It Leads to This

…Religious Education: yet another school subject on which I had the kind of fragile grip that meant that my tutor felt obliged to summarily rip the leather-luk patches from the elbows of my school blazer as a sign of his disdain. I remember little about the Ten Commandments other than the order in which they were delivered (with murder at six) always seemed a little open to question as far as I was concerned. Anyway, I couldn’t help but wonder what Moses would come down from the mountain with today, in order to give him any chance of maintaining moral compliance amongst his over-entitled people…

Thou shalt have no other Gods before me… although I do realise that my absence from Insta means that, in reality, I might have to wait my turn behind Selena Gomez, Cristiano Ronaldo and some guy sneezing into a trombone. As I am all-knowing, I realise that pretty soon people are going to start thinking that there are more important things in life – particularly on a sunny Sunday afternoon – and may even start to wonder why their God is more important than anybody else’s. Lord knows, they may even stop killing one another for a few minutes while they think it through.
Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image… of anybody else. Many of you will strive for simplicity in church buildings, but it would seem that representations of God being all powerful and Jesus being impossibly handsome are quite acceptable. Interior design concepts are of paramount importance to the kind of people the church hopes to attract these days and comfort has become a prerequisite in order to put bums on pews, except in the case of church heating systems which remain determinedly utilitarian.
Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain… nor use it to justify lying, stealing, bullying or terrorising. Just to make it clear here, Evangelical TV Preachers and Irish Nuns are not exempt.
Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy… unless if it clashes with the Sales, a big sporting event, or a distant cousin’s fortieth birthday party, in which case you might need to pray twice as hard the following week.
Honour thy father and thy mother… particularly if they are seeing you through University. Hopefully they will have the common sense to shuffle off the perch whilst still leaving enough in the bank to provide the deposit for your first house. It may be permissible to not honour them, if all they did was to provide you with a decent upbringing and everything they could afford whilst you were growing up, and if they failed to provide for you during your third divorce and subsequent arrest for cocaine dealing.
Thou shalt not kill… unless it is politically expedient to do so.
Thou shalt not commit adultery… unless you are married.
Thou shalt not steal… unless somebody else has something that you badly want. It is not right that they can afford it and you cannot. Portability is the key to effective theft. If it is a house you desire, taking it without anybody noticing is likely to be very tricky, but if it fits neatly into your pocket it can barely be classed as theft anyway. Theft is nothing more or less than wealth distribution and everyone agrees with that, right? If you do not, you are probably a Devil worshipper.
Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour… unless it is possible to do it anonymously. If the police get involved, pretend that you are one of forty illegal immigrants living in his loft. Speak a language that nobody understands. Draw pictures to explain how you spilled the petrol.
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, wife, slaves, animals or anything else he/she owns… Especially if she looks like my neighbour’s wife. (It is likely that she is miffed at coming behind the house in the list of things thou must not covet.) Their house is a dump, their car is a wreck and their dog has only three legs. I do not covet anything they own… which must make me very Godly, right?

I hope it goes without saying that this is not intended to – nor should – offend the many amongst you with a true and honestly held faith, which I respect implicitly.

So it leads to this
How could we get it so wrong?
For all this time, for all this progress
For all this time, for all this progress… It Leads to This – The Pineapple Thief (Soord/Harrison)

Not That Funny

I have days when all I want to do is write funny. Occasionally I have days when I can actually do it, and even more occasionally the two days coincide. On those days, in addition to writing, I almost inevitably find myself re-writing: my stock of yet to be published is given a jolly good full-body massage and slapped into some kind of life. I don’t know why I’m not like it all of the time, but somehow I fear that if I was, someone would have killed me long ago. These are the days when my life is like a tub of Alka-Seltzer into which someone has dropped a spoonful of water. On these red-pen days I even tire myself out.

I have learned to rein it in a bit: in the past it all bubbled out of my mouth, but these days it ends up scattered across a number of various computer chips, although it still leaves me feeling like I have binged on Love Hearts and Irn Bru: a long, dark night of the soul, just camomile tea and me, a pen, some paper and the kind of ever-evolving, meandering plot that would make James Joyce blench (and let’s face it, he deserves it) lies ahead. Alcohol is never the answer – unless the question is ‘what is ethanol?’ Time making sense is usually wasted: never explain a joke.

My handwriting is dragged along by mood in a way that I do not fully understand; from backwards sloping, to forward sloping; from large and loose to tight and tiny; from neat and tidy to totally deranged; it’s all the same me in different hats. I have tried so hard to analyze the nature of the scrawl, but I can make neither head nor tail of it – as long as that is not what you do when sexing hamsters – the writing/mood/joke conundrum is not one that can be solved by the likes of me, even if chocolate is involved (and it usually is).

