The Monday Post

My first post of each week usually sets the tone for the other two, and those that do not fit neatly into my weekly triptych tend to find themselves plunged into the abyss that is my ‘Holiday Posts’ file, where they sit and wait for me to not be around for a few days. Generally I like these Holiday Posts because we both share the experience of sitting outside the fence, and also because they tend to be written as a consequence of not having to think about what I am about to write. Thinking things through is the bane of my life.

Today being Monday I should be writing the post from which, like ringworm, the other two will develop, but I am instead chewing the end off a cheap biro and staring at the unused face of a previously employed sheet of paper. I never actually write with the cheap biro: I have a tub full of decent pens (e.g. ball point is not hemispherical, plastic case is not broken into razor-sharp shards, end cap has not been masticated) for that. The cheap one is just for gnawing. It comes into use only when the others – even the most powerful green rollerball – have failed. I used to have pencils for chewing, but I kept swallowing the rubbers*. It can often take me quite a while to find the right pen for the day, but as soon as I do find it, things generally fall into place. Some days, though, none of my pens seem to fit and then cometh the hour of the plastic Bic and jaw exercises.

…And just in case you are thinking that my handwriting is some kind of Calligraphers wet-dream, it is not. It is at best a scrawl and at worst a scruffy sub-decipherable mess that I generally have to wrestle into some form of sense before it hits the computer. I do own, and occasionally use, fountain pens with which I stain my fingers, but most of my ‘special pens’ are ballpoints. From time to time they are ‘the right pens’ but mostly they are not: they are frustrating obstacles to my muse.

And should you be thinking ‘It’s a bad workman that blames his tools’ then you might well be right – although, to be fair, I do not blame my pens, the fault is all mine. I have a myriad of tools to use: laptops, iphone, fountain pens, ballpoint pens, rollerballs, pencils and when none of the above are able to meet my aspirations, bags of ten-for-a-pound biros on which to nag. They are all good, solid, workman-like pens. I, on the other hand, am a rubbish writer – except for the times when I am no writer at all, when I become a man who dines on thickened ink. Inspiration, when it does arrive, more often than not does so in the form of a giant block of Cadbury’s and a tumbler full of Scotland’s finest.

And if it doesn’t come until Tuesday? Well, maybe it’s time for another holiday…

*I’m not sure whether this is a purely British colloquialism for the titchy little pencil-borne erasers that sit, metal-encased, at the blunt end of the graphite rod: ‘rubbers’ because they rub things out. They will not prevent pregnancy or STD, but they might mean that you get an extra attempt at spelling colloquialism.

Outward Looking

I concluded that a few of my most recent posts had been too introspective, so I decided that it was time to look out…

…Summer in England. Bright sunshine that could last for several minutes before the clouds develop and lightning rents the darkling skies. The entire village is out and about, walking the dog, running, cycling, turning crinkly red before the giant orb dissolves away and the rain starts to lap around the first floor window sills. The council mowers are butchering the communal grass areas, distributing the grass cuttings together with a thousand different kinds of litter and dog shit across pathways, roads and front gardens from where the gales that precede the coming storm will drive it all into my doorway.

The village is a-hum with serried hedge-trimmers and flashing lights as electric cables are clipped, oaths are muttered and manual clippers are rushed out of the shed, soaked in WD40 and pressed into emergency service. The village could be back in the 1950’s – if it had ever left them. Within the hour most hedges are neatly, occasionally precision trimmed and anybody unfortunate enough to have missed this fleeting window of opportunity will find themselves shamed by having something that resembles Miriam Margolyes’ uncoiffed bush surrounding the house. Sadly, the right weather for future trims may well not occur again until the autumn, by which time wet rot will have beaten you to it. (In the UK, autumn – the season in which the leaves fall off – can occur anywhere between March and November.)

Across the road the man in the corner bungalow takes the opportunity to dead-head his roses. He does this at root level as it stops the spiky little buggers from coming back again this year.

The bin wagon (or garbage truck as it is known by my grandchildren who watch far too much American YouTube) is meandering along the street collecting the carefully sorted recyclables (glass, tin, paper, certain plastics, soap-opera plots) garden waste (leaves, branches – below the diameter of a thumb – thumbs, cat crap, semi-digested bird, rodents, dead cats) and general trash (everything else, with the one specific exception of anything you really want to get rid of) and depositing them – along with an immovable oil slick – in a single ragged pile in the middle of the road. If I put the wrong stuff in the wrong bin, they put a label on and refuse to empty it. If I put the right stuff in the bin, I get to sweep it back up as soon as the truck has gone.

