There is a Wood Pigeon’s nest in the hawthorn at the back of our garden. I say ‘nest’ but what Wood Pigeons actually build in order to raise their brood is, at best, destined to be condemned before Spring is out, looking more like the aftermath of a child’s game of Pick-up-Stix than a family home. It has somehow lingered on, this ragged stack of disparate twigs, through the winter and the pigeon seems to believe that it will see him though another season, because he is currently making no attempt at home improvement whatsoever.
He (you will have noted the lapse into the singular) just sits on the high gate near the greenhouse and looks at it – alone. No Mrs Wood Pigeon has yet appeared and he has been waiting there, day and night, for weeks. It is unbearably sad. You see, I know what happened to his errant spouse because it was me who had to scrape her off the road out front, but I haven’t yet summoned up the courage to tell him. How could I? My grasp of Pigeon is on a par with my fluency in Serbo-Croat.
You see, I know because I looked it up, that pigeons, like particularly unpopular Mormons, are monogamous. I’d really like to tell him that he didn’t ought to sit there all day, shitting on my path, but get what must now be considered as his bachelor pad tidied up. Make it into something where he could happily bring what might – if she is adequately impressed – turn out to be the second Mrs Wood Pigeon.
Not that there’s much chance of that. He never goes anywhere. How’s he ever going to meet anyone without internet access? Beside himself, there is only me and next-door’s moggie who even knows there’s anybody living there. I can’t imagine that anyone’s going to come knocking on his branch – unless it’s someone from the council to warn him for bringing down the tone of the neighbourhood. My lawn is full of moss, why doesn’t he just drop a little bit on his floor? Well, if I’m honest, I’m not sure that it would take the weight.
I’d quite like to knock this nest down in the hope that it would persuade him to build something a little more durable, but I can’t because a) I saw his previous effort and it was even worse: improvement is not guaranteed and b) he never goes away from his gate post roost and I just can’t bring myself to do it whilst he’s watching.
Nature will, I suppose, take its course in time: there must be loads of widowed Wood Pigeons out there. They can’t all be that discerning. Maybe his springtime sap has not started to properly rise yet. When it does he might become an ornithological whirlwind of fevered hormones. He will be oozing pheromones like a feathered Idris Elba. Mind you, if it happens, I think he might have to move. I don’t think his current bedroom walls are up to it…
Being the second part of my original ‘vision’ for this blog…
I stand at the portal that will allow me entry into a new age of discovery. The doormen of Nirvana have found me to be on the list and have grudgingly agreed to let me in. There are many benefits to belonging to the club that I will shortly join: I can take tea and biscuits with my fellow sexagenarians in the designated café; I can board the bus to Rhyl with a half-empty suitcase and a clear conscience; Lord knows! I may eligible for a discount on a stair-lift or a sit-in bath. I have reached the age when I understand that I should always smile sweetly at the dentist, because to gnash my teeth at his suggestion that I need several long-haul holidays-worth of dental treatment is merely putting money in his already bulging pockets. I have attained the maturity that allows me to comprehend that the true joy of an April day by the east coast seaside cocooned within fourteen layers of thermal clothing to protect against the unseasonal scything on-shore breeze and draped in a slightly too small cagoule that herds the interminable arctic drizzle into the large drips that run around the rim of the hood before depositing themselves into the ever-swelling puddle on my crotch, whilst I push fish and chips around the paper as they congeal in front of my eyes, is the knowledge that there is no point in doing it, other than knowing that I don’t have to do it – but, shit, while I can, I will. I have begun to appreciate the myriad joys of getting older. A whole new world of revelation has opened up before me. I have entered, in short, a second phase of enlightenment and realisation.
I have opened my mind to learning, although, truth be told, most of what I have learned is how little I know. My discoveries, such as they are, are modest – they are not of Newtonian proportions. What I have not discovered would generate a ‘to do’ list that could keep Isaac and his apple occupied for a very long time. I have not discovered, for instance, what makes me (or more appositely, they being on the bottom, Australians) stick to this globe of ours. I tend to adhere to the Velcro Theory. In fact, I find myself irresistibly drawn towards the flat earth theory, simply because I do not understand why, wherever I go in the world, I am always the right way up. Hold up a football and put something on the bottom of it; what happens? Yup. If the world is actually a sphere, what prevents the Australians falling off? Forget gravity. Gravity is everywhere. It can’t even hold my glass on the table after six Martinis. And also, if the world is a globe, how come all the water doesn’t flow to the bottom? Never thought that through did you Pythagoras?
