A Little Fiction – A One Night Stand

Vivien checked her hair and make-up in the bathroom mirror: nothing special, but nothing glaringly out of place. The wisps of grey that flowed through the waves of her hair, like oil on the surface of a running stream, were highlighted in the harsh glare of the lights that surrounded the mirror but, she was pleased to note, no thicker than they had appeared the night before. She was wearing her evening make-up; what her mother always referred to as ‘war-paint’: eye-shadow was just a shade darker than she wore during the day, her cheeks a shade rosier, her lips redder, fuller and altogether shinier. She smiled at her reflection, ‘Not too shabby,’ she said ‘Not too shabby at all,’ and she turned to open the door, a delicate ghost of perfume trailing behind her as she left.

In the lounge of her tidy little flat, her guest sat silently on one side of the two-seater settee, leaving just enough room for her to settle beside him, but instead of doing so, she bustled. ‘I’ll put the kettle on,’ she said. ‘I’m sure you’d like tea. I have some iced rings in the cupboard. I so like an iced ring with a cup of tea, don’t you? Yes, we’ll have some iced rings too.’ She hummed happily to herself as she laid a tray with biscuits, cups, milk and sugar, and patiently warmed the teapot before pouring the boiling water over the tea and carrying the tray to the small table in front of the settee.

‘Are you a milk first man, or a tea first man, Mr Pettigrew? I always put the milk in first…’ Without waiting for a reply, she carefully poured a small amount of milk into each china cup and poured the tea, spilling a little onto the table. ‘Oh, I’ll get a cloth,’ she dashed towards the sink. ‘We don’t want that dripping down onto your shoes, do we?’ She fussed around, wiping the table, topping up his cup although he drank nothing, sipping her own tea and eating iced rings for two, spinning like the dynamo on a free-wheeling bicycle, creating more energy than she used. She chatted lightly, intimately, smoothing her hair from time to time as she caught her reflection in the mirror; straightening her clothes, brightening her smile.

Throughout it all, Lawrence Pettigrew said nothing. He reminded Vivien of the strong, silent men she remembered from the films of her youth. He reminded her of her father in the photo her mother kept in her purse; a young man before he went off to fight. Before he came back as the empty shell he had become. Before then… Her guest’s reticence did not disturb her, she simply took it upon herself to fill in the silence with her own happy chatter, asking questions that required no answers, telling stories that called for no response. She was happy just to be in company and Mr Pettigrew who, whilst by no means demonstrative, was at least making no big show of wanting to leave. Fiona was, she thought without irony, as happy as Larry.

Eventually she settled beside him on the sofa and, with little hesitation or resistance, rested her head on his shoulder. It was soft, warm and yielding. She sighed gently and a small bead of saliva escaped her lips and landed on his cheek like a kiss. She tutted quietly and wiped it from his face with the edge of her sleeve; watching as his smile slowly decayed from a warm and friendly openness, to a strangely asymmetrical leer that spread across his cheek. She moistened her lips with her tongue and yawned with an exaggerated spread of her arms. ‘Well, I think it’s time for me to go to bed now,’ she said. ‘You look very drawn.’

Mr Pettigrew was unmoving, helpless to refuse, as Vivien laid him on her bed. ‘This won’t hurt at all,’ she giggled lightly. Slowly she teased the rubber band that secured his balloon head away from his pillow body, and released it with an airy indifference, allowing it to bounce away towards the door. ‘There,’ she said. ‘Let me help you out of that shirt.’ She pulled the old ‘T’ shirt from his memory-foam body with a soft care, placing it at the foot of the bed before giving his body a jolly good fluffing up and, laying her head gently against his chest, closed her eyes and drifted into a dark, dream-filled sleep…

First published 08.08.2020

I first encountered Vivien in a book I attempted to write called ‘Lonely People’ which I saw as a ‘concept album’ in book form. It, like many such ideas, never reached fruition, but I remembered her and she seemed to fit so snugly here…

Insomnia

2am…

I spend much of my life awake, most of it when I should not be. Don’t fret, I am also almost invariably awake when I should be. Sleep occupies little of my life, but most of my thoughts. In the night my thoughts are febrile little beasts. I gather them up in the morning, like a shepherd might pull together a flock of nocturnal blancmanges, and try to slop them back into the appropriate vessels. Writing, for me, is like assembling a Haynes Manual for my head.

Back in the day, I would face down the night and write with no intention other than to be funny¹: no axe to grind, no tale to tell – or at least no moral to latch onto it – just a million jokes in my head and the need to release them for the world’s admiration. You would not believe the sleep I lost in letting them go, nor how many of them, like maladjusted pigeons, came straight back home to roost. I don’t do it so much now: the bagful of jokes thing. I don’t know why. It could be my age I suppose. Somehow I need things to make sense these days, but I’m trying to get over it. Logic is the death of comedy I know. If you need to explain a joke, it is almost certainly not funny. If you can explain a joke, it is definitely not funny.

