A Little Fiction – OldenEye

…007 sat back in the deep, yielding burgundy leatherette swivel chair, his chin resting on the pyramid of his fingertips. His once-steely eyes were focussed glaucously on the minister, he could see his lips moving – just – but he did not hear a word he said. His mind was preoccupied with thoughts of how he would get out of the recliner without putting his back out. Again. The minister smiled benignly at the supposed indifference of his senior spy and flipped open the lid of an exquisitely inlaid wooden box. Involuntarily, Bond’s body tensed and he was again thankful for the ‘special’ pants in which his house-keeper had dressed him.
“Cigar, James?”
With an almost deft flick of his finely manicured hand, the super-spy fiddled at his ear, knocking the miniature hearing aid to the floor, where it whistled irritably. Bond struggled to his feet and reinserted the apparatus, back to front, so that it echoed eerily around the office. The minister smiled again. Obviously a little piece of Q’s genius, cunningly designed to foil concealed electronic bugs or somesuch. “Cigar, James?” he repeated.
“No thank you,” said Bond, who had decided not to try the swivel chair again, but was standing at the corner of the minister’s desk, resting his weight on a red telephone and wheezing gently. Having reinserted his hearing aid, Bond was able to hear the minister, whom he was saddened to hear was suffering from some sort of adenoidal problem. “I am very aware of my responsibilities as a role model for the young.” Advancing years had made Bond ever-more conscious of the debt he owed to the planet that he, in his prime, had saved on many occasions from nuclear destruction with little, if any, consideration to the biodegradability of the apparatus he employed. “Now,” he said. “What can I do for my country?”
The minister explained in great detail the nature of the latest threat posed to the free world by Ernst Blofeld and he was almost sure, at times, that Bond understood a little of what he said. Satisfied that he had his most senior agent on the job, the minister waved him away airily and 007 left the room, finding the correct door at only the third attempt.

In the stores, Q issued the special equipment. “Of course,” he said. “We’ve had to garage the Aston Martin, James. The emissions were simply unacceptable.” Bond nodded his understanding. He had a similar problem. “But we’ve beefed up this electric trike for you. Push this red button here and the booster cuts in giving you a top speed of anything up to eight miles an hour, depending on the wind; three-wheel drive will enable you to continue pursuit across all terrain – providing of course that it’s flat and surfaced; there’s an in-built MP3 player, pre-loaded with Coldplay’s greatest hits and concealed behind the seat here is one of those clever little adapters that allows you to plug your vehicle in anywhere in the world.”
Bond grinned. “And the range?”
“Twenty miles,” said Q. “Fifteen if you use the booster. Should be plenty to get you to the bus stop…”
Bond signed out an e-cigarette that concealed a radio transmitter, a comb that concealed a powerful magnet, and a tube of ointment that concealed the worst of his rash, all of which he stashed away under the cleverly designed hinged seat of the trike.

And so, as evening drew into night, James Bond trundled off into the enfolding darkness, unconcerned by the danger that lay ahead and untroubled by the gangs of youths that garlanded his route – mostly because his glasses were steamed up so that he couldn’t see them, and his hearing aid had fallen out in Penge.

…“A virgin martini please, shaken, not stirred…” The barman looked quizzically at Bond, who would have raised an eyebrow in reply, but he was wearing contact lenses and he didn’t have any spares. Bond moved his face very close to the barman. “Tonic water,” he whispered. “Slimline if possible, with ice and a slice… oh, and put one of those little umbrellas in it will you?” He began to rifle through his purse, searching for the correct change, when a female voice behind him said “Put that on my bill, would you?” The barman nodded and handed Bond his drink. The woman joined Bond at the bar, hoisting herself effortlessly onto the stool. Bond recalled his own battle to mount it with distaste. He could still feel the bruise swelling on his shin. The woman reached out an elegant hand. “008,” she said. “Pleased to meet you Mr Bond.”
“Likewise, I’m sure,” said Bond.
“Won’t you join me for dinner?” she smiled.

The meal was acceptable, although Bond would have preferred something a little more… fried, but the company was scintillating. Memories of conquests-past flooded Bond’s mind and he found himself, almost subconsciously, taking a little pill with his dessert. He knew that he could trust a Rennie to ensure a good night’s sleep. 008 sparkled. Her conversation was engaging, witty, seductive. She laughed and her laughter was like a summer breeze; bright and joyous. He laughed and coughed up a piece of carrot the size of Sheffield. A bubble of sauce escaped his nose. She spoke of life and love in a way that Bond had never considered. She spoke of Keats, Shelley and Chaucer almost as if she actually enjoyed them. In the past, of course, he would have seduced her, but something told him that, delightful though she was, it was just conceivable that she would not welcome the amorous advances of a sexagenarian lothario with sauce down his chin and a full floret of broccoli wedged under his dentures. Besides, she was probably more than capable of rendering him unconscious with a single chop to the throat.