Mind you, I must admit that physics was never one of my strengths. I can still recall the look on the face of my teacher when he read my test paper aloud to the class, with special emphasis on the question ‘What is resistance’, to which I had answered ‘Futile’. I thought I was being endearingly amusing. He thought I was being an arse. Guess who was correct? I would never discover a new continent, even if one were to exist, because that would almost certainly involve sailing off into the unknown and, quite frankly, I have enough trouble sailing off into the known – and only then when I have double-checked the catering arrangements. And as for finding a new planet, I can barely see the television in these contact lenses, let alone an infinitesimal blob at the far end of the universe. No, the things that I have learned are of a much more personal nature. I do not know if they will make a difference to the lives of others. I do not know if they were at any time unknown to others. What I am beginning to know, I think, is what everybody else has known all along.
I have discovered that stairs are arranged singly for a reason; there is nothing to be gained by ascending them two at a time. I know that escalators move so that you do not have to. I have learned that there are only two types of shoe; those that fit and those that look good: no single pair of shoes is ever able to meet both criteria. I have learned that rows of buttons are always to be fastened from the bottom in order to avoid having one left over at the end. I have learned that hats are for other people.
I have begun to understand that there is no point whatsoever in attempting to take a photograph with my mobile phone. Nobody is even faintly interested in a close-up of my nasal hair, nor do the staff of The Raj Palace want another silent call from me. I have grown to realise that I have lost the innate ability I once had to know instantly whether an acquaintance was older or younger than I. Everyone of my age looks so very old. I have begun to understand that no-one younger than me actually sees me as younger than I am. That the way I viewed people of my age when I was my daughter’s age is exactly the way that people of my daughter’s age now view me – eccentric; mildly amusing in a ‘let’s just humour him’ kind of way, but definitely to be kept at arm’s length as the risk of slight urine/saliva contamination is ever-present and increasing. I have discovered that the only thing more annoying than a younger man in an extremely expensive car is an older man in an extremely expensive car. I have begun to realise that nobody ever gained anything from arguing (except, for some, a lucrative career). Stealth is the answer. Age gives one the time to wait and the insight to appreciate that there is absolutely no finer moment than the acutely timed ‘I warned you that would happen, but you never listen do you? Oh no. You always know best…’
I have also begun to understand that advancing age is not to be feared, it is to be embraced. Embraced for its ability to allow me clearer vision than sight. Embraced for its ability to grant me the realisation that what is right for me, may not be right for anybody else, but quite frankly, that I care even less than they do. Embraced for the realisation that my appreciation of the world around me is linked, incrementally, with the paucity of time that I have left to enjoy it. Embraced because I have no choice. Embraced because it makes me happy.
Spring being the current plat du jours I thought that I would take this opportunity to briefly take a look back before lurching uncertainly further on into the burgeoning joy of what lies ahead and so, if you will bear with me, on today and Friday I intend to republish the two posts with I which originally launched this whole farrago four-and-a-bit years ago. I’ve resisted the urge to ‘update’ them, so it’s an opportunity to see just exactlyhow much times have changed and how much they’ve stayed the same. To date, these two posts have always been my reference points for what this whole thing is about, so do I need to consider whether I should continue to plod along the self-same path as I set myself way back then, or should I shelf all the soul-searching and just do it anyway? I am not certain how many of you were with me when I launched: I think for most of you it will be your first chance to read these two pieces. For the rest of you, I can only apologise… Again.
I feel that I should begin my first blog with an explanation of what it is exactly that I intend to do over the next however long I am given: it might give you an idea of whether you are going to bother with it, and it might help to remind me what it was I had started when I return to it after pouring a glass of red and half-eating a jam and peanut butter sandwich. My intention is to observe life through the eyes of an older person – I have no choice in this, I am one – and to lay what I have seen before you in such a manner that it might take your mind off the pre-paid funeral plan for a few minutes (unless, of course, you really want that free Parker pen). I do not intend it to be about getting old, but merely the product of a mind and body that is itself slipping inexorably downhill, gathering both speed and mass, clinging on to all the dignity it can muster whilst understanding that the inevitable pratfall into the dog-shit of life lays merely inches away. I do not intend to focus solely on the experience of being an older male, but being one, it might just go that way. Just think of it as a thousand words(ish) a week window into the soul. Actually, probably less a window into my soul and more a knot-hole into my psyche. I am aware that I cannot properly see life from the perspective of someone I am not. I try, believe me, I try, but almost inevitably just as soon as I think I have got this empathy thing licked, I unwittingly put my foot in it up to my ears and, having apologised for all I am worth, write myself a note to remind me not to make that mistake again… and then lose it…
There will be, I am sure, some nostalgic twaddle; some howling at the moon; some ‘how shit things used to be’; some ‘how shit things are now’; some ‘why can’t I remember what it is I wanted to say when I started this…?’ It is my hope that people of my age may be able to wring some scintilla of truth or recognition from it, whilst those younger people amongst you may regard it as some sort of instructional tract; providing nuggets of information that you may recall at apposite times when interacting with we vintage souls (and possibly mopping up after us).
