New Folk Songs

It is well over a year since I published my last ‘poem’ at which time I decided that I had bitten off more than I could ever have chewed and that I would be perfectly happy if nothing in the world ever rhymed again. The songs that follow are definitely not poetry, but they do rhyme. What they sound like is up to you – although one of them, at least, has a tune that you might recognise. Be creative. Stick your finger in your ear and sing through your nose whilst I go get the cider…

The Gardener’s Lament

Begonias, petunias and purple columbines
Hydrangeas, photinias and orange clemetines
Bulbs and rhizomes, little seeds:
Plant them down and tend their needs.
Water them to make them grow,
Keep the weeds down with a hoe.
Celebrate each little bud,
Protect the stems with splints of wood.

The snails will visit with the slugs
In numbers that will make us mugs –
We gardeners who trust to luck
The treasure we plant in the muck.
However much they’re worth you know
Invertebrates won’t let them grow:
They’ll eat your seedlings overnight.
And all your beds will look like shite.

So out we go with torch at night,
With hatred that we know will harden,
To find the buggers in the light
And throw them onto next door’s garden.

Geraniums, delphiniums and pastel phlox,
Nasturtium, and allium and pink hollyhocks
Bulbs and rhizomes, little seeds:
Plant them down and tend their needs.
Water them to make them grow,
Keep the weeds down with a hoe.
Celebrate each little bud,
Protect the stems with splints of wood.

At night the bloody cat will prowl
And dig your seeds up with a howl
That says ‘I’m going to sit right here,
On all the plants that you hold dear
And when I’m done, I’ll bury it –
This steaming little pile of shit –
Where you will find it with your nails
Upon the morn whilst picking snails.’

So out we go with water guns
To catch the bleeder while he’s napping
To drench him when he tries to run
And hope that that will stop him crapping.

But in the end, you can always tell he
Will laugh in your face when he’s shit in your wellie (Repeat x3)

The Old Rover

I bought the old Rover at the end of last year
After saving my money from whisky and beer.
I pushed in the key and I got it to start
With a sound not unlike an electrical fart.

To the end of the drive was as far as it went
Cos the engine was shot and the axle was bent,
The window fell out when I opened the door.
I put my foot down and it went through the floor.

So I went to the seller and I said ‘It’s a joke.
This car you have sold me is totally broke:
The wipers fell off when it started to rain.
The roof is a sieve and the sump is a drain.’

He laughed in my face when I gave him the key
‘If you’re wanting a refund, then don’t look at me.’
It was then that the bumper fell onto the floor
Oh I never will buy an old Rover no more.

And it’s no nay never,
No nay never no more
Will I buy an old Rover,
No never no more.

I tried to drive off, but I was stopped by the law
So I never will drive the old Rover no more.

So it’s no nay never,
No nay never no more
Will I buy an old Rover
No never no more (Repeat ad nauseum)

Fruit Song*

An apple a day keeps the doctor at bay
A banana might frighten the nurse
A ripe tangerine
Makes the Registrar green
But a kumquat will make him much worse.

A greengage or plum makes a midwife quite glum
A lychee might turn her to drink
A sweet nectarine
Might appear quite obscene
To the average sub-Freudian shrink.

Psychiatrists feel that a lime has appeal
And a pineapple can be quite cute
A lemon can ease
The desire to sneeze
Whilst the prune takes a diff-er-ent route.

There are few who can reach the allure of a peach
Whilst a raspberry’s sex on a cane
A strawberry just
Makes my mind fill with lust
And a gooseberry drives me insane.

Let’s shout hip hooray for the doctors who say
That a mango is good for your sight
There are some say a fig
Makes your manhood grow big
Well you never quite know, it just might.

The Scrumlops Fall

When the scrumplops fall
And the Jaspers** call
Tween galls that froth
On tinstance broth
Then I will find the limpon quay
Full snore and we at twenty three
Wherever snile will stand in grome
And litterbuss will guide us home.

