Just Looking

I very seldom open windows onto my day-to-day existence because I realise that inducing abject boredom in the reader is not something to which any writer should aspire. My aim is perhaps to engender a small iota of recognition somewhere in the dark recesses in the mind of my readers, not to render them senseless, so my ramblings here are normally rather more general than specific: small splashes of colour on the broadest of canvases; the parts of the story that Michelangelo would almost certainly have emulsioned over. Today however, I am about to stray into the personal when I tell you that we have started to look around other peoples’ houses – not, I feel I should stress, as some kind of nefarious new hobby, but because it is likely that, in the fullness of time, we will attempt to set up camp in one of them. We have decided that the time is right to leave our home of forty plus years and settle somewhere slightly smaller. To that end we also have to invite other people to troop through our own little nest.

The first surprise to me is that the downsizing I always imagined would place a wedge of cash into my back pocket is actually set to siphon all of the folding stuff from the front ones at an alarming rate. The knowledge that a single storey three-bed bungalow is so much more costly than a four-bed two storey house is quite alarming, as is the realisation that, for my wife, downsizing does not necessarily equate to moving into something that is in any way smaller than what we currently inhabit. I was relishing the challenge of excising all manner of extraneous crud from my life only to find that she is looking for a big enough loft/garage combo to accommodate it all. It is of little consequence if I am honest, we will compromise as we always do and I will throw out half a dozen pairs of old pants, a threadbare dartboard and a second favourite coffee mug (chipped) and she… will let me.

The real problem arises in the very act of showing people around our current home. To date we have had only very pleasant people – the kind that we would be happy to sell it to (and it is alarming to discover how much we actually care about who buys it) – but (and here’s the issue) they are all so bloody transparent when muttering the kind of fuzzy platitudes we all do when placed in such an unnatural situation: when you hate the colour of a wall or carpet, but you are being shown it by the very person who chose it. ‘It’s lovely,’ comes out of their mouths whilst the brain can be heard calculating the cost of painting it all over. And we are visiting other peoples’ homes and doing the self-same thing ourselves when hiding a ‘Why on earth have you done that?’ behind a conversation about how much light comes through a window (Seriously? Why else would it be there?) but for some reason, the rational part of the brain that tells you that there is no conceivable reason why anyone interested in buying your house would automatically share your taste in colour, is trammelled over by the bit that shouts ‘How bloody dare they?’ This is my house and any criticism, open, implied or even completely imagined, is an affront. ‘If you don’t like it, don’t buy it. Bugger off!’

I may have to work on my sales patter…

There’s things I want
There’s things I think I want
There’s things I’ve had
There’s things I want to have… Just Looking – Stereophonics (Kelly Jones / Richard Mark Jones / Stuart Cable)

Conversations with the Bearded Man (8) – An Afternoon at the Cinema

…The cinema is ok when you are on your own: it’s dry and warm; you can turn up late, book a seat that has no-one sitting around you, wherever that might be in the auditorium, and enter while the Coming Soon adverts are assaulting the pre-assembled eardrums like artillery shells. Nobody really notices you. It’s not like going into a strange pub: no sudden, uneasy silence, no stares from men holding pool cues, no landlord asking what you want to drink when all you really want to do is get out of there, no lukewarm, cloudy beer in a pre-lipsticked glass, no standing in the middle of nowhere because it’s less risky than accidentally taking somebody else’s seat, no apologising profusely to the walking threat who has just knocked a full pint down your trousers…