We are all getting older. Life is a one way street and we are all heading into the same cul-de-sac. The people around you can erect speed bumps and you can apply the handbrake all you like, but in the end you’ll realise that the only sensible thing you can do is to floor the clutch and enjoy the scenery. And don’t think that science is going to save you. I’m certainly not going to argue with Einstein, if he says time-travel is possible, then I’m sure it must be… but I’ve seen the films: the Captains Kirk and Picard discovered, as did Marty McFly, that even when you travel back in time, you yourself remain the same age; still getting older. Wherever you sit on the space/time continuum, you plod on, just the same. Wherever you go, you become older just getting there. So, what could be the point of going back in time if everything around you got younger whilst you continued to plough on relentlessly through your allotted span? Very little – unless, of course you’ve got an unopened pack of smoked salmon that has gone beyond its sell-by date or your egg yolk isn’t runny enough…
We all claim that we don’t feel any different to how we felt twenty, thirty, forty years ago when, in fact, we are all that little bit weaker, slower and less able; incapable of stretching without farting. Getting Older is not just about what you see, what you hear and feel, but what you do and how you do it. Do you ever wonder how Pooh and Eeyore cope with the associated problems of sagging kapok, slackened stitching and Christopher Robin’s animalistic grandchildren; how Sherlock Holmes copes with the diminution of a giant intellect; how James Bond copes with stress incontinence? I’ll look into it.
And age is not all about loss. Age also brings us gifts: the self-knowledge that we regularly mistake for wisdom. The ability to think ‘Actually, that is not what I would do, but, let’s be honest, what does it matter.’ The knowledge that you are not going to be hanged for wearing non-matching socks and that no-one will notice if you’re wearing your pants back to front may be liberating. I, myself, have heard the siren call of primary colour trousers and Velcro shoes, and like Odysseus, I am desperately clinging to the mast of sanity, attempting to resist them. To be honest, once you’ve passed 50, nobody takes a great deal of notice what you’re wearing. Wear what you have always worn and they’ll smile sweetly and enquire whether you have actually changed that cardi at all this year. Wear something different and they’ll think you’ve had a stroke. It is better to continually keep checking that you’ve remembered to zip up your fly than to wait for someone to tell you that you haven’t. Again…
Age will gift you an insatiable thirst for knowledge. All knowledge. A desire to learn all of the things you did not learn while you were capable of learning them. Infinite curiosity will keep you alive and vital and the desire to experience will drive you crazy. If you are physically capable of doing it, then do it. You may hate it, but at least you’ve tried it and you’ll never have to do it again – like eating oysters and drinking Saké, you’ll know better next time.
The accumulation of new hobbies becomes a hobby in itself. Never tried it? Give it a go. Immerse yourself; soak it up until you’re semi-proficient; pack it up; find something new. Don’t be put off by those who might say ‘You can’t do that’. They might be right, but bugger them frankly, give it a go anyway. If it doesn’t work, you can laugh about it over a super-strength gin and tonic and spit an olive stone at the back of their neck when they’re not looking.
Anyway, that’s what I’m going to do. Join me. If I cannot persuade you to laugh in the face of danger then at least I might encourage you to snigger in the ear’ole of adversity.
I am not one of life’s great dieters. My weight has remained relatively constant for years, although in the last few months I must admit that it has most definitely followed an upward trajectory not dissimilar to Elon Musk’s ego. I will vow to do something about it. I will become lithe and, almost certainly, liverish. Perhaps I will not eat for hours. I would cut down, but I have no idea what I normally eat: I never notice. Generally, if it’s put in front of me, I eat until it is no longer there. I seldom feel full and I do not need to feel hungry to eat. It – along with pubic hair, eyebrows and the inability to speak without throwing my arms around – is probably an evolutionary throwback (although to what, I am not certain): eat all you can while you can and, if you prove to be successful at it, find a way to persuade somebody else to do the running around for you.
This dietary zeal hits me every now and then and I begin to give real consideration to the subject (if not the practice) of weight loss. I might find a graph of BMI on the internet and plot my position on it – usually just to the left of Jupiter – or read a very long list of all the things I should stop doing, over a coffee and a doughnut. I try to work things out: to burn off a standard Mars Bar = a 22 minute run. If I don’t eat the Mars Bar, I don’t need to run. See how easy it all is? I think I’ll celebrate with a Crème Egg. A 22 minute run = a 42 minute walk. If I lay off the Mars Bars I may never have to move again.