Bond slept peacefully. He knew that 008 had been sent along to shadow him in his pursuit of Blofeld, but he realised immediately that she stood a much better chance of success alone. She was smart, she was beautiful, she was ruthless and, unlike him, she had never once mistaken the hotel ice machine for a urinal…

First published 04.03.2019

I love these little parodies. I suppose it stems back to a boyhood full of Mad Magazines. I will try to write some more…

At Last – The Eulogy You’ve All Been Waiting For

In my five years on this site I have returned to the subject of death on many occasions – in fact if you put ‘funeral’ into the search bar, you will find that it brings up virtually every post I have ever published – and I discover that in my post Part of the Process (01.05.23) I talked about the possibility of writing my own eulogy. I don’t think I have ever done this – although I have written a large number of posts since then which, alarmingly, I cannot remember – so here it is…

Colin came into this world at the dawning of 1959 which, typically, made him far too young to enjoy the benefits of The Swinging Sixties: no sex, no drugs, just loads of suet roll. Britain was still clambering its way out of post-war austerity and his childhood was a time of freedom and exploration, his playground a landscape of ad hoc dumps and tatterdemalion ruins, of permanently grazed knees and white dog-dirt. Colin was (to the best of his now meagre memory) the only person in his class with ginger hair and most certainly the only person in the entire school with the forename-that-time-forgot. Little did he know at the time that he would reach the age of one hundred and fifty years, fully sound in both mind and body. (I put that bit in to cheer myself up.)

At school he never rose to the exalted rank of milk or window monitor, but he did fall very easily into the role of class-pain-in-the-arse. Described by his teachers as ‘lively’ he none-the-less breezed through eleven plus exams – largely on the basis of being blithely ignorant that it was happening – and into Grammar School and an environment that left him feeling one degree south of normal for the rest of his life. His proudest achievement during this time being his school prize for Industry and Progress or, as it was known to the teachers Thick, but tries hard. The effort did not last, and he found it difficult to corral his brain into what it should be doing: Daydream became his default setting.

It is fair to say that everyone who ever knew him was, at some time, aware of his existence – beyond that I would not like to commit.

At the age of twenty-one he married his first love Beryl*, with whom he had two children – Gladys and Ethel* – and eventually four grandchildren – Cedric, Lilac, Anna and Viola* – all of whom are here today, weeping inconsolably and wringing their hands for all they are worth. He has left behind a hole that cannot be filled by money – because he hasn’t left any.

Throughout his life Colin was a man of principle which meant that he seldom paid for anything that did not come with a certificate. He was also prone to foible: his penchant for wearing hats that very clearly did not suit him, a passion for the short-lived television series El Dorado and the conviction that the world was being run by a giant lizard called Donald. His life-long passion was music despite his possession of an ear so tin that it may well have contained baked beans. He could not play and he could not sing, but he spent almost all of his life listening to those that could. He also had a soft spot for those who could not, but patently thought that they could.

Humour was his thing and he spent most of his life looking for – but seldom finding – it. He never did really grip the distinction between funny and weird. He was happy to think of himself as a successful husband, father and grandfather, based on his failure at pretty much everything else. He once scored 180 in darts, but it took him twenty-seven throws.

As you are all aware, Colin died as he would have liked to have lived, covered in chocolate and whisky – it is just unfortunate that it was still in a ten-ton truck at the time. At least it saved us the problem of spreading his ashes.

So, if you would all now like to stand, we can all say our final ‘goodbyes’ to him before you are invited to join the family at the pub where Colin has left something behind the bar for you all – it is called the bill…

*All names have been changed in order to ensure that nobody has to endure any association with this tosh.

A Self-Guide to Putting My House in Order

You know how it goes; there are certain times in your life when you feel it is important to put your house in order. For me, these usually occur when I am hanging several miles above the ground, encased in an aluminium tube with wings, suspended in the air by God-knows-what, and the drinks trolley is not getting around to me quickly enough. But not this time. On this occasion my desire to get all my ducks in a row is down to the imminent house move and runs in parallel to the physical act of putting all I have and am into cardboard boxes. These things are physical entities and yet they are no more solid than memory. A record collection may be nothing more than a half ton of plastic, but once it has gone into a box, it becomes the story of a life. I am not ‘packing up my troubles’, I am packing away my life.

Everything I own, everything I have packed, is nothing more than a crystallized memory. When I unpack my records they will not have changed, only the location will have shifted. What will be different will be my awareness of the ‘connection’. In the past, when I lifted a disc from the shelf, all I thought about was the music I was about to hear. When I put the same album on the new shelf for the first time I will remember how, when and why I bought it, the set list from the tour and the friends I went to see it with. Each track, each crackle and pop carries an echo of yesterday.