Anyone who has ever attempted to define what makes anything amusing is trudging along the road to insanity. Time and place has a part to play (funerals and bankruptcy hearings seldom offer the best of audiences) as does the way you tell ‘em: we all have the capacity to bugger up a perfectly good joke. Don’t worry, it won’t cost you friends: what on earth would they laugh at if you weren’t so inept? Anyway, nobody actually tells jokes any more, do they? Jokes are last year’s funny. The chickens have stopped crossing the road.

I am by nature a joker and occasionally, like everybody else in this imperfect world, I say things that I instantly regret and I instantly say things that I later regret. My brain clicks over things that I am, at times, not quick enough to manage. It makes decisions over which I have no control, long before I am prepared to make them. I am what used to be called quick-witted, and the problem with that is that the filters often do not click into place as quickly as my big, stupid mouth. Age has given me the capacity to see it coming. Discretion waves, like Jenny Agutter’s red bloomers, in the face of the disaster-bound express.

There are times when I wish I could be more forthright, but it’s difficult. It’s not the way I was made. People (my grandma in particular) would tell you that I do not have a malicious bone in my body, and I know they are right, because I am a jellyfish. My entire capacity to cause pain lies solely in my inadvertent aptitude to stand on other people’s toes in the ice cream queue and to trap my dick in my own zip². I am the clown whose car refuses to fall apart, whose bow-tie refuses to spin, whose trousers are already full of custard. I am the bloody idiot in the bowler hat and the brightly checked suit that absolutely everybody finds annoying. The red nose is all my own.

So I think that what has happened to me lately is that I have stopped attempting to write jokes that nobody finds funny, aware, as I am, that an unfunny joke is nothing but polemic. (I know this, because I just looked it up,

after dismissing my usual method of splitting words I do not understand into constituent parts in order to get the drift, e.g. pole = stick or stand and mic = microphone. Polemic is a microphone stand. I have spent years thinking that I am full of shit, only to discover that I am actually full of microphone stands.) It is a sobering thought. Like a glass of coke and a fried egg sandwich, it shouldn’t work, but often it does³.

My younger life was shaped by Spike Milligan, Monty Python and Mad Magazine’s Dave Berg. I spent many years trying to find The lighter Side of things. Only recently have I grown to understand that most of them don’t have one. Myquest to try to find the right thing to say leads me, as ever it did, to 3am and camomile tea, to 4am and a half-lit tryst with a pen and a notepad, to 5am and coffee that stains the teaspoon, with Marmite on toast. Marmite is the last surrender. Sleep and yeast extract are like Abbott and Costello, they look good on paper, but in real life they are totally incompatible.

One of these stubbornly long nights I will stumble across the chicken that did cross the road and I will ask why it did it. Hopefully I will stay awake long enough to hear the answer…

¹ I reserve the right to believe that I once was.
² Definitely not in the ice cream queue.
³ In my own (happily limited) experience, the only fully guaranteed hangover cure.

Where does it come from?
Where does it go?
Flowing over your skin
Walking and talking
Dancing ‘til dawn
When you just can’t give in to
Insomnia… Insomnia – Wishbone Ash (Martin Turner)

Private Investigations

“…You no longer have an NHS dentist,” they said. “You will be put on a waiting list until we can replace her,” they said, “but in the meantime you still need your six-monthly check-up.”
“O.K.” I said.
“£85” they said.
My former dentist, Krystyna (whose name has been changed to protect the innocent) was, due in part to a limited grasp of the English language, delightfully direct; she patted my hand when she saw I was stressed; she called me ‘my love’. She had departed, I presume, in search of pastures new, and I can’t say that I blame her…

I have had, to my recollection, only four dentists during my adult life yet now, here I was, flat on my back, staring into a blinding white light with number five peering wonderingly into my mouth. (I am ashamed to admit that I do not know her name – and, having just checked through all the paperwork, can find no immediate way of finding it – so I cannot offer her the anonymity of a pseudonym.) “When did you last have X-Rays?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I answered. “Isn’t it on my records?”
Her nurse tapped on the laptop whilst she looked over her shoulder, holding latex-gloved hands at shoulder height like a 1950’s minstrel singer. “You need X-Rays,” she said.
“O.K.” I replied.
“£30,” she said. “You need to change the way you are brushing your teeth. You are brushing too hard and for too long. Buy a toothbrush with a timer and a pressure sensor and obey it. Do you understand?”
I said that I have been married for forty years, I certainly understand ‘obey’.
“It will not be easy,” she continued, “because…”
“I am old?…” She gave me a look that said ‘not only old, but terminally stupid.’ She sighed. “…because you have been brushing the wrong way for many years.” I wasn’t keen on the emphasis she placed on ‘many’. ‘Many years,’ I thought, ‘during which I have never missed a dental appointment. It’s a shame that nobody has mentioned this to me before.’
“When did you last see the Hygienist?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I answered truthfully. My rational brain is overwhelmed with panic at the dentist. I have always trudged from chair to chair at the dentist’s will, opening wide and closing tight as per instructions, trying as hard as I can to not think about it. God alone knows what they are actually doing.
“You need a deep-clean,” she said.
“O.K.” I said.
“£120” she said.