I’ve never actually regarded myself as ‘fat’, more ‘would benefit from losing a pound or two’, like Donald Trump might benefit from gaining a little humility. I’m relatively healthy I think, although relative to what I am not certain, and I have no desire to look like Adonis. (Actually, I have just looked at the statue of him, by Francois Duquesnoy, and if I’m honest he looks a little flabby to me. His muscle definition is not great and his little bits and pieces are not all that you would expect of a God, although it does say that he was mortal lover of both Aphrodite and Persephone so perhaps he just needed a bit of a rest. Frankly, I think he might have been better advised to have asked M Duquesnoy if he could have kept his pants on during the long – and presumably cold – modelling days.)
I, myself, have never looked good naked, even in my youth I looked somehow unfinished. Even the vainest of men must admit to feeling just the teensiest bit ridiculous without clothes. I think God pinched one of Adam’s ribs simply because he’d come up with a much better design: altogether more aerodynamic, better suited to leather trousers and less likely to get snagged on brambles. Odd that evolution has persuaded half of us that having a penis makes us superior, when all it actually does is to give the other half of us something to laugh about when our backs are turned. It would certainly be better if it wasn’t given so much latitude to override common sense. Funny, no matter how overweight Adonis might get, that never gets fat. Just lazy…
This occasional compulsion to diet, however, is not about looks: if I’m honest, the only person who ever sees me naked now is my wife and she gave up noticing years ago – occasionally, if she’s in a frivolous mood, she will try and hit it with a bottle on the way to the recycling bin, but otherwise she leaves well alone. I’m not even sure that it’s about health – I feel ok as I am: I can play with the kids for hours, I can bend far enough to reach the TV remote – sometimes without the help of a rolled up newspaper – I can always manage the forty-two minute walk to the sweet shop. I think it is probably about Spring. I think it is about hormones – such as I have left – waking up and thinking, “Let’s see, the sun is shining, the buds are bursting, the birds and bees are doing whatever it is that the birds and bees do (most of it, it would appear, on my shed roof) it’s probably time to give this old wreck a bit of a spring clean too. Detox, maybe: remove the chocolate orange and the raspberry flavoured vodka from the five-a-day; stop him lining his arteries with the kind of stuff that the Mafia use to fill wellies; generally give him the chance of making the summer without a plywood casing.”
And part of that appears to be a review of my diet. I leaf disconsolately through my wife’s many calorie-counting cookbooks and discover that every one of the healthy recipes therein could be improved with the addition of butter, cheese or chocolate (on occasions all three) and that most of them would only be rendered edible with a side order of chips. I check myself out in the mirror: not too bad really… for my age… all things considered… and I realise that I’m not fooling anyone. This is as good as it gets and two miserable weeks bereft of calorific intake is not the answer. Unless the possibility of a whole body transplant appears above the horizon – although, knowing my luck I would get Adonis’s – I’ll stick with what I’ve got. At least until the Autumn comes, when I need to ‘put some meat on my bones’ (thank you grandma) in preparation for winter. It’s important to get the diet just right…
Dinah could put an exact date and time to the point at which she ceased to be amazed by the vagaries of life. It was the day when, on a whim, she had responded to a hand-written advert in a newsagent’s window and climbed into a car with Shaw. Whatever had made sense on that day had, henceforth steadfastly refused to do so. On the day that she bagged herself a new job with no wages, working for a man with no income, everything that she held as indisputable became contestable, everything else however bizarre became reality, normality even, and Dinah suddenly discovered how extremely odd normality could be.
She looked around the new offices of ‘Shaw & Parnter’ (Shaw had insisted on bringing the old door with him) and contemplated the passage of the last six months and the strange tide that had dropped her on the shores of today. The flight from the hotel had been fraught enough – even after consuming most of the mini-bar – but consequently finding all of Shaw’s possessions in a skip outside the office (where they belonged in Dinah’s opinion) alongside all of their old case files and what passed for the company computer had dented even Shaw’s own unshakeable sangfroid. But not for long.
