Frankie & Benny #4 – The Birthday

“It’s your birthday Frankie my friend, so you choose. What should we do today?”
“Well now Benjamin, that’s a tricky one. I mean the world is so full of opportunities, isn’t it? We could take a cruise on our private yacht. We could have lunch in our favourite restaurant in Paris, dip our toes in the water at St Tropez, perhaps fine wines and an evening with Barry Manilow in Las Vegas… or we could perhaps walk a slow circuit of the park…”
“…Like we always do…”
“…drop in at the pub for a pie and a pint…
“…as ever…”
“…home for an afternoon snooze…”
“…the same as always…”
“…and then a film on the TV at yours or mine with a couple of cans of beer and a microwave chicken curry…”
“…just the same as every Saturday.”
“ Ay… we like it though, don’t we.”
“We do, but don’t you think that we should do something just a little bit different as it’s your birthday?
“Like what?”
“I don’t know, it’s your birthday, you choose.”
“Well ok. We could… I can’t think of anything.”
“Oh come on. Use your imagination. We could go to the pictures.”
“The pictures, yes, that’s a grand idea. The pictures. We haven’t been to the pictures in years. What’s on?”
“Erm, let’s see. There’s ‘Nope’.”
“Nope?”
“Yes.”
“Is that the name of it? Of the film? What’s it about?”
“UFO’s I think.”
“Oh no. I can’t be doing with all that pie-in-the-sky mularkey. There are quite enough little green men in the pub of a Saturday night. Isn’t there a Western on or something?”
“There’s ‘Where the Crawdads Sing.’”
“What’s a crawdad?”
“No idea?”
“Oh. Well, who’s in it?”
“Erm, let me see here. It says Daisy Edgar-Jones, Taylor John Smith, Harris Dickinson and Garret Dillahunt…”
“How many people is that?”
“No idea.”
“Have you heard of any of them?”
“No.”
“There must be something else.”
“Well, there’s the new Top Gun.”
“Ah, I saw the first one of those.”
“And did you like it?”
“No.”
“Oh, we used to love the cinema though, didn’t we? Back in the day. You and me, two young ladies, a tanner each in the back row, a newsreel, a cartoon, a ‘B’ film and a main feature – a proper cowboy or cops and robbers…”
“A choc-ice at half time and ten minutes necking if you were lucky before the usherette turned her torch on you.”
“Necking?”
“Ay, canoodling, you know.”
“I remember the choc ices. The chocolate always fell off in the dark. You always came out of the pictures looking like you’d shit yourself.”
“I never could be trusted with chocolate, Benny. I think that’s why they invented the Milky Bar, so it didn’t show up so much on my beige loons.”
“Oh, you loved those loons.”
“And my brown suede Hush Puppy boots.”
“It used to be great, didn’t it, to get dressed up for a night out I mean?”
“Part of the fun, my friend: the matching shirt and tie, the drape coat…”
“…the tank tops and the cork-heeled shoes.”
“Perhaps that’s what we could do today, for my birthday: we could get dressed up, hit the town. Maybe we could have a more sophisticated lunch…”
“A ploughman’s, perhaps.”
“King prawns in our curry and perhaps hire a DVD instead of watching whatever old tosh is on the telly.”
“Do you have anything to play a DVD on?”
“No.”
“No, me neither. It’s all Netflix isn’t it now.”
“Have you got that?”
“No. I’ve got channel 4.”
“OK. That’ll do. We’ll watch ‘Bake Off’.”
“No, come on, let’s do it. Let’s get dressed up and head out for town. We might meet some ladies.”
“Oh, I’m not sure about that Benny. I’m out of practice at all that. I wouldn’t know what to say.”
“Let’s not worry about that for now. Let’s just get our glad rags on and promenade.”
“Glad rags?”
“Sunday togs. Let’s do it.”
“I’m not sure. I think my best cardigan might be in the wash.”
“Come on, let’s just make the effort. Trousers without an elasticated waist, shoes without a tartan Velcro strap, you could take your vest off for a start.”
“I always wear a vest.”
“Over your shirt?”
“Oh, I must have got a little out of synch this morning. I woke up needing to… you know. I had to rush into my clothes. It’s freezing in that bathroom. I’ll move my vest under my shirt, change my trousers, put some shoes on, will that suit you?”
“Maybe gel your hair a little bit. So you don’t look quite so much like you’ve just got out of bed.”
“Gel? I don’t think I’ve got any gel. I’ve got some Vaseline from when I had that rash.”
“That’ll do. Instead of walking round the park and back to the pub, we’ll go straight through, maybe to that wine bar on the other side, and we can feed the ducks on the way.”
“Do they do pies?”
“The ducks?”
“The wine bar. Do they do pies?”
“Oh no. Sophisticated dining there, Francis my friend, couscous I shouldn’t wonder.”
“Couscous? What the hell is couscous?”
“No idea, but I’m sure they’ll do it with chips.”
“And beer?”
“Lager. Fancy lager. In bottles…”
“Ah what the hell. It’s my birthday. Let’s give it a go. I’ll go and get ready.”
“You’ll need a coat, mind.”
“Really?”
“It bucketing it down.”
“Oh, I’m not sure about my best shoes in that park when it’s raining: it’s a quagmire at the best of times. Full of dog shit as well if you’ve not got your wits about you.”
“Yes, you’re right. Maybe not your best shoes.”
“And trousers?”
“Elasticated ankles might be wise.”
“Perhaps we could just go straight to the pub.”
“It’s much nearer.”
“I’m not really over keen on ducks, truth be told.”
“No. Quacking little bastards.”
“Our age, it’s much more sensible to get out of the rain as quick as we can. We could catch our deaths.”
“We’ll do that then, and after that we’ll come back here for a cup of tea – I’ve got a pack of those Breakaway biscuits…”
“…and maybe a bit of a nap by the fire…”
“…chicken curry for tea and a couple of cans with the film on the telly.”
“Sounds great… I can’t think of a better way to spend my birthday, old friend.”
“It’s always good to ring the changes. Cup of tea and a Kit-Kat before we go?”
“Great. Put the kettle on, I’ll go and change my vest and find a clean cardigan…”

