St Peter’s Scorecard

A young wood pigeon flew into my kitchen window with a boom only slightly less intense than Concorde flying into the sound barrier. I looked out and it was gathering itself on the fence, a distinct WTF? in its eyes, but no harm done. A couple of hours later it was sitting on the doorstep looking in through the patio doors. I went out to it and finding it to have no obvious signs of damage, gently persuaded it to fly up onto the hedge at the back of the garden. I felt relieved that it could fly – albeit haphazardly: all would be well. Except that it clearly wasn’t, because it kept appearing around the garden all day, always at ground level. It did not fly away when I approached and, although it did not show any obvious signs of damage, something was clearly not quite right. I don’t know what you’re supposed to do with an injured pigeon – if it was a hedgehog, a fox cub, an owl, a newt or a white rhino, I would have a better idea – so I put some food and water in front of it and hoped for the best.

Then I started to see the cats! Next door have three huge, feral beasts that are responsible for the decimation of the bird and small mammal populations in these parts. They hunt in a pack and even the other local cats cower in fear. They are well-fed and cared for natural born killers, who delight in leaving their dismembered ‘trophies’ on the local bleeding-heart’s doorstep. I couldn’t let that happen. I repeatedly chased them away, but gradually they became more persistent and, when I finally managed to relocate the pigeon, he was clearly rather more distressed than before. He clearly was not going to survive, but there was no way I could ‘put him out of his misery’, as everybody advised that I probably should – I’d already given him a name dammit – and there is no way on this earth that I was going to let the moggies rip him to pieces, so I gathered him up and put him in the greenhouse with something soft and warm to lay on and some water and food beside him. I knew he would be dead quite soon, but at least he would pass quietly and peacefully…

…Well, he hasn’t. It’s dark outside now and peeing down with rain, but I have been out with a torch to check on him. He hasn’t moved, but he’s sitting up and he seems alert although his wing is obviously ‘not right’. So what do I do if he’s still the same in the morning? I’m not quite certain how easy he will be to recapture. He is still unable to fly, but I imagine he will be pretty sprightly if alarmed and I don’t want him throwing himself around the greenhouse. I don’t want to find myself throwing myself around after him. Hopefully I can quietly corner him and catch him with the minimum of alarm. And then?

I fear that I might end up building him some sort of cage in which he can be safe, fed and watered, whilst he recovers, but I am very doubtful that he will ever fly again, so what do I do with him? I don’t want him cooped up forever, but if I let him go, the cats will definitely think that Christmas has come early. Perhaps if I install some kind of treadmill, he can build up his leg muscles until he can zoom around like Roadrunner. I’m pretty sure that the cats have no access to Acme Jet Skates, so he should be relatively safe, if a little on edge most of the time. My wife, having faced similar situations before, is already muttering darkly about the impracticalities of a ‘pet pigeon’, but somehow I fear that might be the way this is all going. We’ll see what the morning brings…

…Well, although the wing is definitely broken, the pigeon is in good spirits this morning – it has eaten, drunk and shit profusely overnight – and my dilemma has been solved by a very nice lady at the local vet’s who took him in. She works closely with a local wildlife rehabilitation charity: if he can be rehabilitated he will go there. If not, he will at least have a painless and peaceful passing. She commended me for doing ‘the right thing’, so I am happy – although the cats are now staring at me in a very threatening manner…

Frankie & Benny (9) – Vaccinations

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

Frankie and Benny last appeared in ‘Barry‘
Links to all previous episdodes can be found here.

Better for it

…And so, after the ego-boosting trip of my flu jab, I rolled up yesterday for my Covid booster and, disappointingly, not one person questioned my entitlement to receive it. I had obviously aged overnight. I wore a short-sleeved shirt, the nurse was jolly and friendly and it was all over in seconds – a million miles away from the hullaballoo of paperwork and facemasks that accompanied the first vaccination just thirty months ago. Despite the weight of knowing that I do, after all, look every bit as old as I am, I felt smug on my walk home. My left arm was still a little sore from the flu jab and I had no doubt that by today, my right arm would be similarly sore, but I could cope with that: the chances are that whatever illness should befall me this year, severe covid should not over-concern me. Super-boosted, like Peter Parker, I am Covid Man: what has just bitten me has made me superhuman.