Actually, it has just occurred to me that hamsters don’t have tails and that I have no idea how you would ‘sex’ one anyway, although I presume that there are people who actually do need to know a hamster’s gender. I thought about looking it up, but I didn’t want GCHQ to have that Google Search to hold over me. They have quite enough. I may be paranoid (or possibly neurotic, I’m never sure) but someone is listening to everything I say. I only have to utter the words ‘hamster sexing’ for my phone and laptop to be full of it within minutes. Try a web search for ‘How do I grow carrots?’ subsequently and I will get the answer, ‘Do you mean “How do I sex a hamster?”’ I would be a hair’s breadth away from having a device full of scantily-clad Cricetinae and the police knocking on my door with a telegraph pole.

It is just one small entry in the list of stuff that keeps me awake at night, like global warming, world war three and what is the right size of cup for a Cup-a-Soup? At what stage do you graduate from a Cup-a-Sludge to a Cup-a-Coloured-Water-with-Soggy-Croutons? I know that there must be a ‘sweet spot’, but I have never found it. How easy life would be if it had more perfect Cup-a-Soup days. Most of the time it just makes up funny…

It’s not that funny, is it?
But you can’t get enough of it
It’s not that funny, is it?
Not that funny
Not funny
You can’t get enough of it… Not that Funny – Fleetwood Mac (Buckingham)

Funtime

It is traditional for people to list all of the things that one supposedly gains with age: wisdom, patience, humility, tolerance, but to forget all of the things you lose: strength, flexibility, dexterity, car keys, the ability to remember why you’ve just gone up the stairs, and above all, fun. As you get older, ‘fun’ becomes an ever rarer element in your life. You do things to ‘make a change’, to ‘challenge yourself’, to ‘pass the time’ but seldom simply because they are fun: no jumping in puddles; no having sex when there’s a reasonably high chance of being caught at it; no dancing in the rain; no using a made-up language in conversations on the bus; no roller-skating, no playing cricket with a Rounders bat and a golf ball, no trying to make a playground swing ‘go over the top’, no drinking coffee until your eyeballs vibrate… Invariably ‘the price’ becomes too high, the ‘tutting’ of children too loud.

I believe that the government needs to institute an annual National Make a Total Tit of Yourself Day just for the over sixties. Do it in the summer and the beaches will be full of sexagenarian skinny-dippers, or do it in the winter when the parks will be full of snowmen, sledges, snowballs, hot-aches and broken hips. Do it any time and there will be wrinkly skin on show, cigarettes being smoked, weird cocktails being made from anything found at the back of the drinks cupboard: “Oh yes, it is one part cheap vodka, one part fourteen year-old Ouzo, one part Sanatogen and a small dash of that fluorescent green stuff we got from the Spanish monastery on our honeymoon. You should try it: I’ve just seen the inside of my eyeballs…”

And I’m not sure why, but old people will use any excuse to take clothes off: we are the “H & E*” generation. Naked volleyball may no longer be on the agenda, but what could possibly go wrong with naked Uno? Exposing genitalia at inappropriate times is so much more fun when nobody in their right mind could possibly find it in any way alluring: “Why have you got no clothes on gran?”
“I’m going to have a shower.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow… possibly.”
“Ok. And have you remembered that you are currently shopping in the Co-op?”
“Oh… There was a time when men would have died for this you know.”
“And?”
“Most of them died before they got it unfortunately… Now, where’s the Vapo Rub?”
It is the only reason that we oldies keep our houses so warm…

As joy becomes harder to find, you start to look for it a little bit harder, and you find it in different places: in non-matching clothes, in a tub of cockles on a freezing cold seashore, in beating the contestants on a TV quiz show, in eating baked beans for 365 days a year, in drinking red wine with fish fingers… The wisdom of age simply tells you to take joy where you can find it and bugger just ‘passing the time’, there’s not enough of it left…

*Health & Efficiency (H&E) was a naturist magazine back in the day, and the nearest thing we ever got to pornography.

I just do what I want to do
All aboard for funtime… Funtime – Iggy Pop (Bowie/Pop)

FYI – I have just completed this piece fuelled by red wine and a packet of Honey Roasted Peanuts which the packet describes as “Sweet and savoury nuggets of delight”: what’s not to love?