These are my two favourite recurring characters, and a joy to write. If you want to find more of them, you can catch them here: A Little Fiction – Frankie & Benny; A Little Fiction – Goodbyes – Frankie & Benny #2; A Little Fiction – The Night Before – Frankie & Benny #3

A Dog by Any Other Name

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Back in what we must now call ‘my day’ (and was, until quite recently called ‘my father’s day’), whenever your thoroughbred bitch found its way through the wire netting that surrounded the back garden and managed to fashion a tryst with a similarly footloose and collar-free dog, the resulting offspring were known as ‘Mongrels. Free to good home. Will be drowned if not taken’ and held in such disdain that the canine parents stood every chance of having their Kennel Club registrations summarily revoked and, as far as the male was concerned, being parted from all that he held most dear – not to mention licked most often – by the vet. Mixed parentage was something that was definitely not encouraged by the guardians of the cropped tail, the snub nose and the viciously highly strung. A certificate most certainly would not be granted to anything with a name home to anything less than four hyphens and a pedigree that could be traced back to one of the hounds that lay at King Arthur’s feet under the round table, waiting for cast offs of venison, grouse and wild boar; that had rooted for fleas at the side of Lancelot and attempted to mate with Merlin’s leg every time he settled down on the couch. These days, if you take a £100 poodle and send it off on a ‘we’re all adults here’ singles weekend with a £150 Labrador, what you end up with is a litter of £2000 Labradoodles, three million ‘Likes’ on Facebook and a pied-à-terre in Tuscany. How canine times have changed.

And I realise that there must be some sort of official formula erm… formulated for deciding the names of these Nouveau Hybrids (I’m pretty sure that the male comes before the female – oh come on, don’t make your own jokes up please – and I can’t apologise for it, because it is not my fault!) but, come on, somebody’s having fun aren’t they? Why is a Cockerpoo never a Spandle? Surely there are breeders all over the world racing towards the kind of breeds that the more laconic of dog owners would simply die for: a Jack Russell and a Shih Tzu – a Jack Shit; a Jack Russell and a Labrador – a Jackdor; a Great Dane and a Cocker Spaniel – a Greatcock; a Shih Tzu and a Pit Bull – a Shit Pit…