Between them they had gathered what they could from the skip, packed it into boxes and bags which they placed at the doorway of their now shuttered-up ex-office and sat either side of them, on the pavement in the gathering gloom of evening. “I don’t suppose you’ve got the money for a taxi have you?” asked Shaw. “My credit card is welcomed in less places than Vladimir Putin,” said Dinah “and you gave my last cash to the porter at the hotel. You know, the one that threatened to break your legs when we ran away without paying the bill.” “Yes, that was a bit unfortunate wasn’t it?” “Unfortunate? Really? You took on a case from a client that didn’t really exist, but just wanted to get us out of the building so that they could repossess the office…” “…And my home…” “…And your squalid home. You accepted that they would pay our hotel bill, despite the fact that you had no contact details for them and no idea of why they had instructed us to go there…” “Yes, well it could have worked out better of course,” he said. “Still…” He emptied his pockets of miniature whiskies and placed them on the box. “Would you like a nip?” “You emptied your mini-bar?” “I emptied everybody’s…” Shaw screwed the lids from two bottles. “To the future,” he said. “Do you think we have one,” asked Dinah, cringing only slightly as the fiery liquid burned down her throat. “Of course,” he said. “But for now we just have to work out how to get this lot back to your flat.” “My flat?” “Can you think of anywhere else?” “But it’s tiny.” “It’s only for a short while,” said Shaw. “I’ll sleep on the sofa.” “You? I thought you just meant all of this lot.” “Well this as well,” he said. “Just until we get straightened out.” “Straightened out?” she said. “You’ve seen the size of my sofa. If you sleep on that you will never straighten out again.” Shaw looked crestfallen. Dinah looked at the confusion in his eyes and, as invariably happened, found herself both irritated and somehow softened. “Open me another bottle,” she said, “and you can take the first lot of boxes. I’ll wait here with the rest.” She watched him staggering off along the road under a mountain of cardboard, conscious both that he was going the wrong way and that if she told him so, he would explain why and she didn’t want to hear it right now. When he came back (actually, this was Shaw – if he came back) they should be able to manage the rest between them. He shouldn’t be long.
The whisky had begun to work its magic on her brain and a woozy warmth had overcome her by the time Shaw wandered back with two paper cups of coffee and a bag of doughnuts. How did he do that? “I thought you might need this,” he said. Despite herself she smiled, coffee and doughnuts was exactly what she needed. “How did you get them?” she asked. “You had no money.” “I met your landlady,” he said. “And you asked her for money?” “No, of course not,” said Shaw, sounding almost exactly like he hadn’t actually thought about it. “Oh Lord.” Dinah slumped. “You didn’t tell her that you were going to be staying did you?” “Am I? I thought you said that I…” “Never mind what I said. What did you say to my landlady?” “Well, I couldn’t find your key, so I asked her if she could let me in.” “And she did? You could have been a burglar or anything.” “Do burglars normally take things into premises?” “In your case, it would be more like fly tipping.” “Anyway, I found the key as soon as I put the boxes down. I explained about our situation and she said that she wouldn’t mind if I stayed for a little while… I fixed her kettle.” “You fixed her kettle? Are you sure?” “Well she said it wasn’t working, but I just put some water in, turned it on and it worked. She seemed happy enough.” “And she definitely said you can stay?” “Definitely… She doesn’t wear much does she?” Dinah hurriedly pushed the last of the doughnut into her mouth, drained her coffee and clambered to her feet, gathering up as many boxes as she could manage. Shaw picked up the rest and followed behind her. “She said that we could have the bigger flat at the front if we want it,” he said. “I can’t afford that, it’s twice the price.” “Yes, but there’ll be two of us won’t there.” “But neither of us have an income.” “Things will get better,” he said. “She even said that we could have your old flat as an office.” Dinah knew that she was peeing on his fireworks, but she couldn’t help it. “If we put together all that we have and all that we are ever likely to have, we still can’t afford to pay for one little flat, let alone a bigger one as well.” She hated being the Grinch, but facts had to be faced. “And you need to be careful with her.” “Really?” said Shaw. “Who’d have thought it?” “Look, let’s just get home. We’ll worry about it all in the morning.” Shaw grinned. “Home,” he said.
Together they clambered up the stairs and dropped the boxes outside the door. “I don’t suppose you have the flat key,” said Dinah. Shaw grinned sheepishly. “Actually, I think I might have left it open,” he said.
They packed the boxes behind the settee and Dinah went to make tea but, mysteriously, found that the kettle wasn’t working. “You swapped them, didn’t you,” she said. “I’ll swap them back tomorrow,” he said. Dinah sat beside him on the sofa and, exhausted, rested her head on his shoulder. “It’s all going to be ok,” he said. “All we have to do is find her cat.” “I didn’t know she had a cat.” “Neither did she…”
In preparing reacquaint myself with these two after a gap of over six months, I decided I should catch up with them from the beginning. They were my first regular characters and I always enjoy my time with them – although I have to be in exactly the right frame of mind to make them work. If you want to catch up with how they got here, the links are below:
I woke with a rick in my neck – a term I thought was universal but which I now discover is a British colloquialism and so might be known to you as a crick in the neck, a wry neck (which seems odd to me because I do understand what wry means and the thought that my neck is actively taking the p*ss* is a little difficult to swallow) or, if you are more inclined towards the medical, torticollis. As always, my level of comprehension ranking just below that of the average coffee table, I do not fully understand the cause of this condition. I have been asleep, I cannot have been doing anything too strenuous. I haven’t been involved in anything in bed that would require extreme neck mobility for years. Mind you, I’ve just been reading about dust mites in pillows and that’s a real head turner. I am burning my pillow as we speak. (This is a slight exaggeration. Having set all of the bedding to wash at a temperature that would cook crabs, I am currently spraying the pillow with something that smells like it should be used to dress a wound.)