Which is why the super-nausea I felt this morning came as such a surprise. I seldom feel sick and even more infrequently do I succumb to the whole vile tumult of actually being sick – the blank refusal to let whatever has gone down, reappear, almost always prevails. But this morning… oh dear, it felt like it could be a close call. I did not do the dreadful deed, but lordy, it felt like I ought to. Everyone always says, ‘Just do it. Get it over with’, but I can’t do that. I would honestly rather feel sick for a month than actually be sick for thirty seconds. That was just not going to happen. In my world, what goes down stays down and bugger the consequences.

So, bloody mindedly, I did what I always do in such circumstances and steadfastedly refused to change my routine. I drank coffee – unadulterated and black, I am not a complete idiot – I ate toast swamped in a thickness of butter that left my statins atrophying in their bubble pack and I told myself that it was all in my head, but it wasn’t. It was in the pit of my stomach and it was knocking very loudly on my Lower Esophageal Sphincter with something that felt like a sledgehammer. I felt sure that I must have drunk or eaten something untoward – like a whole rancid cow from the feel of it – but for the life of me I couldn’t think what. So I Googled and, lo and behold, I found that after sore arm, stiff arm and headache, the most common side-effect of the Pfizer injection is nausea. Well, it’s a small price to pay I suppose…

I walked the kids to school and then I listlessly kicked around the house whilst my stomach performed the kind of routine that would net Simone Biles a cricket score and I ignored it the best I could, until ignoring it became just that little bit easier and, although I couldn’t face lunch as such, I did slurp some soup like a proper old man and I really did feel better for it. By the time I walked to pick the kids up from school, I was pretty much the old me. The one that not even a very slightly sore arm could bring down…

Happy-go-lucky

Having just read through last week’s posts, I have to admit that they did drift off a little towards the morose, didn’t they? Honestly, I’m not sure why. I don’t recall being especially what we around these parts would call mardy* in any particular way. I’d love to claim that I have a ghost-writer who had got the wrong end of my literary schtick – but, of course, I haven’t. I’ve just got me and, most of the time, I don’t have a Scooby** what’s going on. In truth, I am happy almost all of the time – why wouldn’t I be: I have a roof over my head, plenty to eat and the body of a Greek God***, apart from all of the little problems associated with getting older, there are no flies in my ointment (although, ironically, since the Germolene incident, there is ointment in my flies). I am surprisingly easy to please.

Age can have some benefits of its own – although you do generally have to search quite hard for them and, ageing eyesight being what it is, they do get increasingly difficult to find – and today I got a ‘ping’ from the NHS to tell me that, as I am 65 before March 31^st, I am entitled to a free Covid booster and a flu jab. Covid was already booked at the surgery, but the flu vaccine was through the pharmacy so, as I was calling by to pick up some of the 3cwt of tablets I take each day to keep me functioning correctly, I asked them when they could fit me in.
“Now,” they said to my complete surprise. “I’ll get the pharmacist.” And so they did.

I was shown into what obviously was a broom cupboard in its former life and was currently home to two chairs, a laptop computer and a pre-filled hypodermic syringe. Now, I was completely unprepared for this turn of events – this is the NHS! – I was wearing a shirt which had sleeves that refused to be pulled up above the elbow meaning that I had to semi-undress in order to allow access to my upper arm, and I did not have my NHS number about my person. “Don’t worry,” said the pharmacist, who after attempting a million possible number, letter and symbol combinations had finally gained entry to the computer with the PIN 1234, “just give me your name and date of birth.” I did so. She looked at the screen and back at me. “You have to be 65 before 31^st of March,” she said.
“I know.”
“So what’s your date of birth?”
I gave it again. “Doesn’t it say on the computer?”
“Yes, but… I just have to check.”
She peered at the screen again. “Is this you?” she said, spinning the screen towards me. I checked. It was.
“Are you sure?”
“Well, it’s my name, my address and my date of birth so…pretty much. Yes.”
I began to panic. Was there some kind of code on my records? ‘Do not trust this man. He is a moron…’
Well, not so much of a moron, because it was then that I had a flash of inspiration. “I have the NHS App on my phone. It will have my NHS number.” To my amazement the App opened without hitch and the pharmacist, very happy with the information it gave her, emptied the syringe into my arm without further delay, allowing me to scoop my freezing moobs**** back into my shirt.
“That’s it, all done,” she said. “Have your Covid in the other arm.”

