The more perceptive amongst you (let’s be honest here, in comparison to me, all of you) will have realised that I have been away for nearly three weeks now. This is the first post I have actually settled down to write while I’ve been on holiday (although I’ll be back by now – you know how it works). You will get something that comes as close to a travelogue as I can muster over the next few days, but for now I’d like really to just take a little look at the general logistics of holiday-making in general. You see, I have so many questions…
We live alone and so have three bedrooms that, except for when we have visitors, are unoccupied for most of the year. I find it very difficult to understand why we need to clean-sheet all of the beds before we go away. Does my wife want to ensure that, should we be burgled in our absence, the felons will have somewhere clean to rest from their toils and a nice fresh pillowcase in which to transport the loot? I have tried to ask, but the answer, in the form of an extended dismayed stare, is not one that readily translates into manspeak.
I also do not understand why, for weeks before we travel, the cases have to fill with more toiletries and medications than the storeroom at Boots. By the time we are ready to actually pack, we cannot fit the clothes in and I cannot lift the bloody things. “We won’t have to carry most of it back,” says my wife, perfectly aware that whilst away I will use the hotel-provided gels and potions, and return with half of what we are taking intact. Sun cream disappears from bottles, but merely soaks into clothes which, like myself, weigh twice as much for the return journey. The one great consolation of a beach holiday is the realisation that most people I encounter have bodies at a similar degree of decrepitude to my own…
In a world full of questions, those related most directly to holidays are amongst the most difficult address. Why, for instance, does my wife, knowing that we get fresh, clean towels every day, insist that I use her wet one to dry myself after a shower as ‘there is no point in getting them both wet’? I struggle to think of too many other uses for a fresh, dry towel. And why is a sunbed in exactly the right position until my wife lays on it, when it is in exactly the wrong one: too shaded, too sunny, too close to the pool, too far away from the pool, millimetrically misaligned to the compass? Why is the SPF of a suncream always the wrong one? Most puzzling of all, why does my wife object quite so strongly to me cleaning my teeth naked with the bathroom door open?
I suppose that some things about holidays I am destined never to understand…
Why do we never get an answer when we’re knocking at the door With a thousand million questions about hate and death and war?… Questions – The Moody Blues (Hayward)
“Ah Benny, Merry Christmas old chum. Come in, come in and slip off your shoes. Your slippers are by the fire and your breakfast sherry is by the toast.” “Breakfast sherry? Excuse me for saying so Francis my friend, but is it not traditional to drink Bucks Fizz on Christmas morning – fine Champagne and freshly squeezed orange juice – and not cheap British sherry from a milk bottle?” “It may well be Benny, it may well be, but only in the kind of circles that can live with the fact that a litre of pasteurised orange juice is twice the price of a pint of draught sherry and the nearest the local mini-mart has to fine Champagne is warm Lucozade. If you are worried about your health, I can put some roughage in the sherry for you: I’ve just burned the toast, I can scrape it into your glass if you’d like.” “Don’t get angry Frankie – you’ll burn the eggs as well – you know full well that we like to push the boundaries you and I. We may well set the trend. Within a year or two the landed toffs will be sending the faithful old family retainer down to the corner shop on Christmas Eve saying ‘Here’s a tenner. Bring us back a bottle of that sweet sherry with a picture of a stagecoach on the front and a couple of vacuum-packed kipper fillets if they’ve got them: the ones with a little pat of butter in. Get yourself a pack of five Park Drive with the change and Merry Christmas Jeeves. Make sure you’re back in plenty of time to stuff the turkey mind…’” “‘…And give that orange juice and fizzy wine shite to the kitchen staff. Let the chef cut the meat up first though, I don’t want thumb in my duff again.’ How do you want your bacon Benny, crispy or crispy?” “Tradition dictates that it is crispy my friend, like the eggs and the tomatoes. The black pudding, however, should still be frozen in the middle and the mushrooms left, forgotten in the fridge until New Year’s Eve.” “And how do you like your fried slice these days, my Masterchef friend?” “White or wholemeal?” “White.” “Crispy, able to withstand a sound dunking in tomato ketchup. Shall I pour the sherry?” “The cups are on the table.” “Cups? How very refined. And they’re matching too – at least they both have handles.” “Well you can’t have mugs, can you? Not on Christmas Day. Anyway, they’re still in the sink from yesterday. I’ll wash them for the wine at dinner.” “We’re having wine at dinner?” “Of course.” “What kind?” “The cider kind. The kind you buy in plastic two litre bottles and drink from a mug.” “Lovely.” “So have you brought the bird?” “Yes, of course… In a manner of speaking…” “What kind of manner of speaking? You have brought a bird haven’t you?” “Well yes, in part, yes.” “In part?” “Legs, I’ve bought legs! It’s all I could afford, but we’ve got two each.” “Legs? Where am I going to put the stuffing?” “In the Yorkshire Pudding?” “Yorkshire Pudding? Who has Yorkshire Pudding with Christmas dinner?” “They were on offer at the Co-op with a packet of Surprise Peas and a Mint Vienetta.” “Then we shall stuff the Yorkshire Puddings and set fire to the Vienetta. Cheers my friend.” “Cheers… You know I could quite get to like sherry and fried egg.” “It’s like a deconstructed advocaat.” “Lovely. So, when shall we unwrap our presents then?” “Unwrap our presents?” “Yes, should we do