Under protest, I have started to decorate the kitchen. It is never going to be anything other than ‘under protest’ because it is a job I both loathe and am fundamentally unqualified to do. I do, as I do with all things, my very best, but I am painfully aware that, as with most things, my very best is woefully inadequate. It is like one of those dreams where you suddenly find yourself expected to do brain surgery, with a gowned-up nurse looming over you and saying, “Well you’ve got all the right tools. What’s your problem?” It is not the knowing that I am incapable of successfully carrying out the task, it is more the knowledge that the patient will never recover, will start wearing woolly hats indoors and talking like Minnie Mouse. It is the knowledge that once I have had my go, not even the most brilliant of qualified practitioners will ever be able to put things right. I think that I might be ok if ‘slow and methodical’ was allowed, but it isn’t. This is the kitchen: ‘yesterday’ is what is required. No mess, no delay, ready to cook dinner is what is required.
The kitchen is the hub of our house: it has 5 doors, 2 windows, dozens of wall and floor cabinets and more sockets and switches than the average electrical retailer. It has white units for God’s sake! Masking up is a time-consuming and ultimately futile task: it does not matter how expensive the tape, nor how carefully I apply it, paint always leaches under it like a splash of black coffee on a mushroom shagpile, covering a far greater acreage than it is physically possible to achieve. All adjoining areas look as if they have been painted by J.M.W Turner. Removing the various electrical gewgaws instead is not an option. I have no desire to bounce of the ceiling – again – simply because I do not know my black from my red, nor my off from on. I cannot afford the dental bills consequent upon agonized gnashing.
And I dare not dare to even think about all the add-ons: all the things that are made to look tawdry by the sparkling new walls; all the things that need updating because they are now the wrong colour; all the things that need replacing because I have broken them, inadvertently painted them or lost them.
Now, it is my purpose I feel, in this life and this blog, to look for the positives. Well, I’m looking…
My wife (bless her) is, as ever, full of helpful advice so, should it – as it almost certainly will – all go tits-up, she will be in the perfect position to fill me in very quickly on where I went wrong, how stupid I have been and how much better everything would be if only I would listen. I will try to explain that if she had just listened to me, I wouldn’t be doing it in the first place, but it will not work and I will face my usual two options: down tools or start again. Under protest, I will start again…
… for a few days and, whilst I can schedule posts, I have yet to find a way to do the same with comments. Please excuse my tardiness. I will try to catch up over the next few days. Bear with me…
Each time I open my WordPress home page I see – and until today ignore – a WordPress prompt. I can only think that it is there as some kind of challenge because if you are thinking of writing a blog yet need to be told what to write about, frankly I don’t see much of a future in it. But then, life is meant to be a challenge isn’t it? So, a mere four years down this bloggy track I decided that I would, for one time only, treat it as such and opened my home page with a vow to tackle whatever prompt was thrown at me. I got ‘What are three objects you couldn’t live without?’ and, leaving aside basic sentence structure, I rose to the bait.
Now, I realise that it is fatuous of me to say that, short of a heartbeat, there is probably nothing that I literally could not live without and given that I must also take it as read that the essentials of life e.g. food, water, whisky, chocolate are not the kind of insight that the author of the question was aiming for, I must also conclude that family and friends do not constitute a valid entry, leaving me to assemble a short list which, at the very best, has to be viewed as a little mercenary and could almost certainly benefit from being re-titled ‘Name the three possessions you like the best’.
Item number one has to be my house. I certainly could live without it, but I definitely don’t believe that I would ever choose to. But choosing my house leaves me with a new quandary: if ‘my house’ includes everything inside it, then my other two choices become redundant – pretty much everything I have is in here (or could be, given sufficient time) – so I’d better rule that out and go for just the shell: the bricks and mortar… plus the bathrooms. I’m sixty four years old, if I should have to squat in the garden to poo I might never get up again. On my list of ‘ways to go’, that does not feature near the top. As much as I want to say that ‘home is where the heart is’, it all begins to sound a little hollow if I am forced to conclude that it is also a place where I am forced to crap in the rain. So, house (including bathrooms) it is.
Item number two then would probably have to be my mobile phone because, although I don’t have a social media presence of any kind – and even less interest in getting one – I do use the phone daily for keeping in touch with the disparate and scattered members of my family that I am unable to meet regularly enough in person. I would feel detached without it. Also, if I’m being honest here, I am a man who knows very little and who, consequently, turns to Google for pretty much everything I need to learn. If I don’t know it, I Google it. (Actually I have just Googled ‘Three things you can’t live without’ and found a list near the top of the page that reads 1. Polka Dots, 2. Champagne, 3. Red Lipstick. I have no idea who submitted that list, but I would probably like to meet them.) The mobile phone also swallows up books and music (neither of which I could actually live without) which I realise is a bit of a cheat, but let’s face it, if you could eat a mobile phone you could probably live without anything else – particularly if it was in the house (and the house had somewhere to charge it).