So that is where I have just been. I feel like I have been punched in the mouth, but my teeth are shiny. My gums are bleeding profusely, but healthy. I am told that the bleeding will stop in a week or two. Until then I must continue to brush as per the new regime. The blood (providing it is not gushing) is, I am assured, a good sign. It shows my gums are healthy. It will gradually subside over a few weeks. I wanted to ask why, if the bleeding was a good thing, the stopping wasn’t a bad one, but I didn’t want another look. If I’m honest, I really liked her: she smiled a lot, she was patient and she continually paused to give me a moment to compose myself, breathe and swallow. Laying back in the dentist chair, I do tend to put all other bodily imperatives on hold.
“O.K.” she said. “You can go now.” It reminded me of the over-friendly tone employed by a headmaster after he had administered a caning.
“I’ll book a check up in six months time,” I said.
“Better make it four,” she said.
“O.K.” I said…

It’s a mystery to me
The game commences
For the usual fee
Plus expenses… Private Investigations – Dire Straits (Mark Knopfler)

*Names have been changed to protect the innocent.

Dazed and Confused

The moment having long gone when I may have tried to do anything about it, I feel that the time is now ripe for a terminal whine about the real reason behind our upcoming move to more ‘two old people-sized’ living quarters. It is not our current house that is getting us down, but the proximity of those that are sprouting up around it. People need places to live – I get that – even when the houses that are being built are in no way affordable by those who need them. This is a tiny island with an awful lot of people on it (and, sadly, a lot of awful people). This is not a blast about the blight on our ever-diminishing green sward, nor the impact on those who live just inches – literally – from the ringworm spread of ‘progress’, this is a whinge about the system that allows it to happen, even when it knows it really should not.

The houses behind us now loom, towering over us raised, as they are, to ‘prevent flooding’ – but more on that later…

The news of the planning application – many years ago now – was greeted with the usual howls of dismay by our little villageful of NIMBY’s. What is wrong with doubling the village’s size in one fell swoop? What difference could a mere 350 houses make to an already sagging village infrastructure? We would find out at the planning meeting. We did. Initially the meeting heard from the village Flood Prevention Officer who gave evidence that the scale of development would be a disaster for the already stressed drainage system. (A problem with which I closely identify, should I drink more than two pre-lunch coffees.) It then heard from representatives of the health centre, the schools and the shops, all of whom attested that they would not be able to cope without serious investment and expansion. It then heard from the builders who said they had a responsibility to ensure that their new properties would not flood. They intended to achieve this by building the houses on higher ground than those surrounding them. “Won’t that just cause flooding in the neighbouring properties?” they were asked. “Not our responsibility,” they said. They were asked about the potential problems caused by up to 700 new children being crammed into local schools, over a thousand souls crushed into the care of a teetering health centre, possibly 700 new cars leaving the village for the city every morning on crumbling country roads. “Not our responsibility,” they said. So whose responsibility could it be? Surely the man from the council would be able to inform us. He stood, he spoke and this (paraphrased to the very best of my memory) is what he said.

“You can object to the building,” he said, “but you will be wasting your time. This development will go ahead. The government wants us to build 350 houses in this area and by putting them all here, we won’t have to worry about anywhere else. (‘Including’ – he did not say – ‘where I live.’) The alternative ‘brown-field’ sites in the city? They will take so much cleaning up. It’s much better if we just leave them derelict. Farm land is so much easier. The despoliation of your outlook and your way of life, by the way, is not a valid complaint – so don’t bother with that one. We don’t have the money to improve the village amenities, but it doesn’t really matter because it is not our responsibility either. As for flooding, we agree that it is likely to occur, but it will be at the lower end of the village where the drainage is already overloaded, so we can’t possibly be blamed for that, can we? Besides, if you don’t like it, you could always try to sell your poor, devalued houses and move out. I don’t care: I live in one of the places that is now going to escape development. Thank you for coming – it is always important to gauge local opinion – but you’ve totally wasted your time. Goodbye…” And so, somewhat bewildered, we wandered out of the village hall, dazed and confused by the blinding inevitability of a fait that was very much accompli.

…And that brings us to where we are today, backing on to two giant, raised, five-bedroom houses that are certainly going to be the answer to the housing crisis – just the thing to help people clamber onto the housing ladder – at the fringes of a giant housing estate that develops in fits and starts whilst they wait for non-existent buyers to come forward waving wads of cash. Democracy in action. It has finally ground us down. We are moving to a bungalow that is already surrounded on all sides, happy that there should be no potential for a behemoth to appear inches from our back fence – until, of course, they tell us that next door’s forty-eight storey HMO extension no longer needs planning permission and, “even if it did, don’t be a NIMBY, it is for the greater good and, best of all, it’s nowhere near my back yard…”

Dazed and Confused – Led Zeppelin (Jimmy Page) has no relevance whatsoever, other than its title…

NIMBY is an abusive acronym (Not In My Back Yard) aimed at those who strive to stop ill-advised developments by those who ensure that it is nowhere near their own, probably extensive, back gardens…

HMO (House of Multiple Occupancy) – a means of squeezing thirty-eight homeless souls into a three bedroom town house with a single bathroom and a kitchen within which it would prove impossible to swing a rat whilst becoming very rich on multiple rents and buying a house with the kind of back garden for which you would need a telescope to see whatever anyone might manage to build at the back of it…