Some bastard has let me bike tyres down again (Repeat x3)

*The Fruit Song was written many years ago for an ill-starred project with John Junkin and Crispin Underfelt. I don’t think it ever had a tune. I’m happy for you to make up your own – just don’t ask for royalties!

**I have just remembered that when I was a boy, wasps were known as jaspers. I have no idea why…

In addition to the 52 short rhymes that made up the Zoo, you may well be able to find other bursts of cadenced prose from me by looking for ‘The Haphazardly Poetical’. This, if you’re interested ‘An Appreciation of Poetry‘ is my favourite.

Serendipity

It all started with a Second World War TV docu-drama in which a gaggle of soldiers (mostly female, I noted, dressed in the kind of uniform that would today almost certainly be sold by Ann Summers) pushed wooden ships and tanks around a map of Europe using what looked like croupiers rakes, when a sudden memory of Michael Bentine’s Potty Time flashed across my mind:add a soundtrack of silly voices and dozens of mini-explosions and you were there in all the sense and purpose of war.

Thoughts of Bentine, of course, brought me onto the great Milligan. The two of them (together with Peter Sellers and Harry Secombe) co-created the seminal radio comedy The Goon Show, but sadly quarrelled in the 1950’s reportedly after Michael Bentine attempted to have Spike removed from the show due to his ‘erratic behaviour’. Neither, it would appear, was able to forgive and according to Spike, they did not speak again until the day before Bentine’s death by which time, I fear, it was too late for either of them to rebuild burned bridges. The genius Milligan continued to write and star in The Goon Show until some years later when, as it was concertedly trying to kill him, he moved into TV and books, where he did ok, all things considered.

My own connection to Mr Milligan is via a gossamer thread which, not unusually for me, also suspends the indomitable Crispin Underfelt. We were writing a radio series together at the time and, young, green and fearless as we were, we wrote to Spike to ask if he would read what we had written. Amazingly, he replied immediately saying that he would be happy to read a script and he would comment and advise where he could. Overjoyed we parcelled up the single episode that he requested and, with a prayer to the Gods, sent it on its way. Alas, when the MS arrived back a few days later, clearly unread, it was accompanied by a letter from Norma Farnes (Spike’s minder, agent, manager and later, biographer) stating that Spike did not read or comment on the work of other writers, end of. We were upset at the time by the terseness of the response, but later came to realise that Spike was having one of his difficult times mentally and Ms Farnes was doing what she always did: keeping the lid on.

It was during one such ‘difficult time’ that Spike famously threw a heavy paperweight at his then co-writer, Eric Sykes, which missed its target, smashed through the office window and crashed down onto the thankfully empty pavement five stories below. Sykes had been drafted in to help a then ailing Milligan with Goon Show scripts for series 5 and 6 and was, in fact, the sole writer on many episodes. (Sykes commented that he always felt that with Spike, madness was only ever an arm’s length away.) The paperweight incident was precipitated by a disagreement over a single word – neither of them could remember which – but anybody who has ever co-written anything with anyone will understand the tension only too well*.

Unlike the poor, benighted Messrs Bentine and Milligan, Mr Sykes (as he sometimes allowed me to call him) did occasionally have the pleasure of my company. Our first meeting was at the back door of my father-in-law’s pub, which was directly across the road from the theatre and a regular haunt of those performing there – largely long after what was then a legally enforced ‘closing time’. When the pub was closed at night, the back yard was tar-black, unlit, and all-in-all not the place to be, so I opened the door with some trepidation in response to the insistent knocking, to be faced by a tall man in a black homburg hat and full-length black, astrakhan-collared coat. All I could see was the glowing tip of a cigar, the size and intensity of a fallen sun. ‘Is Bri’sy in?’ said the voice which I immediately recognised as not being that of Hattie Jacques, in a tone not unlike a five year-old asking a friend’s mum if he could come out to play. I ushered him in. Brian (my father-in-law) and Eric were golf pals, playing along with Jimmy Edwards who, my father-in-law swore, had a small trolley attached to his golf bag in which he carried around a fully-stocked array of his peri-round liquid ‘fortifications’. Eric Sykes was the antithesis of erratic: always Sykes, always amusing and always at the very epicentre of any group of which he was part, despite being almost completely deaf. I suppose that genius always has its price…