For item three I am torn between bed and shoes. I have had trouble sleeping all my life and my own bed is just about the only place I can guarantee getting at least a little sleep. But without shoes, I would be pretty much trapped in the house and I think that would probably drive me mad(der). My feet are pretty thick-skinned and I can walk a fair distance without shoes, but not as far as I would like. I know they would harden in time, but I’m at the wrong end of the scale for too much in the way of evolutionary change. If I have my phone and I can walk, I can also forage for food and cook it on the… oh come on, the cooker has got to go with the house, hasn’t it? I’ve spent time in tents since my youth, when the only thing between myself and the three hundred weight of nutty slack that comprised the camp site was my sleeping bag; I’ve travelled Europe in a transit van; I’ve raised babies: I’m guessing that the writer of the prompt would not want me to rip out all of the carpets, it would be such a waste – I can sleep on the floor (always presuming that I don’t tweak the rules just a little bit further so that ‘house’ includes bathroom, cooker and bed)… Did I mention internet connection? Anyway, shoes it is.
So there we are then:
House
Phone
Shoes
…although thinking about it, I bet they just wanted me to say WordPress…
The man in the Meerkat T-shirt carefully placed the three pint glasses in the centre of the beaten copper table before lowering himself onto his stool and retrieving three packets of crisps from his trouser pockets which he threw onto the table where they splashed through the shallow lake of tepid beer spillages that covered its surface. “What’s these?” sneered the man in the lovat cavalry tweed coat. “Prawn Cocktail,” replied Meerkat. “All they had. Been some kind of strike up the factory; work to rule or something. Only thing they’re knocking out at the moment is Prawn Cocktail on account of having nobody willing to cross the picket line in order to change the flavourings.” The man in the cavalry tweed lifted a single dampened pack between two pincered fingers and shook the beer from it onto his neighbour’s Moleskin waistcoat before, with little effort to disguise his distaste, opening the bag and cramming half the contents into his mouth. “Couldn’t wait a couple of days I suppose,” he said, spraying both of his companions and all three pints of beer with soggy crisp shards, “until they were on Smoky Bacon or Salt ‘n’ Vinegar. Bet they all stocked up in advance. They’ll have boxes of Cheese & Onion at home all of ‘em. Even,” he muttered darkly, “Quavers.” “I quite like Prawn Cocktail,” said the man in the moleskin waistcoat. “Yes,” said the man in the coat. “Well, you would, wouldn’t you? Your type.” “My type?” “The Prawn Cocktail Set. Doubtless you eat them with your little finger out.” “Only you,” said Moleskin, “could turn crisp flavours into a class war. I suppose that Cheese & Onion are working class, are they?” “Designed to eat with a pint aren’t they, Cheese & Onion? Proper man’s supper. Probably all they could afford back in the day after putting bread on the family table. Prawn Cocktail, now, they’re designed for gin drinkers aren’t they? Fish your lemon slice straight out of the glass and drop it in your snack. Poncey shit,” he said, ramming the remaining crisps into his mouth. “And nothing like as filling.” “I used to like Tomato Ketchup,” said Meerkat. “Was that an actual flavour?” asked Moleskin. “Yes. Mind you, it tasted nothing like ketchup. More like these really…” “Just chemicals aren’t they,” said Cavalry Twill, drinking half of his pint in a single swallow. “Designed to make you drink more. They’re all in it together of course,” he belched loudly, “the breweries and the crisp people. I bet you anything you like they’re only saying they’re down to Prawn Cocktail because they’ve got a surplus of gin up the wossname brewery.” “Are you seriously suggesting,” said Moleskin “that the owners of the crisp factory deliberately orchestrated a strike at the moment they had a surplus of Prawn Cocktail crisps, in order to sell more gin?” “Obvious isn’t it,” said CT. “So what’s your position on peanuts then?” “Like what?” “Well, you know, Dry Roasted for the Tories, Honey Roasted for the Social Democrats and plain old Salted for the working man, is that how it works? Or would it be more likely that your working class hero would just eat them straight out of the shell.” “Monkey nuts,” said Meerkat, pausing briefly in his quest to lick the final few Prawn Cocktail crumbs from the corner of the bag. “That’s what my dad used to call them.” Moleskin, suddenly disconnected from his thread, stared briefly at his friend in the Meerkat top. “Why?” he asked. “…I don’t know,” he answered at length. “Do monkeys eat them?” “Only the Socialist ones…” “They’re not even nuts really,” said CT. “Monkey nuts?” “Yes Moley, Monkey nuts. They are not nuts.” “What are they then, a petit bourgeois concept designed to delineate social strata and reinforce crisp-softened class barriers?” asked Moleskin. “An upper