it now, before lunch or after tea?” “We always buy one another the same thing Benny, every Christmas, year after year: you buy me a bottle of cheap scotch and I buy you a bottle of cheap ruby wine, and we drink them both with a packet of cheese and onion crisps before falling asleep on the sofa with a mince pie each and two Gaviscon.” “I know that, but it’s Christmas, we still have to unwrap our gifts.” “I haven’t wrapped mine.” “…Can’t you go and wrap it now?” “In what? Why?” “In anything. It’s the only thing I have to unwrap on Christmas day. I’ve wrapped yours…” “You have?” “Of course. Really colourful paper too: robins, snow, all that jazz. It’s got the football results on the other side if you’re interested.” “…I could put it in a bag.” “What sort of bag?” “Well, it’s not a bag exactly, it’s what the toilet rolls came in. it’s got polar bears on it.” “Ok.” “If it means that much to you.” “It does.” “Fair enough. I’ll do it while you prepare the sprouts.” “Ok, we’ll clear the breakfast stuff and then we ought to have a bit of a check on the dinner.” “It’s not a problem. We’re all set: look, we have turkey legs…” “…Chicken…” “…We have chicken legs, frozen; Surprise Peas, frozen; Yorkshire Puddings, frozen; potatoes, tinned; carrots, tinned; stuffing, powdered; gravy, powdered…” “Do you think we really need sprouts?” “They’re traditional.” “Do you like them?” “No.” “Me neither. I’ve got a tin of baked beans back at mine.” “Then fetch them, after all, we thumb our noses at tradition don’t we?” “We are at the vanguard. We are the way forward. We are the new normal… When shall we have the marzipan fruits?” “After the washing up?” “Good idea. I’ll put the kettle on. If we’re having marzipan, we’ll need tea.” “Oh yes, lovely.” “Merry Christmas, my friend.” “Merry Christmas…”
…I am writing this just before I go away so that I know, on my return, I will have something to say before I start to bore you with my holiday posts. As I write, packing is in full swing and I am trying to achieve some kind of balance between what I am told that I will need and what I know I can carry. I think that I will need a pair of shorts and a couple of T-shirts, I am told that I will need a whole lot more. I think that I can carry whatever fits into the suitcase, I find that I can lift a whole lot less. I am always intrigued by the advertisements for vac-packs designed to help with holiday packing: place neatly folded clothing into a plastic bag and suck out all of the air with a vacuum cleaner, leaving you with a bag of half the size containing shirts that used to have buttons and collars that now won’t stay down even if superglued. Surely even though your clothes take up less space, they weigh even more when you include the packs themselves and the electric iron needed to get the creases out when you unpack. Surely you carry even more weight in a smaller package – which makes you look an even bigger pranny when you can’t lift it onto the check-in conveyor. Also, when you’re packing to come home you will either have to find someone to loan you a hoover or throw half of your clothes away.
I believe that my actual needs are very modest: something to protect me from burning; something to protect me from biting beasties and something to stop me soiling myself after I forget that you can’t drink the water. I need a couple of novels, a crossword book, a pen & paper and music, but how many pairs of underwear do I need for a two week break? Well, it all depends, I suppose, on access to running water. Sixty seconds under the tap and a couple of hours in the sun and they’re generally ready to go again – unless, of course, they are white, in which case you will need about three pairs per day and access to an open fire before your return journey. How old do you think you are? I suggest you give yourself a good talking to…
And it’s not as straightforward as I would like with the upper decks when restaurants demand long trousers and wife demands a shirt that isn’t covered in yesterday’s pasta – some changes are required. Also shoes for when you inevitably lose a flip-flop down the toilet. My eyesight is terrible, so I need contact lenses (plus spares), spectacles (plus spares), prescription sunglasses (plus spares), ordinary sunglasses for wearing with contact lenses (and spares) and the use of a guide dog when my bag goes missing at the airport. Having hair the colour of a cumquat and skin the colour of raw haddock, I also need hats: a straw fedora (and spare) plus a cap because I don’t want to look a complete knob all of the time. I have to admit that my head is not ideally suited to hat-wear, so in general I tend to fall back on a sturdy parasol and a bar. I have seldom burned under electric lighting and a fan.
Finally, of course, there is paperwork. You have your boarding cards on the phone these days so no problem – unless it runs out of charge. So we need paper copies as well as passports, instructions, directions and carpark vouchers, all of which will later be dropped and lost under a beer-covered table in the search for a clean tissue and hand sanitizer. There is a general rule of travel that states that everything in your hand luggage is at the bottom. Besides, you will be in Dubai before you have managed to work out why your Kindle will not turn on and your Bluetooth headphones appear to be connected to a Thai porn channel, so don’t try to search for anything on the plane, unless you have ordered a vegetarian meal, in which case you’re really going to need that bag of crisps…
Of course, by the time this is published, we will be back and all that has been massaged into the cases for the return journey will have either been washed or humanely destroyed. I will be determined that we have to pack less ‘stuff’ next time we fly and my wife will be buying some must-have electrical travel gewgaw that weighs more than my entire wardrobe despite being small enough to work its way through the stitching and into the suitcase’s lining from where it can never be retrieved without a penknife and a pair of greased kitchen tongs.