I stood to leave before, fatally intrigued, I asked the big fat pregnant question that filled the tiny room. “What was the problem with my records?”
“Oh, no problem,” she said. “I just found it very hard to believe that you are as old as they say you are.”

As I said, I am surprisingly easy to please….

*Sulkily unhappy. Think of three year old having dropped his/her ice cream.

**In case you didn’t know, Scooby Doo = clue.

***Part of that sentence is not true. If you need a hint as to which part it is, I can only suggest that you should seek professional help just as soon as you have finished constructing the marshmallow stable for your pet unicorn.

****Man boobs – particularly susceptible to the cold… although that might just be me.

Greater Things

I have been working on greater things – not, I hasten to add, in import: simply in volume – and my mind has got itself lodged across the bigger page. I cannot, for the life of me, think of anything worth the saying that does not run to at least a couple of thousand words: if it’s worth the saying, it must be worth me throwing a bucketful of adjectives at. I have fallen into a ‘more words good, less words bad’ mindset that means that I am writing nothing I can use here. My ‘Blog Reserve’ has been used; I have nothing to fall back on, and I now have to ‘write on the hoof’ if I want to keep publishing to my self-imposed schedule. And I do: it is important to me.

Other than when I have something that I really want to get off my chest, I very rarely write my posts on the day of publication. I like to check them. Occasionally, if I am feeling particularly frisky, I like to drop a little joke in here and there. I like to re-read when enough time has elapsed to stop me making the same mistakes again. I need to read like everybody else: with no idea of where it is going, so that I do not slip into the trap of assuming that everybody knows what I am talking about – even when I know that I don’t. Even when writing for a readership that (although of infinitely higher calibre) would comfortably fit inside Robbie William’s cap*, I like to do things to the best of my ability and, for me, that means reading things through until they squeak.

But I have cost myself that privilege. I have taken my eye off the ball, my foot off the gas, and the lid off the scotch. I have found too many other things to do that have swallowed up the time I should have set aside for this and I’m not entirely certain of how to remedy the situation. I would really like to revisit my old friends Frankie & Benny, but they need time – I need a post or two in hand before I can give them the room they need. I think I would probably also like a little run of Dinah & Shaw, The Meaning of Life, The Writer’s Circle and even The Bearded Man – if I can find my way back to him – time to tell a few stories. They are my favourite things to write and, without fail, my least popular posts – possibly because they are longer or, more likely, because they are not very good – but, as things stand, I do not think it is at all possible for them to harm my statistics any further.

If I miss a post or two along the way, I apologise. I’m sure you will manage perfectly well without me (although this is not my plan). One way or another I will be attending to the matters I need to be attending to whilst ignoring the matters I ought to be attending to. And when I’ve done it, I’ll tell you about it, at length…

*Last week my total readership was smaller than during a couple of weeks in May 22 when I didn’t publish anything at all. Perhaps that’s what I need to be doing…

I don’t know

One of those days with nothing to say and no inclination to say it. One of those days when I stare over and above the computer screen and out of the window. One of those days when my head is full of the thoughts that Kier Starmer found too boring. One of those days when I eat sweetcorn straight from the tin…

I’m (un)comfortably into my sixties now. I have had many of these days, but somehow I never see them coming. They just kind of ooze over me in the night. Today I’ve spent the day tickling around the edges of a recently written play, shuffling around the characters in a just finished book, picking random threads from my life, raking over any number of things that I have never satisfactorily concluded…

I thought that the book and the play were done, but they never are, are they? It’s impossible to read through anything you’ve ever written without either regretting something that you have said or finding something new that ought to have been said: dropping in new markers and tracing new outcomes.