It would seem that whilst humans are deeply (and rightly) opposed to eugenics, we are very happy to tinker about in the gene pool of all other creatures. I remember as a child reading about a Tigon (a tiger/lion cross – as opposed to a lion/tiger cross which is, apparently a Liger) being born at a zoo somewhere at much the same time as a Zedonk (zebra/donkey – as opposed, I assume to a Donbra) providing, presumably, something for the Tigon to chew on. These sort of hybrids seldom appear in the natural world (I’ve a feeling – although I’m not to be trusted on such things – that tigers and lions actually exist on different continents, making the possibility of natural hybridization of this type somewhat remote without one of them being very lost indeed). It is the nature of humankind (and let’s face it, whether you subscribe to the views of the scientists, in which scenario serious pre-history crossbreeding took place with Neanderthals, Denisovians and at least one other yet to be identified hominid species, or you subscribe to the view of Theologians, in which case, seeing as we are all descended from Adam and Eve, some serious inter-familial hanky panky must have occurred) to interfere with things that really ought not to be interfered with, simply because we can, and because we love making up new names for new things.

I am most definitely not against this sort of thing occurring – I’m sure that in almost all cases it is desirable, if not actually essential to evolution – I just feel as though it ought to happen naturally. If your Chihuahua wants to cosy up to a Bull Mastiff (providing all proper consent protocols are observed) just let them get on with it. Love will find a way and, let’s face it, the world has to be a better place for having Bullhuahuas in it.

Holiday Posts

At some point in the recent past, present or near future, I am (have or will be) on holiday for two weeks with the certain conviction that I will not be following my usual writing routine whilst I am away. Consequently, I have to approach (or have already done so) the two week gap with six posts up my sleeve which I can schedule to entertain you in my absence. Some of you, I’m sure, will spot them (or you may already have done so) generally, I would guess, because of what they don’t say, what they don’t address, and although I will try (or possibly have already done so) through my lack of response to comments. For that, I apologise in advance (or possibly retrospect). OK, enough of this tense hopping nonsense. Whenever I am writing this, it is ‘now’ to me. Before, after or during, the more perceptive amongst you will probably have worked it out long ago anyway.

When I have the time and my mind is in the right place – e.g. not turning itself inside out over things upon which it can have absolutely no influence (everything) – I can write copious amounts. It doesn’t make it good – for me passable is always a triumph – and editing out the bad bits and tarting-up the decent takes much longer. Pieces that I like might hit the blog on the day of writing whilst more troublesome pieces can take many days and much ink before they pass muster (e.g. I’ve got nothing better). Consequently, the pieces I have left to post whilst I am away are generally those that I have been fussing over for weeks: adding jokes, removing jokes, cutting, pasting, deleting, retrieving, unknotting Gordian Knots of syntax, trying again until I lose all sight of whether they have anything to offer or not. Because I have rewritten the gags a thousand times, I see them coming (which is just as well as most people don’t see them even after they have long gone) and the whole thing becomes polished, but lifeless (like Donald Trump’s head). You understand what you are looking for now? Good luck with that.

The strange thing (for me at least) is in realising how different my tastes are to your own, because very often these holiday pieces are received very well, getting more likes and comments than the pieces that, in my excitement, I can’t wait to get out there. I have tried sitting on everything whilst I work on it, but that generally means that by the time I post it in all its polished glory, time has completely passed it by. I am seldom topical, never on-point and there would be no point in publishing a tract about, for instance, the insanity of a country having a complete buffoon for a leader, when the two biggest have already gone. (You work it out.) Topical gags, like a summer oyster, have a very short shelf life and can, in retrospect, have similarly distressing after-effects. Things that are funny now, should remain funny for all time and that can be accomplished by avoiding topical gags, demeaning language and satire. (Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Father Ted, Fawlty Towers and Dinnerladies*) Sexism and racism are never going to win you friends (except, of course, the kind that nobody wants). I try very hard to avoid satire as it has a troubling tendency to appear spiteful in print (and I’m not bright enough to fully understand the difference between satire and sarcasm anyway) and I am not: I am chilled, relaxed, laid back, happy and on holiday (or was, or will be…) You decide.

*The Office, Dad’s Army, Extras, The Royle Family, Blackadder, One Foot in the Grave, the oft forgotten Rev and the truly wonderful Mum

Paper Tiger Burning Bright

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So, contrary to my normal routine and against what we must, for now, call ‘my better judgement’ I have just read through Wednesday’s itinerant whinge and I feel it incumbent upon me to publish this short clarification: I am not a climate change denier. I totally accept that it is happening and that my generation is in no small part responsible for it – I was raised on tropical hardwoods and disposable plastic. These days I compost, recycle, buy loose, check air-miles, grow my own veg and don’t eat anything with a face on (unless you count that very odd looking potato that I had last week) but I am no paragon: I eat cheese, I eat milk, I eat honey and, from time to time, I do emit a fair amount of methane. And I use paper to write on. I don’t think that makes me a bad person: maybe not ideal, but surely not bad.

