All About You

This little blog is almost entirely about me: occasionally about what happens to me and, from time to time, what happens around me, but mostly me. I am central to its existence, but so are you and what I feel I need to ask myself right now is ‘What is it for?’ and the only real reason I can come up with is ‘entertainment’ or, more appositely ‘diversion’. A distraction. A slight alternative to the ‘must be done’. If I can take you away from what you don’t want to be doing for even a few seconds, it has to be good doesn’t it? If it makes you happy, then I am happy to do it. How altruistic is that? I doubt that I will ever need to give to charity again. I am a shoe-in for a berth at God’s right hand. I will not need to run a marathon, bathe in baked beans or visit every single ‘Red Lion’ in the country for Soup-in-a-basket and three pints of something that looks as though it might have been used to rinse a docker’s sock. I can feel the weight of the King’s sword upon my shoulder even now. If I can keep this going much longer, I sense beatification coming on.

Which leads, quite logically in my opinion, to the problem of the day: as the writer/subject of this little farrago and prospective saint, I find that it is becoming increasingly difficult to find anything entertaining to say about me. I feel that I have fully covered my nails, both hand and toe; my eyes, my ears and my ever more dodgy knees; my successes, my failures, my hopes, my fears, my peccadilloes and, more often than not, another load of my fears. Getting older can be the source of all manner of fear. You are forced to consider how you will die and when you will die. You will face up to all manner of calculations pertaining to the valid extension of your existence: a cream cake versus a glass of wine versus an extra day in the nursing home. It isn’t pretty. In the end, which is where it always is, we all want the same thing, but there can be no guarantees so the only option is simple: don’t consider your death, consider your life and how you’re going to live it (and bugger how long it might be). Sure, that earache might just be a brain tumour, that sneeze bubonic plague, that indigestion a fatal infarction, but equally they might be ear wax, hay fever or a reminder not to eat pickled onions at bedtime. What’s to be gained by looking on the dark side? What good did it do Darth Vadar? Laugh in the face of adversity, search for joy and plan for the best – if you’ve brought the kids up right, they’ll be perfectly capable of doing all the worrying for you. Enjoy whatever is left: after all, it’s not about me, it’s all about you…

From the Sunbed… to Normal

Yup. Don’t worry, I do know what a grumpy old bastard these holiday outpourings have made me sound and it’s a shame because, although my wife would doubtless beg to differ, I don’t think I am. I absolutely do realise that I am lucky to be in the position to take a holiday now and then and I do, in reality, enjoy the company of almost everybody I meet – and that’s quite a lot: I must have one of those faces, people do like to talk to me – but that’s not easy to write about.

I envy those who manage to wring entertainment out of the absolute truth, because I cannot. I am prone to exaggeration almost as much I am prone to the flight of fancy. I have tried to see me as others do, but that’s not easy either, is it? I tend to like people who like me and not so much those who do not, so I’m not fully up to speed with their opinions, but they are, of course, fully entitled to hold them. They are almost certainly right.

Anyway, I deliberately didn’t ‘tidy up’ the holiday posts. I hope the irony is obvious, but if it’s not then there’s not really anybody else for me to blame and it’s certainly too late to do anything about it, so it is what it is and, anyway, it’s all back to normal tomorrow…

From the Sunbed #6 – Homeward Bound

A little thin cloud cover today although still roasting hot, meaning that all around me people are burning in the shape of shorts and T-shirt. We have half a day to kill before being picked up for the journey home, so we are, ourselves, sitting on a sunbed, sucking on a beer (me) and something fluorescent orange with a cherry on top (wife) trying to decide whether we want to go home yet. On balance, I am a ‘no’ whilst my wife wants to get the washing on and whip around the house with the Hoover before the spiders get chance to settle. We both know though that whatever the preference, there is actually no escaping the return to the humdrum, so in preparation I check the bank account and start to worry about laying the new floor in the bathroom. I will be ‘back at work’ before the air stewards come around with the bin bags, and longing for the weekend before the ‘plane hits the ground…

From the Sunbed #5 – The End

There is a single empirical truth that overlays all holidays and that is that they must end. They would not be holidays otherwise. They would simply be life and everyone knows how tedious that can be. So holidays, in order to be a break from that, must end. It means that you can start looking forward towards the next one of course, but first, unfortunately, what you have to look forward to is the plane journey home.

