on the ice and eventually I lay back to get a better view. Away from ‘The Lights’ the sky was black, bottomless and impermeable, but alight with a billion billion stars. It was utterly breathtaking and the enormity of it all set my brain spinning. What is visible to the naked eye is the tiniest fraction of what exists out there. If just an infinitesimal portion of the stars that I could see had planets spinning around them, that must still be countless millions. It is somehow impossible to believe that our own tiny little spinning orb could be the only one amongst such millions to support life. And given that, notwithstanding our considerable efforts to decimate it, our little globe is home to many millions of different species, who can begin to even imagine what might be out there.

I’m not naïve enough to believe that I will ever know. Almost certainly it will never be known, and that can only be for the best. If intelligent beings ‘out there’ can get here, they must be massively in advance of us. What could they possibly want of us? Pets? And given that, as a species, we often find it impossible to get on with our own kind simply on the basis of a different skin colour, sexuality or belief, what chance do we have of bonding with a small green ectoplasmic blob with an intellect the size of a thousand Einsteins? As sure as eggs is eggs, as soon as they see the mess we are making of our own planet, they are not going to want to let us anywhere near their own.

But what if they’re already here? We’ve all seen the films: aliens living amongst us – hidden in plain sight. Come on, who hasn’t looked at Donald Trump and not wondered if he could possibly really be of this world? Who amongst us is not watching his flicky little tongue, waiting for him to peel off his human face to reveal the lizard beneath? Even worse would be if aliens were to reveal themselves in the UK now and demand to be taken to our leader. Where the hell would we take them? ‘Erm… Little bit of a rudderless boat at the moment to be honest… er… situation’s a little bit… fluid… currently. Do you drink tea? Oh… no mouth, of course… Tell you what, I’ll phone the local radio station and see if they can suggest something…’

My dad had a theory that we were originally put on Earth by a much more advanced civilisation simply so that they could watch us develop – much as we might observe ants in a formicarium. We are like some real-time Eastenders for them. Such a shame that all we seem able to do is to hasten ourselves along to our final episode…

And then it occurred to me: what if I am an alien? What if we all are, but we just don’t remember? What if we’ve already killed off the true apex species of the planet and are now slowly (slowly?) working through the rest?

Anyway… all of this in a split-second in the middle of a frozen Finnish lake in the early hours of the morning. My mind clicked back to the Aurora. I sat up and drank it in. It was magnificent and the world that it cast an eerie light onto was also breathtakingly beautiful and then I started to feel cold… When I’m cold, my mind begins to wander – generally towards the warm – and the warm was in the hotel, so I followed my mind back to our room and joined it in a glass of whisky and a packet of peanuts.
All in all, not a lot to tell, but I just thought I’d like to share…

To Infinity and Beyond – A Brief Guide to Everything I Don’t Understand About the Universe…

International Astronomy Day 28th April 2019

Perhaps I should begin by explaining that almost everything I do understand about the Universe is courtesy of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: my problem is not that I don’t understand how the Universe works, it is that I do not fully understand why I would ever want to understand how the Universe works. The answer can only be disappointing. Tell me that the Universe is an upside-down colander and the stars are the flashes of light that come through the holes where the rain normally gets in and I will gladly believe you. Give me some claptrap about a Universe that wasn’t there and then was, a Universe that is both infinite and expanding, and then doubt sets in…

Perhaps I should begin, as it would appear all things did, with the Big Bang. My understanding is that two atoms spontaneously appeared in a vastness of nothingness, occupying the same place at the same time and Kerboom! With a ‘bang!’ not dissimilar to a teenager leaving a room, the universe was created. A broiling, violent, expanding everything – and everything that everything contains. Really? So who put the atoms there? If nothing existed, where did they come from? If they didn’t exist, and then they did, where did the ‘ingredients’ come from? If these two atoms contained all the ‘stuff’ from which the universe is now made, just how big were they? They must have been massive, which, given my exceedingly limited understanding of atoms, seems fairly unlikely. Anyway, putting all that to one side for now – generally because it is further from my comprehension than the edge of the Universe and more baffling than the first six chapters of Ulysses – we must move naturally onto what happened after the Big Bang.

Apparently this huge Kerboom! took only a fraction of a second to create everything that ever was, is, or will be, which was then blasted out into the vastness of space – so where did all that space come from? First there was nothing and then there was infinity. From zero zilch to an infinite abundance of it. Anyway… Massive explosion, all sorts of everything created in the blinking of an eye, and it all flies off into nothingness at a speed greater than the speed of light. (Except that’s not possible, is it? If it went faster than light, it would go back in time and, if it did that, it would surely not have existed in the first place. Oh dear…) Anyway… I do know that the Universe is infinite. And expanding. Really? Into what exactly? If the universe is everything, then what is it spreading into? Perhaps a Black Hole… Yup, now here’s something even more complicated than the Big Bang. There are so many paradoxes, inconsistencies and downright impossibilities associated with Black Holes that even your average Italian Hairdresser will not be able to explain them to you (take, for instance, why the much vaunted photograph of a real-time super-massive black hole was so disappointing – and so much less impressive than the artists impressions of the same). I envisage them as a kind of House of Commons for rational thought – it works for me.