I use both sides of my paper – don’t be silly now: I mean to write on – and it goes in the recycle bin when it is done, but I do know that recycling paper (like the bottles I insist on buying my beer in) uses a lot of energy – although not, I hope, as much as starting afresh. I really want to do my bit, although I don’t expect to be carbon neutral until some time after the crematorium’s incinerator has done with me.

I am a man of my age: I grew up reading Fahrenheit 451 and I understood that book burnings were a regular feature in the history of authoritarianism: the ancient Greeks, the Romans, the French, the English, the Germans, the Chinese, the French (again), the English (again), the Germans (again), the Chinese (again), the Russians (who arrived late to the game but, never-the-less made a fair old fist of it), the Germans (who appear to have developed quite a taste for it), the Americans, the Christians, the Jews and the Muslims have all had a go at it and I think that, all in all, it is seldom seen as a good thing. Books are burned to stop people learning, to stop people understanding, to diminish opportunities and impoverish the mind. It is an act of mass, symbolic vandalism that cannot be matched by a government sponsored Kindle hack.

Even today there are societies where the inflow of information via the internet is so tightly controlled that dissenting voices are never heard, that those in whose name atrocities are almost daily committed, never know of them, but books, simple ink on paper, still find their way into lives and into minds and those whose minds they enter are forever changed, forever enriched. (I’m presupposing here that it is a truth universally acknowledged that nobody objects to the mass torching of Jeffrey Archer tomes.) As Montag learned in Bradbury’s dystopian masterpiece, the printed word holds a truth and a power that nothing else can replicate. Books are too important to be reduced to a stream of ones and zeroes. Read books, treasure books and when you’ve done it, swap them for other books, because if we all turn away from the printed word they won’t have to burn it to stop us reading, they will just have to turn them off, one by one, a click at a time…

…If I’m honest, I’m not quite sure of where that came from, it is not what I intended today, but it is what I scribbled onto my little pad of once-used paper scraps and something you can only read via the magic of the internet, so if it saves you lighting matches, then at least I feel as though I’ve done my bit…

Paper Tiger

It has been quite a while since I have had to whine about my inability to identify anything suitable to whine about. It takes me right back to the dark days of Lockdown, and my fixation with pens, CD’s, very old sit-coms, and ice cubes. The certainty then, that except for the workers of Downing Street, nothing was happening for everyone, at least provided a starting point: there was no experience to write about except for the lack of it and that was universal. I spent so long gazing at my own navel that I now have a stoop. It was not even possible to watch the world passing by outside the windows as the world was banned from doing so. We took our thirty minutes daily exercise on a circuit that began and ended at home and involved crossing the road every time we encountered anybody else doing the same thing, we banged our pans with everybody else as we enjoyed the two minutes of weekly ‘community’, applauding the NHS on our own doorsteps, and it was there to write about and everybody understood it. My gift for the inconsequential was suddenly useful because the inconsequential was the only escape we had from the very consequential and, for once, we all needed it.

Tonight I have nothing and I am struggling to find a way in which to write about it. Having spent the last few hours staring through the window at the slowly encroaching landscape of new-build where, for forty years, I have looked out onto fields and trees has taken my mind away from everything. NIMBY it might be, but I cannot help but grieve over the loss of something which I have held dear for two-thirds of a lifetime. I will get used to it, much like I get used to my inability to smile without revealing un-bridgeable gaps; to spend a day with the grandkids without needing gin; to read the dire warnings on my medication without needing a strong magnifying lens, a bright light and even more gin. It is often easier to embrace change than to welcome it. I don’t want to be old, but I do want to get old.