But you know how it is, nothing ever goes quite to plan. I saw them walk in, this Amazonian couple and I knew instinctively that they were destined to sit directly in front of me, with their giant tray of nachos, a sack-sized bag of crisps that crackled like a Taiwanese Hi-Fi, a Bucket-A-Coke and an unfinished conversation that was much too good to mute during the film. I craned my neck left and then right before realising that I was not going to see anything in the centre of the screen that had not been filtered through hair-gel unless one or the other of them suffered a major infarction, so I settled down as far as ancient knees in a confined space would allow and attempted to snooze the next hour and a half away in a shape unknown to Tetris when a voice beside me said, “It’s so annoying isn’t it?” and despite a period sufficient for the average couple to have met, fallen in love, rented a flat, fallen out of love and soundly trashed one another on social media having elapsed since the last time I saw him, I knew at once to whom the voice belonged. “There’s nobody sitting on this side of me if you want to sit there,” he said. It seemed impossibly churlish not to do as he suggested and so I bottled all my churl and moved into the vacant seat on the other side of him. I knew that there was no point in asking him how we could find ourselves sitting side by side in a cinema I had only entered to get out of the rain. I knew his answer would only confuse me further.
“I’ll move if anybody has booked the seat,” I said and he nodded quietly, obviously content that it would not happen. His long white hair was, as ever, immaculate and dry, yet he had no coat that I could see; no umbrella or hat. He looked like a man who had just emerged from a hairdryer, whilst I looked like a man who had just emerged from the Thames, cold and not entirely free of effluent.
“It’s quite a comforting place, the cinema, when you’re on your own, don’t you think?”
“It allows me to be anonymous,” I said as the sound and fury of some intergalactic war or another warped speakers all around us.
“Salty or sweet?” he asked, holding out popcorn.
“You have to ask?”
“No, not really. I bought both. Why would you want to be anonymous?”
“Do I mean anonymous? I might not mean anonymous,” I said. “I might mean unnoticed. Most places I go to, people notice a single man.”
“You don’t want to be noticed?”
“I don’t want to be stared at.”
“And you don’t want to be single?”
“Of course I don’t!” I snapped, momentarily flushed with anger. “I hate being alone. I don’t know how you do it.”
“Me?”
“You’re always alone.”
“Only when I choose to be.”
“You came here alone.”
“I was meeting you.”
“But how did you even know I’d be here?”
“I didn’t need to. You didn’t know that I’d be here either, yet you still managed to meet me.”
I stared for a moment before, resigned, I grabbed a handful of popcorn. It is so hard to argue with a man whose version of logic is at once bizarre and irrefutable. “I presume it didn’t work out with Sara,” he said.
“And I presume you already know the answer to that!” I snapped again, feeling both ashamed and frustrated by my inability to control my anger.
“Well, I do now,” he said, sipping Coke through a straw, looking for all the world as if it was the first time he had ever done so. “It’s a shame.”
“Look, I don’t mean to be rude, but what does it matter to you whether I am alone or not? Whether I am happy or not? Whether I am anything at all? I don’t really know you at all. You don’t know me. I don’t really know how, or why, we keep doing… this.” I turned towards him, but found his eyes firmly fixed on the screen. He was distractedly eating popcorn one exploded kernel at a time. Nobody eats popcorn like that! The Sara question hurt because I really liked her, but as I always do, I had let things slide. We hadn’t been in contact for some time and now I didn’t know how to try again without… well, you know. I hadn’t actually done anything wrong had I? I didn’t feel like I needed to lose face, even if Lorelei had made me realise how much I missed her company.
“You know,” he said, not removing his gaze from the screen, “I think I prefer the salty, until I try the sweet and then I’m not so sure.” I knew that there was a point to this, but I had no idea what it might be. He held out the two card containers. “Here,” he said, “see what you think.”
Despite the conviction that I was nothing more than a lab rat in a maze, I took a single piece from each box and chewed meditatively. It was impossible not to agree with him. I took another two pieces before settling slightly in my seat and turning my own attention to the film.
“You know,” he said, “I think I might have seen this all before.”
“I think it’s new isn’t it?”
“Is it? I must be mistaken then. I can’t have seen it before can I? I just feel as though I know exactly what is about to happen.” I struggled to form a clear image of his face in the flickering gloom, but as far as I could see there was no suggestion of irony there.
“In my experience,” I said, “you always seem to be at least one step ahead. It’s like you always seem to know exactly what’s going to happen next.”
“I’m like everybody else,” he said. “I know what I’d like to happen, but I’ve no way of knowing that it actually will… unless, of course, I really have seen the film before. Do you know I think I might have to… I’m sorry. I won’t be a minute.” I smiled smugly, bathing in the knowledge that at least in one way he was no different to me. Drink a large tumbler of Coke and you’re never going to make it all the way through a film. “I’ll leave these here,” he said, placing the two boxes of popcorn carefully under his seat. I watched him wander down the stairs and into the dimly lit entrance, turning back to the film at the exact moment that a silhouetted figure passed between me and the screen catching her foot on the unprotected popcorn containers and scattering the contents for some distance in all directions.
“Sorry I,” she said… “Shit!” The popcorn cascaded out of the boxes and down under the seats ahead. “I… oh bugger,” she kicked away as much of the spilled popcorn as she could and picked up the now empty containers. “I don’t know how I do it. I always manage to turn up just a little bit too late, after everybody else has settled down” she tried to explain “and instead of disappearing into the crowd, I usually find myself treading on toes, making a grand and unwelcome entrance. I’m sorry, I’ll… Jim?”
“Sara?” Of course, it had to be
“Well, I was going to offer to buy you some more popcorn, but you can buy your bloody own,” she said. She was torn, I could tell, between anger and laughter. She looked closely at her ticket and began to sit in the seat beside me.
“I think that seat’s taken,” I said.
She compared her ticket with the number on the seat again. “No, this is mine,” she said.
I wondered what might be said when Lorelei came back before I realised that, of course, he would not be returning to his seat at all.
“Of all the cinema seats in all the cinemas…” I said.
“Here,” said Sara holding out a paper bag.
I took a small handful of popcorn. “It’s salty,” I said.
“I know,” she said. “Do you prefer sweet?”
“No,” I said. “It’s fine.”
We both settled into our seats to watch the film and enjoy the prospect of not actually being alone for a couple of hours. I struggled to find something to say, but decided that silence was the best policy until, hearing a quiet sigh beside me, I risked a quick glance to my side and was shocked to see Sara’s face close to my own. “Do you know,” she whispered, “I think I might have seen this before…”