I dare not begin to contemplate the horrors that accompany the start of such a journey, save to say that ‘Airport’ lies at the centre of Dante’s other nine circles – the very depths of Hell. It is of some consolation that for much of the time, no matter how bad things are, they could always get worse: you could be at the airport, where adults become tantrumming children and there is nobody about who can tell them to stop stamping their feet, jumping the queues or peeing on the lavatory floor. Fortunately there is neither sufficient paper and ink nor bandwidth to allow me to fully vent about the airport, but let me settle instead on what lies on the other side: the aeroplane.

You see, aeroplanes make no sense to me. It doesn’t matter how fast they go, I can find no logical reason to explain how they stay up in the air. They are huge, and I seem to remember from schoolboy physics, that gravity has a greater effect on larger bodies. They are an aluminium tube with wings. Fix a pair of wings to a tube of aluminium foil, throw it and see what happens. Yes, every time… And the wings are full of fuel. They must weigh a ton! How come they don’t fall off? My dad had a riveter when I was a kid. He made all sorts of things with it and they all fell to pieces. I am deeply suspicious of rivets…

And so, here I am, approaching the last days of a holiday that I know must end; the sun is in the sky, the beer is in my glass and rivets are in my head.

I’ll probably need a holiday to get over it all…

From the Sunbed #4 – Snatches

“Someone like you should not be allowed to start any fires” – David Bowie. ‘Win’

…Heated debate over the winner of BGT*. Some say right, some say wrong, some say any other point of view is stupid. Some say “Who are you calling stupid?” Some say “Well I don’t see too many other morons around here.” Some are upset with the use of the ‘Golden Button’. I wish I had a red one. A big one. With a bomb attached…

“…I think you’ve caught the sun our Vicky. Here, Chelsea, do you think Vicky has caught the sun?”
“Well, she is a little bit red. Could it be how she was laying?”
“No, I think she has caught the sun. I think you have caught the sun Vicky. You’ll have to put some cream on that when you get back to the room.”
“Isn’t that her birthmark?”
“No, that’s not her birthmark. I think she’s caught the sun.”
“What shape is it?”
“Well, it looks a bit like a duck. A red duck.”
“That’s no duck. It’s more like a dragon. If it’s a dragon, it’s her birthmark.”
“No, it’s a duck… or possibly a dog. Definitely not a dragon. I think she’s caught the sun.”
“In the shape of a duck?”
“Or a dog… She’ll need to put cream on it when she gets back to the room…”

“…What have you got Jacqui?”
“I’ve got a Mojito. What about you?”
“I’ve got Sex-on-the-Beach, you should try it, it’s quite nice.”
“Oh no, I’ve had that before. It took me a week to wash the sand out. I’ll stick with my Mojito…”

“…You could see he was going to miss it as soon as he placed the ball. It’s that stuttering run up. He always misses when he does that. I knew he was going to miss as soon as he started his run up.”
“But he scored.”
“Did he? Oh, I must have been thinking of a different time. How did he run up?”

“…The MkIII is not as good as the MkII though.”
“Really? Why did they make the MkIII then?”
“What do you mean?”
“If the MkII was better, why didn’t they just keep doing that?”
“Well the MkIII had higher specs.”
“So better then?”
“Yes, better, but not as good. Ask the experts…”

…Conversation turns to holidays past. Places where you could buy 400 cigarettes for the equivalent of 50p; a litre of vodka (‘Smirnoff, not the cheap stuff’) for the equivalent of a single tot back home; a three course meal that was so cheap the waiter gave you a tip when you finished. Places where staff ‘knew their place’ and respectfully averted their gaze should the good lady inadvertently pop out a nipple during a game of catch. Not like here apparently… “It looks as though they’re putting a lot of rum into your Cuba Libre, but it’s all watered down, you know. You watch them, they have a different bottle for locals… Did I ever tell you about the time we stayed on a small Greek island and the natives had never even seen a Vape before? They thought we was some kind of wossname, God. To this day they still say ‘better out than in’ if they burp at the dinner table…”

*Britain’s Got Talent” – on this evidence it hasn’t.

From the Sunbed #3 – Sun Cream

On sun and the ginger-haired male.

I squirt the bloody stuff upon my legs
I squirt it on my thigh
I put it on my forehead
And it runs into my eye.

The label says I have to have
A solid, even layer
I try my very hardest
But I haven’t got a prayer.

I miss the red bits down my back
The chafe behind my knees,
My nose is like a beacon
‘Cos the sun cream makes me sneeze.

The SPF is so immense
No matter what the therm is
The nasty UVB rays
Should not reach epidermis.