Obviously, not all memories are good ones so I must ask myself whether I should take this opportunity to throw out the bad ones. Should I, like Russian, Chinese and German governments before me, expunge certain elements of my past from the narrative, leaving gaps that I am able to fill with self-aggrandisement? Well, I’ve got plenty of age-old photographs – mostly featuring tank-tops or ill-advised facial hair – that could certainly get the chop. I have seldom kept diaries – well, never for long – because I quickly became aware that they were little more than a terminal whinge. They have long gone, shredding is not an option. I have boxes full of old scripts because I am far too lazy to transcribe them all onto digital media, but I will not destroy them: not because they are of a quality that will ever see them reworked, but because they are my very own, slightly dog-eared archive of all that I was and did. In there somewhere is every pre-computer joke I ever wrote. Stick an infinite number of monkeys at an infinite number of typewriters and sooner or later they will come up with exactly the same stuff – only funnier.

My books have gone into boxes and they will be coming out – no book burning here – despite the fact that I have re-read them all ad nauseum before, without remembering a single word of what they said (with the notable exception of the ending). Books don’t change, do they? (Unless, of course, they were originally written by Enid Blyton and featured a certain jam-related ragdoll.) I do retain the memory of when and why I first read them, and I never forget who first recommended a book to me.

And then I have my various bubble-wrapped knick-knacks (which I am guessing will be known to my French speaking readers as knack-knicks) which I surround myself with as pure memorabilia. Beautiful objets in my opinion; yet another thing I never bother to dust in my wife’s. When, in the fullness of a chainful of solicitors’ time, I unpack, I very much doubt that it will in any way enable me to get it all together. In short, when I place my old life into its new surroundings, it will remain to be very much in a house of disorder…

An Unsolicited Address to my Alma Mater

Each year many UK schools ask notable ex-pupils back to make an inspirational speech to current pupils. I have (of course) never been asked – not even my school was that crap – but if ever I was, this is the speech I would give:

…It is over fifty years since I first walked through the doors of this august establishment, almost immediately picking up a Saturday morning detention for looking at a prefect ‘the wrong way’. The school has, of course, in common with the rest of society, changed in the intervening years: as a first year pupil you are now unlikely to be sent by a sixth former to buy five Park Drive from the local shop; you will not find yourself scrubbing the school cloisters on a Saturday morning to the accompaniment of a bored tutor reading passages from Dostoevsky out loud; you have the right to refuse when invited into the changing rooms to see ‘the blue goldfish’. Walking around the school today I can immediately see the massive improvements in the fabric of the buildings: I note that hot water has been connected to the changing room showers and that the woodwork room now has an electricity supply that does not require the use of a thirty metre extension lead; the biology lab is no longer made of asbestos and the cockroaches are kept in a tank.

This school will open up a world of possibilities to you – some of them legal. Those of you fortunate enough to one day be put in charge of the tuck shop will learn all that you will ever need to know about finance, private enterprise, dentistry and clinical obesity. Never lose track of why you are here: your parents almost certainly did not want you anyway. You are here to learn but, let’s face it, if you can attract a girl or two by making smartarse remarks, win/win I’d say. During my first four years of incarceration… sorry, I mean education, this was an all-boys school: life passed by in a haze of learning, farting and catching a whack in the b*llocks if you didn’t have your wits about you. In the Fifth Form, at the age of 16, with more hormones flying around than a Chinese Sports Science facility, we were co-joined with a previously all-girls school and expected to drag some exam results out of the wreckage. I learned about patchouli oil, sweet cider and the fact that out of uniform schoolgirls did not look like schoolgirls whilst similarly divested of cap, satchel and blazer, boys looked exactly the same, but smelled faintly of their dad’s Old Spice.

Always be open to learning. Lessons do not only take place in the classroom. You will learn more about your place in the world in the shower after rugby than in a year’s worth of Social Studies. As you get older you will begin to regret every lesson you refused to learn. I, myself, failed miserably in both French and Geography and so, consequently, cannot rely on satellite navigation on the other side of the channel where, in my experience, all roads lead to someplace where nobody speaks English. My grip on scientific subjects was even more tenuous and generally involved either poisoning or electrocution. I did not concentrate; I did not try. I saw myself as a comedian, but the joke, as always, was on me. I left school with a handful of ‘O’ levels, a single (Art) ‘A’ level and no idea at all of what would become of me. Employers are perfectly aware that qualifications are not everything, but they can also spot a non-trier when they see one.

So, my message to you is a simple one: don’t be that non-trier or else you could, like me, in fifty years’ time find yourself giving a ‘talk’ to a group of totally disinterested, press-ganged teenage students for absolutely zero return – and nobody wants that, now do they?