First published 17.03.23 under the title “An Afternoon at the Cinema – Conversations with the Bearded Man (8)

Codex

I can’t help but feel that the world would be a much simpler place if everybody actually meant what they said (or, indeed, said what they meant). People speak in code: sometimes we are meant to understand it, sometimes we are not. Sometimes words are intended to lead and sometimes they are intended to mislead. Take, for instance, the code of the Estate Agent where ‘bijou apartment’ means understairs cupboard and ‘mature garden’ means six feet deep in Japanese Knotweed with the distinct possibility of a completely new life-form evolving behind the shed. Where ‘modern’ means so outdated it’s bound to come back into fashion sometime soon and ‘close to all amenities’ means above a shopping centre with the Railway Booking Office on the back porch. Where ‘ready to move into’ means we know you are desperate.

Consider too the code of the dating agency. Who doesn’t understand that GSOH means more boring than a woodworm? Some things are known by all: ‘single’ means married, ‘NSA’ means married, ‘unattached’ means married and slightly deranged, and ‘adventurous’ means can’t be bothered to pair up his socks. ‘MSW’ means man seeking woman… any woman. I will beg if necessary. Dating acronyms were very different in my day. The nearest we got was to scrawl ‘SWALK’ on the back of an envelope, but today – oh today – it is all so complicated. I am relieved to say that I am not, in anyway, in the game. Slip an ill-considered Nota Bene (NB) into your profile and you will be unable to turn on your phone without being offered non-binary companionship. Worse, if non-binary companionship is what you require, you will almost certainly find yourself with some nutter banging on about dropping meaningless asides into your profile.

Family members, lovers, work colleagues, we all have little codes that somehow bond us together whilst ever-so-slightly alienating those not in the loop: in the home the simple TV Remote Control might be known as the remote, but it might also be the clicker (our house), flicker, watchamacallit, doubrie or doofer: you could just as well call it Nigel, it doesn’t matter, as long as you understand and others don’t, then it works – and as long as you are not one of the excluded. Work places are notorious for the use of jargon. It is Batman’s mask. Even the Police do it: “We are keeping an open mind” simply means we haven’t got a clue. Anything will do, just as long as it separates those in the know from those in the don’t know. Everyone wants to be part of the in crowd. Nobody wants dragging off by the Boy Wonder…

And finally we come to the Lords and Ladies of all liars… I’m sorry, I mean word mis-users: politicians. Politicians seldom say what they mean and they never mean what they say. They say what they think we want them to say, without the slightest intention of ever really meaning it. Obfuscation is their way, aided and abetted by ambiguous statements. (As a little aside here, I have just watched a TV interview with a politician and it put me in mind of the chicken/egg situation: which came first, the obfuscating politician or the unimaginably aggressive interviewer? Answers on a postcard please – but not to me.) Language is a fluid beast for politicians: words can mean whatever they want them to mean and the meaning can never be held against them. Beware of the politician who says “We must root out the liars and the wrongdoers,” because they are one of them…

Slight of hand
Jump off the end
Into a clear lake
No one around
Just dragonflies
Fantasize
No one gets hurt… Codex – Radiohead

N.B. I have not included a glossary of dating-site acronyms here, you will have to do what I did and look them up – although I have to warn you, I barely dare to turn my phone on right now…

Things I’ve Been Telling Myself for Years

I’m guessing we’ve all done it: I typed this title with a clear idea of what I wanted to say, got distracted, wandered off and drifted back half an hour later with coffee and chocolate and absolutely no idea of what my intentions were. I think it unlikely that I actually intended to tell you the things I have been telling myself for years: they are nonsensical, inconsequential, and almost certainly totally refutable, and… oh, hang on, isn’t that the very definition of this entire little fol-de-rol? Maybe that was what was on my mind. The problem is that these things must have been all roosting quite peaceably between my ears until I threw the stone of thinking about them into the tree because now they’ve all flown off into somebody else’s tree and all I’m left with things I’ve been telling myself for the last thirty seconds. The things I’ve been telling myself for years have become things I just can’t quite put my finger on.