I would currently be brilliant in a maze because I can only look to the left. I am sitting at an angle of forty five degrees to the laptop screen, which eases the stress on my neck, but does nothing for my spine which is contorted into a ragged stack of vertebrae looking not entirely dissimilar to a corkscrew. If I leave my feet on the floor, the swivel chair rotates at a speed that would have James Bond reaching for the sickbag. When I stand, the top half of my body uncoils to the sound of popcorn cooking, yet when it stops, I still find myself looking back over my shoulder. It’s very disconcerting.
The strange thing about a ricked neck is that as long as you remain conscious of it, it does not cause too much of a problem. It is only when I forget that it is there that it reminds me, with a jolt not unlike a wet finger in the National Grid, resulting in a convulsion that leaves me doubled-up like a Kirby Grip. I am a grown man: I handle pain with the stoicism of a three year old and the kind of shriek that was last heard when Ramses III dropped a pyramid on his foot. Nevertheless, even with my neck so constrained, I can operate perfectly well without pain providing I do everything at the speed of a plumber on piece time. If I am tempted to react to anything at a speed above stately – eg the moment when the end threatens to break away from a dunked biscuit – I am skewered.
I am a fully grown man – I have the benefit of a mirror to prove this, you will just have to take my word for it – and I realise that this pain (unlike my moaning) will not endure. It will disappear just as quickly as it appeared, almost certainly overnight, but I have no idea how. Does it perhaps, like some malignant spirit, leave me when it is bored and drop into another neck for a short spell of ricking in alternative surroundings? If so, my wife will almost certainly spend the next couple of days looking the other way. And what if she gets it at the same time as me, only on the other side? Will we spend the whole time with our backs to one another? How would I ever know? We seldom look at one another these days – except in a very wry way…
*…and I’ve just realised that this, too, is a particularly British phrase meaning, in this sense (it has others) ‘making fun of me’…
I just found this in my ‘back catalogue’. Nothing new under the sun…
Its therapeutic sometimes to just gaze out of the window and write about what I see – although merely spelling the word ‘therapeutic’ actually seems to raise my stress level by several notches – but on the occasions when there is nothing to see, I have to turn instead to what I have done. This is problematic in a man of my age because all too often the question ‘What have you done today?’ has to be met with the answer ‘Not a lot’, even though I have managed to fill most of the day doing it. Occasionally, of course, I have to resort to ‘making things up’, but sadly, as what happens between my ears tends to operate on the same principle as ‘The Chaos Theory’, I’m never entirely certain of what will emerge. It’s difficult to remember which was what (and vice versa).
In truth, few of my posts – except for the Little Fictions which are based, of course, solely on fact – are exclusively any of the above. I will freely admit that, when relating the truth, I do have a tendency towards what Spike Milligan described as ‘jazzing it up a bit’. Things often drift off to a place where they will be happier. Reality has, occasionally, to bend to accommodate a funny line (Come on, if you search hard enough you’ll find one.) and I’m pretty certain that most of you will feel as though you can spot the joins anyway. They bother me sometimes – these little stitching togethers of reality and embellishment – but mostly they don’t, I just let them be.
It is a major failing that, if I don’t watch myself, I write as I speak and if I’m honest, my conversation can be, at times, a little difficult to follow. I do tend to require a certain minimum level of concentration and I have a brain that registers useless minutiae in preference to the pointlessly necessary. At least, I suppose, when it’s written down you can go back and read it again – although I can’t for the life of me think of why you would.
From this side of the page I can see the difference between real me and on paper me: on paper I can play a few solitary chords on the guitar, but in real life they are only the ones that were long ago misplaced by Sir Arthur Sullivan. On paper I write about life because, in reality, I don’t have one. What I don’t know, I make up in the confident knowledge that few of you will be able to point me out on the bus. I see the point at which fact is tagged with fancy and I know that it doesn’t matter because, frankly, I’m not writing a text book. This is, I suppose, in the way of self-help: it helps me – I have no idea what it does for you. It is, I think, some kind of therapy – whenever there’s nothing going on outside my window…
I won’t lie, I’m not certain that I even knew where it was until I realised that I had never been there.
Anyway, I thought that now might be the right time to take a look at this little Pearl of the… wherever it is and fill you in on whatever I eventually discover.