A Little Fiction – The Discovery of Fire

The man on the raised rocky platform raised himself unsteadily to almost his full height. He was still slightly unused to standing: he felt distinctly giddy when his knuckles were off the floor. Never the less he steadied himself against the rocky outcrop and peered down at the gaggle of fellow troglodytes that had assembled below him, squatting uncomfortably on the rocky ground and checking one another for edible parasites. He raised his hand and a hush descended on the crowd, broken only by the sound of scratching and the occasional ‘pop’ of a tick caught between thumb and forefinger.
‘Come on,’ yelled one of the homunculi gathered at his feet, ‘We haven’t got all day, you know. We got holes to go to, stuff to, wosname, hunt, stuff to gather.’ There was a gentle hum of agreement; the crowd were getting restless. ‘Best get on with it,’ thought the man on the rock, ‘Before they start chucking those sharpened flints about.’
‘Fellow cave dwellers,’ he began ‘I have brought you here today to disclose my latest, life-enhancing invention, which, I am sure you will agree, will revolutionise our very way of life.’
‘I hope it’s better than that flippin’ limestone boat you had us all in last week,’ said a man in goatskin. ‘Damn lucky we could all, what do you call it, swim.’
The man on the platform gave goatskin one of his hardest stares before stepping triumphantly to one side in order to reveal the fire that flickered behind him. ‘Behold,’ he said proudly. There followed a long silence, which at first he took for awe, but which was, in fact, fuelled by indifference. Eventually goatskin spoke for the crowd.
‘Very nice, I’m sure,’ he said. ‘What’s it do?’
‘It is fire!’ yelled the inventor. ‘It gives you warmth and light. It scares away the savage beasts of the night.’ The man in the goat skin leaned forward and rested a hairy forefinger on the glowing embers. It took him a moment to recognise the sensation as pain and, by the time he removed it, his finger was a blackened stump. ‘And,’ continued the firestarter, ‘You can cook with it.’
‘Cook?’ cried a woman examining goatskin’s charred digit. She turned to face the crowd. ‘He’s making words up now. What is cook?’
The man turned back to the fire and, with a flourish, withdrew a hunk of mammoth from the flames on the end of a stick. ‘Try that,’ he said, handing it to the woman, who took a rapid mouthful and then screamed in pain, waking the baby at her breast.
‘Not the stick,’ said the man. ‘Try the meat.’
Warily, the woman eyed the meat. ‘It’s all black,’ she said.
‘A little well done I’ll admit,’ he acquiesced. ‘I’ve not quite got on top of the timings yet, but just give it a try.’
Reluctantly, she gnawed on the wizened flesh and chewed. ‘It’s like meat,’ she said at last, ‘But hot. No blood.’ Whereupon she grabbed what was left on the stick and ate it before it could be taken from her.
‘Hold on,’ cried a woman from the back as the melee at the front began to subside. ‘How long does this cooking take?’
‘Depends on the size of the animal,’ answered the man on the rock. ‘I told you, I haven’t quite got it worked out yet. An hour or two I should imagine.’
‘So, who’s going to do that then?’ she continued. ‘I mean, whilst you’re all out hunter/gathering and we’re stuck in the hole looking after the kids, keeping the place tidy, who’s going to do this cooking?’
And even as her voice trailed away on the prehistoric breeze, every male eye in the gathering turned towards her.
‘Oh, I get it,’ she said, ‘Charming. Bloody charming…’

The Discovery of Fire was first published 18.02.2020

A Little Fiction – Nefarious Activity

The field backing onto the house was dark and progress across it was challenging. There was no option to use a torch – the neighbours would spot it at a thousand paces – and the moon, although full, was hiding behind ever-thickening clouds. Low lying brambles clawed at his ankles and nettles threatened any area of skin left incautiously unsheathed. Not that he had much of that: he was a professional. He was clothed from head to toe in black lycra. His hands were covered in surgical blue latex and his face in a neoprene ski mask. Not ideal on a night as sultry as this, but he had been too long in this game to grow slack. He had even drawn over the logo on his trainers with a black Sharpie and he had boot polish covering the small exposed area of his pallid face. He was a stealthily moving black ghost, lost in the darkness of night, his position betrayed only by the muttered curses each time he strayed into something that an animal had left behind, and the near-silent complaints that his wife had once again skimped with the shopping and had not bought the waterproof Cherry Blossom that he had instructed her to buy, aware that the sweat that was currently pricking on his brow would very soon be carrying rivulets of cheap, unlabelled shoeblack down into his eyes.

The back fence was no easier. It took an age to find a panel that was sound enough to bear his weight and, when he finally did, he found that it backed directly onto the shed. His scrambled descent from the top lowered him painfully into a stack of metal buckets and an old hosepipe that wound around his legs and tightened about him like a cobra. He suppressed a scream when something ran across his shoe. At night, the rats always came out to play. He hated rats. He had stifled so many screams that he had a callous on his tongue. Still, at least behind the shed he was not visible to any of the neighbours and he was able to take the time to quietly disentangle himself from the hose, the sprinkler end of which had posed serious challenges to his manhood.

