New Year’s Day

It’s a bit of a ‘taking stock’ day isn’t it: what am I/where am I/what/where would I like to be? The latter is always an unaccomplished aspiration, the former a messy truth. I plan to retire from work this year, other than for a few, irregular ‘helping out’ days, so I will have seven days a week to designate. Or have designated. I think that particular task will probably not be entirely my own, and I feel that my wife is already feeling the weight of responsibility, but I cannot really consider the year ahead because I have absolutely no idea what it is likely to bring.

I have never been much of a New Year’s Resolution person: I’ve never felt that the old me was that bad (‘useless’ I will accept, but not bad… exactly) and I really don’t feel qualified to put right whatever is wrong with me. That truly is a job for the professionals. Like everyone else I will vow to be thinner, healthier, better… but in the end I will just bob along, as I have always done, more or less the same tomorrow as I was yesterday.

Tomorrow I will pop my head over the parapet of 65 years of age which would, until recently have been a huge day, but then the government moved the goalposts. I will be at work tomorrow. My official retirement date has been moved back one full year, to my 66^th birthday. I will get my bus pass* a year from now – unless, of course, the government decides in the meantime that it is unfair of the elderly to occupy seats that could far more productively be used by young people who cannot afford cars because our generation has consumed all the world’s money whilst doing nothing at all for them! And they can’t walk, it’s so tiring. We own our house and lived in what would now be regarded as abject poverty** to get it. I have contributed my taxes for fifty years plus and the fact that I have been able to do that demonstrates, apparently, that I shouldn’t be able to gain any benefit from it now. Do I sound bitter? OK, I resolve to stop that right now.

As far as this blog is concerned I am realistic. I have no plan, no idea and little talent: this is never going to be great literature. The best I can hope is that it offers a modest insight into how it feels as the mind ages and the body collapses (or vice versa). Many years ago when I first started serving this salmagundi, one early reader commented that she thought I deserved praise for the way I was dealing with my dementia. To be honest, at that stage I was just pleased to find out that somebody was reading my little fol-de-rol, but I did nonetheless feel obliged to reply that, to the best of my knowledge, I was not suffering from the symptoms of early onset dementia (although, in retrospect, I’m not sure if I would have known) just facing the changes in perception marked by the passing of years. In short, I might be daft, but no more than ever I was – mentally it is how I start every New Year and, if I’m honest, all I really hope for is to end it in the same way…

*All pensioners in the UK get free bus travel – and therefore the opportunity to stand in the freezing cold waiting for a bus that never arrives, completely free of charge.

**No phone, no TV, cuts of meat that went out of fashion in the Mediaeval times and snowdrifts inside the lounge being particular highlights – all of which, incidentally, we realised we had brought on ourselves and were, therefore, nobody else’s problem.

“Under a blood red sky
A crowd has gathered in black and white
Arms entwined, the chosen few
The newspapers says, says
Say it’s true, it’s true
And we can break through
Though torn in two
We can be one” New Year’s Day – U2. Written in the early eighties in the midst of the Irish Troubles, to express faint hope that things would one day be ok, and (sadly) applicable to half the world today…

Christmas Eve

So, here we are and, as if to prove that I am equally inept for all 365 days in the year (366 in the year to come unless I take a day off) with a Christmas Eve post to write, I find myself without a single thought in my head. Not, you will be aware, an altogether novel situation but, given everything that is going on at this time of year, a superhuman feat of vacuity I think.

I had intended to write a pithy little number about all the things that can go wrong on The Big Day, but it seemed to be unnecessarily gloomy. We all know that we’re going to forget to defrost the turkey on Christmas Eve and consequently spend much of Christmas morning with a hair dryer thrust up what would have once been its arse; we all know that the cat will grab the giblets and spend the rest of the day throwing up shards of polythene on the bedding; we all know that there will be a row about the gravy (again) but it is no reason to let it sour the day. As long as nobody gets the Monopoly out, we will all make it through.