Middle-aged men who previously would have utilized this time by buffing their cars to the kind of finish with which Snow White’s step-mother was best acquainted are now throwing open the doors of the camper van, hoovering out the wildlife, mopping long-forgotten pork pie from the floor of the fridge, airing mildewed sleeping bags over the washing line and chiselling fossilized sausage from the bars of the Calor Gas barbecue. By mid afternoon they will be ready to go. It will be snowing.

The woman from next door begins to spray her fence, and I am happy that one side, at least, of my car will not suffer from woodworm for at least twelve months…

My Greatest Strengths

Questioning my own ability is often fruitful when writing this blog, because, let’s face it, there is so much for me to question. There is so little in this world that somebody could not do better, but just as nobody can be ‘all bad’, I must conclude that nobody can be ‘all crap’ and so, in a move that fully justifies my decision to write in a shorter format, I have decided to search for some of my good points, which I lay below for no better reason than I feel that somebody else ought to know about them.

I am very good at doing the right thing. It is, I would say, my best attribute. Unfortunately, picking the wrong time is probably – along with my inability to open jars – my biggest weakness, so the right thing tends to get overlooked. How quickly the right thing eg streamers, balloons, stripping policewomen, can become the wrong thing simply due to bad timing eg it is granddad’s funeral.

I am loyal, which providing I do not enter politics must be a good thing as long as I manage to find the right person/cause to be loyal to: choose the wrong one and I am ‘misguided’, choose it twice and I will be forever cleaning the dog shit off the front door…

I am reliable – although even as I write this I am not certain that it is always a laudable trait. When people say “Well, you can always rely on him to do that…” with a roll of the eyes, it’s not always meant fondly is it?

I am not competitive – with a distinct leaning towards the over-conciliatory: put me in a competitive environment and I do alright for myself until I realise that this is in any way upsetting my opponents, at which time I cease to be feisty and become, instead, a liability. There is no joy to be had from winning if your opponent is sobbing and telling their mum that “Grandad cheated”.

I can be amusing company – except when I’m not – but I do sometimes lack the filter to say ‘not now’. I do suffer fools gladly because I am one* – but I have very little time for bigots of any kind – especially those who rail against short, ginger geeks who don’t know when to shut up – because that’s what nerves do to me: put me in a room full of strangers and I stand, mute and unmoving in a corner, pretending to be some kind of art instillation with gin, or I gabble. About what? No-one can say. I am on autopilot, I do not know what is coming out of my mouth even as I say it and – presuming that they are not idiots – the people to whom I chat will almost certainly have not heard a single word I have said either.

But I don’t mind – it’s probably one of my greatest strengths…

*With thanks to the great Harry Secombe

Sorry, My Mistake

You must know the feeling (I hope it’s not just me) when you make the kind of mistake that leaves you wondering ‘Am I losing it, or is this the kind of mistake I could have always made?’ For me this is, more or less, an annual thing. Generally I do not make, I am happy to report – I do still manage to spot them coming over the hill – the same mistake twice, but what if that all changes? What if I start to screw up more often, more catastrophically or on a repeat cycle? What if the blunder becomes the norm? What if I can no longer trust myself? I cannot face a lifetime in politics…

Don’t get me wrong here when I say ‘catastrophic’, nobody actually dies and for me, at least, the occasional ricket is, and always has been, ‘par for the course’, but each one comes with the kind of jolt that leads me to question whether it is time to distance myself completely from decision-making duties: just put the whisky in my hand and turn the chair towards the TV with the Remote inches out of reach. I do, of course, ‘get it right’ thousands of times a year, but I am aware that if these two properties were to become inversely related I would become a liability of the Liz Truss magnitude.

In a world full of questions, I question myself far more than anybody else and so, despite the paucity of my responses, I am at least sufficiently conscious of my own fallibility to view everybody else’s mistakes as such: unintentional errors – but I’ve never quite managed to view my own lapses in the same light. Cock-ups generally arise from not following my normal procedures, rushing or leap-frogging the ‘safeguards’ to which I am usually accused of being too wedded. Every now and then, for reasons I am totally unable to fathom, I see the gaping hole that lies in front of me, but walk straight into it anyway and I am forced to admit that not even BoJo or Trump could find grounds to blame anybody else on such an occasion. God has the CCTV. Conscience will be getting the full report by the morning.