A Little Fiction – Love Amongst the Ellipses…

Following on from the runaway success of my first attempt at geriatric erotic fiction (‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ is here) I decided to try my hand at Mills & Boon style romantic fiction. I’m not entirely sure that it followed the path that I intended. It’s not altogether easy to get to grips with this world of masterful men and passive women. Especially when you’re a fairly passive man…

“…”

The space between them crackled. The air was alive. Atom by atom the ether became electricity. His skin bristled with energy. He felt as though his whole body might be glowing, alive with a vigour that was not his own. The weight of all that surrounded him crowded in on him, until he feared he would no longer be able to breathe; as though he might drown in the nothingness that enveloped him.

From the moment he had first encountered her, rinsing her underwear in the village stream, she had fascinated him. Not least for the fact that she had a perfectly good washing machine at home. Her hair flowed down her back in luxurious blonde waves. Unfortunately, despite having an extraordinarily hirsute back, she had a totally bald head. She wore the kind of clothes that all serving girls wore when you’re looking to sell the film rights: riding britches and a blouse that appeared to be made from tracing paper. Her eyes betrayed a total innocence – or at least they lied about it very well. Her lips were full and red, the colour of blood. It was the third time that week that she had walked into the stable door. She refused to wear her spectacles because they hid the limpid nature of her eyes – and also because they were the kind that you get from the joke shop, with a plastic moustache fixed underneath them.

She looked at him now, stripped to his braces, and she couldn’t help but wonder why he was so keen to get his teeth straightened. They’d be alright if he didn’t keep taking them out and putting them in his back pocket every time somebody gave him a balloon to inflate. Her heart burned every time she heard his voice – especially if she had been eating onions. When they first met, he had swept her off her feet. He apologised at once; it was his first day driving the road sweeper. Mind you, it wasn’t his fault that she was lying in the gutter under the remnants of a whole flock of Kentucky pullets. He was everything she had ever wanted from a man. Well, he was a man. Rich, handsome, charming – he was none of those things, but he did have his own transport, even if it did have the council’s name stencilled on the side of it. He had the air of a Lord about him, although the nearest he actually came was drinking at The Nelson on a Saturday night. His yearning body told the tale of several hundred too many fried poultry dinners and his skin had the pallor and sheen of a pound of lard. He glistened with perspiration at the thought of having to blink. It was unlikely that he would ever make the Earth move for her – unless he sat down very sharply. He could not have ripped her bodice without becoming seriously short of breath. If he had thrown himself at her feet, it would have taken a crane to lift him. He was what her mother would have described as ‘wet’ – less Colin Firth, more Moray Firth – and his small-talk had the habit of bordering on the microscopic, which was fitting, as his breath resembled some kind of fungal growth and his brain was reminiscent of a single-celled organism.

They lay side by side on dew-fresh grass, dappled in the sunlight that filtered down through the woodland canopy, surrounded by the scent of dog-rose, bluebell and fox shit. She had seldom felt such a gathering storm within her since the day of her sexual awakening – watching the bare-chested farmhand scrub down the Hereford bull to prepare him for the market. The smell of Dettol, the memory of his muscular body made her glow even today. If only the stupid farmhand hadn’t kept getting in the way. Absent-mindedly he toyed with her nipple (She had only one? Ed.) which bloomed, like a rose, beneath its sheath of silk. She did the same with a boil in the middle of his chest. Only one of them burst.

He half opened his mouth to speak, uncertain of what he was to ask her; uncertain if to ask her. In his life, nothing was certain – except for the odd horse that his father swore must have been got at. “What did you say?” he sighed at last.
“When?” she asked, distracted momentarily from the search for her other nipple. (Hah!)
“At the top of the page.”
“Oh, I said ‘…’” she replied.
“No,” he whispered. “I meant before the ellipsis.”
“Before the what?”
“Before the three dots that you left at the end of the sentence, indicating that it… Oh, it doesn’t matter.”
“Three dots… Are you sure?”
“You just did it again!”
“I did? I don’t know. I…”
“You seem to finish most of your sentences that way.”
“Well, it’s that kind of book isn’t it? What’s left to the imagination is so much more important than what is said.”
“Oh, I see,” he said. “I suppose that explains the plot then…”
“Plot? I shouldn’t think so,” she said. “Anyway, it’s getting late. Shall we…?” she breathed – she had to, she would have died otherwise.
“Be a shame not to,” he said.
“…” she sighed…

First published 31.10.20

Well, there’s always time for plain daft in my estimation…

Just What is my Problem with ‘Grown-Up’ Films?

I have never been very good at ‘serious’. ‘Grown-up’ films and television series are a real problem for me. My attention span is that of an ADHD goldfish. Paranormal horror keeps me awake at night; gore makes me nauseous and I experience the hot-under-the-collar discomfort of all British men of my age when confronted with on-screen sex of any kind. At the very best I have to turn the sound off. I can manage ‘Action’ movies as long as they are not too demanding – and probably more importantly – not too loud. (It always seems to me that the volume of the special effects is in direct inverse proportion to that of the dialogue.) Indiana Jones, Star Wars, earlier James Bond – the latter ones require far too much attention – probably mark the limits of my Action threshold. My Refresh Rate is not what it was.