…And then I awoke mid-reminiscence, to find myself mid-Newsnight instead, with Kirsty Wark presenting stories from Ukraine and allowing me to witness for myself the kind of monstrous harm and destruction that can be released by one unhinged man, and I couldn’t help but wonder when the croupiers rakes might come out again…

*I don’t think, incidentally, that Mr Underfelt and I actually ever ‘fell out’ over a script. We often had different ideas, which we were prepared to argue in favour of, but ultimately we always reached a settlement with which we were both happy, nary an angry word passed between us. Mad ideas man and embittered old hack in perfect accord…

A couple of weeks ago I lamented that, other than John Junkin, I had no names to ‘drop’, when I suddenly remembered Eric. It doesn’t matter that nobody who remains within their first half century of life will remember either of them. I do…

N.B. I cannot recommend highly enough, for people of a certain age, Eric Sykes’ Autobiography ‘If I Don’t Write it, Somebody Else Will’ – even though he doesn’t mention Brian – and Norma Farnes’ (who, incidentally, was also Sykes’ manager) record of her thirty year relationship with Spike, ‘An Intimate Memoir’. Although neither of them mention me…

Yesterday

I don’t want my grandchildren to grow up in my world, I want them to grow up in their own, but I would like them to remember that my world did exist: that it is (on my timescale) a bare few seconds since if your car broke down in the middle of nowhere (which still existed back then) you might well have to wait hours, if not days, before being found; that if you were running very late for an appointment you would have no opportunity to explain until you arrived in time to find that everybody else had gone home. That if you wanted to talk to anybody at all that was not within touching distance, you would have to stand in the freezing cold hallway where the one phone in the house was tethered to the wall, counting the pennies off in your head as the conversation meandered on.

The mobile phone – now the ‘smart phone’, unless you have to rely on it – has made the biggest difference to my life, but it is, of course, nothing new to my grandchildren. It is just as it has always been. They do not remember once-upon-a-yesterday that if you wanted to speak to a person in the next room you actually had to get up and walk there, or at least raise your voice a bit. They do not remember that if you took a photograph you had to wait days before you discovered that it was of your thumb. They do not understand that if you wanted to win a quiz, you had to know the answers.

There is nothing new to this: we are all afforded a present that would have been unimaginable to our forbears; it has always been the same. I recall buying a pair of roller skates for my eldest daughter and suddenly being struck by the fact that at her age I had only ever been in possession of a single skate which I scooted around on to the detriment of whichever foot my other shoe was on at the time. My parents had food that they did not have to grow themselves, clothes that they did not have to make, lives that they did not have to lay down. We move on.

But it is at our own peril that we forget what came before. We live in an age where it is acceptable not to know something because it ‘was before my time’, as if history only extends as far backwards as our birth. It could not be more wrong: we forget slavery, war, apartheid, The Beatles, famine, starvation, Van Gogh, disease at our peril. If we forget Hitler, we leave the door open for his successor. If we forget Mandela, we close the door on his. Everything that came before us is part of us, everything that we take for granted is because of yesterday.

Somebody once said that ‘Those who forget the past are doomed to relive it.’ Who? I’m not sure. I’ll just have to look it up on my phone…

I’m sorry this is late. I will let you decide whether the glitch is mine or WordPress (Hint: it’s mine!)