I have discovered that there is only one way to react to the giant balls-up scenario and that is to hold up my hands and take it on the chin. There is no point in trying to deflect blame as everybody knows exactly where it actually lies. I own up, apologise and try, as far as is possible, to put it right. If pride is at stake, I swallow it. Contrition is great, but never promise that it will never happen again – everybody knows that it will. Such words are wasted when you’re a walking f*ck-up, but do remember that everybody messes it up from time to time: somebody must have thought that Birmingham was a good idea.

Anyway, I will now away and get back on with my life, happy in the knowledge that the next boo-boo should be some time away (unless, of course, I choose to believe the theory that bad things always come in threes) and for the time being I can do no wrong…

Fitbit

Back in The Good Olde Covid days of yore I started to run because it was one of the few acceptable ways of getting out of the house. Soon after that – Amazon being one of the few ‘essential service’ suppliers permitted to operate in such benighted times – I bought a Fitbit as a running helpmate. These days we are seldom parted. I was told that I needed to monitor my heart rate immediately after a run, to ensure that it returned to normal in a reasonable period of time – for a man of my age, about three weeks – so I bought a little wrist-borne companion that would give me that information, and all was well, despite how it felt, I was not killing myself.

Now, the fascination with heart rate soon dims. It goes up when you’re busy, exercising or stressed; it comes down when you are not. There are (thankfully) no great dramas. I have learned that my heart rate goes up when the weather is hot – apparently the heart pumps up to four times as much blood around the body when the temperature goes up, although I’m not sure where it gets it from – when I catch a glimpse of Piers Morgan’s smug face and every time somebody insists that it is everybody else’s fault apart from their own. It goes down when I sit on my big, fat arse with a book, some music and a drink – although I have yet to persuade my wife of the health benefits. Otherwise it has little to tell me.

My steps, however, have become an obsession. How many steps have I taken today? I average somewhere around 75,000 to 80,000 per week, but within that I have days where I barely move, which are usually associated with inclement weather or mood. There are ‘good’ sides to this – I seldom drive when I can as easily walk – but also ‘bad’ sides – when my wife asks me to ‘pop around to the shops’ for something, it takes an hour and by the time I get back the dinner has burned. It might not be quite enough to save the planet, but at least it feels as though I am making an effort.

I am intrigued by the steps feature because I don’t have to do anything in order to make it work. If I want the watch to monitor my diet, my water intake or my weight, I have to input information which is just far too much effort – and would, incidentally, almost certainly put my heart rate up. I thought these things were meant to be intelligent, can’t they see for themselves? I don’t wear it when I sleep because, although I do like to know how much I have slept, I know that wearing the Fitbit will keep me awake worrying about how much sleep I am getting – not to mention waking up with a watch-head embossed onto my cheek. I know that it is waterproof, but where does it stand on dribble?

I realise that it – or one of its future heirs – will one day record that it has ceased to receive input of any kind: I will be dead or Britain’s Got Talent will have just come on the TV. I hope it can tell the difference…

Happy Hunting

Well, as I mentioned on Monday, my post for the day – as well as its little envoi – had originally found themselves, due (I was going to say “in no small part”, but I’ve thought it through and will now say) due entirely to my own incompetence, in the stifling limbo of the WordPress Drafts folder, where I found them, quite by accident and thought “Oh what the hell, they’re written now…” and so posted them. I wouldn’t say that this is an entirely ideal way of working – although, to be fair, I doubt that there is one – but I don’t care for waste…

Anyway, I read them through and they reminded me that what I was really concerned with at the time was that I was about to fly off on holiday with a blocked ear and something inside my brain was telling me that it wasn’t necessarily an entirely good idea, but if you really want to know, in reality I forgot all about it almost immediately afterwards and in the event I didn’t feel a thing. My ear didn’t ‘pop’, my brain didn’t seep out, I heard when the steward asked me if I wanted anything from the bar and, more importantly, he heard me when I said “Yes”. Like so many things that seem massively important for a short time, they cease to be so when the worst doesn’t happen and, let’s face it, there are so many worst that could happens that I will soon have to rank them: what is the worst, worst that could happen, that could happen? Is there a fate worse than death? Is it worse to be deaf, blind or David Icke? Is it worse to be the person who can’t remember where they buried the dinner, or that person’s spouse? Like everyone, I hope to avoid all of the above scenarios (especially the David Icke one) but sooner or later I know that the man with the black hoodie and the scythe is going to come knocking, and he doesn’t always do it nicely.