What this means is that I am not the kind of man that goes to the cinema too often these days: I can just about manage comedy and Disney (although, in my mid-sixties, I have to persuade a grandchild to come with me to the latter if I am not to appear unseemly). Comedy, it goes without saying, is not what it was, occurring now in only one of two forms: the gross-out or the rom-com. I really can’t get to grips with the gross-out – I have been a male teenager and it wasn’t funny even at the time – but I have developed a grudging affection for rom-com, without which I fear I would be petitioning Pixar for a release date for Toy Story 5 and camping outside the Chief Executive’s office in a Woody mask yelling ‘There’s a snake in my boot!’ at anyone brave enough to wander past without cackling something indecipherable into a walkie-talkie, throwing me through the door and using my ribs as a xylophone. I am a man who sought comedic solace in the Johnny English films for goodness sake, and I am not proud of it.

In today’s cinema it would appear that there is no com without rom and, if I’m honest, it has affected my whole viewing experience. I am totally incapable of watching anything without pairing people up, be they a febrile mess of confused neurons or a neatly packaged string of geek-generated pixels. Everything I watch I treat like some kind of public participation Speed Dating event. All I ever really hope for is a reasonable com to rom ratio. When it works, it works: When Harry Met Sally, almost anything by Richard Curtis, anything starring Simon Pegg, Crocodile Dundee… comedy can withstand years. Cars age, clothes age, attitudes change but funny can endure.

If I choose to review my favourite comedy films, I find that the list accords, more or less, with everybody else’s: Monty Python (Holy Grail & Life of Brian), Airplane, Blazing Saddles, Duck Soup, Annie Hall, The Producers, Young Frankenstein, Planes, Trains and Automobiles, The Pink Panther... (You may notice that there is nothing here produced since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Perhaps there is no comedy without rickets.) My list does differ from most of those I have read in that it does not include Dr Strangelove, but I was very young when I saw it for the first time and it scared the sh*t out of me. I have never fully recovered.) I have a particular soft spot for late nineties English comedies such as the sublime Brassed Off and Full Monty but there is so little to drag me away from vintage Columbo and Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads on TV now that I fear I may never visit the cinema again, which is a shame because you can never quite reproduce the experience of being bored witless by a film whilst sitting behind someone three feet taller than yourself, having a very loud conversation with a similarly proportioned partner as they eat nachos and suck Coca Cola through something that sounds like a bilge pump, now can you?…

On our Little Plot by the Plots – from Garden to Grave

It would be unforgivably disingenuous of me to claim that my relationship with gardening was built upon anything other than loathing. I enjoy a sunny day garden as much as the next man, but sunny day gardening is an entirely different matter. It seems to me that there is nothing entirely benign in the horticultural world: if it does not poison, then it stings, punctures or irritates. If it does none of the above, it sets down roots that, given time, will bring your house down. The array of hardware designed by human beings to ‘tame’ the garden flora is lethal. Having grown tired of removing stray digits with such things as hedge trimmers and lawn mowers, we electrified them in order to introduce the possible frisson of entire limb removal. Open the average garden shed and you will find sufficient offensive weaponry and chemical agents to carry out a coup. There is nothing in there that does not have the potential to cause severe harm. (I once gave myself a very passable black eye by walking into the edge of a badly suspended plastic sledge.) It is like Torquemada’s playground.

I have tried to like gardening but, my word, it’s boring: dig a hole, put something in it, watch it grow, watch it die, dig it up – at least coin collecting, for instance, comes with the jeopardy of mistakenly spending the only rare piece you have on a prune yoghurt and a pork pie. I spend weeks learning to recognise a hollyhock only to find that it is a foxglove. The only certainty I have is that if it is growing through the driveway, my wife does not want it there. I dig up nothing without written instructions, preferably in triplicate. I am allowed to kill the weeds in the lawn but I don’t like chemicals, so it is always a bit of a lottery: grab a trowel and resign myself that it’s 50/50 on whether the weed loses its root or I lose a finger. I was told by a good friend that one of the best things I could do was to put salt on unwanted weeds. I did so, but all I ended up with was a lawn filled with salty dandelions.