Anyway… I believe that one of the giant telescopes that we now have circling the Earth has spotted stars that are billions of light years away at the very edge of the Universe. So far away, in fact, that the light they are sending our way actually emanated at the dawn of time. (Did I mention that time didn’t exist before the Big Bang? Kind of messes up my same time/same place theory.) Right, so, surely what is today at the fringes of the Universe would, at the dawn of time, have been right in the middle of it. If so, why is the light of the Big Bang! coming from the fringes? How can these suns be seen at a time and a place that they weren’t until now, if the light we are seeing was emitted at a time when they weren’t there but were here? In short, how can light emitted at the time of the Big Bang! have taken billions of light years to reach us when, at the time of the big blast, we were all in the same place?

Our solar system is one of millions in the galaxy; our galaxy is one of millions in the Universe and our Universe is… no, I’ve lost it again. You see I’ve never really understood how planets and stars stay where they are in the first place. If they have mass whilst space does not, how come they don’t all just end up at the bottom? How do they remain where they are? You try spinning around at 67,000mph (the speed that Earth orbits the Sun) and see if you end up where you started… Anyway… The Hitchhiker’s Guide told us not to panic. It doesn’t matter that we don’t know what’s going on, astrophysicists understand all that there is to know about the entire history of the universe; in much the same way that 17th century apothecaries knew all there was to know about phlogiston presumably. They know that all their sums would add up – if only they could find some dark matter. (Presumably they’ve never thought to look between a four-year-old’s toes.) What they really need to verify their theory is a Higgs Boson particle. So, they build a Large Hadron Collider and, glory be, they create one. They also create a mini-black hole, but don’t worry; this is tiny, nothing like the super-massive black hole that, at the end of time, will swallow up the whole universe. Mind you, seeing as the whole caboodle began with just two atoms, I can’t help but wonder just how big it would need to be…

N.B. I realise that all the basic hypotheses on which I have built this post are, in all probability, total nonsense. I have no idea how scientifically verifiable my ‘facts’ are, but they’re all I’ve got. Where knowledge fails, I fall back on fantasy: what I don’t know, I make up. It is not even a conscious thing, it is just that whenever my brain finds a gap in my knowledge it fills it up with whatever it has to hand. I am no Brian Cox or Brian May – more like Brian from The Magic Roundabout. I carry absolutely no expectation that anything I have said above is not demonstrably incorrect. I have a basic inability to comprehend what existed before anything existed – and more precisely how there can possibly have been nothing. Surely nothing can only exist if there is something for it to exist within? Much like infinity: I am perfectly willing to believe in infinity, if only somebody could explain to me what’s at the end of it… Whatever the true cause of the Big Bang – and I realise it almost certainly is not what I said (whatever that was) – surely something had to be there to cause it. Unless the Big Bang as we know it (know?) and the start of our universe was actually caused by the very last atom of a previous Universe being sucked into a black hole… Anyway, if there is anybody out there who feels that they can explain all this to me in a clear and concise manner – please don’t bother, as any attempt to do so will only make us both feel terribly inadequate.

D.I.Y (part 2) – doors, decorating and electrical shenanigans.

paint brushes

…So, we begin part two by presuming that you have not had to visit Accident and Emergency and that, flushed with shelf-hanging success, you may have decided that you wish to attempt door hanging. The main advice I can offer at this point is ‘For God’s sake, make sure it’s an internal one’. For a start, there are no awkward locks for you to fit back to front and it doesn’t matter quite so much if it doesn’t shut. The necessary equipment and the methodology are similar to shelf hanging except that it involves hinges that will initially be affixed to the wrong side of the door. In addition to your previously assembled toolkit you will also need a plane with which you will remove three inches from the top of the door and half an inch from the bottom, all at an angle of forty-five degrees. Do not even consider an electric plane unless you want to end up with something from which you can make the front of your bird box. A slight draught is one thing, but being able to walk between the newly fitted door and the frame without touching either is quite another. Never attempt to remove the bottom of a door with a saw; you will only end up having to nail it back on. Saws are seldom a good idea for the DIY enthusiast: you will never have the right one and you will always end up hacking bits off with a bread knife anyway.

Once you have hung your door, you may wish to paint it. Beware. However small you leave it, once painted it will always stick, even if it does not physically touch the frame. This is one of the great mysteries of our age, like why hats only ever suit somebody else. Now, there is, God forbid, just the outside chance that your experience of door painting might give you the taste for decorating in general. Please believe me when I tell you that shutting your tongue in the car boot will be less painful in the long run. If you must put stuff on the walls, at least stick to emulsion; that way you will only ruin the carpet and the furniture, the house itself will at least retain some value.

