Two of my deepest held holiday loves, gin & tonic on the twilight balcony and The Times Cryptic Crossword combine to ensure that I spend many hours staring at a half empty grid and a page of clues that make far less sense than they’re meant to. I don’t (yet) resort to the method of an old friend who, when in difficulty, would make up answers – and sometimes words – and if the mood took him, new clues to indicate that his answers were, after all, correct. He took great delight in leaving the newspaper, open at the finished crossword, for all to see. It gave him great delight to think that some poor, beaten soul might turn to his completed grid to help them complete their own, only to discover that the answer to 13 Down was ‘SKRIBLIB’ the clue to which, unlike his/her own copy was ‘Sound made by tongueless frog’.
I love a day on the sunbed, be-booked and all music’d up, and I love the sea, but I do not like a combination of the two. A day on the beach is, for me, as bad as it gets on holiday. (I lie: I once spent a sunbed day next to somebody who played Chris de Burgh all day on a tiny, tinny speaker that actually made my teeth itch. I think I may have tried to drown myself that day.) However, I am one of two, and the other one of two loves a day on the beach, so off to the beach we schlepped. Our beach of the day was a tiny cove, semi-submerged for part of the day (there is a certain frisson to lying on a sunbed as the waves lap ever higher up the legs) and accessed by a five minute scramble across and down a rocky hillside. It was so inaccessible that I was amazed to be charged €8 for the hire of the beds and to be offered a food and drink menu shortly after we decamped. How did they get the drinks down without the ice melting? How did the cream in the doughnut (‘Extra special fresh’) not turn to cheese? How, in God’s name, had a man of my own age got the bloody sunbeds down there in the first place? Had they parachuted them in under the parasols? They didn’t have a toilet though which, at least in part, may well explain the warmness of the sea.
I don’t like sand in ‘stuff’: personal ‘below stairs’ equipment, shoes, teeth and most particularly sun cream. What can be worse than a liberal application of factor 30 over an enormous portion of beach? Skin does not burn, it is sanded off. My wife says that it makes her skin ‘feel alive’. I try to explain that it is only because she has almost entirely removed her dermis, exposing raw, tingling nerves underneath, but to little avail.
She is currently enjoying the last few rays of the dying sun beside the pool whilst I am enjoying the last few watery gin dregs before the ice completely melts and discovering that, today, 13 Down might well just be ‘SQURROX’*.
We like a nice walk in the holiday morning, she-who-deserves-much-better and me. Just a potter, you understand, shorts and flip-flops rather than boots and rucksacks, but it’s always good to get your ten thousand steps in before the first morning beer. Holiday rules are, of course, somewhat more flexible than domestic regulations, and the first beer of the day normally arrives about two minutes after I notice that somebody else has already got one.
Walks here fall into two categories: uneven and rocky coastal paths that lead, via treacherous coves and cliffs, precisely nowhere, and rocky mountain paths that lead to the same place – only higher up. When we get to the terminal point of the-middle-of-nowhere we turn around and try to remember where we came from. (I mean that in the physical sense, rather than the metaphysical – although ‘What the f*ck are we doing here?’ has crossed my mind from time to time.) I’m not sure what it is about cliff tops that always leads me to the edge, but whatever it is, I wish it wouldn’t quite frankly. The conviction that I just might be the first man to actually fly is not an easy one to shake off. It’s the last thing I would do (quite literally) of course.
On our little treks we have encountered many different types of indigenous flora and fauna (often scaly and mostly with many, or no, legs). I recall with startling clarity having to catch a lady who had a bit of a fainting episode as she tried to alert me to the fact that there was a fist-sized spider crawling up the back of my shirt. Unfortunately her swoon brought her into closer proximity to the meaty arachnid and it was uncertain which one of us (and I include the spider) felt the most uncomfortable at this stage. In the end she swiped the beast away with her handbag and we parted with smiles and waves, but no words, as she did not understand English and I did not understand terrified screaming.
On another occasion a friend managed to collect a Praying Mantis of quite alarming proportions and was most put-out because I couldn’t stop laughing at how much it looked like Jiminy Cricket perched on his shoulder (although it was, in his mind, more the size of Long John Silver’s parrot). He had the last laugh on that occasion though, as later in the holiday my wife and I managed to acquire a cicada under our fridge which started calling for companionship at a volume which, in James Bond films, would have brought down aircraft. Nor did it want to leave. In the end it took offence to a liberal spraying with anti-perspirant and made a dash for the door which, thankfully, was open. I think of him (Her? I always think as noisy things as male.) every time I hear cicadas in the trees – which is probably why we don’t walk in the evenings…
As one of my great reader-friends would say, ‘Here’s the haps’. I have been on holiday for a few days – apologies for lack of comments, likes etc during that time – and I decided to write my blog, as normal, but from the beach. In fact, I wrote six short posts, none of them with any particular point or direction, and each of them took about as long to write as I think they will take to read – and for that I apologise. However, whatever their shortcomings, I have decided to publish them exactly as written over the space of the next six days. I hope you will forgive me…
In keeping with my normal routine, by the time you read this, ‘now’ will be ‘then’ – I almost always allow myself at least a week from writing to publishing which does, on occasion, allow the world to overtake me, but also allows me something of an airbag against the possibility of saying something so crass that it does not belong even in my blog. I do read this stuff, so believe me, I feel your pain. Anyway, in the ‘now’ as I write, I am on holiday and hoping to maintain my bloggy routine from a sunbed with a beer and sunglasses dark enough to ensure that nobody knows what I am really looking at.