My little family of Pre-Covid seasonal gatherings now encompasses ten households covering half of the country, and each of those households has another extended family to consider over the holiday. Getting together in one place at one time is not a possibility without hiring half of Blackpool. So, piecemeal, it all spreads along well into the New Year and, inevitably, involves much travelling. We have the great fortune to be a very harmonious family, so each mini-reunion is joyous and involves many excited little people, one of them me. I embrace it all and consequently approach the New Year feeling like the old one has run me over. If the kids want to play, I play; if the adults want to drink, I drink; if they want to sit up late into the night watching zombie films and talking nonsense, I do that too. But I am old, my candle is not as long as once it was (if I am honest, it has never offered much in the way of worldly illumination) and the wick most certainly no longer reaches both ends. Nor does it burn. A kind of spluttering flicker is the best it will manage these days. A big night out for me starts before teatime and finishes before News at Ten. If I am awake after midnight, it is almost certainly because I am waiting for the Bisodol to kick-in.

Thankfully, Christmas comes but once-a-year – although it does tend to slip un-noticed into the New Year – and I also manage to slip my birthday into that slightly extended period of Bacchanalian excess, which is why it takes until mid-November to shrug the weight off. The week of sloth and gluttony lies ahead and I think that I will probably not post again until it is all over, by which time I hope that I might have found something to say. Meantime, I will wish you all a Merry Christmas and a very peaceful New Year…

…the Gaviscon is under the sink…

A Temple

So, this is the time of year when the more weak-willed amongst us – yes, I am looking at me – park our livers in a near-by side road; put our hearts in a seaside B&B, and our brains onto the back benches of the House of Lords whilst we subject our bodies to the gross abuse that is Christmas, prior to picking them back up on the 2^nd of January and settling back into the normal routine of bodily maladministration that prevails for the bulk of the year. Christmas pudding deserts the brain around about the Spring Solstice, bread sauce clears the arteries by August and the several dozen roast potatoes are due to vacate the midriff by sometime in mid-November (but seldom do). Calanderists (Oh yes they are. I just looked it up.) invented New Year’s Day simply so that we had a point at which we could promise ourselves that we would never again do all of those things we have been doing over the previous seven days. Except, of course, we will. Apparently we consume an average of 5,373 calories on Christmas Day, although I think that without my individual input it would be much lower. I spend much of the day grazing like a dugong: if it is edible and on a flat surface, I will eat it, often without the use of my hands. Fruit, nuts, chocolate, cheese, crisps, pie, pudding or cake, leave it uncovered and it will be gone. I have to make sure that I am wearing my glasses for fear of eating my own fingers. And to wash it down? Well, anything in a bottle will suffice, starting with Buck’s Fizz, through beer, wine, brandy, gin and tonic, a quick detox on orange squash, all rounded off with the nice single malt that I hope somebody will have bought me to save me from having to drink my usual crap. If a bottle is open, I will drink it. If it is not, I will open it. What a way to spend the morning waiting for the day’s main event.

I don’t eat meat, so I always feel that I am owed extra pudding to compensate for turkey (which I never did like) and pigs in blankets, which I do not remember ever featuring in my childhood dinners. Sausage and bacon we did have, mind, sometimes rolled up and held together with a cocktail stick that nobody ever thought to warn you about. You have to wonder where these fanciful names came from. I remember in my waiting days serving Devils on Horseback which, to my recollection, featured a date, stuffed with an almond and wrapped in bacon: no devils, no horses – at least the pigs in blankets have pig – and Angels on Horseback, no angels, no horses, just what could very well have been coughed up by a Victorian coal miner wrapped in bacon. I can understand why chefs would wrap an oyster in pig – anything to save you having to look at it. I suppose that pigs must look forward to Christmas Day almost as much as turkeys.

If I’m absolutely honest, my favourite Christmas Day treat is usually raiding the kids’ selection boxes and blaming whomever has been foolhardy enough to fall asleep in front of Strictly for the subsequent gaps in the packaging.