If, by some miracle, you emerge from the other side of painting a wall with your health and house intact, you may be determined to create a ‘feature wall’ by hanging wallpaper. If this is the case, I can say little except that you are obviously more daft than you look. If you cannot be dissuaded from such a course, then kindly allow me to offer some observations based solely upon my own bitter experience. I hope they help:

• All wallpaper is tapered. It might fit at the top, but never at the bottom.
• The pattern on wallpaper is never even. It might match at the top, but it will stray badly by the time you reach the gaps at the bottom.
• The ‘pattern repeat’ information on the label is merely a trap for the unwary.
• Wallpaper stretches – but never where you want it to.
• Wallpaper tears – but never until it’s nearly finished.
• Always cut the wallpaper around light switches and electric sockets whilst it is wet. Once it has dried you will never find them again.
• Scissors, even when new, are never sharp enough to cut wet wallpaper.
• Do not attempt to trim the wallpaper with a razor blade. Wet wallpaper is like blotting paper. A pint of blood will leach over an entire wall.
• Bubbles in drying wallpaper should be popped with a pin. Once popped, they should dry flat. They should, but they never do.
• If the bubbles make a shrieking noise when you pop them, you have probably papered over the cat.
• If you want to remove the wallpaper in six months time, you will require a flame-thrower.
• If you do not want to remove the wallpaper in six months time, it will fall off.
• The pattern is never upside down until after you have finished.

In the somewhat unlikely event that you might wish to attempt tiling, the one piece of advice I feel equipped to offer is not to worry too much about straight lines. Just be grateful if they stay on the wall.

For those of you with an even more adventurous DIY bent, there is always plumbing to be tackled. Much like binge drinking, it is only really a suitable pastime for the young and fit. Like binge drinking, it also tends to make an awful mess of the carpet. If you really must try your hand at plumbing, let me suggest something very simple at first. How about stopping the kitchen tap from dripping without ramming a huge lump of blu-tack up the end of it? Fitting a new washer to a tap is the simplest job in plumbing – which is why you can never find anybody to do it. If you feel as though you really want to attempt pipework, let me offer this solitary recommendation: always use compression joints in preference to the soldered variety. They will still leak, but at least you won’t burn the house down.

Which finally brings us to electrical works. In the UK it is now, thankfully, illegal for the amateur to carry out most electrical projects. DIY enthusiasts are largely restricted to changing socket fronts and light switches – although this still allows ample opportunity to fuse the rest of the neighbourhood. In the UK, the electrical wires are colour-coded; Live (brown), Neutral (blue) and Earth (yellow/green) with red and black thrown into lighting circuits. Improvisation is not encouraged: an incorrectly wired light switch may lead to a neighbourhood blackout, singed nasal hairs and fused dental work.

There are, of course, many other DIY tasks that you might consider taking on, from the most straightforward – drilling an outside wall in order to put up a hanging basket bracket – to the slightly more advanced task of rebuilding your house again afterwards. I may return to some of them at a later date – like a burglar returning to the scene of somebody else’s crime – not so much a harbinger of doom as the Prince of I-told-you-so. In the meantime, whatever you may choose to do, remember always why you are doing it: because you are too mean to pay somebody else to do it properly.

D.I.Y (part 1) – constructing bird boxes and hanging shelves.

black claw hammer on brown wooden plank

Easter. Time to face up to all those jobs you’ve been putting off since this time last year. Please accept my little Easter guide in the spirit in which it was written e.g. to give you something to do whilst you are attempting to concoct a reasonable-sounding excuse for not doing them. It is a little longer than normal, so it is split into two parts – not unlike sections of your anatomy if you are not careful…

As you grow older, and your time becomes less consumed by children, dangerous sports and Himalayan trekking holidays, you may feel the need to fill the void with a more age-appropriate pastime. Sadly, many will consider that sitting in an armchair drinking cider and doing the quick crossword is not such a hobby, and you may be forced to seek something a little more challenging. There will come a time in the life of all of us when we are tempted to say, “I’m not paying that. If I had the tools, I could do it myself, it can’t be that difficult.” Well, here’s my first warning for you: generally it is. All DIY projects end up costing considerably more than getting a tradesman in. A friend of mine once managed to remove the party wall between himself and the neighbouring bungalow whilst putting up a photo frame. He is, I believe, now a speech writer for Donald Trump. Of course, it would be wrong to suggest that all DIYers are so inept (there is, after all, only one Donald to go around) but the potential is always there. Never-the-less, if you feel you really must give it a go, I find it incumbent upon myself to offer such advice as I am able. Since you have probably decided to ignore my imploration to quit whilst you are ahead, e.g. before you have started, we may as well begin.