Is it better to greet him with no idea of who he is, who you are and where he is taking you, or is it best to be prepared? What if being prepared involves enduring the kind of pain and discomfort that means that you actually welcome his appearance? If I knew he was coming, could I ever welcome him in? Would I be able to let myself go? I have always imagined myself drifting away in my sleep, but even that is not ideal, is it? No chance to say goodbye. Perhaps I would prefer the big deathbed scene, my own “Bugger Bognor” moment, but I’ve never really been one for making a scene and it’s difficult to avoid being the centre of attention when you’re drawing your last breath. The great Spike Milligan said “I don’t mind dying. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.” I thought he was joking then, but now I think I know exactly what he meant, and I share the aspiration…

“You live and learn. Then you die and forget it all.” – Noel Coward.

Who Knows Where the Pin Dropped? – Envoi

…So, ears duly olive oiled, I reported to the lady with the otic hoover, but she didn’t do the sucking thing in the end. Instead, she poked a camera in my lug and showed me in beautiful Technicolor what the good one looked like and, by way of comparison, what the bad one looked like. Not too dissimilar as it turns out – and neither of them filled with wax. The problem, it would seem, lies behind the eardrum and will probably clear up by itself in a few days. As she did not have to get the vacuum out the audiologist decided to test my hearing. It proved to be excellent for a man of my age and the left ear was only marginally less acute than the right one due, almost certainly she said, to a small amount of congestion which no manner of mechanical siphoning could cure without also removing my ear drum. So she left it alone.

Meanwhile my hearing has, indeed, been slowly returning and within a day or two I should think that if any of you might decide to drop a pin, I will know exactly where to find you…

Who Knows Where the Pin Dropped?

As the more perceptive amongst you (yes, Shaily, I do mean you) might have noticed, this post has actually appeared very fleetingly before, as I attempted to schedule it. It was immediately deleted and – I thought – rescheduled for a slightly later date. In fact it simply made its way into my drafts file where it loitered unheeded until I found it yesterday and decided that, despite the fact that all the events it chronicles happened some little time ago now, to let you have it anyway. I’m sorry…

Woke up this morning to find myself completely deaf in one ear: an unusual sensation, especially when coupled with the feeling that half of my head has been stuffed with cotton wool. My wife, who knows a thing or two about ears (particularly with regards to turning a deaf ‘un) says I need to have it syringed. I’m fairly uncomfortable with that notion because, having a brain the size of a peanut, I’m always afraid that it will be sucked out as well – I’ve seen the photo’s on Google of the kind of things that have been washed out of people’s ears. A brain would not surprise me.

This has happened to me before – I know because I have just re-read a post* from February ‘21, which actually brought back more memories of Covid restrictions than deafness – but it is about the same ear and the symptoms remain unchanged. As then, despite being totally deaf on that side (I say totally, but that is not quite true: I do have a constant whistling that I am pretty sure should only be audible to dogs) my overall hearing is ok because, in normal circumstances, for a man of my age it is very good and now, as then, I can still hear a pin drop, I’ve just no idea of where it’s falling. With one ear out of action, I appear to have totally lost the ability to tell where a sound is coming from (except if it is a list of my shortcomings, in which case it is almost certainly coming from my wife.)

I must be honest: whilst I would (obviously) hate for this deafness to persist, I am actually finding it much more difficult to cope with the sensation of having what feels like a full tub of peanut butter rammed into my ear canal than not hearing the junk mail ‘ping’ onto my phone constantly. And worse, it seems to be something that I cannot deflect myself from. Whatever I do by way of distraction, it fails: the fact that I have what feels like a tennis ball inside my head is constantly on my mind. The world surrounding me is on the other side of a cotton wool wall.

In conversation, the way around it is to look directly into the face of those who are speaking to me, but it does not feel natural. I am not conscious of doing this normally and it now makes me feel a little overly attentive. Peer into somebody’s face when they speak to you and you must focus either on their lips which is, at best, a slightly weird thing to do at close quarters, or you stare into their eyes, which can lead to all manner of misunderstanding. Nobody ever stares squarely into anybody’s eyes without ulterior motive and temporary deafness does not readily spring to the mind of somebody finding someone they thought they knew gazing into their baby blues for no easily conceivable reason. My current mode d’emploi is to dip my glance slightly – being careful if conversing with a member of the opposite gender that I do not find myself leering at breast-level appendages – and turn my good ear towards the source of the conversation. It’s awkward, but it’s working so far, although I doubt that it is going to be completely practical going forward, especially in group conversations: I fear I may dislocate my neck.