Frankie & Benny #9 – Vaccinations

“…You’d think they’d have coffee, wouldn’t you? Perhaps a custard cream or something. We’ve been here ages”
“Well, I don’t suppose they want to be encouraging folk to linger do they? I think ideally they want us in and out.”
“Really? Well how long have we been waiting here now my friend?”
“Just under forty minutes I think, but we did arrive almost an hour early.”
“Yes, well that wasn’t entirely our own fault was it?”
“Well no. I suppose we could quite legitimately blame the landlord for chucking us out of the pub so early. I’ve no idea why he should need to go upstairs to cook himself a meal anyway when he’s got a cabinet full of meat pies on the bar.”
“True, although if he’d eaten one of those he would probably have had to see the doctor before us. Some of those pies have been in there so long you can tell how old they are by cutting them in half and counting the rings.”
“Then you can’t really blame him for not wanting to eat them, can you.”
“I can blame him for charging me two quid every time I have one.”
“To be honest, I bet it costs him more than that to keep the bloody things warm for weeks on end. Besides, he only keeps them for you Frankie, nobody else touches them… unless they want to build a rockery perhaps.”
“Well at least they’re hot Benny, not like the shitey pasties you eat.”
“He microwaves the pasties. Nothing survives a microwave, does it? And I never eat the cold bits…”
“Well, he could have had one of those then, couldn’t he, and we could have stayed in the warm a bit longer.”
“To be fair, he can’t survive on just pies and pasties can he? I mean, alright I know that we do, but he’s young and soft. He likes his veg.”
“We’re eating veggie tonight.”
“I thought we were having fish and chips.”
“Fish, chips and mushy peas. How veggie do you want?”
“Good point. And anyway, fish is veg as well, isn’t it really? And bread and butter…”
“…Marge. Bread and marge. Margarine is made from veg.”
“To be honest, the stuff you buy is probably made from old sump oil. Have you ever checked the ingredients?”
“In margarine? No. Have you?”
“Well no, Francis my friend, but I don’t buy my spread from the local coal merchant.”
“Don’t exaggerate Benny, he’s a mobile grocer… He just sells coal as well.”
“Frankie, he’s a coal merchant with a van who sells anything he can get out of Derek’s ‘Only Slightly Out of Date’ bargain bin.”
“Well whatever, it’s proper margarine… and I can’t read Russian anyway. What’s the time?”
“Have you lost your watch again?
“That depends on how you define ‘lost’.”
“Have you got it?”
“No.”
“Do you know where it is?”
“No.”
“That, old chum, is how I define ‘lost’.”
“Ok, let’s go for lost then.”
“It’s ten to.”
“When are our appointments?”
“Mine’s at five to and yours is at five past.”
“…I still think they should offer us coffee.”
“Look, we’ll just get this done, buy our fish suppers and you can come back to mine for a coffee, ok?”
“I think I’ll have tea.”
“I thought you wanted coffee.”
“Not your coffee.”
“What’s wrong with my coffee?”
“Have you tasted it?”
“No, I don’t drink coffee. I stick to tea.”
“Ok, well where did you get it from?”
“I’ve no idea… Actually, I think you gave it to me… So, the coal merchant probably.”
“No, well, it’s probably for the best that they don’t serve coffee here if I’m honest. I’m busting for a pee.”
“Why don’t you go here?”
“Here? At the doctors? Are you mad?”
“What do you mean?”
“Look around you, the place is full of sick people. No, I’ll just sit here, thank you very much, and wait for my injections… Which arm will they use?”
“I think we’re having flu and covid, so they’ll use both.”
“Really? My arm was as stiff as buggery after my covid last year. If they do both together I won’t even be able to scratch my own arse tomorrow.”
“Always a silver lining eh?”
“…Did you feel ill last time?”
“Not really. Bit of a headache I think, but I took something for it.”
“What did you take?”
“A tumbler-full of cheap whisky, that did the trick.”
“Then, good doctor, I will follow your advice – indeed, if they are doing both arms, I shall have two tumblers-full.”
“Very wise, Francis, very wise… So when we get these injections done we’ll eat our vegetarian suppers and drink our medicine whilst watching ‘Only Connect’ on the TV shall we?”
“Yes, although I’m not sure why we always watch that, we never know the answers?”
“Well no, but we like watching the presenter, don’t we? We can turn the sound down if you like.”
“Yes, that would be better, wouldn’t it.”
“We’ll certainly feel less stupid.”
“I doubt that will work. We are, old pal, exceedingly skilled at ignorance.”
“In modern parlance, I believe it is probably known to be our default position.”
“Like hiding behind the hat stand when the Jehovah’s Witnesses knock on the door?”
“Indeed.”
“Like when you put your collar up and pull your hat down whenever you see a poppy seller?”
I don’t do that… Do I do that?”
“Indeed you do, my friend.”
“Well, if they want us to buy a new one every year, they shouldn’t make them last so long, should they? See, like this vaccination we’re having, they change them every year, don’t they. Just enough to make us think that we’ve got to have the new one.”
“But the vaccination is free.”
“So are the poppies for some: I’ve seen what you put in the box.”
“It’s proper money, they’ll just need to get it changed.”
“I’m not sure they’re that desperate for a peseta.”
“They might be collectible these days, pesetas.”
“Well, it is possible I suppose, although the bus driver didn’t think so, did he?”
“I’m not certain that his language was entirely appropriate.”
“Ah well, at least we had plenty of time to walk, since the dipstick landlord chucked us out onto the street with over an hour to kill.”
“…And only a two peseta pie for sustenance…”
“You didn’t!”
“Rude not to Benny, rude not to…”

First published 20.10.23

Five More Minutes in the Car

I’m fascinated by characters that slowly reveal themselves through nothing more than conversation. These two people first appeared in Five Minutes in the Car back in July 2022. I stumbled across them a few days ago and decided that I would like to revisit…