Satisfied that he was clear of all encumbrances and able, should his information have been incorrect, to make a rapid escape, he peered around the shed corner. The security light flashed into life, but he was not concerned: it was what he wanted. The curtains did not twitch in the houses to either side: the occupiers – both cat owners – fully aware of the tendency for the lights to beam into life in response to anything more substantial than a passing moth. More to the point, nothing at all stirred in the house ahead of him. The curtains were partly open, there were no lights within, no flickering TV to light up the walls. Definitely empty. He grinned inwardly and slipped out into the open garden, never actually leaving the comforting shadows of the fence. His movement was steady, even when alarmed by the unexpected movement of bush and shrub, and he was there, pressed against the back wall of the house within seconds.

Here he paused for a few seconds giving the security light time to go out, before he slid around the brick extremities, undetected by Passive Infra-Red detectors or mid-week, wine-weary neighbours. They were all the same and he hated every single one of them: all the ‘haves’. He was tired of being a ‘have not’. He had spent too long living in a world of dark, idle poverty. It wasn’t jealousy that drove him on, it was a burning, overwhelming desire to have everything that they had: everything he did not. He dreamed of being ‘a better man’ and he was prepared to take whatever it took to get him there. He remembered the time that it had first struck him, like a light bulb in his head. He was certain of his path. He had devoted the rest of his life to it.

He carried out the rest of his task with quiet, dark efficiency and it was a matter of minutes before he was retracing his steps back across the unlit garden, over the fence and into the blackness of night…

…It was just after midnight when he found his way home. The streetlights had turned off and he had removed his ski-mask which, experience had taught him, drew the immediate attention of any random police vehicle that might pass by. He had painstakingly cultured the gait of slightly drunk man creeping home from the pub, hoping not to be noticed by his partner and was seldom bothered by the upholders of law and order. He entered his own back door, un-noticed by his neighbours who were either sleeping themselves or watching something on the TV at a volume that ensured nobody else was sleeping either. His wife was in the kitchen waiting for him with a freshly opened bottle of beer and a glass. “What have you got?” she asked by way of greeting. He took a swig from the bottle and without speaking, proudly opened his bag to reveal its contents. She peered inside. “A light bulb,” she spluttered. “What the bloody hell am I supposed to do with that?…”

This is the first time I have written on of these ‘stories’ in quite a while. I used to write my Little Fictions quite regularly, but became disenchanted with them because so few people ever read them and I have written few outside of my ‘returning features’ recently. I did, however, enjoy writing and, more recently, re-reading them so, in an orgy of self-indulgence I have decided to republish some of my past favourites in the now regular Sunday repeat slot. They vary substantially in length and in genre – reflecting, I think, my mood at the time(s) of writing – as I generally just let them tell the story – and I’ve tried not to mess too much with what was originally published (except for correcting the most jarring of cock-ups). I tried all kinds of ways of assembling them into some kind of logical order, but they beat me, so they will arrive in a totally random order. I hope you enjoy them…

Heroes

I will not be going into unnecessary detail today because a) it would not benefit anyone and b) I’ve only given myself five hundred words to play with, but I went to a Year 6 (10-11 year old) school leavers play/concert yesterday and it just might have changed my life. To say that it was a joyous occasion seriously undervalues it. The roles, allocated I presume by someone in authority, were assigned with a breath-taking abandon: the lispers, the whisperers, the stutterers, the mumblers, the painfully shy, the bouncing off the wall’ers, the tone-deaf, the scratchers, the nose-pickers, the ‘I definitely do not want to be doing this’ers, the ‘everybody look at me’ers, all given the most inappropriate roles possible. The tone-deaf were front-rowed to sing the big solos, the introverted were tasked with performing the comedy duologues, the extroverts were given scenes to shift, yet every single one of the kids appeared to fully embrace the task they had been given. Every child was fully engaged. Every face wore a smile whilst perfectly good jokes were lost in the telling and painstakingly constructed songs were crucified. Somehow the sweetest of voices were flattened by the big finish, the atonal were always the loudest.

The audience of siblings, parents and grandparents sat in their miniature chair semi circle, craning their necks to see past the head of the man in front, eyes on the spot occupied by their own family member, the main action taking place elsewhere on the stage becoming nothing more than a distraction. Each hastily delivered just-slightly-too-old-for-the-kids-to-understand joke receiving pleasing laughter from the cast and a bemused ‘What did she just say?’ raised eyebrow from all but those involved in interminable bedroom rehearsals. It is the universal sanctuary for the nervous when given something to say: say it quickly, say it quietly, look at the floor…

The main cast had head-mic’s which contributed to all manner of heavy breathing confusion during the delivery of the short explanatory scenes whilst the rest of the cast had to take their turn to dash for one of the two microphone stands set either side of the stage, the massive size differential obvious in children of this vintage ensuring that the shortest kids always got a laugh when they had a line to deliver. A far cry from the Junior School productions of my own youth when, unencumbered by technology, the instructions were always simple: ‘Speak loudly dear, and slowly. Try not to pick your nose and if you really must, try to wipe it on your own trousers and not those of somebody else.’ My recollection is of singing a few hymns to the assembled mums (the only dads who could make it would have been unemployed and, therefore, unwilling to show their faces) and trying not to giggle if Miss Sellars was looking. I don’t believe we were ever given jokes to deliver. The best way to involve the whole year was to let us all sing at the top of our tuneless voices – and put the ugly kids at the back…