Sadly, for you, I haven’t lost my holiday notebook, so make yourself comfortable for the next few days: turn off all electrical devices and – take my advice – for your own safety and comfort, keep your seatbelt on for the whole duration…
Another key for my collection For security, I race for my connection… Man in a Suitcase – The Police (Sumner)
I am, like the leaders of the world’s great powers, cold and calculating. It is the way you have to be when you are encumbered with unbridled influence. Imagine if the ex-President of the United States, for instance, just said whatever popped into his head the moment it found space. (Imagine having that much space.) Imagine that he was totally incapable of self-censorship. Imagine that pure serendipity (and nothing to do with money) could ensure that such a man could return to power… and then pause, and reflect that it could never happen in the real world…
I like to schedule my posts a few days in advance as it gives me the opportunity to thoroughly regret what I am about to say whilst still fulfilling my stubborn desire to say it anyway. I never seek conflict and I value friendship far higher than my own opinion, but as long as I am content that I am saying nothing ‘wrong’ then I will say it – and I will also defend the right of anybody else to disagree with me. I am a useless liar but, ironically, antiphrasis comes easily to me.
Of course, when putting words into a character’s mouth nothing is without risk: allow a bigot to say just exactly what they think and you might just find them ‘talking’ to someone who wholeheartedly concurs with their views, however abhorrent you make them. It is a fine tradition that, in my lifetime, stretches back to Alf Garnet (who I think became Archie Bunker in the US) and through to Al Murray’s Pub Landlord today: when your characters are allowed to say something that is so outrageous you fear that you might have gone just a little too far, you find that someone agrees completely with every single word you have put in their mouth. In the absence of mocking laughter you are left to ponder two possibilities: 1) you are playing to the wrong audience, or 2) you are not funny. In my case the answer is simple enough, but I realise that for others who do not have the benefit of making calcification appear to be a more entertaining alternative, diagnosing the issue may not be quite so straightforward.
And there are people (you will just have to take my word for it that I am not one of them) who will attempt to hide their actual views behind presumed irony. (You can usually spot them because of an unshakeable supercilious smirk and the fact that they have to come through doors sideways as their egos will not fit through multi-face on.) I promise that I will never use antiphrasis to deliberately disguise the fact that I am an arse. (Now don’t be sarcastic.)
When I have a few posts ‘in hand’ I tend to sort them out into some kind of logical pattern, because very rarely do they fall from my head in that way, and I like to think that it might make me seem a little more rational than I actually am. Unfortunately it becomes an impossible task because I always find myself either laying a ‘feed’ to which I do not respond until well after any right-thinking reader will have forgotten it, or referring back to things that I have said, that I haven’t actually said yet. It is one of the very few things I have in common with Douglas Adams. So, anyway, that is why things are as they are here, and that is why everything is always so sequential. I prepare and I hone. I identify my target and I aim. There is nothing, other than dandruff, coming off the top of my head here. What do you think; I just say what’s on my mind? Come on, who on earth does that?
Don’t believe me if I tell you Not a word of this is true Don’t believe me if I tell you, especially if I tell you I’m in love with you… Don’t Believe a Word – Thin Lizzy (Lynott)
I needed to report that our debit cards might be used abroad. Mine was easy, but my wife’s card for the same account has a different number which does not appear on the online banking app, so I was forced to throw myself onto the mercies of the AI chatbot. Kick off with the full facts I thought: “I have just reported that I intend to use my debit card abroad. It is a joint account, but my wife’s card number does not appear on the app. How do I report that she will be away at the same time?” “I’m not sure I understand. Try rephrasing your question using a few key words.” Exactly what, I wondered, were those few key words.“How do I report that an additional card holder will be abroad?” “Ok. Let’s have a look at removing somebody from your account. 1. Remove a current account owner. 2. Remove a savings account owner. 3. Remove a credit card owner. 4.Something else.” Clearly the few key words I had chosen were not the few key words I needed.“Something else.” “How can I help?” “I want to report that an additional card holder will be abroad.” “Try again. Please type one of the listed options.” “They are not appropriate.” “Do you wish to continue?” “No.” “OK. Let me know if I can help with anything else.” “Yes. I want to register a debit card for use abroad.” “If you are travelling outside the EU please report travel here.” ‘Here’ being a link back to where I started. “I can’t because the card number does not appear on the app.” “Did I answer your question?” “No, you did not.” “Thank you for your feedback. Can I help with anything else?” “Almost certainly not.”