“…So, do you think it’s possible that Einstein could have been wrong about things?”
“What kind of things?”
“Well, he said that energy could neither be created nor destroyed didn’t he?”
“Possibly, yes.”
“So he can’t ever have seen you on a Saturday night.”
“Once, just once I fell to sleep during ‘Strictly’.”
“I mean, I look at you and I believe that energy can obviously be destroyed. You are like a vigour shredder. Someone has taken the second ‘o’ out of your oomph.”
“Omph? I don’t understand.”
“Exactly… and if he claims that it can’t be created either, then where did it come from in the first place?”
“Weetabix?”
“It will be the Big Bang I suppose. That’s the problem with Einstein: everything’s boils down to the Big Bang.”
“I remember I went with you to the cinema once to watch Fifty Shades of Gray. That definitely sapped all of my energy.”
“Well, let’s be fair, most of it went over your head, didn’t it?”
“All I know is that if I approached your nipples with two giant paper clips, the reception would be less than welcoming.”
“You have a valid argument there.”
“Anyway, the point is, I went in full of energy and came out two hours later without even the will to live, so where did all the energy get to?”
“You chewed a lot of popcorn.”
“I yawned a lot. I held my head in my hands…”
“I think that just illustrates what Einstein said doesn’t it? Energy doesn’t disappear, it just changes.”
“Into acute embarrassment?”
“Well… Look, we’re driving along now right, which uses a lot of energy.”
“Ok.”
“But that energy isn’t actually lost, it’s just changed.”
“Into what?”
“Well, overwhelmingly into tedium when I’m with you.”
“No, come on. Be serious: I’m interested. Energy drives the car along right, I get that. So where does it get to after that?”
“It’s turned into friction.”
“Friction?”
“Yes friction. It makes the tyres get warm.”
“…A bit of a waste isn’t it?”
“What?”
“All that energy just to make the tyres warm. You could just do it with a hair dryer.”
“But that wouldn’t get us to the Supermarket.”
“My point entirely.”
“Look, if you rub two surfaces together, it takes energy doesn’t it?”
“Right.”
“But it creates friction.”
“Right.”
“And that…”
“… makes car tyres warm apparently… Do you know, I think you might be right.”
“Do you? I mean, you do?”
“Yes, I think that Einstein bloke was obviously an idiot.”
“Wow! That’s going to rattle a few academic cages. Let’s just take a minute here and discuss your evidence.”
“Well… O.K… Right… Boiling the water to make a cup of tea on a Sunday afternoon; that uses a lot of energy doesn’t it?”
“According to British Gas it certainly does.”
“And when we drink the tea?”
“We watch a film and fall asleep.”
“Yes! So, where has all that energy gone?”
“Into snoring, in your case… and farting.”
“Oh come on, that takes no effort at all. Look, just suppose that we’re right and he got it all wrong about energy, he could be wrong about everything else as well.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know… Gravity! What if he was wrong about gravity?”
“Well, I don’t think it was him that actually invented gravity. Wasn’t that Isaac Newton: an apple on the head and all of that? I suppose when you come to think about it, he could probably have sued someone…”
“Oh… Ok, not gravity. So what else did Einstein actually come up with then?”
“The Theory of Relativity.”
“Like genes and all that?”
“No, like the Speed of Light.”
“What do you mean?”
“Einstein calculated the Speed of Light.”
“The Speed of Light? Surely that would depend.”
“On what?”
“Well, whether it was fast light or slow light.”
“Is there such a thing?”
“Yes, of course. The light on the front of an aeroplane goes much faster than that on the front of a bicycle. It stands to reason.”
“Right. I’m not sure that…”
“So did he say anything else then, Einstein, did he have any other great ideas?”
“Well, he said about the Big Bang, the origins of the Universe, all of that…”
“Right, so the Big Bang, I know about that. Everything stated with one almighty explosion, is that what he said?”
“In principle, yes, I think so.”
“So where did the energy come from?”
“The energy?”
“To make the Big Bang. Where did the energy come from? There was nothing before it, right? And according to him energy can neither be created nor destroyed, so where did it come from?”
“Well, it must always have been there I suppose.”
“Before the Big Bang?”
“Yes.”
“The same Big Bang that created everything?”
“…What’s your alternative?”
“I don’t know. A Supreme Being?”
“God?”
“Possibly.”
“So what was there before God?”
“Nothing.”
“Must have been very boring for him.”
“How do you know it was a ‘him’?”
“How much sense does the Universe make to you?”
“It’s very complicated.”
“And serves very little purpose.”
“I see… Anyway, I suppose he had a lot of time on his hands.”
“So he created energy?”
“Yes, obviously.”
“From what?”
“I don’t know… God stuff…”
“I see, so, just before we give Brian Cox a ring and explain that his whole life is a pathetic sham, what exactly is our position on Einstein’s Theory of relativity?”
“What?”
“You know, E=MC².”
“What does that even mean?”
“Well, ultimately it means that half a dozen egotistical old men have enough power at their fingertips to destroy the whole world a hundred times over.”
“Well, let’s hope that he was wrong about that as well then… Have you got any mints?…”

Probably a couple of things I should explain here. In the UK British Gas also supplies electricity and there are two famous Brian Cox’s: one is a great actor and the other is a heart-throb astrophysicist – I don’t know which is which…

Waiting for the Big One

Nothing to do with this post, but who could resist that face?