I feel under a certain pressure to have eaten all the Christmas treats before the New Year arrives. Anything that has not gone by then tends to lurk forgotten in the back of a cupboard until mid-July when it appears, with a Gala Pie and sausage rolls, in a seaside picnic. I don’t care for picnics. My body is a temple…

The Common Language

Despite the fact that many of us assembled here share a ‘common language’, I thought that it might be interesting to actually take a look at some of the everyday words we do not share. I am sure I will have touched on one or two of these before (WordPress will find me out!) but I started to think about it now because it is Fall for a number of my readers whilst, here in England, it is Autumn. Now, I know that Autumn must be the oldest of these words – it is English dammit! – but Fall is definitely more literal. So where does Autumn come from? Well, as large chunks of our language do, it comes from a word left behind by The Romans when they buggered off to somewhere warmer, autumnus, meaning, well… autumn. Except I also learned that following the departure of the Romans from our shores, through to the sixteenth century, autumn was actually known as harvest and, more confusingly did, from that time, begin to be called fall. All to do with the fall of leaves I presume. No doubt we went back to the good ole Latin as soon as we discovered that you guys had adopted fall – we’re not a nation to hold grudges, after all.

So, let us continue for now with our shared differences with the U.S. Films (ok, movies) and TV have made sure that we are completely familiar with your interpretation of the language, but the fact that you insist on calling trousers, pants, always causes us to pause because, as anyone knows, pants is, in fact, the generic term for underwear, of which boxers are just one option. (For the under-forties only: beyond that age a completely different level of support is required.) We know (and to some extent accept) that you have sneakers while we have trainers; you have a fanny while we have a bottom and you have a coochie while we have a fanny; you have diapers instead of nappies, bills instead of notes and faucets instead of taps, but restroom for public toilets always raises eyebrows: anybody trying to rest in a public loo over here faces the prospect of an extremely rude awakening!

And you enter buildings on the First Floor, whilst we enter on the Ground Floor. Over here, the first floor is the second floor, and requires a ladder. Anyone leaving a British building from the first floor will find the step exceedingly steep. Equally sidewalk is a very literal use of the language, whereas we use a pavement (from the Latin pavimentum, which means “trodden down floor.” Trodden down because it’s for pedestrians and not vehicles!) Here sidewalk is something people do after a gin or two too many. Most odd for me is the discovery that in the US a car’s silencer is known as a muffler. Here, a muffler is a scarf, and it now makes me realise that ‘having a muffler wrapped around one’s neck’ is something that, in America, would only be carried out by the Mafia.

Of course, we also have many different names for foodstuffs: eggplant (aubergine), scallion (spring onion), zucchini (courgette), chips (crisps), French Fries (chips) and single portion (an entire family meal).

Which culinary reference brings me on to our Australian friends who employ, without question, the very best use of the English language – generally by abbreviating all nouns and sticking ‘ie’ on the end – but you do have Shrimps which, to us, are some kind of mutant Jurassic-sized prawns. Shrimps, here, are the size of woodlice – if you put them on a barbecue they would definitely fall through. Here, a shrimp of sufficient size to barbecue is called a lobster. Some other great Australian words are Berko (angry – I would love someone to tell me why), cut-lunch (sandwich – cut lunch just sounds impossibly posh), daks (trousers – they were always known as kecks here when I was a kid, I wonder if it’s the same thing), jocks (pants, boxers) but by far the best thing is the fact that you are a nation of thong wearers. Over here we wear the far more onomatopoeic flip-flops on our feet because, in the UK a thong is a very flimsy item of female underwear – known in Australia as bum-floss: surely the word of the century. What’s not to love about a language that can do that?