I abandoned the ‘chat’ and decided to try the phone number instead which connected me to a different machine. Before it would speak to me it wanted to register me for voice recognition. It asked me to repeat the same phrase a number of times. It was something like, “XXXXXXX Bank is the very best bank in the whole wide world and I love it more than life itself.” (At this point I was reminded of an incident some years ago when my mother received a call from a plum-voiced ‘BT Technician’. “We have had reports of problems on your line,” he said. “In order to allow me to check the integrity of your connection could you please repeat this phrase after me: I cannot hold a hot potato in my hand.” Very precisely my mum repeated the phrase “I cannot hold a hot potato in my hand.” “Well shove it up your arse then!” shouted the voice from the other end, hanging up amongst gales of laughter.) Anyway, after I had made approximately twelve attempts to sound like me, the machine finally decided to let me in. “How can I help?” “I have just reported that I intend to use my debit card abroad. It is a joint account, but my wife’s card number does not appear on the app. How do I report that she will be away at the same time?” “You wish to remove somebody from your account?” “No.” “How can I help you?” “I have just reported that I intend to use my debit card abroad. It is a joint account, but my wife’s card number does not appear on the app. How do I report that she will be away at the same time?” “You wish to remove them from your account?” “NO I DO NOT!” “There are just a few steps to have this person removed from your account. Would you like me to take you through them?” “Noooooooo!!!!!!!” Click. Brrrrrrrrr…….
I returned to the on-line chatbot with an iron will. “Hi. I have just reported that I intend to use my debit card abroad. It is a joint account, but my wife’s card number does not appear on the app. How do I report that she will be away at the same time?” “I’m not sure I understand. Try rephrasing your question using a few key words.” “How do I report that an additional card holder will be abroad?” “Do you wish to remove someone from your account?” “No, I wish to report that a debit card will be used abroad.” “Do you wish to remove someone from your account?” “No, I do not. I wish to report that a debit card will be used abroad.” “Thank you for your feedback – I think that I might need some help in getting you the right answer. Would you like to ask the question again?” “I have just reported that I intend to use my debit card abroad. It is a joint account, but my wife’s card number does not appear on the app. How do I report that she will be away at the same time?” “A team member will reply as soon as possible… As there are currently very high volumes of chats there may be a delay in answering your query. In the meantime you can leave the app. When you return the chat will still be here and you can continue at you convenience…” I left the chat and returned about fifteen minutes later to find: “I understand. What is the card number you wish to register?… As you are no longer online and you have not replied, this chat has been closed.”
Spitting the proverbial feathers I started a new ‘chat’, determined not to let it go. I inputted all my answers word-for-word as the previous chat in order to avoid enraged swearing and then I waited… and waited… and waited, not daring to allow my eyes to drift from the screen, until finally what I presume was a human being picked up the chat. They asked for the card number and, within seconds, said “That’s done. Can I help with anything else?” “Yes,” I typed “can you tell me how I can get half a day of my life back?”
Sometimes I’m invisible I’m nowhere to be seen Kicked like a tin can into the shape of a man… Circles Erratica – Colin Hay
“So Frankie, shall we do yours or mine on Monday?” “We’ll do yours Benny. Your door sponges down easier than mine.” “So you say. Ok, well you’ll have to help me block the letterbox again and make sure we’ve got plenty of food in.” “Yes, it took us a full week to get out last year after the little buggers superglued the lock.” “My lock.” “Yes, well, we made the mistake of letting them know we were in there.” “‘Trick or Treat?’, ‘Trick or Treat?’… If I’m honest, yes, I’d like a treat thank you. How about I could afford to turn my heating on? How about I don’t have to sit under a blanket at night to keep warm?” “Ah, but we like the blankets don’t we.” “Well yes, ok, at night with the telly on.” “A cup of tea and a Yo-Yo.” “Legs all tucked in.” “And you with that bloody rubber Frankenstein hand again no doubt.” “There should be a good film on the telly mind.” “It’ll be a horror won’t it, being Halloween.” “I suppose so. What was it last year? The Exorcist wasn’t it?” “Yes, and you pee’d your pants.” “I spilled my tea. It made me jump.” “It made you put a cushion on your crotch for the rest of the evening.” “You know, I don’t remember Halloween even existing when we were kids.” “No. It was an American thing wasn’t it.” “Yes, I think that bloody alien brought it over.” “Alien?” “Yes. In that film. Little green thing. Long finger. Sat on the front of a bike while all the kids wandered about with sheets over their heads.” “E.T.?” “Probably. We didn’t have it till then did we: Halloween? Bloody Trick or Treat: extortion I call it. Robbery in a white sheet and grandma’s make-up.” “Well, they don’t bother much with the fancy dress around here do they – unless you count a black balaclava and a baseball bat. Never mind a pumpkin in your window to show that you’re Trick or Treat friendly. I reckon you’d need a gun emplacement in the foyer to keep the little sods away.” “Not so little most of them.” “No. So big these days aren’t they? One