The new house has a much smaller garden than this one – unless you include the graveyard onto which it abuts, which will certainly make me more circumspect when digging. These days I can only complain about the stiffness of my own spine. I do not want to put myself in the position of finding somebody else’s when excavating for a water feature. It is, though, a very pretty garden full of… flowers and it has the kind of lawn that I could probably tend with nail scissors. It is, I am told, cottage garden-style, which always leaves me thinking about St Mary Mead – home of Miss Marple – and you know how many people died around there. All those picture-postcard gardens filled with foxgloves, hemlock, belladonna and aconitum (monkshood, wolfsbane, leopard’s bane, devil’s helmet or blue rocket – take your pick) there’s no wonder it was a village full of poisoners. I will approach the gardening as ever I do: with extreme reluctance. I will try not to rub up against anything toxic growing in our colourful little mini-plot, in the knowledge that, if I should none-the-less do so, all my wife has to do is ask someone to dump me over the back fence and hope that somebody will risk digging me a hole. As an investment, I think it has it all ends up over funeral plan insurance…

Synchronicity or Why Things Fall Into Place If You Let Them

Photo by Polina Tankilevitch on Pexels.com

You know how it goes. Every now and then you have nothing going on between your ears and you have to, none-the-less, encourage yourself to write about something. Today is one such day. I have nothing to say and just an hour to decide how to say it. I’ve got the music on shuffle and I’m working straight onto the computer, what could possibly go wrong? Strap in folks, today’s post is about…

…well I still don’t know if I’m honest, but Good Things Happen to Bad People (Richard Thompson) is playing as I start, so we’ll start there because they certainly do, but even more bad things happen to good people. Why? I really don’t know. I’ve always kind of believed in natural justice, but it has become a little lax in its application of late. I really do believe in karma, but I have a feeling that it doesn’t really hit its stride until after you’ve died and, for most of us, that’s a little bit late. I do allow myself to believe, every now and then, that I really am a quite decent person, but if I am going to be particularly charitable, I think that I might prefer my Walnut Whip reward whilst I’m still able to taste it.

And whilst karma can prove a very slippery concept, kismet is a little easier to understand because the next track along is The Masterplan (Oasis) and the thought that something is ‘meant to be’ or even pre-ordained is something that consoles us all when we are cursing our luck. ‘I suppose that was always going to happen’ means that no matter how hard we tried, no matter how catastrophically we failed, it wasn’t our fault. It was, like our chances of meeting a tall, dark stranger, written in the stars.

Which sentence found me – as it was obviously always meant to – washing up against the shores of Shut Your Eyes (Snow Patrol) and I realised how much the above all ties in with my genuine belief that it is, actually, possible to use The Force in real life. Sometimes things can, and do, just work out without conscious input. Shut your eyes and rely on instinct and you’ll be surprised how well things can turn out. Sometimes. Obviously I wouldn’t recommend it if you were walking along a rocky cliff edge or whittling wood with a Stanley Knife, but you get the idea I’m sure. Close your eyes and think your way through it, let the force of everything within you take over. Come on, the Force might be a fanciful concept, but it can’t cock things up more regularly than your brain, now can it?

And I drifted into Black Swan (Thom Yorke) and the theory – amongst others – that statistically unexpected events of massive importance have a disproportionate influence on the way that history develops. (I seriously have no idea why I know this shit – or think I know this shit. It is entirely possible that it is nothing to do with that and I may be confusing it with the Yellow Wagtail Theory, but working on the, almost certainly false, assumption that I am correct, it does fit in very nicely with the distinct possibility that the world would be better run by people who believe that they can feel the right way forward rather than those we have now, who simply feel that they know better than everybody else.)

Having set off, not half an hour ago, with no idea of where I was going, I seem to have been led through this post with my (metaphorical) eyes closed – not even The Force could make my ‘blind’ typing legible – by a random shuffle through thousands of disparate songs, and the synchronicity of it all is quite striking.

Which leaves me here, six hundred words in, wondering what fate will throw at me in order to bring it all to a close, and it tosses me Across the Universe (The Beatles) but, you know, life’s like that sometimes…

…Words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup
They slither wildly as they slip away across the universe… (Lennon/McCartney)

A Little Fiction – Party Impolitics

Carol had been working at the Wilton Tribune for seven years, never allowed to report on anything more glamorous than the Ryland cat show, the local ‘am-dram’ production of ‘All Quiet On The Western Front’ and The School Friend’s Fancy Dress Disco, Barbecue and Charity Beetle Drive. She was officially titled ‘Community Correspondent’, but known amongst her colleagues as ‘Our Man at the W.I.’.

Today she was scheduled to be reporting on the long term affects of a burst water main outside the Wilton sub-post office. The leak had been cleared up over a week ago and as far as she was aware, the only long term affects had been felt by a cardboard box-full of Reader’s Digest ‘You may already have won…..’ cards. Still, it was an assignment and it didn’t pay to argue with the editor. It would get her name in the paper and if all else failed she could always make something up. Perhaps if she tried really hard, she would be able to find a water damaged water bill…

Not to be. The Tribune’s senior leader writer had been taken ill with something that the whole staff sincerely hoped would be fatal and a replacement had to be found to cover the annual Society Bash. Carol was to hand when the Editor went ballistic and was duly despatched, party frocked and coiffured, to the local conference centre.