So, what do I do? Well, I fear that the only practical solution will be to follow my wife’s suggestion (similar to the ‘Ten Suggestions’ God chiselled on a stone for Moses) and get it sluiced. If it washes away my brain at the same time, well, I’m not entirely sure that anybody will notice – except for those who are wondering why I have stopped listening to their chests…

*My ear has trodden this path before, as told in my previous posts Lend Me Your Ears (March 2020) and Left Ear in Lockdown (Feb 2021) but it is to date a syringe virgin. I will, no doubt, give you the full details of its deflowering as soon as I have them…

Speed Reading

Photo by John Michael Thomson on Unsplash

It is my considered opinion that there are two kinds of people: those who read fast and those who actually read, and that those who read fast, whilst undoubtedly able to get the ‘drift’ are far less adept at judging nuance. It is to do, I think, with not leaving sufficient pause for full stop, comma and all other ancillary punctuation marks. I am a proficient, but slow reader. When I speed up to anything above my habitual lope, I cease to understand. I read what the characters say – word perfectly I would say – but I do not hear them. They talk, but do not speak. As I ratchet up my words per minute, books become politicians: I hear almost every word they say, understand about fifty percent and believe none at all.

If I’m honest, I am yet to be convinced of the desirability of reading quickly anyway. I know that there are lots of books out there waiting to be read and obviously you can’t get through them all without swallowing up the pages with the speed of a paper shredder, but a little perspective here, there are few good books and even fewer great books: most of what you read will be pants and there cannot be much justification in cramming more of that into the memory bank than you have to. The ability to read, for instance, Ulysses in a super-quick time (in my case, anything under 64 years) would be welcome, but would it make the whole overblown ragbag any more understandable, more readable, more entertaining? No, it would be none of the above, but it would, at least, be over quicker.

When I read a book that I like, I want to know what happens, but not too quickly. I don’t want to reach the end before I understand the beginning. I have more than enough problems in holding down the nuances of plot without ripping through them like Usain Bolt on a pogo stick. I realise that I should be able to retain details of carefully drafted characters, but on a single read I find that quite often I cannot. This is just me – it has always been so – but ‘scanning’ always makes it worse. Without taking the time to read each word and punctuation mark correctly, I find myself grasping the wrong end of the stick more often than a fishing lake carp. At least by reading at my own pace, I don’t have to keep going back to remind myself who people are and why they did whatever-it-was they did to whomever-it-was they did it.

I am definitely camped in the ‘slow’ school. I might not find out whodunit first, but when I do work it out I will, at least, remember how, why and possibly – providing I didn’t miss one of those dratted nuances back in chapter two – wherefore…

Stream

The ‘stream of consciousness’ post used to be my big thing; these days, just staying conscious is enough. I have shortened my posts, not because I have less to say, but because I have ever fewer who want to hear it and, in relation to the author, least said the better seems to be the way. The tales that I have to tell have become slightly less fanciful, whilst reality has tended to step up to the plate and fill in the gaps. My life, in general, is quieter than a stag weekend in a Trappist Monastery. If I’m honest, there is far less to me than meets the eye.

One of the most notable things about getting on is that you begin to expect far less from life, although you do tend to get even more grumpy when it doesn’t manage to live up to even your most meagre expectations. It becomes increasingly difficult to understand when dramatically lowered aspirations are not attained. The fact that I no longer have any confidence in my ability to become James Bond doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t like to do the audition. I might not look like Daniel Craig when I get out of the shower – to be honest, I’ve never really mastered that whole ‘tying a hand towel round the waist’ thing – but I’m pretty certain I could match him martini for martini given the chance, providing, of course, there was somewhere to wee nearby.

And that’s something in which I bet I could outdo Bond, Q, M and any other letter you might care to choose, on all occasions: location of the nearest Public Toilets. I could probably go on Mastermind. Take my age and factor in a dodgy prostate: there are some things you just have to know. Picture the scene: I am tied to a chair being force fed Timothy Taylor’s Landlord* through a funnel, with Blofeld’s voice grating in my ear, “Very well Mr McQueen, we are going to release you into the local shopping mall just as soon as your bladder has reached what we term ‘explosive proportions’”. I will smile up at him, even as his henchmen push down on my pelvis, because I know that in the dark recesses of the Marks & Spencer’s Food Hall, hidden away between a sandwich bar and a sushi stand, is a long-deserted public loo – decommissioned at the time of the last refit, but still usable once you have the knack of the dodgy flush. Take that Blofeld! The world is a safer place for Shopping Mall cleaners the world over.

But I digress. As I was saying, I no longer allow myself to be dragged away from the main thrust of these little fol-de-rols: short, sharp and to the point, that is what I have become. A social commentator, never deflected from the essential gist of the tale I have to tell.

If only I had one…

*A fine English Ale