There are times when I know that I am not very good and there are things that I know that I am not very good at. There are also things that I’m ok at, but nothing that I could honestly say I am great at. In most ways I am bang in the middle of ‘average’: pretty shit in general but tries hard. Seldom in life’s first eleven, but might make a decent mascot.

Thankfully, I am untroubled by high aspirations, otherwise my low achievements would be exceedingly disappointing. I suppose that how poor I am depends largely on how good others expect me to be. Like all wannabe writers I have always considered myself to be one lucky break away from totally smashing success. Like all realists I have always known that it was never actually going to happen. My wife, who has always looked on over my small triumphs, continues to believe that something is waiting around the corner for me, whilst I am old enough to realise that if it was ever there, it has got bored and buggered off back home long ago.

Now, before I lay myself open to accusations of false modesty or fishing for compliments, I should point out that I do know what I am capable of (not being grammatically correct, obviously) and I do believe that I have written many things through the years that were deserving of that break, but I also know that, at my age, it is no longer waiting for me. The media is on a never-ending search for the new and that, in their collective heads, cannot possibly be provided by a sixty year old. The biggest obstacle to success for me has always been me. I’m very good at getting things done; I’m very poor at doing anything about it. I’ve never adapted well to futility.

Does that sound like I’m giving up, because I’m really not? There is no life without hope, but it is very liberating to be able to decide to write exactly what I feel like writing, exactly when I feel like writing it. I rarely plan anything beyond toilet breaks and I seldom know where I’m going when I start. What would be the point in that? What flaps around between my ears is all my own, so I choose when to use it and how, although I do usually manage to turn up with something when asked. I’m always thrilled when people read what I have to say, even more so if they say they’ve enjoyed it.

I admit that on this platform I have found myself exasperated over the years by my inability to get more readers, but I do absolutely nothing to help myself: no social media, no self-promotion, no research, no attention-grabbing titles, no idea of what people want to read… just wittering on and stories. I genuinely love being part of this little ‘community’. I consider many of you to be friends (not you obviously) even though we have never met and it is a joy to read about your lives. That you allow me to bore you with mine is a real bonus. I continue to be ‘up’ for writing anything that interests me – so if your local village magazine requires an ageing agony aunt or an astrologist (as long as that’s the made-up future predictions tosh and not the thing with the planets – even my imagination does not stretch that far) just let me know. I’ll think of something, even if it’s not very good…

Waiting for the big one
One too many, where ego I go too
Looking for the real thing
It don’t come from what I do… Waiting for the Big One – Peter Gabriel

N.B. not for the first time, I had a little hiccup when scheduling this piece. If you’ve seen it before, no matter how fleetingly, I apologise for my astonishing ineptitude.

I’m a Believer

Here I am, listening to The Definitive Monkees – a musical rollercoaster of a CD: a collection that is filled with more than its fair share of complete clunkers (even David Gates and Goffin & King managed to chip in with a couple of songs that I am sure they would prefer to forget) but also a few absolute gems. I think it is pretty widely known that apart from the lead vocals (an early contractual agreement stated that only one actual Monkee could appear on any single Monkees recording) the early songs were actually performed by Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart who also wrote many of them, but who cares – listen to some of these tracks and you have a short, but perfect, snap of the schoolboy sixties:
(Theme from) The Monkees
Last Train to Clarksville
I’m A Believer (Neil Diamond)
(I’m Not Your) Stepping Stone
A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You (Neil Diamond)
Randy Scouse Git – Known over here as ‘Alternate Title’ for some reason (Mickey Dolenz)
Pleasant Valley Sunday (Goffin/King)
Daydream Believer (John Stewart)
Valleri
Cuddly Toy (Harry Nilsson)
I’m not sure that Neil Diamond ever bettered those two songs and in Pleasant Valley Sunday – which did feature all four Monkees – Gerry Goffin and Carole King gave them a song that was thirty years ahead of its time, whilst a proto-Harry Nilsson’s Cuddly Toy managed to accompany a jaunty ‘showtime’ tune with the kind of dark, twisted lyric that would almost certainly struggle to find its way onto CBeebies today.