It was a nightmare. Wall-to-wall swank… and swankers. A room full of the kind of people that only ever get to fill a room of this kind. Carol stood, spiral bound notebook and pencil in hand, and watched as the dinner suits and sequined frocks wafted by: all designer-label mating-plumage, silicon-breasted, botoxed and lipo’d, carved and padded, a room full of semi-clothed and penguin-suited egos and shoulder chips. A human menagerie, doused in expensive perfume and naked ambition, smelling of pride and envy, jealousy and impotent rage.

She had tried to get a ‘star’ interview. She had tried to get any interview. She had tried to get some inside information from the caterers, from the waiters, from the bar staff, from the cat….. It was impossible; no-one willing to talk to a reporter wearing a borrowed frock and less-than-expensive perfume. No-one willing to talk to a woman who was asking questions that didn’t appear on the crib-sheet. No-one willing to talk to a woman who was ever-so-slightly tipsy…

She yearned for her long-since burst water main and its all-too-difficult-to-find water damage. She began to crave her W.I. meetings, lukewarm tea and soggy biscuits, interminable lectures, dried flower arrangements and crocheted blankets. She began to ache for the company of people in pleated dresses, high-necked woollies and sensible shoes. She began to long for gin and tonic. A very large gin and tonic, with very little tonic…

Then salvation arrived. It was in a face she knew. It was wearing an expensive dinner jacket of immaculate fit. It was looking cool and comfortable in a silken shirt and bow tie. It was tall, slightly ungainly, but none-the-less relaxed and at home in these opulent surroundings. Damien West, the most eligible boy in the whole class of ’99 strode easily through the gathered throng towards her.

“Carol… It is you, isn’t it?”
“I think so,” she said, aware of the banality of her answer and desperately eager for the floor to swallow her up. He laughed. He laughed! Joy of joys, he laughed. She wanted to laugh too, but embarrassment led her to try and hide it and, in doing so, she merely succeeded in contorting her face into some kind of grotesque halloween mask. She feared she might be dribbling. “Save me, God. Please save me…” And then she remembered that he had crossed the room to come to her. Of all the people in the room, he had come to her. And he’d remembered her name.
“So, what are you doing at this boring old lot?” he asked. He sounded friendly, he sounded interested and Carol felt closer to heaven than she thought she had ever been.
She took a deep breath, determined to speak without stumbling over her words. She looked up into the crystal blue eyes and knew that it wouldn’t be possible. “I just, that is I… I work for a newspaper. I have to cover this… I have to get, that is, I have to try to get some interviews. I haven’t done very well up to now. Nobody wants to talk to a nobody. I might have had a glass or two of wine…”
“You could interview me,” he said before leaning in and whispering conspiratorially into her ear “I don’t blame you, I don’t think anyone can make it through one of these evenings sober.”

Carol studied his face. He meant it, he really meant it. She smiled in gratitude, hoping that it didn’t look too much like a gloat. And then she noticed for the first time the elegant woman at his side. Her blonde hair was expensively styled, her clothes had obviously been designed especially for her, her perfume was intoxicating. She was every inch the professional woman, every man’s dream and every fibre with Damien. She leaned towards him and whispered into his ear before slipping away into the crowd. He smiled and nodded before turning back to Carol. “Do you know, at school, I used to loiter around the corridors, waiting for you to come along, hoping I would be able to speak to you, but you seldom came my way. When you did, I could never think of anything to say.”
“I was hanging around some other corridor, waiting for you. I could never speak to you either.”
“It’s strange,” he said. “When you look back, things could have been so different.”
“Would you have wanted them to be?”
“Not everything, for sure, but you always wonder, don’t you. ‘What if’s’.” His colleague/agent/companion/partner/wife (bitch, bitch, bitch!) appeared carrying champagne. She handed a glass to Carol and one to Damien before taking up station once more at his side.

Carol coughed her thanks and stared hopelessly from her notebook to the floor, to Damien and his tall and perfectly proportioned odalisque and then back to Damien, who was looking at her expectantly. She took her cue.
“You’re a famous person these days. A well-known and respected author. Is there any facet of your fame that you find difficult to handle?” An obvious, but sensible attempt to get the interview back onto some sort of professional footing.
“Evenings like this,” he said. “Usually…”
“…I used to stand in the trees, you know, watching you playing football,” she whispered.
“I know.”
“You know?”
“Well, I know that you used to stand in the trees. I presumed you were watching somebody else.”
She laughed, more loudly than she should have. “Half the Sixth Form was in those trees,” she looked down.
“I didn’t realise teenage girls had a ‘thing’ about uncoordinated boys with gangly limbs and knobbly knees.” Embarrassment flashed across Damien’s face. He turned to his companion who smiled benignly, like a mother. Suitably assured he turned back to face Carol and she realised she had shocked him. Oh God, she didn’t want to blow it now. She had to get a decent interview. “I’m sorry.” She was stammering again.
“Don’t be,” he said. “It’s erhm… flattering, I guess.”