It is hot here: the sky is cloudless blue and the sun has forced the world into a protective haze of factor 30, ice and alcohol. While some gamely undertake listless lengths of the now tepid pool, most fill the moments between one bar closing and the next one opening by reading. The only conversation a gentle murmur of weather appraisal: cooler tomorrow apparently, less breeze and, yes, get some peanuts while you’re there if you can.
The bodies around the watery margins are a glorious salmagundi of the human form. Some inordinately proud of such flesh as they can decently expose, strut and flex in the sun whilst others, less certain, cover themselves in loose fitting T-shirts and huddle in the shade of sun umbrellas that require the attentions of at least four weight lifters to erect. It is a strange example of the human psyche that only those who really should never wear a pair of Speedos, do.
It is the same sun that turns some of us a glorious brown and the rest of us salmon red: that means that the more ripped amongst us appear sickeningly fit whilst the rest of us adopt the appearance of peeled beetroot. Being of the beetroot persuasion myself, I generally smear myself in more cream that the average profiterole and, in an attempt to prevent curdling, head for the shade of a bar.
We are approaching the hour when the pool empties and everybody heads for shade and food, leaving a single child in a unicorn inflatable, obliviously spinning round and splashing to their own tune. Life for them is long, but still not a moment to be wasted, whilst those of us with precious little of it left stare at the sky and wonder ‘Why?’ The main problem at times such as this is that inspiration does not lie in the majesty of the infinite, but in the man trying – unsuccessfully as it goes – to clamber aboard a pool-bound inflatable in the very middle of an otherwise empty pool. It lies in the diminutive elderly grandma who has decided to join the muscled youths for a game of volleyball. Possibly local, she clearly speaks a different language than the boys, but they all laugh in the same one. I pause in the hope that she might be better than them all, but she isn’t. She is, none-the-less, fully included: a triumph of human spirit and a restoration of faith, and it cheered me up no end.
Here is my understanding: politics is a spectrum and at opposing ends there is Communism and there is Nazism and the thing is… they are exactly the same. (I have the uneasy feeling that I may have peaked too soon here, as that is pretty much where my understanding ends, but I’ll plod on anyway: understanding is very over-rated in my opinion.) So, now I think about it, politics is not a spectrum at all, it is a circle. Whichever direction you take, clockwise or anti-clockwise, if you keep on going and refuse to listen for long enough, you end up in the same place: a totalitarian nightmare. It is so weird that the far right so detests the far left (and vice versa) when they are both fighting for the same thing: disenfranchisement for the majority, vast riches and ungoverned power for the tiny elite. Both of these systems thrive on corruption and function only because those that rule are completely divorced from those they rule over.
It strikes me that these despotic leaderships can only successfully function when the area over which they rule is vast – Russia and China – and probably explains why the Third Reich in Germany were so focussed on the kind of expansion that, eventually (and thankfully) proved to be its downfall. The benefit of magnitude is that things can be hidden. We can only scratch at the surface of what goes on in China, and Putin’s claim to be protecting the world from Ukranian Nazis rings exceedingly hollow when he is at the head of a State that behaves in such a manner. In such a State that the rest of the world is treated with disdain whilst the home population is treated with contempt. Such contempt that they never get to hear about it.
So, here we are, the rest of the world, arranged at various compass points around our political circle. We have a single collective aim: to try to stop every other tinpot dictator from making his way towards the extreme end of the circle (except, of course, circles don’t have ends and if somebody stops you going round to the right, there will always be someone to help you make progress round to the left – unlike the M25, of course, in which case progress in any direction is generally impossible) and to do this, we have the Leaders of the Free World. Let’s look, we have Joe Biden in America, a man who looks so confused it has to be an act and whose greatest asset is that he is not Donald Trump. In the UK we had (until yesterday) Boris, and tomorrow will have who-knows-who to stumble through the next two years prior to an ignominious defeat either in a party coup or a general election. And in France we have a man whose main aim in life is to become Napoleon – if only he could remember which way he needs to turn.
Do not panic fellow Earthlings, there is definitely a way out. Let’s all start building a rocket before the buggers blow us up.