At the end of last night’s show, the entire year assembled for a gustily delivered version of The Monkee’s ‘I’m a Believer’ and the Head Teacher made a little speech about ‘inclusion’ which called for more rounds of applause than the average University Graduation ceremony. She said she was proud of every one of the children and she was right to be. They were all heroes. They made my heart sing for ninety minutes – and it is so out of tune, it could have been a member of Blue*…

As I think about it now, I suppose ‘life changing’ might be stretching it a bit, but it did make me very happy for a while, and that’s a decent start…

I, I will be king
And you, you will be queen
Though nothing will drive them away
We can beat them just for one day… Heroes – David Bowie (Bowie/Eno)

*A truly dreadful Noughties Boy Band.

I’ve Got That Photograph of You

I write almost every day, even if what I produce cannot be described as being of merchantable quality, I still go through the motions. Not, of course, that I would suggest for one minute that my motions are, in any way, something that you might wish to go through. But I do. Or did. For the last few weeks I have not. I have started one or two pieces, but I have finished none. It has been a period devoid of application and inclination: a lethargy that has actually seeped into my soul and found it to be disturbingly empty.

I have searched for an excuse: I have been busy and preoccupied with housemoving matters, but I’ve been busy before and it has never stopped me writing. I have delved into my memory – have I had a period like this before? – but my memory is not what it was (or, to the best of my recollection, ever has been) and it is currently highly-coloured by a lifetime of photographs needing to be sorted and, in large part, binned. The attic was full of them: boxes of 6×4 inch (or 7×5 during more affluent periods) snapshots of a million yesterdays, some of them featuring people that neither of us can remember, most of them including faces (largely blurry) of parents, children and yesteryear selves. So many, in fact, that I think the surveyor thought that we might have been using them to insulate the loft. The temperature in the house – as well as the spirits of those within it – plunged with each discarded binbag.

My memory consists of flashcard incidents, like the thirty second trailer for a thirty part series on TV, there is generally no context or chronology to them. I remember anything notable, but with no reference to time or place. I remember holidays I have loved, but I cannot ‘picture’ them. Photographs are the key: it’s all in there somewhere, the frozen image just unlocks the door. It’s amazing just how much ‘forgotten stuff’ is stored within the brain. Like the attic, it needs unpacking and sorting before I can decide what to keep and what to take to the dump; what needs retaining and what needs tearing in two before burning.

It’s an odd sensation, being an outsider peeking in on your own life, still unable to follow the plot. It’s like watching an old film and realising that whilst you have retained the general gist, all the detail has passed you by. You realise that there are many things you have completely mis-remembered, like you would never wear that shirt… would you? We are all shaped, to a greater or lesser extent, by every single encounter in our lives: some round off edges, some leave fractures that it takes an age to smooth over, some break us in two. We are all pebbles on the beach being ground down into sand – and we all know how bloody annoying that can be in the underwear. It is impossible to wash away; it irritates and chafes until one day it is no longer there, just a faint rash to leave you wandering where it has gone…

…Well, I can tell you. Most of it has gone back into the boxes it came out of and back into the attic. We will sort through it before we move – obviously – although the new house does have an attic and, at the moment, there is absolutely nothing in it…

I’ve got that photograph of you
It’s in my head
And it won’t ever fade away.
My eyes they took a snap of you
And my heart said
Photograph, please don’t laugh, I love you… I’ve Got That Photograph of You – Spike Milligan

I know that this song does not really fit in with the general remit, but I recall seeing Milligan sing this many, many years ago in an episode of (I’m guessing) ‘There’s A Lot of it About’ and the obvious joy he took in doing so. As soon as the theme of this post began to resolve in my head, it was joined to this song and so it will stay…

The Beginner’s A-Z of D.I.Y Subversion (Flog to Funeral)

FLOG Beat with a stick. Sell, or offer for sale – I am unsure what the word is for selling a stick. Flogging a dead horse¹ (although I have no idea why anyone would want to buy one) is what you will spend most of your life doing.

Flogging a dead horse – to waste efforton something when there is no chance of succeeding. For the average subversive, all effort is wasted.

FLOUR One of the main tools in the subversive armoury when faced with reasoned argument (along with over-ripe tomatoes and rotten eggs).

FLUID A substance that flows – in addition to the three historical ‘humours’ – wind, bile and phlegm – all three of which the average subversive has in abundance, there are the three other fluids – tears, urine and sweat – which he/she will shed whenever it is beneficial. Many scholars claim the existence of a fourth fluid – blood – but no subversive will own up to having that, let alone shedding it.

FOE An enemy – The human race in general: anyone with more money, more power, more charisma, better looks, better clothes, fewer hang-ups, fewer jars of ointment… In short, everyone. You cannot fight such an enemy, you can only cause them mild irritation (which you probably do simply by being alive). You may well find yourself unable to counter the logic of a greater intellect, but you will soon discover that putting your fingers in your ears and saying ‘Na-na-na-na’ very loudly can be particularly effective. Subversion is the art of not having to fight. Unfortunately it also often involves not washing and mixing with other subversives.