I suppose I have been telling myself for years that I am better than I am – at pretty much everything if I’m honest. Adequate should probably be my middle name. I just about get by in most things, but I have to admit that, here and there, I thought I might be better than that. I told myself that I had some kind of innate understanding of people, but now I have begun to realise that they are all bloody aliens to me. I do not understand a single thing. I have always told myself that, come what may, I would be alright and, I suppose, I was right – I have been alright, but the alright I have been telling myself about is quite unlike the alright I have. That is far more dreary. It doesn’t have any of the things I have spent my whole life telling myself that I could happily live without.

I have always told myself that, if the chips were down, I would do the right thing. Not necessarily the heroic thing, but not the running away thing. These days I’m not so sure. I’m pretty certain I wouldn’t leave anybody else in trouble and, if I’m honest, I probably wouldn’t be able to run too far anyway, but would I stand up to be counted? I think squat is more likely, and hope that I am not called upon. In one respect I am lucky, whilst not technically a dwarf (although Grumpy is a possibility), it is not hard to surround myself with people that are much taller than me. Despite having red hair, I can blend into the background surprisingly well at times.

And, based I think, on having a head full of useless half-remembered facts, I have a tendency to think of myself as bright, but the more I think about it, the less I think it’s true. Bright people invent things, bright people discover things, bright people do not believe that everything will be alright without them doing something about it. One day I will do something about all sorts of things: I’ve been telling myself that for years…

I can read people
Blushing peccadilloes, twisted bents and buried fears
Things I’ve been telling myself for years… Things I’ve Been Telling Myself for Years – Elbow

White Riot

Photo by Mauru00edcio Mascaro on Pexels.com

Just imagine, Waitrose is out of Taramasalata, Hummus is in short supply and some young fool who “really shouldn’t have been given the job if she didn’t know any better” has hidden the Tzatziki behind the grapefruit yoghurts: the oat milk iced lattes are approaching their sell-by date and the cucumbers are completely unsuitable for use in Pimms due to ridiculously knobbly skins. You get the picture? Somebody’s fuse is about to blow. I mean, is it too much to ask for the Rambutans to come in seventy five gram packs to match the recipe in Good Food Magazine? Also, they’re supposed to cater for the busy housewife – au-pairs don’t plan their own diaries you know – I can’t believe that it would hurt them to sell the grapes ready peeled…

It is easy to understand this rage: imagine being the only mother at the school gates who cannot fit an entire flock of sheep onto the back seat of their car, who cannot block an entire pavement whilst still leaving at least two wheels on the road, whose son’s scooter is not badged by Audi. I mean, how can one possibly fulfil one’s potential when the world is full of feckless dicks who cannot produce precisely what you want, exactly when you want it? We have the working classes thronging through Waitrose, pretending to know what rainbow chard is, before they infiltrate Aldi, pretending to go there because it is affordable. God help us if the food bank ever becomes trendy – how will we ever clear the poor people out? Of course, there is a place for them – and they should jolly well know it! What is the point of a station if the hoi polloi is constantly trying to get above it?

There is a broiling middle-class discontent brewing – they let almost anyone shop at Sainsbury’s these days – and it can only be a matter of time before writs are aimed and essential oil-burners are lit. The crowds will gather in the car park – providing, of course that it isn’t raining and Jasper isn’t having one of his turns – and the air will be heady with scented candle. A ‘mum of three’ who spends her time (when not overseeing the upbringing of her children; Sophie, James and… the youngest one…can’t think of the name just now, but it wears a nappy) crocheting tampons for the third world and decaffeinating mung beans, will lead the crowd in a rendition of “One will overcome” (providing Gareth Malone has been available for rehearsals) and several new mums will chain themselves to the organic fruit section whilst their partners block the aisles, discussing the ethics of investing in Iranian Sumac. Hell will be unleashed. Self checkout tills will be rendered useless by the application of mint humbugs.

The media will blame the unseasonally warm weather and an unexpected surge in super-strength Limoncello Spritzers which were being passed around the crowd by unscrupulous venison burger vendors. The cognoscenti will implicate climate change whilst the ruling elite will impugn mansion-envy, but wherever the blame lies (and let’s face it, there has to be one) the flame will have been lit. White Riot will explode and the Buratta uprising will surely follow…

All the power’s in the hands
Of people rich enough to buy it
While we walk the street
Too chicken to even try it… White Riot – The Clash (Jones/Strummer)