I have tried, for a bit of a change, to put my pen to one side, to stare at a blank laptop screen, hands poised above the keyboard like arthritic spiders, waiting to pounce upon any notion that might pass their way, but it doesn’t work for me. I crave paper. I can’t doodle on the laptop. Deleting is nothing like as cathartic as ripping it up and starting again – although it is more sustainable. Everybody, from the bank to the window cleaner tells me that I should go paperless, but I’m not quite fully on-board with the logic yet. You see, I remember from my youth when huge forests of coniferous trees were planted to provide us with paper, and I am aware that scientists now believe that these are detrimental in our fight against climate change. In short, they need to chop them down and replace them with broad-leafed trees. Having chopped them down, I’m sure they can’t just leave them lying there can they, so they might as well make paper out of them. At my best estimate, I don’t suppose I’ve got much more than a couple of trees left in me now and my oak planting record is a good one, so I’ll keep on jotting my whines to paper (as soon as I can find something to whine about) – even if it does mean that, for now, the world is just that little bit more full of hot air than it used to be…

A Wastrel’s Guide to Housework

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The dedicated shirker will always find it advantageous to make a clear mental note of where things are placed by their partner. (The assumption that without a partner no dusting would take place, is implicit.) Slightly moving or even swapping over a couple of prized ornaments can save many housework hours, providing you remember to remove any dust ring that may have been left behind. A simple apologetic ‘I’m sorry, I must have moved them while I was dusting’ will remove any suspicion that you were not, in fact, dusting at all, but actually sat with your feet on the coffee table watching Homes Under The Hammer and eating sweetcorn out of the tin. As well as ridding you of the necessity to dust anywhere else – all scrutiny of your dusting-prowess will have been lost in the scramble to find out where you have misplaced other treasured items – you may well find that you are never tasked with the job again.

In a similar fashion, you will be able to get away with the most rudimentary of Hoovers, providing you remember to misalign a few mats, move a coffee table or two and ensure that, here and there, the vacuum cleaner leaves clearly visible wheel lines that disappear under the furniture and do not stop at the edge. A skilled skiver will be able to pass off a basic flit around with the Dyson as the most thorough of spring cleans with nothing more than the slight skewing of the settee, the misalignment of dining chair and a clear line disappearing underneath the most easily moved piece of furniture in the room. Stair carpets can be rendered ‘vacuumed’ by simply roughing up the pile here and there with a rubber soled shoe and picking up any dead woodlice. Even if you do not plug it in, never leave the Hoover quite where you found it.

If, in your rush to watch a twenty year old repeat of Agatha Christie’s Poirot, you failed to load the dishwasher, do not panic. Simply turn it on and claim that the other pots would not fit in. Offer to unload the machine when it finishes and send your partner off for a bath with a chilled glass of wine. Whilst he/she is there, rattle as much crockery as you can before loading the unwashed pots in. Accept the Brownie-points on offer for both unloading and reloading with a modest shrug. He/she may not even notice that you have broken their favourite mug, drunk the rest of the wine and got biscuit crumbs all over the armchair. (If your partner is a great lover of scatter cushions, simply shake them about a little bit and put them back on the wrong chairs. All comestible detritus will lay un-noticed as pillows are put back to ‘where they should be’ with an affectionate ‘Tut!’)

As you will almost certainly fall out of bed some considerable time after everybody else, it will be incumbent upon you to ‘make’ it. If you have a partner this will involve straightening and retucking the sheets, fluffing the duvet and plumping the pillows. If you do not have a partner, what’s the point? Pick up pants and socks from the floor and throw them in the wash basket, from which they can be rescued after you discover that you have run out of clean ones.

If you don’t open the curtains, not even the window cleaner can see in.

Gas (The Meaning of Life #4)