Before commencing any DIY project it is important to ensure that you have the following items easily to hand:

• Elastoplast
• Antiseptic Cream
• Mobile phone pre-programmed to dial 999
• Car: this is essential in order to fetch the vital components or tools that you always manage to forget until half way through the job
• A small child to blame when it all goes wrong.

Most prospective DIYers will begin with a little woodwork. The lure of producing a 3-legged coffee table, an asymmetrical magazine rack or a wonky pipe-rack will prove irresistible to many. In addition to the wood, which is available from any good timber merchants at little more than two to three times the price of a finished product, you will need tools. Woodworking tools are seldom, if ever, used for their intended purpose. A chisel is usually used to hack a notch into the top of a pozidrive screwhead when you do not have a pozidrive screwdriver with which to remove it. A smaller chisel is subsequently used to remove the screw when you discover that you have also forgotten the other screwdriver. A nail punch may then be employed to drive the screw head into the wood when you discover that the chisel will not remove it. Your shoe will be used when you discover that you have lost your hammer. You will also need a stout toolbox from which to misplace your tools.

Warning: All woodworking tools are either sharp, pointed or both. If you must keep woodworking chisels I suggest that you blunt them by knocking holes into walls when your drill has fused.

Let us begin by looking at a suitable early project for the keen DIY woodworker: the bird box. Begin by constructing a simple box of 4 equal sides, a top and a bottom which can be held together with nails and glue or, if you have misplaced the hammer and bought toothpaste instead of glue, blu-tack. The box should have a sloping roof (as it is likely to slope in all directions, just choose the surface that slopes the most) and a little hole at the front through which the birds can enter. When correctly assembled the box should be capable of being lifted without the bottom falling out. Take a photograph of the finished box before it ‘weathers’ (falls to pieces) and put it out into the garden in the spring. Having been affixed to a suitable tree, shed or bonfire, the nest box will remain unused for three years before you discover that the hole is too small. By this time the bottom will have fallen out anyway and the perch will have been taken away by a sparrow for nesting material.

At some stage all DIY enthusiasts will be called upon to hang a shelf. Before you commence the project you should amass the following:

• Electric drill
• Chuck key for a completely different drill
• 3 semi-rusted drill bits, none of which are suitable for masonry, one of which has not had its head broken off during a previous project
• A selection of wall plugs, all for the wrong kind of wall
• A selection of screws in different sizes, none of which match the wallplugs
• A selection of screwdrivers, none of which match the screws.

Warning: Electric tools offer all the risks associated with other woodworking equipment multiplied by 240 volts.

Choose a likely-looking drill bit and insert it into the drill chuck and tighten best you can. If it wobbles a bit, don’t worry too much unless it shoots out when you turn the drill on and decapitates your daughter’s goldfish. Then worry. Carefully measure and mark the walls and drill the holes in something resembling the right kind of area. Insert the wall plug. If it will not fit, chop a bit off it with a kitchen knife and hammer it in with a ladle. If it is too small, simply insert another plug inside it and hammer it in with a ladle. Put shelf against the wall and insert a screw into any hole that roughly matches a wall plug. Tighten as far as the screwdriver allows and then hammer in the rest of the way with a ladle. Now, take a photograph of your shelf in situ before it has the chance to fall from the wall and scalp the cat. Find something suitable to put on the shelf that will not roll down the slope and blu-tack it in place.

Warning: never sit underneath a shelf – particularly if you put it up.

John Junkin – a short recollection…

junkin

Right, so I was clearing some old files from my computer when I came across an old correspondence file and in it some letters that formed my half of a ‘conversation’ with John Junkin. If you don’t know the name, you must look him up (more of which to come below)…

In 1998 my great friend and then writing partner, Chris, came to me with an idea he had for a stage show based on an LP record he had of songs from the radio show ‘Hello Cheeky!’ We devised a working model for the show and began to write the script. Now, for those of you who do not know ‘Hello Cheeky!’, it was a radio comedy written and performed by, amongst others, John Junkin, Barry Cryer and Tim Brooke-Taylor. The songs were daft, even at the time they were written, but given the passage of time they had become little gems of nonsense (my own favourite, I recall, was ‘Tickling Mrs Adcock With A Lettuce’) and the premise of the show relied on multi-role playing, on-stage costume changes and basic chaos. It was a fun show and I liked it. Now, and here’s the point, so did Mr Junkin.