Grandparenthood

Grandchildren are quite unlike anything else in life: at once a reminder of both age and youth; of innocence and guilt; of cynicism and wonder; of joy and… well, joy if I’m honest. They are your children’s gift to you, and proof that you at least got something right. They simultaneously delight and exhaust. Their progress through life without brakes is breathtaking, following a rationale and a logic that it would take an Einstein to either follow or deny:
“Grandad, can we go outside and play football.”
“Well, not just now, it’s chucking it down.”
“Later then?”
“Yes, later.”
“But what if it’s still raining later? You said we could play football today.”
“OK, well if it’s still raining later, we’ll play football anyway.”
“Grandad?…”
“Yes, alright I’ll just put my shoes on…”
Yesterday, when I was in what passed for – at a very cursory glance – my prime, when my own children saw me, albeit briefly, as a superhero, I was still young enough to be one. By the time my grandchildren first saw me in the same light, I was old enough to realise that any attempt to live up to it could prove fatal. I could kill myself just trying to squeeze into a leotard. Just attempting to hoist lycra over my midriff could bring on a stroke. None-the-less, this could be my one chance to be Superman without the attendant risks associated with confronting anything more threatening than a bottle of ketchup in the hands of a four-year old or a toddler with a full nappy. Grandchildren don’t care that you can’t fly: their love is unequivocal. Mind you, they are unusually prone to coughing in your face.

The devastation caused by a three-year old with a wax crayon sometimes has to be seen to be believed. My children constantly tell me, “You would have gone mad if I had done that. With them, you just redecorate.” It might well be true, but only because it requires less effort. The great privilege of being a grandparent is that you do get to say ‘Yes. Why not?’ much more often than you did as a parent. It is expected. You are shorn of the responsibility of parenthood: allowed to know that sometimes what is best for the child is not always what is best for the child: that another afternoon slumped in front of Peppa Pig will not actually kill either of you; that there is nothing wrong with just being daft from time to time; that if they really won’t eat anything other than chocolate, well, at least it’s something. I know that it won’t stay like this forever: soon enough they’ll be too big to ‘climb upon my knee’ and I will become the smelly old man they have to visit sometimes, when their conscience gets the better of them. Not so much forgotten as sidelined: a ‘do you remember when…?’ by-line in their lives. It’s just how it is.

Obviously, when they’re more thrilled to see me waiting for them at the school gates than their parents, it’s awful – but on the other hand…

Grandparenthood is a gift, but it is, never-the-less, a twenty-four hours a day job and once you qualify there is no going back: you are forever grandad. Fortunately, the only cost is a constant availability for cuddles and conversation – not too onerous is it? This is a topsy-turvy world we are living in, but when a four-year old grandchild inveigles their way onto your knee and falls asleep, there is not too much wrong with it, if I’m honest.

The Alarm Call

Photo by Aphiwat chuangchoem on Pexels.com

When I woke this morning, I was cooking flatbreads on a tropical beach with a friend who was telling me how to identify lab-grown salmon. The recollection is crystal clear, but it is ring-fenced: I cannot remember a single detail more, I cannot illuminate you further except… wait, yes, the salmon came in little oval cells, like Ibuprofen capsules. They looked like giant pink mouse droppings on the plate.

Why? I have no idea. I have strained to find an explanation. Who was the friend? I really don’t know. Why do I (presumably) associate them with food? Ditto. Why was I cooking flatbreads and why did both my unknown friend and I think that they would be a suitable accompaniment for what appeared to be fish-flavoured Tic-Tacs? And the beach? Well, it felt like it was tropical, but I really can’t be sure: it was a dream, who’s to say that the palm trees weren’t plastic?

The alarm clock went off at precisely its normal hour. I am usually prepared for it, already half awake, my hand heading towards the ‘Snooze’ button before the first inane chortle of the Breakfast DJ. This morning it took me by surprise, caught me fully asleep and sounded a clarion ‘Beep’ rather than its normal Radio 2 burp. I was bathed in sweat: clearly caught mid-dream. Maybe that’s why I presumed the beach was tropical.