Nevertheless, we’re not talking the ground-breaking majesty of The Beatles here (who, if we count only the tracks on the Red and Blue compilation albums, boast 60+ such seminal tracks – all self-written) but a snap-shot of a time when as soon as somebody’s mum appeared at the door and the call rang out, everyone ran to whatever happened to be the nearest house to watch the show, generally provided with a glass of weak orange squash and a sugar sandwich. It really didn’t matter whose house you were in, everybody was watching the same thing and, the chances were, your own house would be full of somebody else’s kids anyway. Though special, even to the under-tens, The Beatles were altogether more grown-up, and not even Paul McCartney could inflame pre-pubescent female passions as readily as Davy Jones. There was little in this world that would draw me away from kicking a football around the streets in those days, but the Monkees seldom failed.

For most of us way-back-then, I think that to some extent the songs actually got in the way of the show’s anarchy: even the best of them simply interrupted the mayhem and, if we’re honest, Mickey Dolenz (the de-facto lead singer) was the least interesting of the four. I don’t think anybody ever grew up wanting to be a rock star because they’d seen The Monkees, but plenty wanted to be funny – or ‘daft’ as the less hip parents (daddio) were apt to say. I had no doubt that I was going to grow up daft – I had no allusions of a Rock God future – short blimps with red hair seldom drew the girls. (Let’s be honest, if Ed Sheeran had been forty years older, he still wouldn’t have been a Monkee.)

Those programs – and as I get older the few epoch-defining songs – bounce me right back to those days in a way that not even The Banana Splits can manage. It is a single sensation rather than a series of recollections. “Here they come, walking down the street…” and I do not remember being an eight year-old, I become one. My senses are those of a child, whilst my sensibilities are those that pass for adult. I’m not sure that I could even eat a sugar sandwich these days – and my doctor would definitely frown upon the alternative salt sandwich – I don’t have anything like as many scabs, but I do have rather more padding in the space between skin and bone. I can go days without needing someone to patch me back together.

Time changes us all in a million different ways, but essentially we remain the same. A good person will do what they think is right and a bad person will become a politician or, if sufficiently ruthless, an estate agent. I don’t know if there are fundamentally good people and bad people (if I’m honest, when I watch the news I see little evidence of good, though I do continue to believe in it) but I don’t think that a person’s nature actually changes much through life. Perhaps the way they regulate it does.

All I know is that back then, all I wanted to be was a Monkee and sometimes, when I listen to those songs, I still do…

Then I saw her face, now I’m a believer
Not a trace of doubt in my mind
I’m in love
I’m a believer, I couldn’t leave her if I tried… I’m a Believer – The Monkees (Neil Diamond)