Let me tell you about John Junkin. John Junkin was a gifted actor and writer. He wrote and appeared in a number of radio comedies; he appeared in countless films – including ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ with the Beatles – on TV he worked with Tony Hancock, Spike Milligan and Marty Feldman – for three years he co-wrote the Morecambe & Wise TV shows for goodness sake! In later years he became an accomplished straight actor and he even had his own show on ITV. He had difficult times in his private and professional life, but to me, he remained a big deal. And he agreed to travel half the length of the country to spend some time with us and work on the script. He did this for no other reason than he believed in the show and he wanted it to go ahead. Unfortunately, for reasons I do not want to go into here, it became clear that the show would not be able to go ahead and the project petered out. This is not my point.

John Junkin later went on to find new fame as Ernie Johnson in Eastenders (2001-2), but when we met, a couple of years earlier, he had told me that he could not even find a publisher for his autobiography. This is a man who had worked with The Beatles and Marty Feldman; who had helped to re-shape radio comedy; who had written for Morecambe and Wise godammit! We kept in touch sporadically over the next two or three years and whilst enjoying his newly found soap-opera fame he asked me to update the stage play and send it to him. I did, of course. He did this because he remembered his very short time with us and thought that he still might be able to ‘do something’ with the show. This, also, is not my point.

John Junkin died on 7th March 2006. The show never got made. Now, here is my point. The John Junkin that I met was kind and funny. He was incredibly generous with his time. Chris and I were then ‘nobodies’ (a lofty position that I at least, still maintain), but he gave us time because he liked us, he liked the idea and he liked the script. Today I looked him up on Wikipedia. It lists his films, his TV and his radio work (it doesn’t even mention Morecambe & Wise). There are no eulogies. It is short and it is largely without praise and it left me wanting to tell this very short story because I can’t do anything about his Wikipedia page, but I really hope that somebody can…

NB I found this obituary from the Guardian. It tells a bit more of his story… https://www.theguardian.com/media/2006/mar/08/broadcasting.obituaries

The Utter Frustration of Not Being Able to Work Stuff Out…

I cannot begin to tell you how frustrated I get when I cannot work stuff out. At the moment I have an issue in posting comments on my followed sites on WordPress. I post the comment, it is there, I can see it. I can see the little timer thingy telling me how long it is since I posted the comment. Then I go off to do something else and when I come back to it, my comment has gone. It does not appear on the counter. It does not appear in the conversation. It does not appear to have been there in the first place. Except it was, I put it there.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I know that it doesn’t really matter. But, you know what, it bloody does! First off it matters that I can’t tell people when I really like what they have written. Not to them, I’m sure, but it does to me. Also it matters that I can’t seem to work out why it’s happening or how to sort it out. I’m no tech genius, but this should be easy to sort out. Somehow. But it’s not. I can’t do it. I am totally impotent and it is killing me. I am frustrated beyond words. I just keep on posting comments in case one of them sticks, hoping that I can remember what I did differently should it happen, but knowing that I won’t. If it suddenly sorts itself out, somebody is going to receive a whole lot of comments – all of them the same.

Anyway, until I work this out (actually until somebody else works this out for me) I’m not able to comment on the blogs I like, so, maybe you can just imagine that I have done. I would never bother to comment on blogs I don’t like, so you can discount that. If you haven’t received my comment, I can assure you that I have made it, and if I’ve made it, I can assure you that it is positive – otherwise I wouldn’t have made it.

There. I feel better now that you know and I can get on with my life… except that the pigging thing is haunting me and will do until I sort it out or it gives me a heart attack. Unfortunately I know which is the more likely.

Just as long as you know. If I haven’t commented, I probably have. If I have, it was almost certainly to say how much I liked what you had to say and please forgive me, but I am now going to drown out the pain with loud music and chocolate…

Under the Weather

…So here we are, my cold and I, trapped at home together with just an expectant laptop for company: eyes riveted to back of skull; tongue superglued to roof of mouth; nose dripping like newly installed washing machine. Try to bring focus to eyes that are vibrating like a tumble dryer with a dog in it. Laptop screen looks like amateur graffiti scrawled across a naked jogger’s buttocks. Try to listen to radio but, unless they’re playing Ethel Merman again, ears appear to be malfunctioning in some way. All sound seems to be filtered through several bales of cotton wool. Somehow, passageway between ears and brain is blocked like a service station latrine. Judging by unusual sounds reaching auditory cortex, ears may be stuffed with self-inflating sheep. Fevered brain is doing somersaults. Even beleaguered bladder has climbed aboard the trampoline. Just a cold – I know – just a cold, but, my age, who knows where it might lead…

Must grit teeth and try to write. Not easy as hands are employed in constant search for tissue and, anyway, dental bridge-work not really up to gritting these days. Nose glows like electricity smart meter with kettle on. Tissue feels like sandpaper. Hang on, tissue is sandpaper – no wonder couldn’t rub blemish out of front door yesterday. Must have been using Kleenex.