Carol coughed, nervous and excited. “Did you… Have you based any of your characters on people that you have known?” She was trying again, to get the interview back on track, but at the same time, she couldn’t help but fish.
“No.” His answer was definite and a profound disappointment. “But you’ll be in my next book, I promise.”
“The villain?”
“The love interest.”

He smiled. She swallowed and felt her whole body flush red. In her mind, they were now alone, the crowds around them ethereal, insubstantial. For reasons she did not understand she was overcome by anger and hunger and injustice and need… mostly need.

“You must have known how I felt about you then, but I suppose I was just one of many. Besides…” she was becoming indiscreet and she knew it. The couple of glasses of wine were actually many and they had been washed down with an equal number of gins. They had fortified her resolve, galvanised and empowered her ragged self-belief and honed her indignation into a dagger. Carol Massingham felt herself rising. She prickled with resentment and exhilaration. “…You had someone special, don’t you remember? The skinny redhead from the fourth form. She had the most awful buck teeth. She wouldn’t leave you alone, stuck to you like glue she did. You must remember. I wonder what ever happened to her?”

“I got myself a dentist,” said the goddess at Damien’s side. “Put some weight on; dyed my hair…”

First Published 12.09.20

It’s a hoary old joke I know, but I quite like the telling…

How to Bridge the Gender Divide without Devouring the Father of Your Children

Any person who is – or has ever been – in a long-term relationship will attest to this simple fact: whatever you are doing, it is less important than what your partner wants you to be doing. This rule applies even if what you are doing is what they asked you to do. It is one of life’s imponderables, like an ever-expanding Universe, electricity and Donald Trump, there is no rational explanation for it. I no longer worry about it. If I spent my life worrying about things that I do not understand, I would have no time left for breathing.

There is little doubt that men and women were put on this Earth in order to bewilder one another. There is no battle of the sexes, just bafflement. Spending life with a member of the opposite sex is like finding yourself locked in a room with Professor Brian Cox – not entirely unpleasant, but very confusing none-the-less. The more we try to work it out, the less we seem to understand it. We (men and women) are like two primordial atoms forced to occupy the same space and time… in every dream home a Big Bang is pending.

Of course, not all domestic arrangements equate to the stereotypical male/female tinderbox. (Basic honesty – and embedded heterosexual logic – forces me to admit here that if I came back to Earth as a woman I confidently predict that I would be a gay one. My poor simple brain does not allow me to compute how something as simple as a total change in hormones could ever persuade me to share an intimate relationship with anyone who is covered in bristles and smells his fingers after scratching his arse.) Anyway… most single-sex couples I know continue to divide household tasks along the typical female/male lines: one partner organises the cooking, the cleaning, interior design, DIY, finances etc etc and the other one puts the bins out.

I am uncertain how bickering duties are assigned. I can speculate of course – I am told that I am abnormally good at it – that one partner may be somewhat more ‘measured’ in their reactions to everyday setbacks, considering the approach that will be most appropriate before acting in a considered and reasonable manner… and the other one will still put the bins out.

In the animal kingdom, gendered rules remain strictly structured: male gorillas beat their chests, female spiders eat their mates. Female lions hunt, but males eat the kill first. By and large male mammals are not big on parental responsibility. Many birds – evolved dinosaurs we are told – share parental duties, whilst male penguins also go in for a spot of solo childcare – as do male seahorses – although I believe that female camels make very poor housekeepers.

What we humans have, of course, is the ability to rationalise, communicate and ultimately row*. We are good at it. Evolution has decided that we should be by nature monogamous, but has somehow not equipped us to be so without petulance on a monumental scale. Dissatisfaction seems to be fundamental to the human psyche. Our high-end evolutionary status**, however, ensures that we settle our marital disputes relatively amicably – at least no-one gets eaten – and discontent seldom escalates to loathing – unless somebody forgets to put the bins out…

*It is only very recently that I was made aware that ‘having a row’ is a particularly British turn of phrase. I believe in American it would be known as ‘having a fight’. We, in the UK, also use this phrase, but here it generally relates to something very much more physical, more often than not, between two irrationally irate and drunken men or, in Eastenders, between two middle-aged women with the make-up skills of Jackson Pollock, the feral instincts of a weasel and the inability to correctly pronounce any word that contains the letter ‘aitch’ (including the word ‘aitch’.).

**Forgive me. I write a light-hearted blog. I am aware that the world is full of un-evolved shits (when one would be too many) and I wish them nothing but ill. They will go on to be politicians and their lives will be comfortable but barren – like the back seat of the bus in my youth.