Frankie & Benny #8 – Barry

“…Well, I’m pleased we went.”
“Yes, me too, I’m pleased we went.”
“I’m sure he appreciated it.”
“…Do you think he knew who we were?”
“He thought you were one of the staff; that’s why he asked you to empty his commode. He wouldn’t have done that if he’d remembered who you were, now would he?”
“I wouldn’t put it past him. He always had a strange sense of humour, Barry, I think that’s why nobody liked him… Would you visit me if I was in one of those places?”
“Of course. You owe me money.”
“Do I?”
“You don’t remember? Maybe we ought to go straight back and sign you in. Where do you keep your Will?”
“I don’t have a Will. I don’t have anything to leave – unless you want the Crinoline Lady off my spare toilet roll.”
“You have a spare toilet roll?”
“Anyway, I don’t owe you money, do I?”
“Have you got any?”
“On me? No.”
“Let’s hope we can find a pub that gives credit then, because it’s your round.”
“Francis, my dear friend, I always ensure that I maintain the pecuniary wherewithal to finance your sad alcohol dependence. I have my debit card in my wallet, an emergency ten pound note sewn into the hem of my trousers and, should all else fail, a lead-lined cosh in my pocket. Do not worry my friend, you shall not want for a tipple. And anyway, when have I ever missed my round?”
“What about last week?”
“Frankie, I was in bed with flu. You came round to mine and drank all four of the cans I had in the fridge and you ate all of my Blue Ribands.”
“I brought tea to your bedside.”
“Call that tea? It was like warm pish.”
“Honey and lemon, very good for you – at least, it would have been if you’d had any honey in…”
“…Or lemon…”
“…Or lemon.”
“So, what was it then?”
“Golden syrup and Oxo. I had to improvise.”
“You thought that you’d cure me with sweetened gravy?”
“At least I came to see you.”
“And you ate all my sausages!”
“They were going off.”
“I’d only bought them the day before.”
“Well you should have taken them back, they were horrible.”
“Really? What was the sell-by date on them?”
“Who looks at sell-by dates? You can smell if things are going off.”
“So they weren’t off then? Otherwise you wouldn’t have eaten them.”
“No, not off, just horrible. Where did you get them?”
“The corner shop.”
“You’ve been in Derek’s Bargain Bin again haven’t you? I told you, he just puts the crap out of his own fridge in there. No wonder you’ve been ill, eating all that stuff.”
“I didn’t eat it, did I? You did.”
“Yes, well I’ve always had a stronger constitution than you haven’t I? Even when we were kids, you were always the weakling.”
“I was not!”
“You were. You were never at school. Always wrapped up at home in bed, in your muffler.”
“My mum was just a bit over-cautious, what with my dad and everything.”
“Your dad?”
“Yes, and his chest.”
“Benny, there was nothing wrong with your dad’s chest. He was on the sick from 1955 to 1985 and I never once heard him cough. ‘Work-shy Wilf’ my dad used to call him. The only time he ever broke sweat was when he had to go and sign on.”
“He gave his life to that foundry. All that smoke got onto his chest, that’s what killed him.”
“Benny, he smoked sixty a day. I never once saw him without a fag on.”
“Can’t have helped, I’ll grant you…”
“Staying at home in bed, in the room directly above your dad had to be more unhealthy than going to school. Maybe you missed out on headlice, threadworm, measles, chickenpox and mumps, but laid up there, I’m surprised you didn’t turn into some kind of a kipper.”
“Well that’s as maybe, but I didn’t miss out on mumps did I?”
“Oh no, I forgot you caught that when you were eighteen didn’t you? You had a ball-bag like a bull elephant. You had to lie flat on your back for weeks. Your mam could never balance the breakfast tray on your bed…”
“Yes, well I’m pleased you find it amusing Frankie. It was a scary time.”
“Of course my friend, of course I understand. The fear of not being able to have children…”
“I don’t think that ever bothered me. I was worried that I would never be able to wear the new flares I had just bought. They had a button fly and very little in the way of non-essential space.”
“Yes, you always did like a tight trouser, didn’t you?”
“It was the fashion.”
“It might well have been the fashion, but I don’t think I ever saw you sit down for about six years.”
“Yes, well I’ve got over it now.”
“You certainly have.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Well, your trousers are exceedingly… accommodating these days, aren’t they?”
“I buy for comfort now.”
“Yes, you look as comfortable as a man twice your size.”
“Well, thank you for your sartorial input, Mr Versace… You didn’t answer me earlier. Would you visit me if I was in one of those places?”
“What makes you think that it won’t be you visiting me?”
“Well, granted that you’ve got a bit less ground to cover before you get there than me, but let’s just suppose…”
“Maybe we could both go ga-ga together.”
“Maybe we already have.”
“Why do you think that?”
“Well ok, take this bus, why are we sitting upstairs and why are we right at the front?”
“It’s what we always do.”
“Yes, but why?”
“I don’t know. Do we have to have a reason? It’s just what we always do isn’t it.”
“We used to come upstairs to smoke, like everybody else back then, nobody under fifty ever sat downstairs, I remember that, but why did we start sitting at the front? I don’t remember Frankie, do you?”
“No Benny, I don’t, but I don’t think that means we’re going senile either. Nobody remembers exactly why they do everything they do. It isn’t practical. Why do you always wipe your chin with a hankie before you eat?”
“I don’t… Do I? I didn’t even realise I did that.”
“My point is, Benny, you get to our age and it’s much more important that we remember what we have to do today than why we started doing something else God-knows-when.”
“And you think that’s all it is: knowing where we are and why we’re there?”
“As long as I can remember that it’s your round, I’ll be happy.”
“But what if it isn’t?”
“Then I’ll have to hope that you’ve forgotten.”
“…Do you remember when you realised that Barry wasn’t quite right?”
“Barry was never quite right.”
“Yes, I admit he was always a little bit… adjacent… I’ll give you that, but we didn’t notice when he started to change, did we?”
“Change? The thing is, we all change all the time don’t we.
“And?”
“Because it happens so slowly, you just don’t see it.”
“Like you reaching into your pocket at the bar?”
“Or you stumping up for a fish supper when it’s your turn of a Friday.”
“He kept forgetting names though didn’t he? Then he kept forgetting where he lived. Do you think we should have noticed sooner?”
“We all thought he’d had too much to drink.”
“To be fair, he normally had.”
“Yes, and if I’m honest, if I’d lived where he lived, I’d probably try to forget it too.”
“Not the best of housekeepers was he?”
“Generally speaking, flood did a better job.”
“Anyway, I’m pleased we went to see him.”
“Yes, me too.”
“We should raise a glass to him later.”
“Providing we remember…”
“Yes.”
“Do you know whether this bus turns round at the end of the route?”
“We’ve missed our stop, haven’t we?”
“Yes…”

First published 26.05.23

Peaches

I try to maintain a rhythm in my life and whilst others either sunbathe and read, or play Biff-Bat in the warm Andaman Sea, I lay and write. Two weeks on holiday requires six posts. They will not be published until after my return, but that’s how I work anyway. These holiday posts are always fragmentary – a couple of hundred words here, a dip in the sea, a leisurely lunch, a couple of hundred words there, a nap, a conclusion of sorts, all to be cobbled together on my return home – but today more so, because today we pack our bags for the journey home, but we don’t head home, we head instead for an airport hotel to ease our way into an early morning departure.