Clearly I pressed the wrong button in setting the alarm the previous evening (Although why, I cannot begin to imagine. I have had the alarm for years and have always primed it in exactly the same way, uneventful night after uneventful night.) and the unaccustomed electrical siren startled me into wakefulness rather than allowing the soothing tones of the breakfast DJ to lull me, as usual, back into a micro-sleep, before waking me in time to press Snooze just one more time.

I seldom remember anything I dream, so this adamantine recollection, although fragmentary is – pardon me – alarming. Why was I dreaming it in the first place? It must surely have had some foothold in the day that preceded it, but I cannot think of a single instance that would lead me down that particular gustatory path. I cannot think, either, why I was so fully asleep when the alarm sounded. I always wake in advance of the alarm, even when the time is an unaccustomed one. Was my mind so distracted by this particular dream that it quite forgot its primary function of preparing me for wakefulness before the bloody clock shocked me into it?

It has bothered me all day. It has set synapse against synapse in my poor enfeebled noggin: wakeful elements attempting to tease information out of the uncooperative elements of the occipital lobe. If there are neurons up there that know the secret, they are not letting on, and such elements of my mental faculties that I am able to muster remain, like me, completely in the dark. It bothers me. I fear it might keep me awake at night…

I was standing at a public urinal today, mulling this situation over as my mind and my bladder emptied in unison, when the person to one side of me – how shall I put this – vented with some gusto. Instantly the man to the other side of me said ‘Blimey. I don’t know what it is mate, but whatever it is, you’ve dropped it.’ I laughed so much I had to dry my shoes…

Nothing to Report

I have spent so long writing about what happens to me that I have quite forgotten the nub of my problem: nothing ever happens to me. I am not an adventurer or a socialite, I cannot report from the centre of the Amazonian Rainforest nor the shadow-lit back booth of a reality star lined nightclub. I do not move in the kind of circles that would allow me to report on the foibles of the great and the good. I walk about a bit, occasionally I trip. I don’t have much to say. If I start a post with ‘It rained this morning’ it is not the prelude to some fantastical recollection of a financially overloaded neighbour building himself an ark on his back lawn, it is merely a statement of fact. End of. I don’t know anybody who has been into space: most of my friends can just about manage the Co-op. If I made attempts to ‘drop names’ they would not hit the ground with much force.

I have a steady readership that just about troubles double figures and the nearest I have ever been to going viral is when my wife had a cold sore. I have never attempted to make money out of this thing – I fear, if I did, I might end up in negative equity. For all those bloggers who decide to ‘follow’ me in order to sell me the means to make my fortune out of blogging, I can only say that I really wouldn’t bother if I were you; this is exactly all this blog will ever be: an exploration of nothing in particular, the odd trip into wishful thinking and an occasional wander through the land of make-believe. All I can do is meander around anything that I think might amuse you and allow you to do the same for me. I won’t change what I do in order to make money because a) I have nothing to change it to and, b) nobody in their right mind would pay for it if I did. Anyone that actually reads this over an extended period will already know quite enough about me, thank you very much. In the case of yours truly, less is definitely more.

I run, but I am not a runner. I am not going to buy protein drinks, mega-vitamins or super-shoes. Try me on Mars Bars. I don’t need professional counselling or well-being advice. I need chocolate and wine and diversion. I do this thing simply because I want to. It’s what I do. I’d like to think that I occasionally raise a smile, but I seriously doubt that it is anything that anyone would ever pay for. (How would I charge: a pound a grin? Would I have to offer refunds to the straight of face?) If I could become rich through people laughing at me, then I think I might already be loaded. I would be very happy to ‘make $millions’ from this twaddle, but unless thousands of people suddenly decide that they want to learn about everything that never happens to me, it’s just not going to happen.

I will carry on telling you about the meagre salmagundi of my life, about the dustbin men, the gas fitters, my maladies and my hobbies; I will continue to bore you with my rose-tinted recollections and half-baked theories. I will implore you to educate me whenever bafflement with daily existence proves to be too much for me to process. In short, I will continue to report at some length on my vacuous self and you can choose whether you wish to read it or not – and all without charge.