Conversations with the Bearded Man (7) – Helpline

“…I knew it would be you as soon as I dialled. How do you do it?”
The voice at the other end of the phone was exactly as I had grown to know, except for an air of confusion with which I was not familiar but, not being one to let doubt get in the way of indignation, I pressed on none-the-less. “Your card in the newsagent’s: how did you know that I would see it? How did you know that I would call?”
“Call?”
I quoted directly from the card that I had removed from the shop window. “‘Tired? Lonely? Need to hear a friendly voice? Just ring,’ and then it’s got your phone number.”
“My number? Are you sure?”
“It’s the number I just dialled.”
“But I don’t have a card in the newsagent’s.”
“Yeh, right.” I said, regretting my tone instantly. “So how come I just got you?”
“You must have mis-dialled.”
“That really is…” I wanted to say preposterous, but the notion was simply so far-fetched that I was already checking the number on the card against the number I had dialled. It was, of course, one digit different. That single digit had connected me with the man I know as Lorelei. But how? How is it even possible to dial what now amounts to a virtually random phone number, and get him. It must be some kind of trick – a mind-game or something. Maybe I was having some kind of psychotic episode. Perhaps I’d been brainwashed, or hypnotised, or… I have no idea what… I would wake up soon and find that this was all a dream.
“So, are you?” His voice pricked into my brain like defeat into an ego.
“Am I what?”
“Tired? Lonely?”
I wanted to say ‘no’, but I knew that he would see right through that. Why had I rung the number in that case? I really didn’t want this man to think that I might have been trying to contact the kind of person who routinely displays their phone number in the newsagent’s window. “Well, I’m tired of how things are. Does that make sense?”
“I don’t know. What sort of things?”
“I thought I was making progress. I thought that she might have been ready to change her mind, but instead she just told me that she was getting married again and…”
“Ah, this will be your ex-wife.”
“The new man is called Duncan. Bloody Duncan! He sounds like a Blue Peter presenter.”
“I thought you had put that particular situation behind you. I thought you said you were moving on.”
“Duncan has a sports car. Duncan has his own house. Duncan, apparently, wears clean socks every day and doesn’t behave like a three year old when things don’t go his way.”
“Ah, so you’ve not moved on quite so far as you might have hoped then?”
“The thing is, I’ve done everything she asked.”
“Have you?”
“Well, I listened.” Even through the mobile phone I could sense his eyebrows arching. “There was a lot to take in,” I explained. “She had a lot to say. It appears that I have quite a lot of faults.”
“I don’t suppose you can remember what any of them are?”
“Not really – she might have a point with the not listening thing I suppose – but the other stuff… I’m willing to try.”
“She doesn’t want you to though, does she?”
“Not now she’s got Duncan. Good old Dunc’…”
“She was alone too, just like you, although without the six foot pile of takeaway containers in the kitchen and a mound of dirty socks in the bidet, obviously.”
“She left me. She started the divorce. She said we were both unhappy.”
“And?”
“…It’s bloody infuriating.”
“She doesn’t want you to be lonely.”
“She wants me to meet somebody. To ease her conscience.”
He sighed the kind of sigh that, even over the phone, comes accompanied with a world-weary roll of the eyes. “Where are you?” he asked.
“I’m in the park,” I answered. “It’s the nearest thing I get to excitement these days. Can I get home without treading in dog shit? Can I sit on a bench without having my hat stolen by a gang of feral kids?”
“You’re not even wearing a hat.”
“How can you possibly know that? I…” I looked at my phone only briefly before ending the call. “Don’t tell me,” I said, turning to face the man who I knew I would find standing beside me, “you just happened to be in the park as well.”
“I like to walk,” he said. “I like to meet people. It’s a good way to meet people, don’t you think?”
“I’m not really lonely you know,” I said.
“I know,” he said. “Let’s have an ice cream.” We joined the short queue to the kiosk. “And we’ll see where life takes us.”
“Beautiful day,” said the woman in front of us, trying to defy gravity by remaining upright with a bouncing toddler dangling erratically from her arm. She smiled apologetically as a whirling hand caught me a glancing blow a-midriff and gently eased the child out of range. “I brought my nephew to play. An ice cream is a small price to pay, don’t you think? It’s so nice not to be staring at the walls.”
I waited for Lorelei to fill the void, but he was silent; smiling benignly at me, the woman and the world in general. He had a look of contentment that, as ever, I found impossible to understand. I tried to grin my way out of the situation, but the silence was becoming increasingly awkward.
“Do they still do 99’s?” I asked nobody in particular.
“I hope so,” said the woman. “Otherwise I’ll have to get a Flake from the newsagents on the way home. I’ll be particularly unhappy if they don’t do sprinkles.” She smiled. Quite a nice smile, in its own way. “Sara,” she said. “My name is Sara.”
“Jim,” I said. “It’s nice to meet you. And this is?…” I looked down at the child clinging to Sara’s hand.
“Oh this,” she said. “I’ve really no idea. He’s not my nephew really, I just picked him up at the playground. It’s so much easier to talk to people if you’ve got a child with you, don’t you think?” I could feel my mouth dropping open. “It’s a joke,” she grinned. “Of course I know his name… It’s written in the back of his coat.” The smile again. “This is Tom. Say hello Tom.”
“Aunty Sara’s going to buy me an ice cream,” said Tom clinging tightly to her hand. “We’re both having sprinkles.”
Lorelei coughed quietly. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve just…” He turned to the woman in the queue. “I’m sorry Sara – I hope it’s ok for me to call you Sara – I hope you don’t think me terribly rude, but I have to go. It’s been good to meet you. I hope you enjoy your ice cream.”
“We will,” I replied in perfect harmony with Sara and Tom as Lorelei turned and wandered quietly away.
“And don’t be lonely,” he said. “I’m just a call away…”
“I know,” said Sara…