“…The thing is,” asserted the man in the Cavalry Twill overcoat, wiping foam from the tip of his nose with his sleeve “that it’s not our fault, so there’s no way we should have to pay for it.”
“Who should pay for it then?” asked the man in the Meerkat T-shirt. “Who is responsible?”
“Napoleon,” said the man in the moleskin waistcoat.
“Napoleon?” laughed Cavalry Twill. “Napoleon? He never even had electricity. He wouldn’t have had to take that Josephine on campaign with him, eating all the cake et cetera, if he’d had e.g. an electric blanket with him.”
“Napoleon ordered his army’s tailors to put buttons along his soldiers’ cuffs to stop them wiping their noses on their sleeves.”
“A dapper man that Napoleon,” said T-shirt. “Wouldn’t have liked shiny sleeves.”
“Except on a mohair suit,” said Moleskin.
“Except on a mohair suit,” agreed T-shirt. “Par for the course on a mohair suit.”
The man in the Cavalry Twill overcoat carefully picked a stray peanut from his lap and ate it in quiet contemplation. “Putin,” he said at length. “Putin is responsible for the current situation viz-a-viz the having to burn all the downstairs doors in order to keep warm scenario. He should be made to pay our energy bills.”
“He’s got deep pockets, I’m sure,” said Moleskin, “but I doubt that even he can afford to pay everybody’s gas and electric.”
“Not everybody’s,” said C.T. “Just those as need it. Just those who e.g. have to keep their wossname knitted gilets on after they get back from the pub. Just those who have to, for instance, get rather closer to their spouses in bed than they would ideally like to for the shared heat of a hot water bottle. It could, in my opinion, be classed as a war crime.”
“Are you mad?” said Moleskin, a thousand tiny blood vessels popping gently behind his eyes. “Stark, staring mad? You do know, don’t you, that there are actual war crimes being committed out there? That people are dying?”
“Putin denies it.”
“Well, he would, wouldn’t he.”
“He’s not denying messing with the gas though.”
Moleskin stared at C.T. for a long time. He opened his mouth to speak, but decided it would get him nowhere. He looked to Meerkat for support, but he was preoccupied with examining the tip of a pencil he had just extracted from his ear. “Another pint?” he asked at length.
“Thought you’d never ask,” said C.T.
Moleskin stood slowly and lifted the glasses from the sticky table one at a time.
The man in the Cavalry Tweed overcoat carefully brushed down his sleeves. “I mean, it’s alright for some isn’t it?” he said.
“What do you mean by that?” said Moleskin, fighting to ease his ever tightening grip on the fragile glasses.
“Well, you management types,” continued the man in the overcoat. “It’s alright for you.”
“I’m not management!”
“He works in the same place as you,” said Meerkat. “Same job.”
“He wears,” said Cavalry Twill, “a tie under his overall. He has clean shoes. He has pens in his top pocket…”
“What have my shoes got to do with anything? I do exactly the same job as you,” said Moleskin, the cilia on the back of his neck rising as one, like the rioters at a Donald Trump rally. “I get paid exactly the same.”
“But without the overheads.”
“I’ve got a mortgage, two kids at school, a wife who holds down two jobs to make ends meet, a nine year old car that’s in worse shape than Elton John’s toupee…”
“No dogs though,” said C.T. “No satellite T.V.”
Meerkat looked alarmed.
“We barely watch the T.V.” explained Moleskin. “We get all we need from Freeview. And we listen to the radio a lot.”
“Oh can’t you see them of an evening,” sneered C.T. “Reading books and listening to The Archers. Drinking Earl Grey tea and dunking those Barramundi biscuits…”
“…Garibaldi,” said Moleskin.
“What?”
“Garibaldi. The biscuits are Garibaldi. Barramundi are fish.”
“Really?” I suppose they told you that on Radio 4 did they? ‘What’s My Fish’ was it, with him off the news?”
“I don’t care for raisins,” said Meerkat. “They get under my plate. I have to poke them out with a crochet hook.”
Moleskin glared. “Is that really the point?” he asked.
“Well, not for you perhaps,” said C.T. patting Meerkat softly on the shoulder. “You’ll have a dentist no doubt. Properly fitting dentures. Porcelain crowns I shouldn’t wonder.”
“A gas powered toothbrush,” said Meerkat, suddenly getting a feel for things.
The man in the cavalry twill overcoat and the man in the moleskin waistcoat stared at him, slack jawed, for some time. “A man could dehydrate waiting for you to get them in,” said C.T. at last as Moleskin departed for the bar with a resigned shrug.
“Do you think that Putin will pay my gas bill?” asked Meerkat. “I don’t mind if he doesn’t stump up for the electric. We’ve got an electric cooker – I’d save a fortune on burned food.”
“It could be a true test of his communist convictions,” said C.T. “From each according to his means, to each according to his needs.”
“You don’t suppose he’d pitch in a bit towards the rent as well, do you?”
“I thought you owned your house.”
“Well I do,” said Meerkat. “Technically. But he’s got a lot on his plate at the moment hasn’t he, that Putin, what with going mad and everything, perhaps he wouldn’t notice. I don’t suppose he’d be too particular with his paperwork. He doesn’t seem to be that bothered about petty bureaucracy does he?”
“Well no, I suppose not. He’d want a bit of the property though, wouldn’t he? If he was going to pay the rent I mean. Somewhere with easy access to next door in case he fancied a piece of the action there sometime. Some means of reaching next door but one…”
The man in the moleskin waistcoat returned with three pints of lager and placed them carefully on the table.
“So, if Putin’s not going to pay for the gas then, who do you think will?” asked Meerkat.
“Search me,” said Moleskin. “We all will in the end I suppose.”
“Or go back to how things were a hundred years ago.”
“We’re already on the way I think…”