There’s a word for it…

You know, I know, we all know that when things start to get a little staid – when you cannot think of a joke worth its salt – there are certain words that you can turn to that will never let you down: want a stupid, childish snigger, just use the word pussy (we have recently been to a pantomime – Dick Whittington – in which the words ‘dick’ and ‘pussy’ were used so often that my eyes started to glaze, but they got a laugh every single time); want to amuse people who might well soon, although they will never admit it, be using one, just cram the word commode into a sentence; want to get a quiet ‘yes, we all know what you mean by that’ smirk, simply use any word or phrase that could conceivably be viewed as a euphemism: knob will never fail, nor will pork sword, muff or nunny. It’s a strange reaction to words that possibly goes some way towards explaining why women (reportedly) laugh more than men: they know how childish and genital-obsessed the other half of the human race is.

It is the very same half that hardly ever uses the correct terminology for anything that resembles what Monty Python called The Naughty Bits. Men never – except, perhaps, when talking to a female doctor – call a penis a penis. In the general area you will find a cock, a knob, or a dick, whilst if you wish to take a slightly wider view, you will encounter the dangleys, the family jewels or, my own personal preference, Richard and the twins, but never a penis – unless it’s got something wrong with it. Have you ever heard a man use the word vagina unless he is wearing vinyl gloves, wielding a plastic spatula and staring down at you between raised knees? Men will not even use the simple word for what constitutes their favourite thing(s) in the whole wide world: baps, tits, boobies, bazoomers, umpa lumpas (yes, I’m looking at you Hugh Grant) but, unless they are talking to their great aunt, daughter or niece, men are incapable of saying the word breast unless it is in relation to a chicken, and even then, not without blushing.

Women are capable of adult conversations about sex. Men are capable of ‘Wor!’ Women are capable of making rational decisions about their bodies: ‘I generally wear a loose top because it draws the eye away from my large breasts,’ (oh no it doesn’t) or ‘I never wear tight trousers because they accentuate my big bum.’ Can you imagine a man ever refusing to wear tight trousers because it accentuates his big member (Oh God, I’m at it now!) or squashing his toes into too-small shoes, because he’d heard what they say about big feet? I wonder how many men would be prepared to go into Marks & Spencers to buy padded ‘Y’ fronts if they were kept alongside the padded bra’s? Not many. They might try to persuade their wives to do it though. I actually knew a barber who always kept a rolled up hanky tucked down in the front of his trousers when dressed to impress: slightly obscene looking (especially when he bent over) and terribly inconvenient when he had a cold.

Perhaps that is why (with the very notable exception of Alan Bennett) men very rarely write great dialogue for women: we use the language completely differently, but women are rather better at translation than men. I think that women are far more able to laugh at themselves, whilst men are far more willing to let other people do it for them. Speaking for myself, I am very happy to laugh at a ‘rude word’ provided it doesn’t hurt anyone (I won’t say ‘offend anyone’ because that is something most of us do almost every time we open our mouths today – there is always someone looking to take offence), I am also happy to laugh at myself and to be laughed at. There’s no point in being an arse about it…

Christmas Specials

Generally speaking, I think the conversation goes something like this: “Ok, you’ve finished the new series and we’re really happy with it. Is there any chance – we can give you all day – that you can knock up a quick Christmas Special for us, you know the kind of thing: twice the length, half the jokes and a magical snowfall scene at the end? Oh yes, sorry I should have mentioned, twice the money…”

There are certain films without which Christmas would be incomplete: ‘Love Actually’, ‘Miracle on 34^th Street’, ‘It’s A Wonderful Life’, ‘The Muppets Christmas Carol’, ‘Home Alone’, ‘The Exorcist’… and a handful of TV specials that bear repeat, notably any one of many ‘Only Fools and Horses’ Christmas Specials, various ‘Vicar of Dibley’ and the King and Queen of them all ‘The Good Life’, but by and large the ghost has been given up: no-one wants to waste too much energy on it any more. Oh, and talking of ‘Ghosts’, that also gets a crack at Christmas Day with its last ever episode – so we can all be happy about that.