I hide under assembled shades,
A hat upon my head,
My skin is sleek and oily
But still shines scarlet red.

It doesn’t seem a minute
Since I last looked at my watch,
But here I am as ugly red
As Mick Hucknall’s* sweaty crotch.

It doesn’t really bother me,
My ego is quite small,
I’m happy to look foolish
I don’t care much at all.

It simply doesn’t matter:
I have my super-power
And I know my shattered epiderm
Will just wash off in the shower…

*For the benefit of the Simply Red singer’s lawyers, I must point out that I am referring here to an entirely different red-haired, ego-maniac cock.

From the Sunbed #2 – A Family Holiday

…Meanwhile, the men sit, slightly hunched beneath half-erected umbrellas, navigating the space between next beer and marital disapproval. Some opt for exotic-looking cocktails, prepared to argue that, despite persuading the barman to add half a bottle of vodka to each, they are basically just fancy-looking pop – all lemonade and fruit juice – and that they really just keep going to the bar in order to collect the free peanuts: flimsy in the extreme, given that this is all-inclusive hotel and everything at the point of delivery is free.

10am appears to be the time beyond which no self-respecting male can be seen with a non-alcoholic beverage (except for water – as we all understand the value of water-drinking in preventing the prolonged discussion of ‘what you’re like when you’ve had too much to drink’.) Angry red patches of sunburn are also integral to the male psyche: ‘I am too macho to require the protection of suncream. I am male, I feel no pain.’ With the exception of tonsure, nose and ears, men prefer red to tan.

Parasols are erected for the benefit of ‘the wife and kids’. Men do not need them. Shade is not natural – unless it has a bar in the middle of it. If the umbrella proves intransigent, the man will simply move his family – perhaps to another hotel – rather than ask for help with it. Sun shade-inflicted blood blisters will be bravely sported for the duration of the holiday and may well preclude an immediate return to work when the holiday is over.

None-the-less, the average sub-thirty male is perfectly happy to spend half a day knee-deep in the paddling pool on a ‘work call’ rather than play another bloody game of ‘catch’ with the kids. It is important for the children to learn that it is ‘not all about them’. Everyone has to toe the line – it is a family holiday after all…

From the Sunbed #1 – Tiffany

With apologies, as ever, for lack of communication over the last few days during my holiday, I give you a week of holiday missives, all jotted on a titchy hotel note pad using the complimentary ballpoint pen – meaning that I feel somehow obliged to report that we had a very good holiday thank you very much indeed. Yes, of course we will come again…

I am certain that many of you will have already worked it out, but as I write today’s little communiqué (although not, as it goes, as you read it – you know how I work) I am taking what I promised myself would be a short break from writing this kind of thing whilst enjoying a week lounging in the Aegean sunshine. Except that I am not. What I am, in fact, doing is writing about my attempts to take a break from writing because I fear that if I ever did manage to take a break from whatever-it-is that I am now doing, my brain might well explode and blow my hat off, up above the canopy of sunshades and into the cloudless blue yonder. The Great Creator of All Things (or Pure Evolutionary Fluke, depending on your point of view) failed to furnish me with an ‘Off’ switch.

It is one of those things that becomes quite suddenly obvious to me when the rest of the outside world seems to stop; when the pool empties, the sunbeds fill with crackling bodies and not even the promised onshore breeze can be arsed, quite frankly. My brain remains semi-occupied by sound (Radiohead as you ask) and story (Starship Titanic as you ditto) but cannot restrain itself from the habit of creating cloudy little biographies for the basting souls that surround me…

…Take the woman directly in front of me. She does not know that I am looking at her, partly due to the effectiveness of mirrored sunglasses and partly because I have yet to see her remove her gaze from the screen of her mobile phone. It is unrelenting. What could possibly demand so much attention? She is in her late twenties (in the way that I am in my late fifties) and she is called Tiffany, or Chardonnay, or Clacton-on-Sea. She has discovered Facebook and realised that it is altogether less messy – both physically and mentally – to follow the amorous activities of others than to pursue her own. She has become a sponge for the overwrought emotions of others and without them, she realises, she has little left: she has no life of her own; no emotion and no inter-personal relationships that do not require the use of both thumbs…

…Or then again, perhaps she’s called Vicky, on holiday with her best friend Ava, who is up in the room quietly regretting an over-zealous evening with Sex-on-the-Beach and Pornstar Martini. She is cyber-stalking her ‘ex’ (Dwane) and his new girlfriend who is twenty years her junior and wears a school uniform, not for titillation but because she has to go to school. Vicky would report him to the police if she didn’t realise that it was actually pure fantasy. Although the thought of doing it anyway – anonymously of course – does hold a certain appeal…