I’d probably like to say that these three are a joy to write, but it’s more true to say that they are a gift when you want to tell everybody exactly what you don’t want to say. They have also appeared in The Meaning of Life: Supplementary Philosophy (The Meaning of Life #2): Ancient Greeks (The Meaning of Life #3)

Doppleganger

I’ve got a fairly normal (if slightly porcine) and unremarkable face. (An ex-employer once suggested that I should go to work for the clothing company Fat Face, ‘Because you’ve got one.’) But for some reason, people continually think that I am somebody else. I work in a shop and I have often been faced by customers saying ‘You’re that bloke off the telly aren’t you?’, although few of them seem quite able to put their finger on exactly who. Most often (generally when I am wearing contact lenses) they think that I am ‘the bloke off Homes Under the Hammer’ or, if bespectacled, one of the ever-growing roster of experts from the similarly expanding catalogue of ‘Antiques’ programmes that clutter the daytime viewing schedules. Some become quite agitated, convinced that I am clearly moonlighting and being unduly coy in owning up to who I am when they have so clearly caught me at it. My denials are so much in vain that, by and large, I no longer bother.

On holiday this year one waiter took to calling me John as he was struck by how much I resemble John Lennon. I do not (nor ever have – even when he was alive) in any way look like the erstwhile proto-Beatle. I am not as tall as he, nor as thin. I do not have his angular face or nose (in that particular facial compartment I much more closely resemble W.C. Fields). I have ginger hair! All I do have, currently, are small round glasses. It’s not enough is it? A few years ago I was bothered by a fellow hotel guest who really did (rather more disturbingly) believe that I was Elton John. I will not bother you with all of the things that separate he and I, but I did wear at that time large red spectacles: short, fat, could be a wig, might have had a facelift, teeth done etc, must be Elton John. He seemed to think that I was denying it just to preserve my privacy. (And please bear in mind here that this all took place in a hotel that I could afford to book into. I suspect it would have been of too humdrum a standard for even Sir Elton’s wig primper or third comis chef.) He was not to be denied however, so I sang him a chorus of Rocket Man – that did it.

A few weeks ago we were in a park with the grandkids and I wandered past a couple of families picnicking on a large rug. I was aware of a certain amount of nudging and covert pointing – enough that I felt obliged to check my flies – and indiscernible whispering, but nobody actually said or did anything to cause concern. Except that when I walked past them on the way back a few minutes later the whispers of ‘It is him…’ and ‘I told you so…’ were quite distinct. I had to pass them a few times after that and on each occasion there was nudging and whispering and the growing determination that I really was whomever they thought that I was. I toyed with talking to them but, come on, why would I want to spoil their day? They had a story to tell their friends. ‘You’ll never guess who we saw in the park today? He was a bit older than I thought: shorter, fatter and a bit more ginger, but it was definitely him. I’d know those glasses anywhere…’

Being English

I am English. I could not suppress my emotions any more than I do without standing on a chair. If I internalised any more, I would turn myself inside out. In adversity I gnaw my stiff upper lip to a stump and, on a really bad day, wring my hands silently. I do not make a scene. I am not even really keen on appearing in somebody else’s. I am so uptight that I do not need a belt. If there is anything about which I am not embarrassed, I am yet to find it. If God had been English, at least one of the Commandments would have been ‘Thou shalt not stand out in a crowd’. An English Jesus would have still gone ahead with the Resurrection, but he would have been dreadfully embarrassed about all the fuss.

Being English means that I do actually conform to just about every national stereotype you can think of: I will queue, quietly and placidly, even when there is nothing to queue for; I will observe all of the rules, even if nobody else has the slightest idea of what they are; I will chat happily with anyone about anything, providing it is in English; I will smile benignly at anyone who has not had the foresight to prepare themselves for a chat by learning English. I realise that nobody is personally to blame for not being English.

When I was a boy, Englishness was something like a suit of armour that you wrapped around yourself (I am fully aware of the physical impracticalities involved in wrapping rigid metal around oneself, bear with me) but today it is more of a universal acknowledgement of bewilderment and frailty: a virtual red flag that says ‘Whatever it is you are trying to explain to me, I will listen politely, but I will almost certainly not understand. I am English. Sorry.’