BBC Christmas Day will feature ‘Dr Who’ (because there’s a new Doctor and he’s really nothing like the old Doctor), ‘Eastenders’ (because you just can’t get enough depression), ‘Call the Midwife’ (because all of the Eastenders viewers are badly in need of uplift and you can’t beat a bit of nostalgia – even if it’s for a world that never really existed, twenty years before you were born) and ‘Strictly Come Dancing’ (because Grandma is in temporary control of the TV remote). There are also two seasonal special ‘Mrs Brown’s Boys’ – don’t shoot the messenger, it’s not my fault!

All in all, it’s not great and I wouldn’t blame you for reading blogs instead.

I really couldn’t get my head into Christmas Special mode this year and so, should you want something to read over the Christmas period, all I can do is to refer you to the following links to Christmas Past and some of my own Christmas favourites (all by me, of course, because my ego far surpasses my talent). I’ll be watching Death in Paradise whenever it’s on, and waiting for Mortimer and Whitehouse in the New Year…

Whatever you are doing, watching or reading, I hope you have a joyful, peaceful time.

T’was the Night Before Christmas
A Christmas Tale
A Boxing Day Tale
Christmas – A Frankie & Benny Christmas Special
Green Ink on the Back of a Pizza Delivery Receipt – A Dinah & Shaw Christmas Special
Searching for the Spirit of Christmas – A Dinah & Shaw Christmas Special
A Pre-Christmas Exchange – The Bearded Man
Supplementary Philosophy – The Men in the Pub for a Lockdown Christmas
I Believe in Father Christmas
Christmas Dinner
Festive Planning Principles
Christmas Conundrums
Christmas Traditions (1)
Christmas Traditions (2)

My very own Christmas Annual is available on the garden bonfire, if you’re very very quick*…

* Oh no it isn’t!

The Panto’s at Seven

You know how it goes, the local news, once filled with the marriages of your contemporaries (followed by births of their children, divorces, re-marriages, big birthdays, retirements etc.) is now filled only with death. I have resisted social media all my life (at least the portion for which it has existed) because, when you get to my age, it seems to thrive almost solely on mortality and misfortune. Facebook notifications usually come in the form of a death knell.

The ‘official’ media is seldom better, and good news stories usually revolve around a person in their late sixties who can still walk to the shop and buy a tin of beans all by themselves. How amazing is that? The media is run by the cast of Logan’s Run*. This is a world in which old-age is considered infectious, and starts at 40. Anyone still capable of tying their own laces beyond the age of sixty is a freak.

The real world, though, is not like that, is it? We oldies are in the ascendency. It’s a good job we’re not vindictive. Now there’s an idea for a film: a dystopian society in which the elderly have taken over and forced everyone under the age of forty to ‘sit for a while, drink tea and play bingo’. It could be a winner. The only problem would be in persuading young actors to play old people…

As one gets older, the mind switches away from thoughts of how close death has become, to how much life is left. It’s a subtle shift, but it allows joy to be found where it never used to be: in watching other people have a good time; in putting on lots of layers and walking in the cold; in keeping warm and eating Custard Creams. Silver linings become a preoccupation. Although I cannot deny my year of birth, there are only two times when I actually feel old: 1) the first fifteen minutes after waking up in the morning and 2) the rest of the day. It is only having the brain of a nine-year-old that allows me to cope with it.

And so, perfectly logically, you might now ask me why I was looking at the local news in the first place? Well, I say local news; it is actually what we fancifully call ‘The Parish Magazine’, a monthly collection of adverts, church news, chapel news, W.I. schedules, walking club routes and reader’s letters about dog shit, but it also includes a ‘What’s On’ section, which was invaluable because I knew that we were going to the Village Pantomime (‘Oh yes I did’) but I had no idea what time it started. Turn up too early and you are likely to freeze to death on the plastic, fold-away chairs whilst the hyperactive kid in the row behind crams marshmallows into your ears; turn up late and Dick Whittington is already slapping his thigh and the principle boy is being propositioned by King Rat.

