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.

Folio

In the UK, everywhere is currently full of William Shakespeare. I read that 400 years had passed since the publication of the bard’s First Folio and I wrote this. Just silly really and, I am quite happy to admit, a little bit childish. It’s been that kind of week…

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE SITS AT HIS DESK, QUILL IN HAND, DEEP IN THOUGHT. THERE IS A KNOCK AT THE DOOR.

SHAKESPEARE Anne! Anne! Forsooth, where is she. Down at ye bingo again I shouldn’t wonder. Yeah, loathe that I am to break this tragic muse, I must away to answer the door, forsooth….. again.

HE OPENS THE DOOR. FRANCIS BACON ENTERS.

SHAKESPEARE Aah, Bacon.

BACON Shakespeare. It is not usual for you to answer your own door. Where is your wife?

SHAKESPEARE Anne Hathaway.

BACON Yes, that’s the one.

SHAKESPEARE No, Anne hath away to ye bingo. Come in my friend, take a pew.

BACON Don’t mind if I do.

SHAKESPEARE I would offer you a coffee, but I’m not entirely certain whether Raleigh’s invented it yet.

BACON No matter. Tell me, fellow Bard, why dids’t thou sumonnest me to thy humble abode this fine frost-scarred morn….. forsooth.

SHAKESPEARE It is ye writer’s block, Bacon. I’ve not written a decent sonnet since Wednesday and I’m getting nowhere with my new play ‘Hamlet’

BACON Is that the one about the Frenchman?

SHAKESPEARE No, Danish, Bacon.

BACON COLLAPSES IN LAUGHTER.

BACON Oh verily, that’s a good one. A real side-splitter is that. I should put it in your next comedy

SHAKESPEARE Comedy? I’ve never thought about doing a comedy. How do they go then?

BACON Well, they usually start off with a pair of identical twins and they have very similar names. One of them has to dress up as a man to get a job, but then she falls in love with her boss and eventually, after lots of high jinks and good old-fashioned belly laughs occasioned by this subtle subterfuge she has to reveal her true self to him.

SHAKESPEARE That’s it?

BACON Always.

SHAKESPEARE No custard pies?

BACON Ye gads, no. Besides, Raleigh’s not come back with the recipe for custard yet, has he?

SHAKESPEARE I could give it a bash I suppose. Perhaps I could adapt one of my old ones. What about this one; ‘Romeo and Juliet’

BACON Good title, not very comic though. What about ‘Carry On Romeo and Juliet’….. ‘Capulet’s World’….. ‘Venetians Behaving Badly’?

SHAKESPEARE No, I prefer my title.

BACON What You Will.

SHAKESPEARE That’s it! That’s it! Perfect! I’ll start it straight away. I’ll change the plot though. I’ve only got male actor’s you know and they make lousy women. Besides, I’ve got a blinding first line. What do you think of this? “If music be the food of love, play on, that surfeiting the appetite may sicken and so die.”

BACON Erh…..

SHAKESPEARE Well?

BACON It’s not very….. you know….. is it?

SHAKESPEARE What?

BACON Well, it’s not funny is it?

SHAKESPEARE Funny?

BACON Funny, comedies are supposed to be funny.

SHAKESPEARE They are?

BACON NODS

SHAKESPEARE All the way through?

BACON NODS AGAIN

SHAKESPEARE How do you do that then, without custard pies I mean?

BACON You tell jokes.

SHAKESPEARE Jokes?

BACON You know, like why did the chicken cross the road?

SHAKESPEARE Chicken? Has Raleigh brought them back yet?

BACON Look, this is not going to work. Why don’t you go back to that one you were working on when I came around the other day. The Scottish one. I’d shorten it a bit though. You know what they say, ‘Brevity is the soul of wit’.

SHAKESPEARE Do they?

BACON I’m sure I’ve heard it somewhere… Anyway, you must do something, Will. Nothing will come of nothing.

THE DOOR OPENS. ANNE HATHAWAY ENTERS.

BACON Anne.

ANNE Bacon, here again?

BACON Aye, he haveth ye writer’s block again.

ANNE I cannot think why he calls for you. He is a genius after all. Why should he need you to help him?

BACON The lady protests too much, methinks.

A DOG BARKS

ANNE (Shouts) Out, Damn’d Spot.