middle class entree construct?” “Beans,” said CT. “Beans? Are you sure? Why aren’t they called Beannuts then?” “Image.” “Image?” “You just can’t see the bigger picture can you,” said CT, sliding his empty glass towards Meerkat whilst never disengaging his gaze from Moleskin. “Look, who’d buy a packet of e.g. Dry Roasted Beannuts?” “A Conservative Monkey?” “‘Nobody’ is the answer. It’s the name isn’t it: no cachet” “I don’t get it,” said Moleskin, nodding thanks to Meerkat who took his empty glass and the proffered twenty pound note. “I mean, they’d taste just the same wouldn’t they?” “A peanut by any other name…” “…would be equally Honey Roasted.” “That rather depends sunshine,” said CT “upon the circles within which you choose to consume your bar snacks.” “Are you seriously telling me that you have never had a Honey Roasted peanut.” “Typical of your sort,” said CT. “Trying to paint me as a Phyllosan…” “…Philistine…” “…to paint me as a Philistine simply because my mid-drink comestibles do not accord with your own nouveau-riche parameters. And since you ask, yes, I have tried them – lest you forget I am no stranger to the Lady Mayoress’s Thursday afternoon cocktail soirees, thank you very much. I have,” he shuddered at the memory, “even partaken of the odd olive on a stick from time to time with a glass of Chardonnay I believe it is called. It is not a betrayal of my class roots – although I would never deny my preference for a properly pickled onion and a pint of John Barleycorn’s finest – it is research.” “Research?” “How the other half lives.” “She’s your sister-in-law. She lives on the same estate. In fact her husband works up at the crisp factory… Hang on; has he got a supply of Cheese & Onion in the shed?” Meerkat returned with three replenished glasses which he placed in the little pool that occupied the centre of the table before handing the change to Moleskin. The man in the Cavalry Twill coat took a long draw on the chestnut liquid, using every moment he could in which to formulate an answer that would put Moleskin in his place. He looked pointedly at the three empty crisp packets in the ashtray and then at Meerkat. “I suppose,” he said at last, “they’re on strike up the Pork Scratching factory as well are they?”
My problem is in knowing when to pull the plug. Sometimes, like a Thames Water sewage outlet, there seems to be no way to stem the flow. My head is so full of fluff that when I pick a stitch, I can’t necessarily stop all the internal gubbins falling out and blocking up the cat. (I don’t actually own a cat – in as much as anybody does – but use it in a metaphysical sense for anything that plays with vermin, licks its own genitalia and coughs up fur-balls in my shoes.) I have no problem tidying up what sploshes, willy-nilly, down onto the page, but actually editing – deciding what stays and what goes – that’s an altogether different proposition. I’m often very proficient at chopping stuff out that I think might prove offensive (on one occasion I wrote a Best Man’s speech which, in deference to good taste, I eventually whittled down to the single word ‘juxtapose’) but what do you do when people are crying out to be offended? It would be rude not to…
It is easy to pick out some of the bad bits – I can hear them hit the ground with the kind of ‘clunk’ normally associated with Aunt Nelly’s new hip – but it’s very difficult to be totally dispassionate about what you have just written: it’s like pretending not to be proud when you’ve done a particularly big poo. You know it’s just a poo, but look at it. I mean, just look at it!
As quick as I edit down, I find myself adding new bits to fill the gaps – except (like The Beatles White Album) the filler tends to take up a whole lot more space than the rest. (Come on, I might be the only person to say it, but I’m not the only one to think it!) Should a gag pop into my head, then it has to go in because, frankly, they don’t come along that often, and I somehow have to make what passes for sense out of it, which I do by picking just a few more stitches and adding even more fluff. Except that fluff isn’t necessarily that amusing and what I add is often – even to a man raised on Enid Blyton – soporifically boring, so I try to jazz it up a bit with the kind of asides that, if I’m honest, are far more perpendicular than parallel, which then means that I have to ‘fill’ some more and before I know it, what started out as a fairly short and relatively rational paragraph (possibly about newts) ends up as a thousand words about a dragon – and so few of them cogent.
Anyway, in case you’re thinking that this post itself seems to be meandering along with no thought of any kind of resolution, you might just be right. It was shaping up to be even more bland than afternoon tea with Richard Madeley**, but luckily I think I just found the plug…
*A not entirely successful attempt at cockney rhyming slang for ‘rigmarole’ which I am almost entirely certain I have just made up. **If you don’t know, don’t ask… please.
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:
Getting On 