One day, I’ll write a post about it…

The Flu Jab II

I do learn, but it is often a very slow process. Every now and then I publish a Little Fiction, often dropping back in on characters that I love writing and every time that I do so I am surprised to learn that nobody else is in the slightest bit interested in any of them. I write an odd Guide to… and I am often quite overwhelmed by the sheer apathy that they engender. A couple of weeks ago I prattled on about my annual flu jab for a few hundred words and not only was it (by my own very modest standards) very well read, it was the welcome subject of much WordPress conversation. What I have to learn is that I am obviously at my most engaging when I have nothing to say. Thankfully, that is quite often.

So, today I am reviewing my life, peering deep into my insignificant soul in order to find something with which I can divert you for a few minutes. I have recently had my Autumn Covid Booster, I could tell you about that I suppose, but I’m not quite certain that the world is yet ready for ‘Flu Jab II’, even if the lady did drop my vaccination card into the Sharps Box. Oh how we laughed!

I am lucky enough not to have been made ill by it and so do not have to take the Paracetemol that the nurse recommended. I am happy about that: I think my liver is up against enough already.

Anyway, with Autumn on my mind, on getting home from the vaccination centre, I set about getting my bike ready for the winter e.g. chiselling the old batteries out of the bike lights before refixing them to the frame as close as possible to the light-clips that I broke getting them off. I cycle a bit, not in a Tour de France kind of a way, but more in the manner of Norman Clegg from Last of the Summer Wine. I do not ride a finely tuned racing machine. My proudest boast for my bike is that the wheels match (or at least they’re both round). The frame is probably best described as ‘robust’ in that it appears to have been made from old scaffold poles. It weighs more than my car. I have a lock for it, although God knows why. If I am honest, it is probably worth more than the bike.

I’m not terribly keen on all the peripheries that appear to come along with a pushbike: I have a helmet that I wear whenever my wife is looking and a set of lights that actually make my surroundings look darker. I have a bell, but its little ‘dinger’ is stuck. Not that I ever go far. The local Co-op is about as far as I ever dare trust the tyres – the inner tubes have had their integrity challenged more often than the government. They probably constitute the world’s greatest repository of Rubber Solution. I’m sure that, if I asked them, the W.I. could probably crochet me new inner tubes that were more airtight.

I’ve ridden much worse, of course. I come from a time and a place where bicycles were generally assembled from bits and bobs found in the bottom of hedgerows. It was rare to have wheels of the same size and saddles were most definitely optional. Mostly these construction were ‘fixed wheel’ and without brakes. If you wanted to stop, you had only three choices: a) slow the pedals – perfectly effective unless you were moving at speed or downhill in which case you’re most likely to break at least one of your legs, b) launch yourself at the first available friendly looking privet hedge or c) throw yourself at the ground and prepare to tell your mum that your trousers were shredded by the pixies.

The current bike, despite its wilful intransigence, is rather safer to straddle than those of my youth, and I am more than aware that any attempt to use a fixed wheel now would almost certainly lead several hours in a clapped-out ambulance before the fortuitous death of an impoverished pensioner allowed me access to a hospital bed.

As I said, I do learn…

Monochromatic Me

Despite the fact that I know nobody will read them, I cannot resist the urge occasionally to write ‘guides to’, be it History, Subversion or Gardening; I just can’t pass up the opportunity to expostulate on what I know nothing about whilst my readers showing, as usual, far greater insight than I, do not bother to read in their droves. (Earlier in the year, having decided once again that I just ‘couldn’t do this anymore’, I stopped posting altogether and still scored more readers than I did last week!) I love to write these things but, weirdly, according to WordPress, what my readers most want to read about is me – and there is so little of it to go around. My life is so uneventful that it could be a Zoom concert by James Blunt: why anyone would want to know anything about it I cannot imagine. None-the-less, my life is an open book – albeit full of empty pages. If somebody were to make a film of it, I would be the intermission – Pearl & Dean would not concern themselves with the insertion of various advertorial mini-epics in preparation for my main event – never-the-less, every now and then, as fascinating as I find myself, I have to take a break from it and, ironically, the cinema is the ideal place to do so – isn’t it?