day a toddler and the next a full-grown mugger.” “They were taking credit cards last year.” “For payment?” “No, they were actually taking credit cards and buying stuff from the corner shop.” “Blimey, they must have had to buy a lot of sweets: don’t they have a minimum £5 spend on a card?” “They don’t do Haribo these days apparently, kids, they do Johnnie Walker and Benson & Hedges.” “It was all about Bonfire Night when we were kids wasn’t it?” “Penny for the Guy.” “Dignified begging. At least there was some effort went into making those Guys.” “Unless you could nick one off the smaller kids.” “Of course, but it was all much more innocent then, wasn’t it?” “November the fifth, a box of Brock’s in the back garden, a mug of Bovril and a blackened potato out of the bonfire.” “Disappointing rockets and Catherine Wheels that fell off the pin and scorched your dad’s begonias.” “Roman Candles that threw sparks into your bobble hat and burned great patches out of your hair.” “Tying a Jumping Jack to your sister’s coat.” “And bonfire toffee, do you remember that?” “I do, Francis my friend. I do. Rock hard shite. It was like chewing a sweetened paving slab.” “And Mischief Night the night before.” “Oh yes, knock and run…” “…Dog shit on the door handle…” “…Bangers through the letterbox…” “… So, we lock the door, block the letterbox, turn off the lights and pretend we’re not in until after Bonfire Night.” “Shall we have a Halloween themed meal?” “Like what?” “I don’t know… Egg and chips?” “Egg and chips? How’s that Halloween themed?” “Well, it’s what we always have. Have you got a better suggestion?” “Well, let me think now… What about Ghoulash? Stake and chips? Maybe something with loads of garlic in it.” “Why garlic?” “It wards off the vampires.” “It wards off everything when you’ve eaten it.” “Mm, it doesn’t sit well with me does it?” “It oozes out of you. Sharing a room with you is like being locked in a dustbin with a French corpse. I have to wash my clothes when I’ve been in the lift with you.” “No garlic then?” “Not unless you want it with egg and chips.” “Shouldn’t we have pumpkin?” “Pumpkin what?” “Pumpkin pie, pumpkin soup, pumpkin and chips. I don’t know, I’ve never eaten pumpkin.” “I don’t think anybody eats pumpkin. It’s like turnip: it’s a straight out of the bag and into the bin thing.” “So what then?” “I’ve told you, egg and chips, a fresh cream éclair and a cup of tea.” “A few tinnies with the film afterwards. Champion. Just like always… except we’ll be in the dark.” “Oh God, yes. I suppose I’ll be chiselling egg yolk off the settee again.” “You leave them too runny.” “Too runny? Who wants a solid egg yolk? You can’t dip your chips in a solid egg yolk.” “You can when you’ve cooked ‘em! Last time they were still frozen.” “I was trying to save gas.” “Well it didn’t work did it? I had to thaw mine out one at a time in front of the fire.” “You’re very quick to criticise. You’re no Egon Ronay yourself you know. The biggest leap forward in your cookery skills came when you took the batteries out of the smoke alarm. And anyway, we’re not having the fire on this time. We’ve got blankets and hot water bottles. We’ll just sit the week out. It’ll be like the blitz. Especially if you’ve had garlic.” “It’ll keep the kids away from the door.” “It’ll definitely put them off their Smarties.” “…Do kids still eat Smarties?” “I’m sure they do. I’ve seen them sharing them out. Only the blue ones mind.” “Are you sure they’re Smarties?” “What do you mean, M&M’s?” “No, I don’t think they’re M&M’s either.” “What then?” “I think they’re probably pills.” “Viagra?” “No Benny, not Viagra.” “It wouldn’t surprise me, randy little buggers.” “I think they’re probably amphetamines my friend?” “What?” “Amphetamines. Bennies, Benny. Speed, whiz, whip…” “Bloody hell, you sound like a script for Batman. What do they do with those then?” “Well they keep them awake. It’s why they’re down in the front there firing rockets at the fire brigade at three o’clock in the morning. It’s why they’re setting fire to your bin at midnight. It’s why they’re asleep all day. It’s probably why they keep mistaking your door for a lavatory…” “…Do you remember those little brown tablets we used to take as kids Frankie? Really perked you up they did.” “I think you’re talking about Fisherman’s Friends old chum.” “Am I?” “They certainly cleared the sinuses, I must admit.” “Maybe I’ll get a bag of those for the Trick or Treaters.” “It might not be wise my friend.” “No, I suppose you’re right. We’ll keep the door shut and the lights out. If anyone knocks we’ll pretend we’ve had a stroke.” “…Shall we eat the Haribo now then?” “Yes, let’s do it…”
I feel as though some explanation may be required for those of you reading this outside the UK. Yo-Yo – a foil wrapped, mint cream topped, chocolate biscuit delight. Haribo – jelly sweets made almost exclusively from cow knuckle and sherbert. Bonfire Night – November the Fifth. A ‘celebration’ of a failed attempt to blow up the British parliament in 1605, in which an effigy of one of the plotters, Guy Fawkes, is burned on a bonfire. In the past, the effigy was often taken from house to house asking the householders to give ‘a penny for the Guy’. This was not begging, it was tradition. November Fifth, back then, was the only night on which, whatever the weather, fireworks were lit and as tradition dictated, damply fizzled out. The traditional Fireworks Night now runs from mid-September to Christmas. Mischief Night – November the Fourth. The night on which all of those who did not stump up the ‘penny for the Guy’ learned the error of their ways. Smarties – Like M&M’s, but less so. Fisherman’s Friends – A small brown throat lozenge, also useful for removing the non-stick coating from Teflon pans.