SHE STARTS TO TIDY SHAKESPEARE’S DESK.

ANNE Honestly, the very idea that he should need help.

SHE PICKS UP A PAPER KNIFE.

ANNE Is this a dagger I see before me, the handle toward my hand?

DISPIRITED, BACON EXITS, THE OPEN DOOR CASTING LIGHT ACROSS THE ROOM.

ANNE Soft, what light through yonder window breaks?

SHAKESPEARE It’s a door, actually.

ANNE Trust me, go for window.

FADE TO BLACK

Nothing Quite

Nothing quite matches the thrill of finding water dripping through the kitchen ceiling, especially when you’re trying to cook risotto. The first thought is “No, it can’t be,” followed by “Oh yes it is”, both of which rapidly give way to, “So where is it coming from?” A brief peek out of the window tells you that it is raining heavily (Here in England? Surely not.) and so, leaving the onions to carbonise on the hob, you schlep outside to investigate.

Nothing quite matches the thrill of climbing a soaking wet ladder in the pouring rain, especially when it is just not quite long enough to take you to where you need to be. Never mind, I could see enough to know that the water wasn’t coming through the extension roof, especially seeing as, having got back inside I noticed that the water was dripping through what has always been an inside section. Something had to be leaking upstairs. It’s odd how difficult it is to work out what is above what in a house that you have lived in for forty plus years, especially when you’re trying to remember where you last left the buckets, but I finally narrowed it down to a bathroom radiator or the toilet beside it.

Nothing quite matches the thrill of lowering your head down into the toilet bowl and shining a torch down the underside of the cistern in order to watch the water dripping out – nor the relief of noting that the leak is from the clean ‘in water’ rather than the outgoing variety.

There is, of course, no way that my wife would sanction visible pipework in the bathroom and, equally, no way that the bloke what boxed and tiled it in (me) would have had the foresight to realise that said pipes might one day leak, so a relay of frazzled runs up and down the stairs bearing hammers, screwdrivers, knives, chisels, anything that came to hand ensued, whilst another pan of finely diced onions turned to dust on the hob.

Chipping off tiles, unscrewing wooden framework – an additional sprint up and down to locate the Phillips screwdriver that appeared to be the only piece of equipment I failed to grab on my original swoop – squeezing a contorted wrist through to the isolator and turning it off took less than – I estimate – three gallons of water before peace was restored.

A brief glance around the bathroom revealed a post apocalyptic scene of broken tiles, fractured wood and blood covering every available white surface due to finger tips that look as if they might have been forcibly dragged across a cheese grater, but at least the drip, drip, drip had stopped, to be replaced downstairs by the spontaneous discolouration of every available painted surface. Clearly the slow filtration of clean water through floorboard, God-knows-what-between and plasterboard produces a brew that any barrista would be proud of, lending the white ceilings a colour resembling the grandchildren after an hour in the park, and the tenacity to resist all manner of overpainting. After twenty coats or so it begins to fade… I am told.

The plumber – God bless him – promised to come the following day, but then rang to apologise for not being able to make it as he had, in a day that had become freezing cold, a client without heating or hot water. He hoped we’d understand. We did: we have a second loo. We completely get it, he will come and sort out our former drip, drip, drip in a day or so and I will hope, meantime, that the murky ‘tide mark’ currently spreading across the kitchen ceiling like golden syrup across a pale cream Axminster will dry and fade sufficiently to allow itself to be painted over so that, after a few days spent honing my non-existent carpentry skills, re-boxing and re-tiling in the bathroom, you will never know that the water had ever descended.

And nothing quite matches the thrill of that…

Here Today…

Winter arrived overnight – early for us – but no doubt it will be gone by tomorrow…

Time Travel

Having made 780 posts over five years, by and large all about the same thing – me – it is little wonder that I inadvertently repeat myself every now and then. I fight against it, although I know that it creeps in, but what I have just discovered is the great pleasure that WordPress itself takes in highlighting it. A few days ago I published Guess Who? a fragrant little nosegay about the joys and otherwise of contact lens wearing and touching on my inability to recognise faces whatever I might have thrust into my eyeballs or balanced on my conk, and some clever little algorithm plonked a long forgotten little piece from over three years ago into the ‘More in Getting On’ slot at the bottom of the post called Social Contacts: a fragrant little nosegay about the joys and otherwise of contact lens wearing and touching on my inability to recognise faces etc etc blah blah blah. I had of course – it being well in excess of fifteen minutes ago – completely forgotten about it.