First published 10.06.22 under the title “A Little Fiction – Conversations with a Bearded Man (part 7) – Helpline“

Fatman

Nobody ever says, “I really need to lose a little weight,” unless they really need to lose a lot of it. I know this because I need to lose a little weight myself, but I am at an age that means I will remain tubby or I will become gaunt: I will look fat and healthy or thin and ill. When you pass sixty you are doomed to look either overweight or unwell, there are no other options: leotard or tub-of-lard. I have grown accustomed to being on the plumper side of overstuffed. If I was a cushion, I would be the one that you gave to the dog.

You know how it goes, one of those days when you eat until you start to feel like some kind of extruded sausage. When, having eaten far more than you know you should, you turn to drink and, having drunk, you turn to peanuts. Perhaps you don’t. Maybe you don’t like peanuts; maybe you don’t like whisky, maybe you’ve never felt like too much suet in a single duff. Somehow, it always comes as a surprise when someone tells you that you’re supposed to have an apple instead of cake, not as well as; when they tell you that carrot cake is not one of your five-a-day; that orange squash is not an orange; that a banana split does not count as two bananas…

As you become older everything makes you fatter and nothing, other than ill-health, makes you thinner. Thus, in the minds of most people, an elderly thin person is an unwell one. I definitely carry a little too much timber. I would quite like to shift some of it and I’m quite certain that doing so would not make me ill. The problem, should I actually lose the weight, is that nobody bothers to tell my skin that it has less flesh to cover. It does not shrink to fit. It hangs in folds and gives me the kind of jowls that are otherwise associated with Deputy Dawg. I don’t want to look like somebody else – for a start I’d never be able to get onto my phone – but I would quite like to look like a thinner me. Not because I have a great face – my mum used to show me milk whenever she fancied a yoghurt – just that it is the face that I have grown used to. It is the face that scares me in the mirror every morning. It might not be much to look at, but it comes attached to my body and as long as I see it in the mirror, I know that I am still around. In the movies, when fugitives ‘change their appearance’ with the kind of radical cosmetic procedures that, in the real world, leave relatively normal-looking people resembling one of our less-attractive simian ancestors, who do they see when they look in the mirror? Do they still see themselves, or do they see somebody else? Do they become somebody else? Maybe someone a little slimmer, with less saggy skin…

Don’t want to be a fat man
Have not the patience to ignore all that
Hate to admit to myself
I thought my problems came from being fat… Fatman – Jethro Tull (Anderson)

Supersonic

A distinctly analogue, non-sonic version

So, I was wondering why the only thing I’ve never seen Doctor Who do with his sonic screwdriver is to tighten a screw, when it occurred to me how very very sad my life has become, and then I realised that it has always been that way: my ability to whittle over something that is not only inconsequential but also entirely fictional is without equal. You know the kind of thing: why do terrified people always walk into a darkened room; if there is more than one of them, why do they always split-up? Why does the gun always run out of bullets when just one round would see off the bad guy? Why do I worry that my own particular skillset would boil down to gibbering quietly in the corner, attempting to hide in my own sock? Why do I worry that with my back to the wall I would be less John McClane and more clematis?

The only thing that separates fact from fiction is that they are completely different things: situations are not real, reactions are not real and no-one ever feels sick because they have eaten too much chocolate. And of course reality is so much more rational, isn’t it? Well, we have a world led by a man who seriously looks as though he is only managing to dodge the coffin on the grounds that The Lords of the Universe have looked at him and thought, “Well, what harm could he do? And anyway, look at the alternative.” We have Putin, we have Xi, we have Israel and Hamas, we have Iran, and we have madmen running around with guns and knives… doesn’t it all make a sonic screwdriver seem quite logical? (In reality, logic is something that only mathematicians and astro-physicists believe in. For the rest of us it is The Chaos Theory and Wacky Races on TV.) Nothing really makes sense. Why is there nothing in the world that makes you crave a cup of coffee quite like the sound of the coffee machine turning off? Why does nothing make you realise that you’re not that hungry quite like the ‘ping’ of a microwave? Why does nothing make a politician quite so contemptuous of the common man as being elected as a man of the people?