The songs that flit through my head as I write these little titbits have become a running theme and, because of that, I have started to look far more closely at the lyrics, small snatches of which have rounded off every post so far this year. As a long-time fan of David Bowie I have always been a disciple of the beautifully crafted phrase. (My first Bowie LP – Man of Words, Man of Music – came when I was no’but a child and simply because I had some birthday money left and I loved Space Oddity. I will not pretend that, at that time, I understood what the words were really all about, but I liked the way that they sounded – and I still do.) I would like to put in a word of my own here for the wonderful Guy Garvey of Elbow who writes lyrics that read like the very best of poetry: simple yet affecting. Take almost any Elbow song and read the lyric sheet and you will see. Try Puncture Repair, Magnificent, Weightless, Starlings or even the ubiquitous One Day Like This and you will understand. I digress…
The God-like Alan Coren turned out buffed-up idioms like there was no tomorrow and the young Woody Allen used words in a way that rendered me speechless. I love the simplicity of Orwell’s prose, but I cannot replicate it: somehow I always drift off towards the flowery end of the page. Back in the day I was – I think – the same as all other teenage boys: I knew that I was going to be a professional footballer (I was ok but, if I’m honest, seldom the very best in any team I was a part of) or a rock star (despite the fact that I could not play an instrument more complicated than the G# chime bar and had a post-adolescent voice that was reminiscent of the whine of a recently neutered cat). Punk came along for me at the perfect time, but I turned my back on it because by then I had decided that I wanted to be funny (or, as my then best friend suggested ‘weird’). That I failed on all counts is no surprise. Never mind, I play football with the kids, I sing (very badly) all the time and I scour the twilight zone between my ears most days to write this. Who needs the fame I craved back then?
Of course my vision of fame then was slightly different to today’s. Then it just meant getting girlfriends – which is everything to a pimply youth. It was the only motivation. I must admit that I’ve always been a bit bored by money. I realise that I am exceedingly fortunate in that I have always had just enough to live how I would wish, but I have never had – nor desired – plenty. The thought of all the husbandry that is required to care for stacks of lucre is not at all appealing. Nor, for me, is the thought of spending shed-loads: I hate changing my car and the thought of voluntarily diving into the luxury housing market leaves me breathless (and not in a good way). The thought of fussing over piles of dosh, ensuring that they always grow, is less appealing than an evening with Gemma Collins. And you can’t even give the bloody stuff away: you don’t want to pass the problem onto your kids, but you cannot bypass them for charity as a) everyone will presume that you are the head of a disastrously dysfunctional dynasty, or b) that you are incredibly vain and prepared to part with huge wads of currency in order to buy admiration. High ideals, it seems to me, are incompatible with riches. Fortunately, I don’t have to make the decision…
there’s a laddered tear in my high ideals like I took a chair on the battle field… High Ideals – Elbow
My wife thinks that I should swim more – it would be good for me – and whilst it is difficult to argue that the exercise would, indeed, be beneficial, there are as always other unassailable truths that must be taken into account: a) I hate swimming and b) I hate public swimming baths even more. I argued that any physical benefit I might accrue would be more than cancelled out by the mental anguish I would suffer. “My personal discomfort in such circumstances would,” I ventured “impact negatively on your own enjoyment of the experience…” or words to that effect. She was not persuaded and thus, it goes without saying, I acquiesced…
The swimming pool changing room is a very particular place of torture. You undress in a booth in which there is insufficient space to bend down and remove your own socks. (And there is certainly no room for somebody else to do it.) The floor is a puddle through which everything below waist level is dragged. All hooks, pegs and rails appear to have been removed from the walls just in case, I presume, someone should decide to take the easy way out. Anyway…
Eventually costumed – albeit with numerous vertebrae completely disassociated from their customary positions – I emerged from the cubicle balancing a teetering pile of shoes, bag, coat and towel, and headed towards the lockers where I discovered that I had left the £1 coin for the locker on the cubicle bench. I retrieved it and, after a mere dozen attempts, found a working locker in which to ram my belongings. I thanked the kind lady who passed me the now sodden pants I dropped on the way through (although I could not help but think that the rubber gloves were a little unnecessary) and somehow rammed the door shut on a space seemingly designed to hold nothing more than a single shoe and a tube of veruca ointment.
Pausing only to retrieve the goggles I forgot – swimming in contact lenses is not recommended without them. Swimming without the contact lenses however, is not possible as it involves wandering fuzzily through the ladies toilet, the café and a startled zumba class before hitting the water. You must submerge yourself quickly in public swimming pools. Do it slowly and you are doomed. The human body reacts badly to freezing: you cannot give it the opportunity to complain.