FOIL (1) A thin, light sword – Will not keep your sandwiches fresh.

FOIL (2) A thin metal sheet – Will not help you win points in a sword fight, nor toast more marshmallows simultaneously than anybody else at the village hall barbecue.

FOIL (3) To prevent somebody or something else from being successful – This is the ultimate aim of all subversion. Subversives do not actually want to achieve anything other than ensuring that nobody else does either.

FORBID To refuse to allow something – In a subversively ideal world, anarchy would rule¹ and nothing would be forbidden – except, hopefully, double-dipping at buffet restaurants. The lawless would be in charge² and subversion would lay in following the rules³.

Except it wouldn’t, would it? Being anarchy and all…
I’m not at all certain about the veracity of that statement. I don’t think anybody would actually be in charge – except somebody would have to make sure that nobody was obeying the rules (which wouldn’t exist) otherwise everything would just descend into… erh…
Oh, this is getting far too complicated now. Maybe we could just do away with a state of lawlessness and settle on one where you are allowed to yell ‘Sausage’ through stranger’s letterboxes on the occasional Bank Holiday.

FORMER Of, or as, an earlier time – As in ‘friend’ (below). As a subversive, all your friends will be ‘former friends’ unless they are the kind that you really don’t want as friends, in which case they will still be friends and you will be stuck with them.

FRACTURE A break or crack in something hard, particularly bone – The reason why an enemy’s skeleton exists. There are many, many ways of causing fractures, the most reliable of which is alcohol. Causing a drunken enemy to stumble is simplicity itself – just persuade them to get up – but beware, drunken people often bend when they should break and, although they will have forgotten almost everything about the previous evening when they wake up, they will remember who pushed them.

FRAUD The crime of getting money by deceiving people – also known as ‘being in charge’. Throughout history, those in charge have relieved everybody else of their money by deception: ‘The Health Service is safe in our hands’, ‘Every penny raised by this new tax will go towards making the life of the working man easier’, and ‘Buy me a fish supper and we’ll see…’ This is what you are fighting against. However, short of working, it is also what you must do to pay the bills. Whilst it is not possible for most of us to sell Nelson’s Column to a Chinese tourist, it might just be possible to persuade them that we are quite happy for them to finance a nuclear power station. Remember, fraud is not a victimless crime – if you get caught trying to pull one, you might just find yourself on the receiving end of something far more physical than a bogus lottery ticket.

FRENCH The people of France – French people, the entire French nation is by nature subversive. Ask them the time in the wrong way – e.g. in a British accent – and the average Gaul will have barricaded all the ports before you can say sacré bleu. To the average French Air-Traffic Controller, a bank holiday is the only excuse he needs to go on strike. Most French people own cars only so they can set fire to the tyres when they disagree about something. The only thing that French people find more annoying than the average British tourist is other French people. French people always sound as if they are arguing, but this is not always the case. When French people argue, they hit each other with baguettes. They also lace all foodstuffs with garlic, wear stripy ‘T’ shirts and carry strings of onions around their necks. As a nation they are shameless in their stereotyping of Britons.

FRIEND A person who you know well and like a lot – As it is essential that this sentiment is reciprocal it is unlikely that you will have any of these. It is undeniable that anyone you know well will almost certainly not like you a lot. In fact at all. Let’s face it, the fact that the pub empties when you go in is not down to your charisma or your hygiene. During the course of your subversive activities, you may establish a few tenuous friendships. You almost certainly will not want them.

FUGITIVE A person who is running away or hiding from the police – Well, you’ll certainly be doing that. It is the burden of the D.I.Y subversive to be hounded by the fuzz, particular if you were captured on CCTV putting that crisp packet into the recycle bin. Let’s face it, you are unlikely to ever become Public Enemy Number One; it is doubtful that you will ever fall into Interpol’s remit; Elliot Ness will not be carrying your photograph in his wallet – but it doesn’t hurt to run away anyway. You can never be too careful, especially if you might be embarrassed by what they find when they turn your pockets out – particularly if it’s a note from your mum explaining that you’ve been off work because of a carbuncle on the backside.

FUNERAL Funerals are long, sombre affairs spent staring at a coffin and dreading the false bonhomie that follows in the pub afterwards, when a thousand assorted photographs of the dearly departed will be produced and everyone has a good old laugh at their expense. If you are the kind of subversive that goes looking for trouble, you could attend many of these. Make the most of the opportunity to consider your own mortality and resolve not to do anything that might put you in danger in the future. Consider how you can persuade somebody else to do the dangerous stuff whilst abusing the free bar at the wake, and smuggling the potted sardine sandwiches out for the cat.

HOMEWORK

Plan your own funeral – you may even be able to sell tickets – and write your own eulogy. Refuse all forms of burial or cremation unless it is read out aloud. Place it somewhere you are certain it will be found after your death – stapled to your life insurance policy and stored with the pasta – together with a CD of Deep Purple’s ‘Burn’ and a limerick about flatulence.