I decided to reacquaint myself and, thankfully, discovered that it was sufficiently different to the later post to mean that reading both is not, in itself, completely unbearable, but bafflingly, I also discovered that in the ‘More in Getting On’ section at the bottom of Social Contacts (published October 2020) is Guess Who? What kind of black magic is this? Some kind of time travel linked to the 60^th Anniversary editions of Dr Who which are currently dropping onto our screens?

I would love to be able to enjoy Dr Who like everybody else, but it blows my mind. “Oh look, there’s a Dalek. Weren’t they wiped out years ago? Oh, I see. (I don’t.) They were wiped out centuries before their evil inventor had actually invented them, after which they also had actually travelled back in time to prevent themselves from ever having been wiped out in the first place by someone who was quite unlike he/she currently is/was/will be, with a Sonic Screwdriver – a gadget that started life as a… well, as a screwdriver but now appears to be some kind of hi-tech Swiss Army Knife/Light Sabre hybrid – it was before they could get upstairs I think. And what do they do with the little sink plunger again?…”

Of course, I am of an age for whom there is only one true Who – Tom Baker, of course – in much the same way as there is only one Bond (Roger Moore), one Batman (Adam West), one Wonder Woman (Lynda Carter) and one Willy Wonka (Gene Wilder). It might be an age thing – although I would make a shout for Benedict Cumberbatch being the ultimate Holmes – but no-one will persuade me that there is any other Tarzan than Johnny Weissmuller. No amount of time travel would ever persuade ten year-old me that he was not the one and only, and don’t think for a second that anyone will ever take you seriously again if you believe that there is any other Robin Hood than Richard Greene.

There are certain things that bear repeat – none of them, unfortunately, written by me – but there is an ‘age’ for them all and whoever assumes the role when you yourself are of that age, will forever be the one and only – unless, of course they are George Lazenby…

On the Hoof

As I get older, I seldom write like this because, if I’m honest, I am neither bright enough nor reliable enough to make a success of it. My posts are often written ad hoc, but seldom last-minute. Blether they might be, but they are almost inevitably drivelled in advance.

You see, if I write for today, then I also write of today and, Lord knows, that gives me so little to write about. I’m not sure whether it’s ‘an age thing’, but so little happens to me – or even adjacent to me – these days. Today, for instance, I have patched up some ropey paintwork, replaced a dodgy light bulb, sealed a draughty door and shifted a plant pot with a weight somewhat in excess of a Chieftain Tank: nothing to make jokes about; little to say. If only I’d dropped it on my toe… I am The Marie Celeste of happenstance.

Now, I have said before that having nothing to say has seldom stopped me from saying it: it is, in as much as I have such a thing, my stock-in-trade. As much as I would like to believe that it is a treatise about the anti-ageing properties of positive thinking, I have the uneasy feeling that Getting On may well, in fact, be all about inertia. I would kind of like it to be about mountaineering, round-the-world yachting, sky-diving, yak-riding, off-piste skiing, all that malarkey, but what it is actually about is the fear of heights, the fear of water, the fear of falling, the fear of wild, hairy creatures, and the fear of making a tit of myself on a hillside – even if covered in so many layers that I am completely unidentifiable to all but those who know me… however vaguely. (I think that people would, by and large, be able to identify me from my gait, my mannerisms, and the fact that, placed on anything even vaguely slippery, I will inevitable end up on my arse.) Fear is the ultimate driver and, as you get older, getting older becomes the penultimate fear (we all know the ultimate one: a long weekend in a tiny Cleethorpes flat with David Icke). Most of us will do whatever it takes to stop feeling old. Most of us feel that we are nothing like as old as other people of our age.

One of life’s great pleasures is in encountering someone who appears to be very much older than yourself, only to discover that they are, in fact, younger. It never crosses the mind that they look old for their age, but simply that you look young for yours. Until – as happened to me very recently – the ancient-looking, wizened old homunculi turns to you and says “So we’re the same age huh? You must have had a very tough paper round!” Bloody Yoda thinks that I look old! Ridiculous! And then…

How do you gauge it? What looks old to whom? If I ask a loved one, “I don’t look that old, do I?” are they likely to say, “Well, as a matter of fact…” or would they lie? Platitudes become meaningless. “Of course you don’t” becomes a dagger to the soul. “I look like an old man to them, and they won’t even admit it! I’ll go and climb a mountain. That’ll show ‘em.” Actually, all it will show them is that I am losing my mind.