Sweating. Am wearing only boxer shorts. Thermometer shows body temperature normal. Shows room temperature 120˚. Central heating thermostat is stuck. Equatorial temperature in lounge bringing flies out of hibernation, blistering paint on radiators, melting curtains. Attempt to adjust thermostat. Search for superglue to reaffix little temperature knob to front of thermostat. Easy. Little knob no longer falls off thermostat. Unfortunately, little knob no longer turns either. Stuck somewhere between Timbuktu and summertime Mercury. Turn off central heating at boiler before house bricks melt. Temperature in house immediately drops to by twenty degrees. Flies are frozen on the wing; left gliding around the room like miniature microlight aircraft.

Nose running like rusted garden tap does not. Resume frantic search for tissues. Tissue box is empty. Blow nose on box. Ears screech. No, cat screeches; have stood on cat. Cat attempts to sharpen claws on leg. Flail at cat with one leg whilst attempting to shake him off with other. Become immediately aware of advisability of having at least fifty percent of available legs (eg one) firmly anchored to floor. Pick self up. Cat now sharpening claws on head. Cat 90% more effective than anti-dandruff shampoo. Take half a paracetemol – never take full dose: have vision of liver dissolving like new grouting on bathroom wall. Anyway, cannot read tablet box instructions to discern correct dosage. Contact lenses feel like dinner plates when I have cold and vision is filtered through net curtains. Looking out at the world is like my grandma looking out at next-door neighbours on a Saturday night. Would wear glasses, but put them down somewhere before lunch and have not been able to find them since. Can smell them though. Somewhere hot, little plastic molecules are reorganizing domestic arrangements. Head towards thick black smoke billowing from kitchen grill. Spectacles now smouldering black walnut. As is forgotten Welsh Rarebit. Remove battery from smoke alarm and realise that screeching in ears has not abated.

Common cold is very minor complaint – even for man – so why do I feel like death? (Once had a vision of death whilst travelling on the bus. Death is not a skeleton dressed in black. Death does not have name written in fire. Death drives a bottle green Toyota. Death is a double-glazing salesman with halitosis. Death has your name in his contacts list. He was given it by Facebook. Death is called Nigel.) This is the most trivial of illnesses, yet it manages to rob me of half of my ability to see, hear, smell, taste and breathe. God knows what an un-common cold must be like. Wonder if the Queen is immune to the common cold. Surely she cannot catch something so vulgar. I bet the footmen have it for her…

One of life’s great imponderables: why does huge, snotty sneeze always correspond with complete failure to locate tissues? Why does frantic dash around the house with mucus a-dangling always lead to empty cardboard tube where kitchen roll used to be? Ditto toilet roll. Where’s the bloody cat when you need it? Am left wondering where all this mucus actually comes from and, perhaps more worryingly, where it all goes when it is no longer dribbling out of my nose. Will explain to wife what happened to curtains later…

Mind is wandering. Could be delirium. Could be Buttercup Syrup overdose. Must concentrate. Must write blog before dark as all lights fused by decimated grill. Also candles melted by central heating and batteries welded to torch by strange green goo. Desperately need to stop nose running. A good strong blow should do it… There is nothing in human existence quite like the sound inside your ears when you have blown your nose and external air pressure struggles to restore some kind of equilibrium inside your head. Unless you have sat on the cat…

Hold tissue with one hand and type with other. Something real and contemporary. Something deep and satirical. Hard to be satirical with something buzzing in ears. More likely to be wasps than ideas. Wonder how to tackle wasps in ear? Perhaps should dangle over-ripe plum to side of head. Perhaps should have a root about with cotton bud. Wonder what to do when routine broggle leaves tiny cotton ‘bud’ in waxy recess of ear, other than look at little budless stick in dismay. Hopefully will fall out overnight – otherwise will book two weeks off work to visit A&E.

Very dark now. Cannot type in dark – especially as super-efficient laptop battery ran out after six minutes on stand-by and keyboard on mobile phone does not respond to mittened hands. Should go to bed. Need to rest. Lay head on pillow and go straight to sleep… soon… eventually… Nose immediately fills with God-knows-what. Eyes no longer close without strange rasping sound. Shattered taste buds detect faintest hint of yesterday’s sock and tonsils grow to size of Blue Whale’s adenoids (if you don’t believe they have them, look it up – I did). Brain works loose in skull and trickles out through nose…

Waiting for the Gas Man

close up photography of brass hot faucet

…So, the clocks have gone forward and, true to form, the boiler has seized the opportunity to cease to function. I am sitting, swaddled in woollen cardigan, whilst the ensuing privations plunge me back into an ocean of golden-hued rememberings of austere youth. You see, the gas boiler provides all of the hot water in our house and, until the man appears to fix it, all showers and baths (unless you fancy a cold one) are out of the question. It will soon be 24 hours since I showered and I am beginning to feel it. We have had no visitors today, not even the post lady, and I am beginning to wonder whether somebody has daubed ‘unclean’ on the front door. I find myself thrown back to the Saturday afternoon football matches of my youth. I can still remember the smell of the buses on the way home: a gentle collation of cigarette smoke, beer and, most of all, sweat. I remember the smell of sweat. Like an olfactory scent-track, it is the remembered aroma of sweat, somehow devoid of the acrid tang of body odour, that casts me back to childhood.