I am a very poor swimmer. My preferred stroke is ‘the flounder’. I am grateful that the water in my ears prevents me hearing the ‘tutting’ of octogenarians as they overtake me on both sides. I put in what seemed to me to be a reasonable number of lengths – one – and climbed out happy that my health had been fully restored. In my absence somebody had turned the changing room into a freezer. I stood for some little time under the shower, plotting the quickest way to the locker and cubicle without suffering from hypothermia, before making a dash for it.
In the event it took me barely fifteen minutes to open the locker and retrieve my possessions, and I was ankle deep in the cubicle watching my clothes as they bobbed on the floor within seconds. Look, I know what people do in swimming pool changing cubicles – I hope – but I have absolutely no idea of how the floor gets so wet. I wrestled my way out of wet swimming costume and into even wetter clothes, rammed everything I could into my rucksack, before exiting the tiny melamined cell and finding myself in the sun-brushed uplands of brown porcelain tile and stainless steel wastebin. Not even my appearance in the mirror – a very old man wearing a ginger fright-wig – could persuade me to re-open the bag in search of a hair brush. The man at the coffee shop would just have to tolerate me. (Although not, as it turned out, for long because – his card machine having died – he was only taking cash and as I only had a twenty and he only change for five I left without a cup of over-diluted own-brand instant beverage. Not even my by now shattered nervous system would allow me to consider paying fifteen pounds for a coffee.)
Still, my wife was right, I really did feel better for it… until she explained that I was expected to do it all again next week.
There are many things That I would like to know And there are many places That I wish to go But everything’s depending On the way the wind may blow… Acquiesce – Oasis (Noel Gallagher)
I am become pin-cushion. In the last few weeks I have had blood drawn from me three times and various viruses (dead, alive and partial) pumped into me half a dozen more. This week the nurse plans to deplete my ichor by a further 30ml whilst enhancing my vigour by injecting me with something that will stiffen my resolve in the face of pneumonia and shingles. I am 65 years of age and the NHS is making me superhuman. At the rate I am being pumped full of beneficial fluids, I will, should I make it to 100, be inured to all known ailments.
Now please don’t think, even for a second, that I am in anyway ungrateful for these recent ministrations. I most definitely am not. Above all else I wish to be as well as I can be for as long as I might live, and I am quite happy to be pierced in order to get me there. It all comes along at once, which is fine – viruses don’t form an orderly queue, do they? They are bullies: they gang up on you. They are like hyenas and estate agents, constantly looking for an area of weakness to exploit. I’m very happy to accept aching arms if that’s what it takes to keep them at bay. The little red, hot and itchy patches are my spider bites. They are my River Styx.
Unfortunately, like my more revered fellow Styx-dipper, I do have an area of particular vulnerability. My own Achilles Heel is that I am me: a walking bad decision. If there is a wrong choice to make, I will make it. If there is a worst time to do it, I will be counting down the seconds. My capacity for unintentional self-harm is unrivalled in the modern world. If there is something to walk into, I will do so. If there is something to trip over, I will do that also. If there is someone very big and very angry who is just waiting to be offended, I will find him. I am an Exocet missile with ‘Home’ programmed into its GPS.
One good thing about slowing down as you get older is that you don’t hit things quite so hard. I’m at a loss to think of any others. Falling over is a particular problem associated with ageing and it is of particular concern to me as it is something at which I am particularly adept. I can find a patch of something slippery with my eyes closed. I am notoriously unstable on snow or ice and I can perform the kind of gymnastics usually associated with pre-pubescent Romanians with just a few wet leaves to assist me. Dick Fosbury had a flop named after him after leaping over a six foot barrier, I can achieve the same landing position with nothing more than a kerb to go at.
I am looking at science to come up with a vaccination against dyspraxic tendencies and I would be perfectly happy if it came combined with something to counter being a total liability. Protection against giggling at inappropriate moments would also be appreciated… although I think that sixty-five might be a little too late for me.