Well no, of course it isn’t. Somebody – possibly the God of Pissing Off Older People – has seen fit to change it all. There was a day – almost certainly pre-decimal currency – when I loved a diversionary couple of hours at the pictures. It was while I could choose my flavour of Poppet by the scoopful; before anybody even thought of salting the Butterkist; before some bright soul changed a Mivvi into a Solero. It was a lifetime before a trip to the cinema became the stress-fest it is today.

It starts with buying the ticket. I don’t want to choose where to sit. I want to be given my ticket by the en-kiosked, pinch-faced woman with the creosoted hairbun and all the charisma of a mackerel fillet. I am happy to be told where I will be sitting. Just give me the simple choice, ‘Stalls or Circle?’ I do not want the pressure of selecting row and seat number. I’m going to wind up seated behind a giant anyway. I really don’t need to choose where I’m not going to be able to see the film from. Just give me a ticket stub and a woman with a torch to light my way. Just give me a pack of Olde English Spangles to suck in peace.

I don’t want to sit behind somebody eating nachos through a megaphone. I really don’t want to sit in front of a family of four sucking eight gallons of Coke through a sump. I do not want to sit aside two people who are determined not to let the main feature get in the way of a perfectly good conversation. Who goes to the flicks to watch a film: that really is not the point at all. Who wants to focus on a screen that is smaller than the TV in an average student flat? Who wants to surrender concentration, even when the volume is cranked up to nursing home levels? I honestly do not need to know what’s coming up soon – I won’t be coming back.

And tedious my life certainly can be at times: it is not destined to be next year’s big blockbuster. It cannot be CGI’d into a Technicolor rollercoaster. Watching it through bi-coloured spectacles will not make even the slackest of jaws gape. The kind of mini-incident that punctuates its steady progress will not trouble a stunt double. The only thing that ever breaks it up is exactly the kind of thing that nobody wants to read.

And all in all, I’m probably happy with that…

Business as (Almost) Usual

My brother died.

He was younger than me. It was unexpected, it was sudden and it knocked me sideways, but fourteen days have now passed – it is, I know, no time at all – but I feel that it is none-the-less, the right time for me to start to settle back into what must pass for normal.

You see, my problem is that I see the absurd in everything and even the most painful of circumstances do not put a block on it. Everybody else’s problem is the same one – me. I have learned, of course, that just because I have seen it, I don’t necessarily have to say it, but I have also learned that popping the balloon is, occasionally, exactly the right thing to do.

I have been through these situations before – too many times (and I carry the knowledge that there will be many more to come) – and always, when despair is at its worst, we have laughed. It must be part of the human condition. It must be how we cope. It is why The Wake can sometimes become such a riotous occasion. When we are wretched, when we are sad – even more so when we are terrified – there is always the feeling that a giggle is not too far away. Somehow, all extreme human emotions channel into the need to laugh. We huddle together, we look on helplessly and hopelessly and we search for something to break the mood. Nobody wants to turn tragedy into Music Hall, but everybody senses the point at which the deceased would have laughed too.

Laughter does not stand apart from grief. It runs side by side. It is an inalienable element of coping. Joy and anguish are interwoven threads through which we look both forwards and backwards.

I cannot tell my mind how to think – we both know who is in charge there – but I do realise that I am not being disrespectful by looking at my own life in these circumstances. Nobody expects me to stay sad forever, nobody wants me to be sombre. In the darkness, I am most definitely not the light: I am the coffee table that skins somebody else’s shin. I am never the way, but I am often the diversion. I would love to cultivate gravitas, but I am stuck with child-like curiosity. I will not make jokes about my brother or his life, but then I would never have done so anyway. There are no circumstances under which I would seek to devalue the depth of pain being experienced by his wife and children, but I am equally certain that they understand that in discussing my own oft irrational responses – how I cope with this and all aspects of my life – in no way diminishes my appreciation of their loss.