Perhaps we need Doctor Who to sort these things out. Could his ‘wonder tool’* turn the previously pretty teenage girl away from a short-term future as a dead-skinned puffer fish with lips that can only drink through a straw? Could a sonic screwdriver ensure that all of the clocks in the house did not run out of battery at exactly the same time; that your phone didn’t run out of charge at the very second you manage to find a signal; that your keys were in your pocket at the end of a journey as well as at the beginning; could it fix the kind of extremely annoying personality trait that has idiots fretting over things that they cannot control? Could it stop them from believing that a sonic screwdriver actually exists…

You need to find out
‘Cause no one’s gonna tell you what I’m on about
You need to find a way for what you wanna say
But before tomorrow… Supersonic – Oasis (Noel Gallagher)

*Oh come on, you’re making your own jokes up now!

Welcome to England

Entirely unlike the three-bedroomed, two bathroomed beast we holidayed in – but much cooler to look at.

It seemed like a jolly idea: a few days in a caravan (we haven’t done that for years) in the North East of England (we’ve never been there). The journey, scheduled by Sat Nav to take just less than four hours took considerably longer as (wisdom, not being infinite, as advertised) we decided to make the journey on a Bank Holiday Monday and whomever is responsible for such things decided to dig up every single road along the way. At least the various diversions meant that we got to see the centre of Newcastle – five times I think. We arrived to typical North East spring weather – very cold, locals bare-chested, tourists in mufflers, the entire landscape being shrouded in a thick, freezing sea fret – and moved our gear into the caravan: approximately ten times the clothing required for a holiday in any climate less unpredictable than our own (e.g. absolutely anywhere).

After an extended period spent shuffling from cheek to cheek in the car, I felt somewhat like a cowboy who had spent too long in the saddle, and it wasn’t too long before I realised that the old farmer Giles* had taken the opportunity afforded to them by a long journey to – quite literally – become a right royal pain-in-the-arse. Oh well, I treated them in the way I always do: a raging hot curry should do the trick…

…This morning I am standing by the bathroom door, waiting for the cure to take effect, whilst listening to my wife – who has taken to her bed** – coughing in the bedroom. You just can’t beat feeling ill in a tin box. We’ll wait until she feels well enough to get up before deciding whether to stay here or head straight home: she might not feel well enough to travel and I might need to find a rubber ring to sit on. I would tell you what this morning’s weather is like, but to be honest, I’m not sure. All I can see through the window is grey: thick, cloying grey. My watch tells me that there is no rain in the forecast but, as the site Wi-Fi is more intermittent than sunshine, it might not be the most reliable of sources. I’m sure that I would hear rain on the roof if it was here, but I have no idea of whether it is on its way. (Actually, we currently have what sounds like a whole flock of seagulls clog-dancing on the roof, so having given it some thought, I’m not entirely confident that I would hear the rain. I’m not certain I would hear a nuclear war.)

The sea-fret is forecast to lift this afternoon – the sun may even decide to fleetingly peep out from behind its folds and shine down on us. I might take my little canvas chair outside… and my big coat… and a mug of tea… and, thinking about it, it would probably be wiser if I stood anyway. Experience tells me that time is the only healer for haemorrhoids: keep the pressure off and allow them to self-heal – I’ve tried medication before and, to be quite frank, for all the good it did, I might as well have shoved it up my arse …

*Piles (haemorrhoids)
**With what shows every sign of being a ‘with knobs on’ re-run of last week’s cold.

You better bring your own sun, sweet girl
You gotta bring your own sun
And don’t you forget, you bring your own sun
Just enough for everyone
For everyone… Welcome to England – Tori Amos

Conversations with the Bearded Man (6) – Newark

I had never actually tried to seek him out before, he had always found me, and if I’m honest, I had no real idea of where to start. I wandered the streets for days, sat on buses, drank in pubs. I retrieved his petrol can from the back of the shed, but it held no clues: it was rusty and the last few drops of the petrol it had once housed had long-since absorbed into the softly rotting floor. I couldn’t remember the last time I had even seen a metal petrol can. ‘Only him,’ I thought. There would be a reason for it of course, some kind of message about strength and fragility. I would ask him – if ever I found him.

More than a year had passed since the last time we spoke and much had changed – and yet it was the same. I had made contact with my soon-to-be ex-wife and we had spoken, almost exclusively without rancour. Well, she at least, had spoken without rancour: I had been my usual petulant self, but against all odds we had managed to remain in one another’s company for more than an hour without once resorting to violence and name-calling. It had not physically changed anything: she was still well on the way towards becoming my very ‘ex’, but the absence of desire to kill after our encounter was exactly the kind of progress I thought that I should report.