When I was younger So much younger than today I never needed anybody’s help in any way But now those days are gone I’m not so self-assured Now I find I’ve changed my mind And opened up the door… Help! – The Beatles (Lennon/McCartney)
“It’s your birthday Frankie my friend, so you choose. What should we do today?” “Well now Benjamin, that’s a tricky one. I mean the world is so full of opportunities, isn’t it? We could take a cruise on our private yacht. We could have lunch in our favourite restaurant in Paris, dip our toes in the water at St Tropez, perhaps fine wines and an evening with Barry Manilow in Las Vegas… or we could perhaps walk a slow circuit of the park…” “…Like we always do…” “…drop in at the pub for a pie and a pint… “…as ever…” “…home for an afternoon snooze…” “…the same as always…” “…and then a film on the TV at yours or mine with a couple of cans of beer and a microwave chicken curry…” “…just the same as every Saturday.” “ Ay… we like it though, don’t we.” “We do, but don’t you think that we should do something just a little bit different as it’s your birthday? “Like what?” “I don’t know, it’s your birthday, you choose.” “Well ok. We could… I can’t think of anything.” “Oh come on. Use your imagination. We could go to the pictures.” “The pictures, yes, that’s a grand idea. The pictures. We haven’t been to the pictures in years. What’s on?” “Erm, let’s see. There’s ‘Nope’.” “Nope?” “Yes.” “Is that the name of it? Of the film? What’s it about?” “UFO’s I think.” “Oh no. I can’t be doing with all that pie-in-the-sky mularkey. There are quite enough little green men in the pub of a Saturday night. Isn’t there a Western on or something?” “There’s ‘Where the Crawdads Sing.’” “What’s a crawdad?” “No idea?” “Oh. Well, who’s in it?” “Erm, let me see here. It says Daisy Edgar-Jones, Taylor John Smith, Harris Dickinson and Garret Dillahunt…” “How many people is that?” “No idea.” “Have you heard of any of them?” “No.” “There must be something else.” “Well, there’s the new Top Gun.” “Ah, I saw the first one of those.” “And did you like it?” “No.” “Oh, we used to love the cinema though, didn’t we? Back in the day. You and me, two young ladies, a tanner each in the back row, a newsreel, a cartoon, a ‘B’ film and a main feature – a proper cowboy or cops and robbers…” “A choc-ice at half time and ten minutes necking if you were lucky before the usherette turned her torch on you.” “Necking?” “Ay, canoodling, you know.” “I remember the choc ices. The chocolate always fell off in the dark. You always came out of the pictures looking like you’d shit yourself.” “I never could be trusted with chocolate, Benny. I think that’s why they invented the Milky Bar, so it didn’t show up so much on my beige loons.” “Oh, you loved those loons.” “And my brown suede Hush Puppy boots.” “It used to be great, didn’t it, to get dressed up for a night out I mean?” “Part of the fun, my friend: the matching shirt and tie, the drape coat…” “…the tank tops and the cork-heeled shoes.” “Perhaps that’s what we could do today, for my birthday: we could get dressed up, hit the town. Maybe we could have a more sophisticated lunch…” “A ploughman’s, perhaps.” “King prawns in our curry and perhaps hire a DVD instead of watching whatever old tosh is on the telly.” “Do you have anything to play a DVD on?” “No.” “No, me neither. It’s all Netflix isn’t it now.” “Have you got that?” “No. I’ve got channel 4.” “OK. That’ll do. We’ll watch ‘Bake Off’.” “No, come on, let’s do it. Let’s get dressed up and head out for town. We might meet some ladies.” “Oh, I’m not sure about that Benny. I’m out of practice at all that. I wouldn’t know what to say.” “Let’s not worry about that for now. Let’s just get our glad rags on and promenade.” “Glad rags?” “Sunday togs. Let’s do it.” “I’m not sure. I think my best cardigan might be in the wash.” “Come on, let’s just make the effort. Trousers without an elasticated waist, shoes without a tartan Velcro strap, you could take your vest off for a start.” “I always wear a vest.” “Over your shirt?” “Oh, I must have got a little out of synch this morning. I woke up needing to… you know. I had to rush into my clothes. It’s freezing in that bathroom. I’ll move my vest under my shirt, change my trousers, put some shoes on, will that suit you?” “Maybe gel your hair a little bit. So you don’t look quite so much like you’ve just got out of bed.” “Gel? I don’t think I’ve got any gel. I’ve got some Vaseline from when I had that rash.” “That’ll do. Instead of walking round the park and back to the pub, we’ll go straight through, maybe to that wine bar on the other side, and we can feed the ducks on the way.” “Do they do pies?” “The ducks?” “The wine bar. Do they do pies?” “Oh no. Sophisticated dining there, Francis my friend, couscous I shouldn’t wonder.” “Couscous? What the hell is couscous?” “No idea, but I’m sure they’ll do it with chips.” “And beer?” “Lager. Fancy lager. In bottles…” “Ah what the hell. It’s my birthday. Let’s give it a go. I’ll go and get ready.” “You’ll need a coat, mind.” “Really?” “It bucketing it down.” “Oh, I’m not sure about my best shoes in that park when it’s raining: it’s a quagmire at the best of times. Full of dog shit as well if you’ve not got your wits about you.” “Yes, you’re right. Maybe not your best shoes.” “And trousers?” “Elasticated ankles might be wise.” “Perhaps we could just go straight to the pub.” “It’s much nearer.” “I’m not really over keen on ducks, truth be told.” “No. Quacking little bastards.” “Our age, it’s much more sensible to get out of the rain as quick as we can. We could catch our deaths.” “We’ll do that then, and after that we’ll come back here for a cup of tea – I’ve got a pack of those Breakaway biscuits…” “…and maybe a bit of a nap by the fire…” “…chicken curry for tea and a couple of cans with the film on the telly.” “Sounds great… I can’t think of a better way to spend my birthday, old friend.” “It’s always good to ring the changes. Cup of tea and a Kit-Kat before we go?” “Great. Put the kettle on, I’ll go and change my vest and find a clean cardigan…”
Getting On 