Sad that you can’t do that with life. Once said, nothing can ever be unsaid. Neither apology nor explanation will ever make it go away. Equally, in real life, it is not possible to go back and paste in the words you know you should have said. Nothing ever really reaches a satisfactory conclusion. Every teetering step you take merely knocks over another domino. By the time you have cobbled together your excuses, the repercussions of your actions have zoomed off over the horizon, and like the roadrunner being chased by an Acme rocket, they will back around before you know it, when they will bite you on the bum.

Sometimes having nothing to say can be the very best thing. Sometimes… I am seldom afraid to say “I don’t know” when I really don’t know, but people are prone to interpret that as “I can’t be bothered” or “I don’t care”. Honestly, if I say that I don’t know, it is genuinely because I don’t know. I really don’t know. If I don’t care – really don’t care – I might just say so, but more likely I will say either nothing or, depending on my mood/state of inebriation, something outrageous and irrelevant. Anything other than “I don’t know…”

If I am asked something simple (what is the square root of nine?) I am allowed to say “I don’t know”, but if the question becomes a mite more tricky (where did we come from/where are we going?) I am suddenly denied the opportunity to aver. I cannot even point out that nobody knows. It is unacceptable that I do not have a theory upon the unknowable. If it is known, I can not know it, but if it is unknown, I am just being coy. Or ‘smart’. I am not smart. I know what I know, and I know that what I don’t know is an awful lot more than that.

There are things that I cannot even begin to think my way through – life, the universe, everything – without finding myself struck dumb. My brain becomes so preoccupied with the imponderable that basic communication becomes a luxury for which time cannot be spared. I am a computer with that little whirring wheel, a TV with a never-ending buffer…

So why, I hear you say, are you like that today? What has sent your brain into this peculiar state of stasis? Well, I’d love to tell you, but the truth is I just don’t know…

Cause and effect

…Here’s what happened. Having caught sight of myself, backlit, in the bathroom mirror, I realised that I had started to develop a fine pair of mutton-chop sideburns (or sideboards as my dad used to call them) and a serious beard trim was called for. In mitigation, I must point out that I was tired and struggling with new contact lenses that appear to make everything crystal clear except for when I want to see it, but anyway, undaunted I set the beard trimmer and started the trim. What I didn’t do was replace the comb/guard, meaning that what I actually achieved was a very neat and precise shaved pathway through my beard and across my startled face. My choices then were limited: either brazen out the look – claim to be preparing for a major role in a new sci-fi series or recovering from major surgery – or shave the rest of my face.

I chose the latter and I am now faced with a curious spud-faced lunatic staring back from the bathroom mirror. “Who are you? You have my smile, you have my nose, but you don’t look like me.” Do I look older, or younger, I can’t decide? I look like my dad before he started to look like me. It is very disconcerting. All I have done is to trim a bit of facial foliage. Imagine if I’d had a facelift: reduced the nose (50% would be good) removed the bags from under my eyes, raised the cheekbones, de-wrinkled the forehead… how would I feel about myself then? My face has always had ‘character’ – eg, looks like it might have been stuck in front of me when I upset Mike Tyson – and asymmetry is interesting isn’t it? This mug tells the history of my life – which is probably why I chose to cover it in hair. Nobody wants to read that book.

So, I start to wonder: if I look different, do I automatically feel different? Do I behave differently? Michael Jackson famously used his own face as some kind of plastecine experiment and his increasingly bizarre appearance was matched by increasingly eccentric behaviour, but which was cause and which effect? Was he moulding his face to match his disposition, or did his distorted features find reflection in his state of mind? Did he feel anything like as grotesque as he ended up looking? If so, what is that likely to mean for me and my newly discovered blubbery boat race. Will I become a (more) neurotic mess, constantly in fear of being cornered by Dan Ackroyd and his Proton Blaster? Will my mind take on the character of the bowl of mashed potato my face has become? Will my soul – much like my arteries – be filled with butter?