I’ll be back in a minute…
Well, it appears that Cleckheaton is, as a matter of fact, the Pearl of West Yorkshire, occupying the gap that lies between Bradford and Huddersfield in the Spen Valley, by the picturesque banks of the M62. It once lay on the Roman road between York and Chester, although there is no evidence that I can find that any Romans ever stopped there. In the years through to the Industrial Revolution it was known mainly for textile production and religious non-conformity, with leaders such as Eli Collins (the Wizard of Wyke) and Alvery Newsome (The Wise Man of Heckmondwike). In 1818, the Reverend Hammond Roberson secured government funding to build a church in the village and the local W.I. started making marmalade and knitting scarves.
The Twentieth Century saw little progress for Cleckheaton although, in 1903, the Lion’s factory did commence the manufacture of Midget Gems in the town where they are still produced today. Consequently, there are few people in the UK of my generation who do not have a little bit of Cleckheaton in them. The town also had a railway station that closed in 1969 and was, according to Wiki, stolen by a man from Dewsbury. It currently has a bus station which, according to the same source, ‘has six stands’ and a school bus.
In case you are wondering, Cleckheaton was, in the past, famous for carding (No, me neither) which is apparently a process by which wool is pulled out into straight strands in preparation for spinning which took place, as far as I can see, in the far more glamorous metropolis of Wakefield (Some 10 miles to the west. 1 hour and 7 minutes by bus – provided all six stands are not full.)
I searched for ‘what to do’ in Cleckheaton and I discovered that you can ‘cycle, walk or run’ – clearly a unique combination of pastimes – never-the-less I decided that if I was going to make the most of my eventual visit I would need to find other things to do at times when I was not so keen on perambulation, so I searched for the five best places to visit in Cleckheaton and this is what I was told:
The Town Hall – which boasts a theatre suitable for Am-dram performances and a selection of meeting and function rooms for hire. Tripadvisor recommends I pencil in two hours for this diversion.
Mill Valley Taproom & Kitchen – a trip to the pub with ‘a five barrel brewing system’ to fill the recommended 1-2 hours.
The Old Silk Mill – which boasts two dance studios, a café and ‘downstairs toilets’.
Terrier Antiques & Interiors Ltd – this is a shop that sells antiques for inside. A welcome diversion for bored children who have had more than enough of availing themselves of the pleasures to be had using the downstairs facilities at the Old Silk Mill or glaring through the windows of the Taproom whilst the adults hover over the fifth barrel.
The Treatment Room – where you can have your nails done.
Finally, in order to ensure that this really is a town worthy of a visit, I decided to check out the local news in case it should be a hotbed of vice or perhaps a main crossing point on the County Lines circuit and I discovered that Cleckheaton is very soon to have a new set of traffic lights, there are fears for the health of a cat stuck up a tree, up to 250 attended a city rock concert, and that a local football player saw what appeared to be a large black cat as he got changed after a match. It does not say whether it had just got down from a tree.
I have absolutely no idea why my brain brought me to this place, but I guess that my body will one day have to follow it. I’ll let you know when I decide to go, perhaps I can meet you there…
BTW, should you wish to know, all the ‘facts’ herein are completely true.
The brilliant hyper-talented cartoonist and illustrator Bill Tidy died on 11th March this year. I don’t know if he’d ever been to Cleckheaton, but hearing his name brought the place to mind. I don’t know why… R.I.P Bill Tidy.
…”I have often puzzled and puzzled, about what it must be like to go to sleep and never wake up, to be simply not there, forever and ever. After all one has some intimation of this, by the interval that separates going to sleep from waking, when we don’t have any dreams but go to sleep, and then suddenly we’re there again, and in the interim, you have nothing. And if there was never any end to that interval, if the waking up didn’t happen, that’s such a curious thought. And yet you know…although that’s rather a gloomy kind of consideration, I found it’s one of the most creative thoughts I ever thought in my life.” ~ Alan Watts…
Well, it is a proper gloomy prospect isn’t it, to ‘go to sleep and never wake up’, but one that (despite my own fairly advanced plans) none of us can escape. That final ‘going to sleep’ is coming to us all and we are all, to some degree or another, afraid of it. It is unknown, and we all fear the unknown. Death is the greatest unknown: no-one has ever come back to tell us about it. (Is there a decent take-away, do the window cleaners leave streaks, are the supermarkets always one item short of a full Meal Deal, is your Broadband connection at anything like the advertised speed?) I realise that many of you will feel that what happens after death is anything but unknown and that one very particular person has, indeed, returned from it in the past to fill us all in on its merits, and I totally respect that certainty – in truth I envy it – but I do not share it. What most of us fear about the eternal sleep is not the fact that we will not wake from it; it is the ‘nothing’ we fear. An eternity of nothing. It is not even the idea of doing nothing (I’m already pretty good at that) but the idea that we will not be aware of the fact that we are doing nothing.