I hope that from today, as far as this modest little smorgasbord is concerned, I can return to business as almost usual. It will change nothing – that is not within my gift – but it will help my brain to re-establish some sense of equilibrium. Life changes, but it goes on, and somehow I cannot stop myself from watching it…

The Full and Unexpurgated History of England* to the Best of My Knowledge (part three)

Sadly, despite the huge advances made in technology, medicine and Reality TV over the last two centuries, the years covered by this final short (although, dare I say, authoritative) record is dominated by war.

1815 A.D. – The Battle of Waterloo. Although not fought on British soil this battle marked a turning point in British history as its resolution marked the start of a prolonged period of peace in Europe. Britain, Prussia and allies fought for the preservation of sovereign state power, whilst Napoleon sought to create a single European state, which just goes to prove that long-term view doesn’t always win the day. It did, however, lead to the consolidation of The Holy Roman Empire (which was actually none of the above) into the increasingly hyper-nationalistic German Confederation – and we all know where that led. Britain gained many overseas territories from France which became strategically important naval bases in the maintenance of its Empire – so, that’s good then – although the ultimate winners were Abba. The defeat at Waterloo still rankles in France – although, if I’m honest, it’s pretty difficult to find anything that the French are not annoyed about. In modern politics, France is renowned as the most well-balanced of all Euro-powers, having a chip on both shoulders.

1914 – 1918 A.D. – The Great War (World War One) was not actually a truly global war, but like its predecessors, The Seven Year’s War and the Napoleonic Wars, it did have global consequences. It was the first truly industrialised ‘total war’ although almost all of the fighting took place in Europe between two groups of ill-trained young people who really didn’t want to be there. It is commonly known as World War One because otherwise World War Two would find itself completely out on a limb. The blindness of The League of Nations, formed in the aftermath of the war, to the rearmament of Germany in response to the punitive reparations imposed upon them contributed directly to the Second (actually first) World War in 1939. In fact many leading historians claim that the whole period from 1914 to 1945 should be seen as a single conflict with just a pause in the middle to allow for the replenishment of cannon-fodder.

!939 – 1945 A.D. (British time) The Second World War (known in America as World War II as it sounds better in films) took place between two totalitarian, expansionist regimes and the rest of the world. Ultimately Britain (with the help of its late super-sub USA) and Russia beat Nazi Germany in Europe and Robert Oppenheimer beat the Japanese. Following the war, world peace was maintained by means of the Cold War and with repeated threats from all sides to blow the hole sodding shebang to pieces. The modern world is now dominated by three military super-powers who are perpetually at odds and George Orwell is spinning in his grave.

1982 A.D. – The Falklands Conflict. This was not actually declared a War by either side (UK and Argentina) as neither was sure that the insurance was up to date. This conflict provided a shrivelled-up UK with its last opportunity to flex military muscle in order to preserve its sovereignty over a small group of islands which would almost certainly benefit from closer relationships with their geographical neighbours. The Falklands was ceded to Britain in the aftermath of Waterloo and at the time of the War (there, I said it) was home to 1,800 people. Some 900 people died in the fighting (including 5 civilians) the majority of them dying at sea. Since this conflict, the UK has managed to fight other countries only in its capacity as America’s official lap-dog.

Since 1982, of course, the world has enjoyed an uninterrupted period of peace, love and understanding, whilst England, through political stability and financial prudence, has re-established itself as the dominant global power of the age.

N.B. I can only apologise if my interpretation of events is at odds with your own. Loathe though I am to admit it, I do occasionally get things wrong.

*This is not The History of Britain because I have no desire to thoroughly piss off the people of three other nations.

I hope I will have my head in the right place to resume my normal blog next week. Thank you for sticking with it!

You can find part one here and part two here.