And historically, of course, we have much to apologise for – although I don’t believe that I, personally, was responsible for any of it. From conquest to slavery, exploitation to xenophobia, ‘Carry On’ to Simon Cowell, we have blighted the world in so many ways, but we also gave it football, cricket, rugby, fair play, The Beatles, Monty Python, Marmite, Stilton Cheese, scones with clotted cream and jam (or possibly jam and cream, depending on where you come from – I know it is terribly important, but I don’t know which is right) Eddie the Eagle, Judi Dench, Bobby Charlton, the National Health Service, real ale and The Queen. We have a small number of brainless morons – every country has them – but somebody has to govern.

What I’m trying to say, I think – I can never be sure – is that we’re not all bad. Historically we have been responsible for perpetrating some inexcusable wrongs, but we’ve also generally been at the forefront of efforts to stop them. I can feel ashamed of what my forebears might have done, but I can’t erase it. In the present, our victories as a nation are few so we do tend to bang on about them quite a bit – if the world is not yet aware that we won the women’s Euro’s, it soon will be (if only because Germany are insistent that we cheated [again?]) – but I do think we also gave the world ‘laughing at ourselves’ and the nobility of the valiant loser.

Am I proud to be English? Of course I am, it’s who I am, but it doesn’t mean I have to get all emotional about it…

Upon (Another’s) Reflection

Come on, everyone looks weird in a selfie don’t they?

I caught a photograph of somebody (I can’t tell you who – it was Courtney Cox) on the internet looking absolutely nothing like herself and I started to wonder if people have mirrors any more. We’ve all seen (if you haven’t, they’re very easy to find) any number of pictures across the internet of people made unrecognizable by plastic surgery and are left with the question ‘Why?’ Mostly these were very beautiful or handsome people, presumably desperate not to age, who spent many, many thousands of pounds in making themselves look much, much worse than they originally did. Who ever looked better after repeated surgeries? OK, you have a crooked nose – so have it straightened, and then STOP. Most Hollywood stars now look simply weird. Who convinces them that they will look better with skin stretched like Clingfilm? Who fails to tell them that in a few years time, the Clingfilm will look like it has been under a hairdryer? Generally speaking, the stars that age the best are those who just age.

There are many photographs of formerly normal looking people who, following costly cosmetic procedures, look barely human. If they look better now than they did pre-tuck and fill, I would honestly encourage them to sue their parents. It is like a gambling addict chasing the losses. The worse these people look, the more they seek to correct it. The more they seek to correct it, the worse they look. Anyone of my age in the UK will remember the scene from the series Spooks when Helen Flynn had her face pushed into a deep fat fryer. (It was one of those TV moments that had you eating the cushions.) Imagine paying thousands of pounds to achieve the same results. How unfriendly must their mirrors be?

I toyed with accompanying my three blogs this week with this recent photograph of me, taken last week at a wedding, for this one reason, simply to prove the veracity of what I have to say: no oil painting, but not quite milk-curdling*. In the end I used it just today as I felt it unfair to put anyone off three meals in a week. If you had my face looking back from your mirror, you would not be ecstatic, but you would probably learn to live with it – even if it meant racking up the multiples of ‘seven years bad luck’ as you patrolled the house with a hammer. There are many things I would be happy to change about me – most prominently my personality, but I don’t think such a procedure exists, except in politics – I wish I had a slimmer, shorter nose, less porcine eyes, teeth that look less like stalactital remains. My forehead, I fear, has moved beyond the bounds of Botox correction and would, instead, probably require complete replastering. But would I actually do it? Would I want to look in the mirror and see somebody who patently isn’t me – even if they did look much better – or would I just start seeing other things that were wrong with my appearance: the bags under my eyes, the scars on my brow, my many many chins and would they bother me even more alongside my otherwise improved visage?

Frankly, I think I’ll just live with what I’ve got. I feel lucky that I have not had to pay hard cash to end up looking this botched-up. I’ve had plenty of time to get used to how I look; it doesn’t really bother anybody else and it does help to keep the cats out of the garden. Besides, if I had any Friends, I’d want them to still be able to recognise me…

*I only just noticed, seconds before publishing, that I had originally typed ‘milf curdling’, which is almost certainly grounds for divorce, if not actually illegal…