There are men around here too, of course, but from the look of it they live far more mundane lives, centred around tattoos, pubs and pies. Men, unless completely atypical, are far less interesting…

And then it occurs to me that Tiffany herself is wearing mirrored sunglasses. Perhaps she is looking at me. Perhaps she is writing down what she sees on her ever-present Apple. Perhaps she knows exactly why I am jotting notes down in this tatty notebook. I wonder what she thinks my name is…

The Sh*tty End

Having mentioned him at the end of my previous post, I felt it incumbent upon me to set the record straight for the one time ‘King of the North Sea Empire’ (England, Denmark and Norway) – although I feel sure he probably doesn’t need it now. King Canute – actually Cnut, but nobody other than the very bravest of teachers ever puts an anagram of that type in front of a schoolchild – is widely held up as an example of extreme vanity: as a man who believed he was powerful enough to turn back the tide, when in fact he should be held up of an example of what history can do to you if you are not extremely careful.

Unlike many of his courtiers, who really did believe him to be all powerful, the old Dane was wise enough to know that he was not. He was a clever statesman and a fierce soldier, but he knew that he was not omnipotent. In fact, his little beach escapade was actually intended as a means of demonstrating this to his followers: in failing to turn back the waves he succeeded in proving that he was, in fact, a fallible, mortal man – although it might not have been wise to spread the word too widely, reputations to maintain and all that – he was still king of three countries and a ferocious warrior to boot. That most of us, a millennia later, perceive him as trying to prove exactly what he sought to disprove just goes to show how willing history is to give you the shitty end of the stick if it gets half the chance. It’s all very well being remembered for what you did, as long as someone remembers why you did it…

Being Canute

Whilst my grasp of technology is pretty much ok for a man of my age, my willingness to utilise it is very much less so. I have access to millions (probably billions – I can’t be sure and I can find no incentive to check) of songs on the various streaming services, but I still choose to listen, constantly, to CD’s and I continue to add to my collection weekly. We have various TV streaming services, but when I do watch TV, I watch the terrestrial broadcasts based on ‘what’s on’, and when I find a new series that I enjoy, I tune in at the same time each week to watch the next episode. TV is one of the few things I never binge on. I have been playing with computers since the days of MS-DOS, but I feel no compulsion to ‘fiddle’ these days. As long as they continue to do what I need them to do, I leave them to it. I am peculiarly inept at ‘computer games’, constantly going left when I should go right, up when I should go down, forever shooting myself in the foot, so I make no more than an occasional foray into Football Manager, in which I inevitably get sacked half way through my first season having overseen a player revolt and a plummet to a league position from which the only way is up. By and large, I don’t seek solutions until I’ve got problems.

I have mentioned before – far too often for comfort I fear – the march of the new that is taking place just behind our back hedge and today, as the sun was shining, I looked out with more than my usual attention to the comings and goings in the building site which has become the backdrop to every writing session, and I grasped, quite suddenly, the stark contrast between what I would like to hang onto and what I am so patently about to lose. My own world is shrinking and the outside world is encroaching – literally banging on my back gate – and there is nothing to be done. People need homes and here they are.

The photograph at the top of this page is one of a glorious sunset I witnessed over the top of my laptop perhaps two years ago. It does not do the scene justice – I am no photo-journalist – but it does perhaps illustrate the magnitude of what I previously had to look out on. These photographs are of my little garden now when viewed from ground level – e.g. when making coffee or raiding the biscuit barrel…

…whilst these are views from my office window.

To the right you can see some of the 100+ houses that have been built to date. The rest of the 350+ are still to come…

The question is what do I do now? Do I resist? Do I grow my hedge and narrow my horizons down to my own three fences, or do I embrace the change that I can do nothing to halt, enjoy the spectacle and, when the time comes, broaden my outlook and become part of the new before it has the opportunity to consume me? For years we have lived with a picture postcard view of England’s green and pleasant, but also the worry of what they might do with it. We no longer have that worry. We have certainty, and the reality – almost certainly – will be nothing like as dire as the fear of what might have been.

Mortality has pressed a little heavier on me this year – anyone of a similar age will understand this – the world, and more importantly the people within it, are changing. It is an ongoing process that could, and probably should, never be turned back. I am on the beach. I can be Canute or I can don a sunhat and paddle. Here’s to getting my feet wet…