Albert Einstein assured us (although he too has not returned to prove the point) that energy cannot be destroyed, but is merely sent somewhere else: movement becomes friction, friction becomes heat, heat becomes convection and convection becomes rain – mostly rain. Ultimately, energy is always wet. Now, often (although now I come to think about it, rather less often these days) I am full of energy and when I eventually enter that long goodnight, it all has to go somewhere doesn’t it? Following the irrefutable British logic that eventually everything becomes rain then it is likely that (providing we have not allowed them all to be cut down) we are all destined to become ‘tree’ – which, intriguingly leads to the possibility that many of us will also become ‘coffin’.
This, I am sure – particularly if Walt Disney becomes involved – forms part of the Circle of Life: the Semi-Circle of Life perhaps, because in order to be a circle, things have to end where they begin, don’t they, and the progress from coffin to sentient being is a rather more difficult one to plot – although given the amount of alcohol that is, on occasion, consumed at a funeral wake could almost certainly result in a lack of inhibition that… well, these things happen, don’t they, and babies can result. How the energy gets from the coffin to the procreation is anybody’s guess, but I assume that gin is involved.
No wonder Mr Watts found this thought to be an incredibly ‘creative’ one. Just imagine that every day, in the interval between sleep and waking, that the ‘nothingness’ you experience makes you both a tree and a parent to a child with whom you have no physical connection. That really is something to puzzle over isn’t it, although, probably not something to die for…
I think it only fair that I make it clear, before you get down to thinking ‘Here he goes again,’ that this little tract is not about anxious soul searching – sunny me remains in charge – but simply addresses a question that, to date, I have been unable to answer, to wit, how will I ever know if I get this right?
As much as I am told that I really should do this thing just for myself and not for the benefit of the very small number of atypically enlightened people who actually read it, I do find that my enthusiasm is wont to wane when my daily readership falls below the winter temperature (in Celsius) of that little red and white striped number at the top of the world. It seems to me that doing anything purely for one’s own ends seldom ends well and, vain as it is (very well, ‘Vain as I am…’) I do occasionally find it difficult to dredge up the requisite zeal for writing when I know in advance that what I have wrestled onto paper (like man v octopus) is not going to be read, and I am fully aware that of late my regular readership has dwindled faster than Vladimir Putin’s Trustpilot rating. I plod on though. I keep to my self-imposed schedule because it is important to me: it is my challenge. Writing is easy – it is my joy – but keeping to a timetable is not. I do still flip onto my ‘stats’ from time to time – most recently to find that my ‘weeklies’ are now well below what were once my ‘dailies’ – and I do occasionally find myself celebrating a 1% increase on the day, even if that only adds up to 5% of an actual person. I have no social media presence – which is definitely my choice – so what do I expect? I don’t worry about not having hundreds of readers, only about not writing well enough to entertain those I do have. I am, happy that I have never knowingly published anything that I felt was not ‘good enough’ (for me), even though I have often published pieces with the certain knowledge that they would not be read. Never mind, I enjoyed writing them. Some of my favourite pieces have been read by fewer people than my tea leaves.
I do, from time to time, try to predict what will be well-received and what will not, but with little success. I am less enlightened than an eight-ball in a coal-hole, but am I downhearted? Well, just occasionally, yes if I’m honest. I do sometimes feel like a gardener whose prize marrow is deemed to be of insufficient quality for a place on the paste-table by the toilets at the village show – even though I have flung more shit at it than the rest of the village combined. Yet, perversely, I am not crestfallen: if I suddenly achieved viral fame – whatever that might be – I would almost certainly not know what to do with it. I would see no pecuniary benefit – although I would, obviously, be prepared to discuss the film rights with that nice Mr Spielberg.
My inability to divine in advance what will, and will not, be successful is what really irks. Every now and then the analytical part of my brain (just to the right of ‘retention of facts’, where there’s lots of room) starts asking for answers and, frankly, I am at a loss. I do not fully understand the way it works, but if a piece is only read by a very small number of people, that does not, surely, make it a bad piece because – in the absence of a big review – reading it would be the only way to find out. It’s more likely, I suppose, that the piece after the bad piece would be the one to suffer reader-wise, but how would I know?
If I’m honest, I’m not at all sure of what I’d do with thousands of readers, what would I write about? How would I keep them all happy? I’m very content just now with my WordPress lot: I write what and when I like; I publish to a routine that keeps OCD me out of the straitjacket and I enjoy the ‘conversations’ I am able to have with (I was going to say ‘like-minded souls’, but that seems unduly harsh on you all) my little band of cyber-pals. If one day I run out of something to say then I can stop – although it’s never stopped me up to now – and one day, probably when I alone constitute my only reader, I will stumble across the answer and, when I do, I will let you know – as long as I can still remember the question…
Getting On 