Perhaps I could now take the opportunity to fill you in on my all-time favourite panto story. I used to spend some time with an actor called George Moon. He was by that time elderly, but regularly turned up for pantomime at the local theatre and boarded with my in-laws. He related the story of a very grumpy and child-hating Jafar who, appearing for his short ‘solo spot’ in the second half after one sip too many from his interval hip flask, found that his thunderflashes were not working. He tried again and again, to choruses of derision from the stalls before – desperate to fill the silence – he was struck with inspiration and delivered the line “Goodness gracious, what a caper: the cat’s pissed on my magic paper” to the gathered children, which, I am slightly ashamed to admit, made me laugh through my nose.

Anyway, I read the mag and discovered that the vicar and minister are in complete accord about the Christmas Story – as well as the brilliance of the long, long ago Vicar of Dibley Christmas Special (they both hope that they won’t, themselves, have to triple-up on pigs-in-blankets, brussel sprouts and sage & onion this year) – the W.I. have been crocheting Santa Claus toilet roll covers for charity (available at all good jumble sales) the walking club have been walking, but won’t be doing so on Christmas Day (as some of its members have a life), and that dog owners really should clean up after their pooches if they are not to expect a most unwelcome little gift from the neighbours on Christmas morn. I also discovered that the panto started at seven – and that no-one died.

*A film about a dystopian society where the population is maintained by killing everyone over the age of thirty. It received a score of zero out of four stars in the Chicago Tribune on its release – despite the presence of Jenny Agutter – which was probably more than it deserved.

The Village Panto was, of course, a huge success full of faltering scenery, forgotten lines, a mis-placed treasure chest and gales of laughter when it all went wrong – which it did, quite a lot…

Ennui Through Mayhem

The title comes from a phrase that I used in a Covid Christmas post (Festive Planning Principles) something like a lifetime (and 3 lockdowns) ago. I like it and it seems a shame to waste it, especially as it sums up how my life has been the last few days. ‘Listless’ might also work, but is far less fun. The cause of this particular bout of languorous mental inactivity was the impending ultrasound scan which is now in the past, and the results which – although requiring an extra pair of hands (called away from the nearby computer screen) to extrapolate (I did not enquire why) – were good. ‘Very healthy’ said the lady with the scanner and the gel, and a weight lifted from my wizened shoulders, only to re-descend a few minutes later when I remembered that the two practitioners who huddled for an unseemly amount of time over the screen to the side of me, just millimetres out of my vision, repeatedly muttered the word ‘bifurcation’ during their deliberations into what, exactly, they were looking at. What is a bifurcation and why did its presence necessitate a lengthy second opinion? What if the scan result – ref the whatever-it-was they were looking for – was very healthy, but the bifurcation was bad news? What if they were not allowed to tell me what they had found because it was not what they had been tasked to look for? What if I was unlikely to make it home anyway, so no point in upsetting me with bad news?

Of course, I know what a bifurcation is now – I looked it up the very second I left the surgery. The question that remains is whether that which is – inconveniently it would seem for the purposes of an AAA* scan – bifurcating within my torso, is doing so as per general guidelines or has gone rogue? Do I have a subdivision where no subdivision should rightly be? Has someone upgraded my main aortal access to a dual carriageway whilst I slept and, if so, why? I know how bad a road has to get before the local council upgrades it (with one man, a spade and a bucketful of tar): I would dread to think that my arterial network could be in anything like the state of the roads around here.

They both seemed to be perfectly content to send me on my way without feeling the need to press the number of a local paramedic into my sweaty palm. I did ask if there was a problem, but they both just said ‘No, you’re fine lovey’ – all well and good, although not exactly addressing my concerns, and I know what you are thinking – and you are indisputably right – I am merely squeezing every ounce of optimism out of good news and finding myself with something else to worry about. Did they see something in there that had only previously been known to live within John Hurt? They said that they would be writing to my GP – I presume on a professional, rather than personal basis – so I am certain that they would pass on any concerns they may have had at that stage: ‘patient has a bifurcation that may well not be ideal, particularly when attempting to see beyond it on a scan’. Anyway, you know what it’s like when a medical professional gives you good news, you get out of there before they have the chance to change their mind.