Hopefully I will never know: my beard grows quickly enough for my appearance to revert to type before my psyche changes and, anyway, I will wear my glasses the next time I trim it – if they still fit my big, fat head…

The Photograph at the Head

I recently started to re-utilize photographs I had used previously at the head of new posts because a) it amused me, b) I am lazy and c) the photographs thrown up by Pexel searches seldom accord with my (admittedly narrow) British view of the world. Having chosen the previously used photos – often linked to the current content in only the most tenuous of oblique fashions – I feel obliged to read the pieces to which I had originally attached them. This is an unsettling experience because the world around me (although not me personally, of course) has changed so much since – pre-Brexit, pre-Covid, pre-Ukrainian ‘Special Operation’, pre-Trump, pre-inauguration of the ‘British Prime Ministerial Merry-go-Round’, pre-Woke Imperative – they were first written and – it now seems obvious – forgotten about (mostly for very good reason).

It has provided for me the opportunity to consider a) how I approached a topic in the past and b) how I would choose to approach it now. I may even re-visit a theme or two – although this will not, of course, be linked to the same photograph, as I will not have even considered revisiting a topic until I have re-read the piece that the already re-used photograph was originally shackled to and, albeit circumlocutionarily, re-co-joined because I do not want to give the impression that the content is pre-loved too – just to see how I would tackle it today. (Still with me? You deserve a medal.) I am less driven than I used to be and less concerned with joke-littering (if they are not there at the time, I do not drop them in later) things are what they are, as they emerge, and with less words to play with these days, I have to strive to ensure that it does not all end up sounding like a washed-out stand-up routine.

The lateral nature of my photo selection strategy ensures that the two (or more) articles with which each is associated are generally completely unconnected in any other way: an article about garden bonfires may share a photograph with one about newspaper speculation simply because the latter contains the phrase ‘no smoke without fire’. It is intriguing, for me, to discover how two totally disparate themes can (like the Liberal Democratic Party*) be so arbitrarily united.

Sometimes Photograph A (initially linked to Article A) might find itself linked to Article B (no relation) whilst Article B might provide the inspiration for Article C, which could, just possibly, be pre-padlocked to Photograph A, but in all honesty will almost certainly be adhered to a cute cat or a monkey with disproportionately large genitalia; the only link being the word ‘gusset’.

Worst of all, of course, is the possibility of checking out the article first linked to a re-used photograph (for clarity, let’s call it Photograph A, issue 3b, subsection 12 of the second inst. per Kramer v Kramer [dec’d]) and finding that the logical reasoning for the original symbiotic enmeshing of the two is completely lost on me: that I can find no clue to my thought process unless, of course, the possibility that the illegitimate lovechild of John Major and Edwina Curry had turned out to be a world famous omelette chef (not a euphemism) linked to an internationally renowned chain of vegan, grey-suited, sex emporiums (emporia?) the discrete nature of which ensures that the Emperor of Japan is never photographed in the company of a scantily clad fin whale, leading me to use the photo of the urinals instead. I’m sure that must be it…

*Sorry. Very British joke. The Liberal Democratic Party is one which basically picks up policies discarded by others for being unworkably idealistic and moulds them as their own: ultimately agreeing with everyone else about everything before ‘going home and preparing for government’. They are peace-loving, idealistic optimists and I have always wasted my vote on them.

The photograph at the head of this particular piece was first used in the post Spend a Penny, Make a Million (February 2020)

Held to Ransom

I have a full complement of ears, roughly symmetrical and untidily concave: I am fully equipped for spectacle wearing duties. I am also completely capable of counting to ten (twenty-one if naked) as I have one available digit for each of the snug little sheaths in my winter gloves (unless my grandma has knitted them). I am fully equipped with lugs and tabs. In short, I have never been kidnapped. I have never had an ear or forefinger excised with secateurs or breadknife to be popped into a Jiffi bag and cast upon the treacherous tide of the Royal Mail’s delivery service, in the hope that it might one day find its way to the expectant letterbox of my fretful family.