…And that’s another thing about getting older…

Haphazardly Poetical – The Reception

Photo by Trust “Tru” Katsande on Unsplash

I posted ‘The Wedding’ last week and mentioned that I also had this ‘poem’ prepared and, against all expectations, a few of you said that you would like to read it, so here goes…

The smoker’s bar at the Rat and Duck,
Was where they all went on.
The tables were all caked in muck
And so was Uncle Ron.
He’d tried, you see, to stand between
Aunt Daisy and Aunt May
And asked them not to cause a scene
Just let the matter lay.

It seemed to work – to some extent
They smiled with fond accord.
And this he took for good intent;
His optimism soared.
They acted like they’d always been
The very best of chums,
But poor old Ron had just not seen
The way that trouble comes.

It’s true, he felt a slight unease,
It seemed a little weird
That Aunty May fell to her knees
While Daisy stroked his beard.
“Is this all real?” Aunt Daisy quipped,
Her mouth fixed in a grin.
Then sudden fear, as both hands gripped
The growth upon his chin.

“Who do you think you are?” she cried
“To interfere like that.”
And then with all her strength applied
Her handbag round his hat.
Then gave a mighty push and heave
To where Aunt May was crawling.
Without the merest by-your-leave
They sent the poor man sprawling

Then when they had him on the floor
His two demonic foes
Both asked him if he ‘wanted more’
Whilst pounding on his nose.
And so he tried to run away
To leave them hell for leather
He would have done so, had not May
Tied both his shoes together.

He tried, but he could not escape,
Nor find a place to hide.
Salvation came in the awesome shape
Of a gently blushing bride.
“I’m doing the rounds of all the men
And you’re the next,” she said.
Before she latched on, there and then,
Like a plunger to his head.

Poor Uncle Ron, he tried to breathe;
He tried to pull away,
But Jane just wouldn’t let him leave
Until she’d had her way.
He tried, in vain, to shake her free
To get it over quick.
He really didn’t mean to be
So violently sick.

The bridegroom by this time had downed
A dozen beers or more
And, having fallen down, had found
He liked it on the floor.
He wouldn’t have to face his bride,
To breath her strange aroma,
Or feel her naked at his side
If he was in a coma.

He tried to stand, to order more,
His legs would not obey.
He fell again to the sticky floor
And there he thought he’d stay.
But burning thirst now ruled his head
“I think I’ll die quite soon,
If I don’t get a drink,” he said,
Whilst draining the spitoon.

The ‘breakfast*’ scoffed, the speeches made,
The wine (and guests) all drunk,
And from the plate where fruitcake laid
The DJ grabbed a chunk
“Now it’s time to spin the platters”
He looked around, askance –
They were all of them as mad as hatters –
It was time for the First Dance.

So Jane ran over to the bar
And hauled the groom upright.
The barman saw the door ajar
And attempted to take flight
As all assembled took their place,
The couple gently swayed
With all the elegance and grace
Of flies when sprayed with Raid.

Then all surrounding bundled in –
Aunt Fanny did the splits –
And Uncle Ronnie, tumbling in
Fell face-first in her décolletage.
Somehow he wound-up underneath,
His yells were heard afar:
The braces on his crooked teeth
Got hooked up on her bra.

The men hauled on his laces,
The women pulled her heels.
There were many reddened faces
And a multitude of squeals
As excess wind was broken
When the two were dragged apart
And Ronnie left a token –
A deadly, silent fart.

And so the evening ground along,
Aunt Daisy got quite merry,
Before they reached the final song
She’d swallowed all the sherry,
Some Cherry-B’s, a Babycham,
A snowball and a gin,
Been sick across a plate of ham
And three times in a bin.

The happy couple slid away
Before the night was through,
They’d really quite enjoyed the day,
And ‘the night’ was overdue:
The bridegroom couldn’t stay awake,
The bride was left frustrated,
She tried her best for goodness sake,
But left him half castrated.