Another Five Minutes in the Car

Explanation: the last time I published one of these little conversations, Herb commented that from time to time he lost track of who was speaking. I didn’t want to tread on your toes in relation to personality, so I tried to give the two characters a number, but Microsoft decided that I must be writing a list and thus did all manner of strange things to the formatting. So, instead, I have given them a letter: as to their gender, age and name, you can work it out for yourself. You can’t expect me to do everything…

X – “So… do you know where we are going?”
Y – “Well… that’s a bit deep for this time in the morning isn’t it?”
X – “The station. I mean, do you know where the train station is?”
Y – “I think so. It’s right alongside the railway line isn’t it?”
X – “Oh, very funny. Very sharp. Had an extra coffee with our bagel this morning, did we?”
Y – “Alright, yes, I know where the station is, thank you. Unless they’ve moved it since I last took you there… a week ago. I am capable of finding my way around you know.”
X – “Ah, you say that but…”
Y – “If you mention Skegness again I will stop the car and you can walk to the station. ‘Tell your mum I’ll meet her at the chip shop,’ is not the most detailed of directions is it? Particularly in a town with more chip shops than people… and almost all of those people in a chip shop.”
X – “I would have thought it was obvious.”
Y – “Really? Why?”
X – “Well, it would be the one we always use.”
Y – “We hadn’t been there since before the kids were born. They have all changed hands, been opened and closed, a million times since then. The chip shop we used to go to is now a vape shop… everywhere is now a vape shop… if they did salt ‘n’ vinegar flavour vapes, they’d clean up.”
X – “I found it easily enough.”
Y – “You found a chip shop, not the chip shop. It had only been open six weeks – I asked – when we were last there, it was a Gonk shop.”
X – “What’s a Gonk?”
Y – “You must remember. They were ugly little furry dolls. You could win them by throwing darts at the fair or knocking over a stack of tin cans with a beanbag. If you were useless, you could go to the Gonk shop and buy one instead…”
X – “…I bought one, didn’t I?”
Y – “You did, but only after you’d been chucked out of the fair for piercing the darts man’s hat and accusing the beanbag man of gluing his cans together.”
X – “They didn’t flinch when I hit them.”
Y – “Yes, well… you always were a bit limp-wristed.”
X – “What do you mean by that?”
Y – “You can’t throw very far, you can’t open jars, you’re useless with a hammer… we can’t even visit anyone if they haven’t got a doorbell. What did you ever do in that boarding school of yours?”
X – “What do you mean?”
Y – “Oh come on… fifty adolescent males in a dormitory. I mean…”
X – “We had cubicles!”
Y – “I bet you did. I bet most of your friends at school had a fairly well-developed right wrist.”
X – “Not the left-handers.”
Y – “No, but you’re not left handed… and you’re limp-wristed on both sides.”
X – “Well, excuse me for preferring Biggles to… to… anyway, I can open jars.”
Y – “Only after I’ve loosened them.”
X – “You can’t possibly pre-loosen every jar lid in the cupboard. When would you ever?… You do loosen them all don’t you?”
Y – “Every single one. Don’t you ever wonder why the ‘safety buttons’ have always popped?”
X – “I presumed it was because you always bought Home Labels.”
Y – “It’s because I didn’t want you to be embarrassed.”
X – “Well I wasn’t… but I am now.”
Y – “Shall I stop then?”
X – “What, so I have to ask you to do it all the time?”
Y – “I do do it all the time… Look, don’t worry about it. You have other strengths.”
X – “Do I?”
Y – “Well…”
X – “I open all the childproof lids.”
Y – “Well there you are then: what you lack in strength, you make up for in technique. You may have weak wrists, but you can squeeze and twist with the best of them… And you worked out how to do it all by yourself.”
X – “You always do this. You can’t resist. You always try to make out that I’m stupid. I’m nothing like as stupid as you think I am.”
Y – “You have no idea how stupid I think you are.”
X – “Well, however much it is, I’m not.”
Y – “So, we’re not considering the possibility that you are not stupid, we are merely engaged in a negotiation over the extent of your stupidity?”
X – “Erhm…”
Y – “OK, let’s take a sliding scale from Albert Einstein to Boris Johnson, who are you nearest to, boffin or buffoon?”
X – “I think I’m nearer Einstein than Johnson.”
Y – “You do?”
X – “Of course. Look, I’m not going to pretend that I understand The Theory of Relativity, but I have got to grips with contraception.”
Y – “You were quite a catch, I must admit.”
X – “Well, you caught me.”
Y – “I prefer to view it more as a mercy mission: I felt like I was rescuing a weak-wristed runt puppy. My dad told me I could have a hamster if I’d let you go.”
X – “Your mum liked me.”
Y – “She spent most of her time keeping dad away from you. He thought I should have had you put down.”
X – “You dad would have much preferred me if I’d had my face disfigured in a rugby scrum.”
Y – “…But, sadly, nature got there first.”
X – “Well you must have seen something in me: weak-wristed, thick and ugly and yet here you are. What happened?”
Y – “I think I just got lost…”
X – “In my eyes?”
Y – “No, on the A42. I think you might miss your train…”

If you want to read the first two of these car-borne conversations, you can find them at Five Minutes in the Car and Five More Minutes in the Car.