Now, I think I can guess what you are probably thinking at this point, and you’re right to do so, ‘why would anyone possibly want to kidnap him?’ Well, we all make mistakes, don’t we? Why should extortionists be any different? What if I was thrust, hessian-covered, into the boot of a black BMW (I have seen the films, it is always a black BMW) before being dragged into a deserted warehouse, tied to a chair and rendered summarily monaural before anybody spotted the error? What then? Surely for the price of a stamp the kidnappers would chance their arm wouldn’t they? I mean, who knows, my family might just be willing to pay something to retrieve me… and, here we come to the pith of the problem, providing they decide I am worth the stumping-up for, where do they get the money from?*

If they want to tap my bank account, they will find that it is registered to Old Mother Hubbard. I do not have a bone for the dog. I do not have a dog; if I had, they might be able to sell that. So how might they be able to raise the used readies to place inside the unmarked holdall in order to facilitate my release? What could they sell? Well, I have thousands of CD’s, but so does every charity shop you pass – nobody other than me listens to them these days. I have stacks of vinyl including a few rare and valuable discs, but whether they are rare enough to save my pinkies, I am not certain. On balance, it seems to me that things become value-less as soon as you want to sell them.

The housing market, should my wife choose to make herself homeless is, at best, sluggish and my kidnappers would have to choose to keep me, if not in comfort, then at least breathing for many months before a cash buyer could be found who might be willing to pay twenty five percent of the asking price provided we promised to demolish the shed and paint over the hideous wallpaper. My personal equity, by the time the lawyers had sorted out the paperwork, would be very much negative and my kidnappers, having long-since run out of ‘reminders’ to chop off, would have fed me through the mincer long before the deeds could be exchanged, cashed in my one gold filling and sent my family the bill for the whisky they were forced to buy in order to keep my whingeing within survivable limits…

…I mention this just because we are currently attempting to sell a house and frankly I think that I’d sooner be kidnapped…

*Yes, yes I know, but I tried ‘…from where do they get the money?’ and, although correct, it does somewhat lack drama doesn’t it?

I Wanna Hold Your Hand

I work on the High Street. I see people holding hands every day: children, teenage lovers and elderly, been-together-a-lifetime couples. They make me smile. They fill my heart with joy, but equally they make me aware that from, let’s say mid twenties to late eighties, most of us do not hold hands other than with our children or grandchildren. There is a huge hand-holding void that lurks in our middle years like the Supermassive Black hole at the centre of our determinedly non-tactile galaxy, crushing this little human bond like super-gravity on thistledown. Hold hands on the street with your partner in your forties or fifties and the assumption will be that you have had/are having an affair – that you are trying to prove something to the outside world: ‘Look, we are still together. Nothing to see here.’ Hold hands with someone other than your spouse and you will be ‘trending’ on social media quicker than Elon Musk can change his mind.

Everybody smiles when the ‘snake’ of schoolchildren bustles by, hand in hand, all noise and excitement, gripping their line-buddy’s hand for comfort and security: sad and happy at the same time that they are not one of the chosen few at the back who get to hold the teacher’s hand. (N.B. It is a proven fact that all children under ten years of age have permanently sticky hands. Watch where they put them and you will know why.)

The furtive joy of holding hands with first boyfriend/girlfriend is something that will never be forgotten: for most, a happier memory than first sex. One of life’s few unregrettables. The pre-Facebook statement of Status: ‘Dating’. Hands remain locked through courtship and, perhaps, wedding, but after a brief honeymoon period it stops, other than for days out, holidays and trips to the midwife. A great, glaring void that takes us right through to old age when hand-holding becomes at least as much a physical need as an emotional one: two centres of gravity are better than one.

According to the man who knows everything at the other end of the internet (let’s call him Wiki), the main reason that humans hold hands is because it promotes a sense of security. In the western world it is linked to romance, but elsewhere this is not necessarily the case. (Whatever, I wouldn’t recommend it for same-sex couples in Riyadh.) It’s hard to imagine why we would turn our backs on such a simple comfort through the bulk of our adult lives. Are we really so confident that we no longer crave the closeness of human touch, so stupid that we can only view contact as sexual? Well, yes, I think we probably are.

So, I believe that it is time for us all to rise up, our chance to change the world. This is our campaign. Let’s realign our attitude to hand-holding: shifting it from a sign of romance to one of friendship. Why shouldn’t friends hold hands? It might mean that we have to come up with an alternative gesture for those romantically involved – identical tattoos, matching T-shirts, a shared hat, we’ll think of something – but surely it is not beyond the wit of humankind: we are, after all, going to defeat climate change without excess effort or hardship (aren’t we?) All we need to do is to align ourselves against the tide of stilted modern convention, all hold hands and sing ‘We shall not be moved’…