His screams were heard across the town,
His voice was loud and high
As in her haste to ‘get them down’
She didn’t pull the fly,
But raked, instead, his wherewithal
With a thousand little teeth
‘Til the skin was barely there at all
Nor what was underneath.

An evening spent in A & E**
Their married life began.
A little stitch (or ninety three)
To ensure he stayed a man.
The honeymoon put back for weeks
To allow for partial mending
Another tale on which to peek
But for now we’ve reached the ending.

*Why the after-wedding meal is known as a breakfast, I have no idea.
**Accident & Emergency – the department at UK hospitals where you are taken to be ignored for several hours, if not days, before receiving treatment (a problem with the system and definitely not the wonderful, over-worked staff) for bodily damage and illness.

As I mentioned at the top of this piece, this ‘poem’ was ready to go – except that it wasn’t. I read it through to find that it didn’t always rhyme where it should and it didn’t always scan. Sorting these things out takes me forever – I cannot tell you how much I admire the likes of Obbverse who go through this pain regularly – each stanza is like a thorn under the fingernail and by the time I finish a poem, I really cannot stand it. I hope you are better disposed to this than I…

Guess Who?

I started a great many of the best years of my life by ramming shallow little bowls of glass into my eyes, most of which refused to come out at night – unless, of course, I didn’t want them to. Gas Permeable Lenses – invented, I believe, by the Marquis de Sade for when his nipple-clamps were on the blink – were what enabled me to do my job during the short periods when my eyes were not watering.

Despite the discomfort, there were a number of benefits to wearing these little saucers of glass rather than spectacles: I could walk into a swimming baths without actually falling into the pool (One of the worst aspects of having two daughters is that they, and their mother, always entered the baths through a different door and at a different time to me. Until the dawn of contact lenses, I could never see them. I had to stand near the hell-hole changing room exit, breathing in the heady aroma of sweat, Brut33 and footbath, watching the fuzzy animate mosaic of unfocused flesh and lycra costume swimming around until, eventually, one of them came to collect me.) I could play sport and, best of all, I could walk in the rain without viewing the world through a rain-splattered windscreen.

I’m very happy to say that vanity never played a part in the decision to start wearing contacts: in fact, when I look at photographs, I always appear more human in my specs. They add a little space between my piggy little eyes and distract attention, just a little, from a nose that belongs on a face that is quite a lot larger than my own. I started to wear lenses because my job required me to use an eyeglass for much of the time and the constant on-off of spectacles usually left them with arms that were more outstretched than Australia in the 1970’s (as long as you were white, of course). Besides, I’ve never laboured under the misapprehension that I was ‘owt to look at’. Taking glasses on or off of this face is never going to give George Clooney sleepless nights. I have great ‘friend’ potential: nobody really cares what I look like.

I have the kind of face that, for whatever reason, people tend to remember. Other people have, however, the dreadful habit of being totally unrecognisable to me. I wish they’d sort it out. I spend huge chunks of my life trying to work out who I have just bumped into: who it is that obviously recognises me. My facial recognition software (at best even less reliable than that of the Metropolitan Police) whirrs uselessly in the background, taking me back as far as schooldays without ever once alerting me to the fact that the other person is a) asking questions about my wife, b) wearing a Tesco’s name badge and c) my mother-in-law. I adopt the kind of vague approach to conversation that I realise makes me sound disinterested, simply because the only alternative I have is downright rude. The option of asking “I’m sorry, who are you?” is ever-present, but one I never take. I would prefer to be seen as socially inept (which I am) than bad-mannered, so the initial part of every conversation I ever have features me blindly groping around for some clue as to who I am talking to (or, should they be a former English Master, “to whom I am talking”.)

Unfortunately, ‘dawn’ usually breaks only after I have said something either horribly crass or downright insensitive, more often than not confusing my companion with someone that neither of us likes. I try so hard to maintain a checklist in my head – like a game of ‘Guess Who?’ – “does he have dark hair, does he wear glasses, does he have a moustache, is he more full of shit than Beckton*… is he Piers Morgan?”, that kind of thing, but it never works. Somehow I cannot recognise faces until long after I have grown to know the people behind them. And no amount of glass in the eye seems to alter that…

*The largest sewage farm in Europe.