…Sunday night was bath night in our house. This meant that even in the summer, the fire was banked up and the ‘damper’ turned so that, by some process unfathomable to the six year old brain, hot water was produced. My brother and I shared a bath, a plastic bath rack across the middle to stop squabbling. A quick once over with Wright’s Coal-Tar Soap* and Vosene Shampoo before a towel-wrapped dash down the stairs to be dried in front of the coal fire. And no shower. The nearest we ever got to a shower was one of those rubber hose things; a sprinkler rose on one end and two connectors on the other that slipped over the taps. It took a good five minutes to adjust the taps, getting the water temperature just right before you turned the spray onto your hair, accidentally pulling the rubber connector from the cold tap – scalding your scalp whilst simultaneously flooding the bath with freezing water.

And the cold… I can feel the cold today. No central heating. In winter, save for the isolated pools of heat around the fire, most of the house was barely warmer than outside. Colder, sometimes, if linoleum* floors were involved. Who can forget the sensation of waking in a freezing bedroom; frost on the inside of the windows; crushed by the weight of the woollen blankets that separated you from the seeping hoar. And on top of it all, the Candlewick bedspread*. Always a candlewick bedspread: wherever you went, wherever you slept, always a candlewick bedspread. A bit like Rubik’s cube, one day everybody had one, the following day they were gone. Where did they all go? They died under the unremitting advance of the ‘Continental Quilt’. Perhaps they will return after Brexit…

Coldest of all was the trek to the toilet: through the quarry-tiled kitchen, out of the back door, along an unlit outside corridor, past the coalhouse and into the barely lit sanctuary of the privy. Why it wasn’t moved into the upstairs bathroom I do not know. This was the early 60’s. A toilet inside the house was still considered slightly outré and quite possibly not something that the powers-that-be considered desirable for council house tenants. I remember my parents being quite proud of the fact that it wasn’t quite outdoors. If it was raining, you didn’t actually get wet reaching it. It was to daddy-long-legs what the Serengeti was to wildebeest. It was patrolled by spiders of a size that would have troubled cats. It was also very cold and in the winter the water in the bowl did have a tendency to freeze, potentially leading to all manner of untoward morning incident.

Between the coal house and the toilet was a whitewashed windowless room that my mum referred to as the scullery. In it stood a tall propane container attached to a circular gas burner that sat beneath a copper barrel in which clothes were boiled. I remember the washing was taken out of the boiling tub and squeezed through the old wooden mangle before being hung out to dry; outside in the summer and in the scullery in the winter. I recall that the scullery always smelled of wet laundry and that my clothes always smelled of wet scullery. Most of all, I recollect the look of pride on my mum’s face when she left the ‘copper’ behind and invited the neighbours around to introduce them to the new Hoovermatic twin-tub washing machine that was housed in the kitchen. She demonstrated how clothes were washed in one side of the machine before being lifted out of the scalding water with a pair of wooden tongs and dropped into the spinner, where they were spun to within an inch of their life. Meanwhile the washing machine bucked and rhumba’d around the kitchen taking chunks out of the plaster, the furniture and the back of your head if you weren’t on your toes; slopping boiling water all over the floor because no-one had remembered to drain it by dropping the little hooked pipe over the side of the sink and pumping out the water prior to the spin.

Now, I realise that I am beginning to sound like one of Monty Python’s Four Yorkshiremen, but it just occurred to me how bereft I feel for the lack of something that my parents never for one second felt the lack of. Hot water at the turn of the tap, every time, with no prior groundwork; a winter home that inside is actually not colder than the outside; inside loos, automatic washing machines, dishwashers and a million other things I haven’t even thought of yet, none of which we need, all of which we feel keenly when we don’t have. And what really bothers me is that it only feels like yesterday that we didn’t have them, didn’t need them, didn’t necessarily even consider them desirable. It makes me realise that yesterday wasn’t necessarily better than today: that the here and now has much to commend it. Unless, of course, today you’re still waiting for the gas man…

*If you’re unsure, ask somebody, anybody, over the age of 60. They’ll explain.

An Homage to Inkbiotic

So, my must read of the day, every day, has become the short bulletin from the life of Inkbiotic, which succeeds in giving me a daily jolt of random thought that is both surreal and at the same time frighteningly real. It is sad, it is beautiful, it is joyful and I love it!