Also, I now had friends – even if I wouldn’t want to be seen out with them in daylight. We went out together, or more precisely, we met up at the same place every Friday night in the bar of The Harrows for a few pints, a volcanically microwaved prehistoric meat pie and a quiz. We never won, but we always got through the evening without major ructions and, as loathe as I was to admit it, I looked forward to the occasion, even if the quiz master did insist on calling us ‘the sad bleeders in the corner’, when our actual name “Archimedes’ Crew”, was quite clearly written at the top of our answer sheet. More progress to report. My life had become, if not exactly good, then at least bearable at times. Never-the-less I knew that there were still pieces of the jigsaw missing and, instinctively, I felt that he had them.

So it became my habit whenever I had the opportunity to sit for a while, empty my brain (a frighteningly simple exercise) and then just see where my legs might take me. I did things. I did theatres, museums, football matches, bus trips, weekends away – all alone, all in the hope of being found, and as each day, week and month ticked away I became increasingly convinced that my final meeting with Lorelei was already in the past. The little diversions became a way of life – just something I did – but as they became more and more habitual, the feeling of emptiness and disaffection began, once more, to chip away at my soul…

…The rain, although not heavy, was as persistent as a text-message reminder from the dentist and more than a match for my cheap, Ebay kagoule. I couldn’t tell you why I had chosen Newark to visit: it was easy to get to on the train and it had a castle and a river, but as the icy cold precipitation soaked through every one of my manifold, yet inadequate, layers of clothing forming a puddle in my crotch that, despite its location, still succeeded in being a good ten degrees colder than the surrounding temperature, I couldn’t think of anywhere else that I less wanted to be. I picked my way across the market place, along the glistening cobbles, sensing the slick, unsteady surface through the wafer-thin soles of my saturated Converse, towards the dim yellow light that beckoned me from the windows of the pub in the corner, when I became aware of a small crowd gathered around a figure on the floor. Instinctively I pushed my way in, feeling the burning imperative of the recently acquired St John’s First Aid badge in my pocket and found myself looking down on a familiar, bearded face. He looked up and beamed a greeting smile. “I knew it would be you,” he said. “Thank you everybody. I know this man. He has training. He’ll help me across to a seat in the café there. I’m sure I’ll be fine after a few minutes in a chair. I’m so very grateful for your help. Thank you.” And all I could do was wonder why on earth he wanted to recover in the café instead of the pub. I helped him to his feet. “How?” I asked.
“I just slipped on the cobbles.”
“I mean,” I said, “how did you know it would be me?”
“Well I don’t know anybody else here,” he said.
“But how did you know that I’d be here?”
“I didn’t… Did I?” He looked confused. Painfully aware that the pub was just next door, I led him into the café and sat him at a vacant table. The waitress was with us almost at once. She was all concern and fret.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” she asked. My companion assured her that he was. “Okay,” she said, finally content, “As long as you’re sure. I’ll get your tea. What would you like love?”
“Coffee please.” The waitress bustled away. “Do you come in here often?”
“I don’t think I’ve ever been here before.”
“So how did she know you wanted tea?”
“I always have tea. Now,” he said, “why did you want me?”
“I didn’t! Well, I did, but…”
He was looking around the room, breathing in his surroundings, reading the walls like he was in a museum. “It’s so important to be open to the new, don’t you think?”
“Yes,” I cast my own narrowed eyes around the twee yellow chintz palace, “but ‘the new’ can be pretty boring as well, can’t it?”
“I suppose so. I always think about see-saws. You want excitement on one end, then you’ve got to put excited on the other. If you want to sit at the bottom end just staring up at nothing happening, then it’s best just to stare. If you’ve got nothing to contribute then you can bounce as hard as you like, you’re always going to end up on the ground with the business end wedged under your chin.”
“So you’re telling me that I can only get out of life what I can put into it, right?”
“Am I? Oh…”
The drinks arrived at the table and, having poured Lorelei’s tea – milk first, one sugar – the waitress fussed away to her romantic novel behind the till.
I sipped at my coffee, which smelled great but tasted like it was a virtual stranger to the coffee bean. “I don’t think I always try very hard.”
“I don’t think you have to try too hard,” he said. “Just try.”
We drank in silence. Somewhere unseen a cuckoo clock marked the hour and, instinctively, the waitress, Lorelei and I all looked at our watches.
“Well, I suppose I’d better get going,” said my companion, rising slowly to his feet. I noticed, for the first time the bruise on his head.
“Are you sure you’re ok?”
“I think so,” he said. “But it wouldn’t hurt to check on me now and again, would it?”
“How?”
“Oh, don’t worry, it’s easy enough. You can let me have my petrol can back some time.”
“It’s rusted.”
“I know…”

First published 08.04.22 under the title “A Little Fiction – Conversations with the Bearded Man (part 6)