Besides these are professional and caring people, they would have told me anything I needed to know there and then, and what they told me was that my measurements were ‘A very healthy 1.5cm. This is a one-off scan and you won’t need any more.’ There is no bad news at all in that, is there? All is well on the Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm front. I’m sure that if I have bifurcation issues I will get to hear about them in due course. Perhaps they’ll invite me for a scan…

*Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm

Stage

I don’t anticipate writing any specific ‘Christmas’ posts this year, but as I do tend to get wrapped up in the spirit of it all, I’ve no doubt that a small amount of pantomime is likely to creep in anyway. If you’re not into it at all, I can only apologise.

Here in the UK we had our first proper snowfall at the start of December – going by the previous few years, it might be first and only – and by now the kids are almost as excited as me. I watched ‘Nativity’ on the 3rd and it has taken a superhuman effort for me to put off ‘Love Actually’ and ‘Miracle on 34^th Street’ until now. I have not been quite so restrained with the port and mince pies.

Somehow December has a habit of being an incredibly busy month and a peek at the calendar shows that we don’t have a free day now until well into the New Year. One of my appointments – an Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm (AAA) scan – lies ahead of me as I write this, but will be behind me by the time I publish. It is, apparently, completely routine for men of my age and, should the result be ok, the test will not be required again. Should the result be less good, however, a world of worry lies ahead. And boy can I worry.

My problem lies, of course, in writing this before I know the result. I am by nature a very optimistic pessimist, but going forward, I’m not at all certain how that will stand up to the possibility of finding out that I am one good fart away from a fatal heart attack. My outlook may not be so sunny then. Of course, it could be that all is well, but what is it they say about counting chickens? (Well, the only thing I would say is that they are a whole lot easier to count before they hatch than afterwards.) There is little in this life more galling than going to the doctors well, and leaving ill:
Dr. – How are you feeling today?
Me – I feel great.
Dr. – Well I’ll soon put a stop to that…
The entire appointment – according to the accompanying leaflet which, on balance, seems to assume bad news – will last less than twenty minutes and I will be given the results immediately. It feels a little like voluntarily sticking my neck into a guillotine. But if I don’t go? Well, my mind is not going to entertain the possibility of good news is it? In my mind, what I don’t know is almost certainly designed to kill me, so I will just have to suck it up and see what the doctor says.

It would help considerably to have a set of symptoms to be aware of, but apparently there are none: fine, fine, fine, dead is the way it goes. I will take the test and hope that I don’t need any treatment. If I do, then at least I’ll know it.

Now, I feel as if I should point out here that I am in absolutely no way special. Every man of my age is eligible for this scan. You are not invited to get the test, but simply contacted with a appointment and a letter telling you that you don’t have to go, but if you don’t it will be taken down and may be used against you. The problem is, if you are like me, you are completely unaware that the possibility is even there… until you get the letter, at which point it becomes impossible to think about anything else.

But think about other things I must. As I write this, the clear-up from the leak is in full swing, because all stains must be gone before Christmas. Give me a paint brush, a roller and a can of paint and pantomime season is always just around the corner. I am Panto Painter: one man, both Chuckle Brothers. I know from past experience that water stains are unfathomably difficult to cover up and the more coats that are needed, the greater the potential for disaster. Bizarrely, the harder I try, the more inept I become. My whole life is like an inverse apprenticeship. Lord help us all if I ever qualify.

“All the world,” said the Bard “is a stage” and mine, it would seem is always set up for panto.
“Whatever happened to the best years of my life?” I ask.
“They’re behind you,” scream the audience…

Brass

I am writing, as I almost always do, with music playing and, at the moment it is the most recent CD by a lady called Judie Tzuke (If you know her at all, you will know her from 1979’s ‘Stay With Me Till dawn’, made before, I have no doubt, many of you were born, but she has been producing superb music ever since.) and I was whisked away by a track called ‘White Picket Fence’ partly because it is an excellent song, but also because it features a brass band (Except it doesn’t: it does feature a trumpet, a flugelhorn, an oboe and a flute, but they are all played by the same person. It sounds like a brass band though and you can’t have everything these days can you?) and I do love a brass band in a ‘rock’ song.