Sadly, my own attempts to distil the minutiae of my own mundane life into a piece of interest, have proved less successful…

Monday: Something is going on with my trousers. I’m not sure what, but nothing is staying where it was left. I’ve tried to sort myself out; straightened my undergarments; realigned my trousers; re-tucked my shirt, but without success. Something is still not right. My shirt tail keeps appearing over my waistband. There is nothing quite so unsavoury in a man of my age as the unsolicited view of an unclothed section of midriff. I’m not quite certain what to do. Should I start wearing high-waisted trousers like I did in the 70’s; can I buy longer shirts? Perhaps I should tuck my shirt into my pants as I appear to have done all the time through my black & white photographed childhood…
Drink: flat tonic water. Snack: dry-roasted peanuts. Soundtrack: Puncture Repair – Elbow.

Tuesday: Problem Solved. Was wearing pants back to front. This is what happens when you dress in the dark. Also, shirt had no tail. Should throw it out but, other than a severe shortfall in the tuck-able material department, it is fine. Threw it in wash basket. Will decide on its fate when it is washed.
Met a man at work today who said I could call him Geoff. The conversation went as follows:
‘It’s not my real name, but I’ve just moved up here and I’m going to tell all my new friends that it is. It’s not illegal is it?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Good, because I’m due back in prison in six weeks…’
He didn’t say why. I didn’t ask. It didn’t seem wise.
Drink: orange squash. Snack: Milky Bar. Soundtrack: (White Man) In Hammersmith Palais – The Clash.

Wednesday: Realised that shirt is not mine. Presumably one of son-in-law’s. He is taller than me. Shirt tail must barely pass his chest.
No work today, so sorted out pants drawer. Put those without labels at the bottom, thereby reducing chances of wearing them back-to-front. Not quite certain why back-to-front pants have such an impact on day. Like a lead weight on spirits (also, hard to be certain you haven’t trapped a woodlouse in the gusset).
Drink: coffee – black, decaffeinated. Snack: honey & yoghurt. Soundtrack: Woman Overboard – Judie Tzuke.

Thursday: Swivel chair has become too low for comfortable typing. Laptop at shoulder height. Pulled lever to adjust chair, but screw fell out. Could not find Allen Key to fit screw, so rammed screwdriver into little hole in screw head. Worked brilliantly until screwdriver skipped out of hole and pierced seat cushion which then appeared to be bleeding. Realised, after a second or two, that screwdriver had, in fact, encountered other hand on way to cushion. Bleeding finger currently swathed in many layers of toilet paper. Did not even bother to look for plasters. They will not be found. Almost certainly eaten by Pixies…
Drink: whisky. Snack: Mars Bar. Soundtrack: You Stay Here – Willy Porter.

Friday: ‘You can call me Geoff’ in to see me again today. Wanted to tell me a joke he had just heard – although he had forgotten part of it, so he was forced to improvise, delivering the punch-line half way through the story. He left the shop laughing loudly to himself. Apparently he is moving, so I won’t see him for a while. He wouldn’t say where he was going, only that he is going to be known as Ray when he gets there. I am not moving, so I can continue to call him Geoff. He asked if I could guess his real name. I couldn’t, so he wouldn’t tell me.
Why does an inside-out sock make your toes hurt?
Drink: red wine. Snack: chilli crisps with Marmite. Soundtrack: Next Year People – Colin Hay

Saturday: Ate single Fruit-tella at eleven o’clock and have been stuffing face ever since. They contain some kind of drug, I am certain. I probably have more sugar in me than a jar of Golden Syrup. Have only stopped eating because I feel so sick, but the craving is still there. Have hidden them at back of desk drawer, but I know that I will go back to them soon. May have to give them away – but no-one will want them as only pink ones left (despite the name, Fruit-tella do not have flavours, just colours).
Asparagus for dinner. Why does wee smell within fifteen minutes? How is that even possible?
Drink: rest of wine. Snack: chilli crisps without Marmite. Soundtrack: Blackstar – Bowie

Sunday: No work today and no Fruit-tella. In desperation I have eaten a bag of Skittles and two rolls of Love Hearts. My teeth are doing somersaults.
Tidied garden in sunshine and put anything not rusted over winter into shed. Tidied shed and put broken stuff into bin. Took bin to dump. Asked man at Skip 1 where to take broken garden fork. ‘Metal’s Skip 6,’ he said.
Took fork to Skip 6. ‘What you doing with that?’ asked man at Skip 6. ‘Wood goes in Skip 1.’
‘But, he said…’ I said.
‘Metal Skip 6. Wood Skip 1. Simple.’ Said the man at skip 6.
Tried to remove handle from tine-denuded fork, but to no avail. Compromised by throwing it in Skip 3 (General Waste) when no-one was looking.
Found a boiled sweet in the car on way home which has removed most of hard palate.
Drink: whisky. Snack: wrinkly black olives. Soundtrack: The Rattle Within – Richard Thompson.