My handwriting, always less than calligraphically perfect, is a mish-mash of varying styles and legibility depending on writing stance and sobriety. I write additions to the lined text across every margin. I have more corrections than a minor public boy’s school. Should future scholars find this tatty little Exercise Book they will believe that, like the Rosetta Stone, each leaf contains a number of different languages forged by different hands. They will have a tough job of making sense of it: I write it and half the time I am unable to make head nor tail of it. At least, for you, it means that holiday posts tend to be a little shorter than normal – although not necessarily any more concise. Word Count appears to offer no limiting boundary to aimless wittering. The same prattle, fewer words.

I have just checked into my last fifteen minutes of gazing-out-to-sea time. A fevered period of attempting to stuff worn clothing into suitcases ill-equipped to deal with the volume will follow then a brief period of limbo before a ninety minute taxi ride to our overnight accommodation, around which my wife hopes to find shops and I hope to find a bar. (We found neither. The hotel was as clean and well-equipped as you would expect but placed in the middle of an industrial estate that was also home to a number of backpacker hostels. We found a 7/11, from which we bought snacks, and a bar with a barbecue that nobody considered safe to use. I have no idea who was responsible, but it was almost certainly me.)

I never feel ready for home at the end of a holiday. Home may be where the heart is, but it is also where the bills are, where the pipes have leaked or the tiles have blown off the roof. Home is where reality is: it is where you find out that whatever has occurred during your absence, you are not insured for it.

Don’t get me wrong here, I do realise that a holiday is not a holiday if it is permanent – my own body is crying out for some form of exercise that doesn’t end in beer – if a holiday becomes routine then, sooner or later, you will need a break from it. For most of us ‘holiday’ is such a small portion of our lives that we always find ourselves wishing that it could be a larger part. Going home is a vital part of any holiday. Returning to work and reality will put an end to all of that ‘r…e…l…a…x…’ nonsense. By the time you have driven from the airport you are as wired as a telephone exchange and not even the threat of unpacking can dent the expectation of freshly laundered clothes going back into the cases sometime soon.

My next holiday will be post-retirement, so I have no idea how I will feel about the whole business then. To holiday more is the retirement I planned for, but will holidays be the same when there is no work to escape from? Time will tell. Perhaps time on the beach will tell me even more…

Oh shit, there goes the charabanc!
Looks like I’m gonna be stuck here the whole summer
Well, what a bummer
I can think of a lot worse places to be
Like down in the streets or down in the sewer
Or even on the end of a skewer… Peaches – The Stranglers (Greenfield/Burnel/Duffy/Cornwell)

Holidays in the Sun

Warning: this post contains many unfounded, sweeping generalisations.

…A long day on a trip with multi-nationalities has just made me realise how different we all remain, and also that the three little words without which no British person could even function – ‘please’, ‘thank you’* and ‘sorry’ – appear to have no equivalent in a number of languages. I will not name races – insert your own – and I can understand why ‘queuing’ might be an alien concept to some (it is clearly a cultural thing) but not why ‘not queuing’ is actually an acceptable excuse for some to physically barge past those who choose to patiently wait their turn, in order to get what they want when they want it, without any admission that other people even exist. Most galling to we pathetic queuers is the absence of manners – a failure to even acknowledge that human interaction is vital. Even more infuriating when we are in a place where our hosts are very much more mannerly than even the most uptight of us. The world appears, quite suddenly, to be full of people who believe that they have the planet all to themselves. Anyway, breakfast over…

Multi-cultural groups are always an education. The guide will inevitably speak English which means they have a chance of being understood by almost everyone except Australians who have recently picked up the baton of wilfully ignoring everything they are told, doing everything they should not be doing, not doing everything they should. I am fully aware that I am from a nation that has for many years had the reputation of supplying the very worst of all travellers, but since we have learned that it is not entirely necessary to drink until we collapse, demand egg and chips for every meal, or consider our host nation as less important than our own, we are – I hope – no longer viewed as quite so bad. I have met many Australians and have always found them to be the very best of company – open, friendly and funny – but something seems to have happened since Crocodile Dundee. I have no doubt that this view is a grossly unjust oversimplification, based on a tiny group of people who have been massively rude to both staff and fellow holidaymakers, but it is clearly apposite. The gently mocking sarcasm of their conversation persists although no longer accompanied by a Shane Warne wink and smile, but a sneer instead.

Obviously we have just been unlucky with some of the company we have been keeping – quite surely they will be saying exactly the same thing about us – but I am saddened by it. Travel is meant to broaden the mind, not narrow the outlook, and surely nicking the very last breakfast doughnut from right under my nose is not part of that…

I dared to ask for sunshine, and I got World War Three,
I’m looking over the wall and they’re looking at me… Holidays in the Sun – The Sex Pistols

Look, I’m sure that I don’t have to explain that this piece is intended to be wholly ironical, but just in case, I will. I do try very hard not to be a complete twat…

*I realise that ‘thank you’ is two words, but only really because autocorrect keeps telling me so. You will have to excuse my inaccuracy. Thankyou.