I suppose – as these things tend to do – that it started with the Beatles: All You Need Is Love and Golden Slumbers notably feature brass band ensembles but I am going to throw three different hats into the ring as the finest examples of rock (or folk/rock) / brass band hybrids. They are to be enjoyed, loved and, in the case of the last one here to be buried to. (Is it a recent innovation that funeral songs should always be heartening and essentially optimistic? I’m pretty certain that, when I was a boy, they were all slow and profoundly depressing. I remember (a very early memory) when Churchill died and the dirge went on for days without break. OK, he was a great man, but surely he would have enjoyed a bit of Satchmo or something as he was horse-drawn around the capital.)

I perhaps need to explain at this point that, being the age I am, I have no idea how to embed videos into posts, so I’ll just have to link the titles to YouTube videos, but hopefully you have the patience to try them out. I promise it will be worth it.

I presume it is probably a very British thing to do – brass bands being not only very British but even more specifically, I think, northern. These three bands/performers are most certainly English, even though one of them hasn’t lived here for decades. (Richard Thompson, despite being quintessentially British, lives in New Jersey.) If, by the way, you want to learn more about brass bands – and at the same time Britain of the late seventies/early eighties – I cannot do more than recommend the wonderful film Brassed Off for your entertainment and education (If you can find it, I seriously recommend that you give it ninety minutes of your time).

Anyway, here we go back to my three hats… has anyone seen the ring?. Hat One is Sad Captains by the glorious Elbow. I have seen Elbow many times and they never fail to be amazing, but on the tour to accompany The Take Off and Landing of Everything (the album from which this song is taken) they were accompanied by a small brass and string ensemble and this song was magical. This is the album version and it is truly lush. It could easily have been my funeral song, but I would hate people to think that I was a Captain. Sad, everyone knows…

Hat Two is I Want To See the Bright Lights Tonight by Richard & Linda Thompson. I have seen Richard Thompson many times, but always solo and although brilliant – there is no other guitarist in the world quite like him – I have never seen him perform this song. The version here is (again) from the album, because although there are many excellent live versions available, this is the only one with the brass band in all its glory. Definitely not a funeral song, but almost certainly on my list for the wake.

Hat Three, When An Old Cricketer Leaves the Crease by Roy Harper*, will definitely be amongst my funeral songs – even though my best friend insisted on telling me for years that I hadn’t played cricket for decades and had left the crease long, long ago. Sad, reflective, yet ultimately uplifting this is one of music’s great lyrics – telling simultaneously a simple tale of both Village Cricket and Human Mortality (not the easiest of combinations to master) – and the brass is perfect. Again, I have seen Harper many times and he does cover this song brilliantly live (there’s a live version here and, take a look, there’s my Bearded Man** in the very flesh) but without the brass band it’s just not quite the same. (Although I now have a confession to make. I have just listened through all of my clips and, if you don’t have time to listen to them all, then I can only recommend that you at least listen to the live version which, despite the whole premise of this post, features no brass at all. Harper is aural Marmite, but if you like him, you will love this***.)

I know this is a very different post for me – all will return to normal on Monday, I promise – but I hope you enjoy the songs and, of course, if any of you can point me at any more, I would love to hear them…

*The only non-band member to ever sing lead vocals on a Pink Floyd song (‘Have A Cigar’ on ‘Wish You Were Here’) he also provided backing vocals on Kate Bush’ ‘Breathing’ and was, of course, the ‘subject’ of Led Zeppelin’s ‘Hats Off to (Roy) Harper’.

**No coincidence that I had recently seen him when I wrote the first incarnation of The Bearded Man.

***Silly Mid-On, BTW, is a field position.