Having recently spent a weekend at a music festival, I have a few questions which I would like you to consider. Please feel free to write your answers on a postcard (neatly please) and then do anything you like with them as long as it is not illegal and doesn’t block the sewer. Now, the sun shone, but in the middle of a large municipal park, it was windy and cold. I was wearing my customary six layers and, if I’m honest, wishing I’d brought a seventh. I was regretting the skinny jeans only because I couldn’t wear anything underneath them. Other than pants, obviously. What kind of festival do you think it was? So, there I was, swaddled but still cold, sitting on the floor next to my wife who was wrapped in a very fetching picnic blanket, contemplating setting fire to my shoes for warmth, whilst large sections of the world milled around me in T-shirts and shorts. They did not look cold. They drank cider and chatted happily without the slightest hint of shivering and I was forced to wonder, do tattoos keep you warm? I don’t have any, because I know that my sallow dermis would flare up post-needle and my precious artwork would wind up looking like an amorphous coloured scab, but I can’t help but wonder if I might be warmer with some. Also, my beard is not long enough to plait. I wonder if that might be a factor.
We had our bags searched as we went in and we were forced to empty our water bottles as the keepers of the gate were clearly unable to discern whether they contained water, gin or vodka by smell alone and they obviously wanted us to purchase both of the latter inside. Water was, as I believe it must be, freely available inside from a single stand pipe cunningly concealed at the rear of the toilet area. I didn’t try any. Clearly the noses that could not separate water from gin could also not separate tobacco from dope because the air was so thick with it that I was transported right back to the Rolling Stones in the seventies. I think that it was encouraged because twenty thousand people with the munchies ensured that the only queues longer than those for the evil-smelling portaloos were those for the various food stalls around the place. More chips, burgers and sausages than you could shake a stick at – not that you would be allowed in with a stick unless, of course, you dressed it up as a giant joint – but my wife craved a salad. I tried to explain that she wasn’t likely to find one, but I dutifully traipsed around with her for some hours whilst she searched and, glory be, in the end she had a burger the same as everyone else. Do burgers keep you warm? No, they don’t.
There were no rows and no fights. There were huge smiles and laughter everywhere. Everybody watched the bands; stood in one another’s way; stood on one another’s feet, apologised and then did it again; smoked what by the end of the day had started to smell like old tyres; drank more pints of cider than there are apple trees; spilled more pints of ciders down trousers than there are pairs of trousers; apologised and then did it again; ate total crap and, whether dressed for the Arctic or The Bahamas, had a great weekend. Is it just that we are all overjoyed to be getting back to some kind of normal, or is it just that everybody’s been waiting the whole winter to get the tattoos back out? As things stand, they have to be cheaper than central heating.
‘…and we’re going to have a party’ (Memory of a Free Festival – David Bowie)
After a period of extensive research and reflection, I have reached the painful conclusion that I do have the tendency to bang on a bit. When I write these posts I generally start with just one thing to say, but soon find myself meandering through about ten others before stuttering to a halt somewhere around a thousand words, which I know is far too many, but it’s just where the guillotine tends to fall. It is the point at which the ideas run out and the denouement, however tenuous, clatters into place.
It’s not in my nature to use one pithy phrase when an inordinately long and convoluted sentence will do just as well: to fully explore the possibilities raised by a single conundrum when I can blithely skim over a dozen more. Still waters may run deep, but I have an almost unrivalled variety of shallows to explore. I see myself skimming a stone across a pond: each time the stone bounces, it slips across the very surface of a subject, but it creates a series of ripples that spread out until they mingle with those caused by each previous and each subsequent skip. It is the intermingling that forms the weft and warp of these little crocheted bedspreads I concoct. I do not have the brain power to dissect and discuss: I am very much a superficial glance man. I am very much aware that when my stone breaks the surface, it will sink without a trace.
So, going forward, I have a plan to start lobbing single pebbles into the pond, so that I might simply trace the few concentric ripples they produce. As long as I don’t get distracted, I should be able to cut myself off at a more appropriate word count, and all before the stone disappears into the gloop at the bottom between the mysterious half-tennis ball and what may once have been a frog. It might not work: I’ve been writing to my accustomed length for decades now and generally things resolve themselves in their own good time. My main concern is that although this new, shortened format might well produce posts that are more linear, more straight-forward and easier to read, they might also be a lot less me.
However, from what I’ve read elsewhere, overlong (as well as badly written and meandering) posts get skipped through and forgotten. I feel supremely confident that by cutting the sheer volume of crap I bombard you with, I will retain far more readers, and my access to vitamins and money-making opportunities will thus multiply exponentially – even as the hyperbole diminishes. In short, I am certain you will agree, the less of me the better. Which brings me to the nub of my current dilemma: it means that I have to get to the point in half the time I currently take and, if I’m completely honest, by the time I have reached five hundred words, I have seldom even the vaguest idea of what that might be. With five or six interwoven themes tangling into some kind or Gordian Knot of bollocks, my crux can sneak up on me without me even seeing it coming. I don’t even have to look for it. But if I have to limit myself to a single notion, one solitary thread, I will have to approach each post with a fixed idea of where it is about to go and where it has to end, and if I’m completely honest it… oh bugger!
The bus was empty, but I knew as soon as I saw him climb aboard, that he would choose to sit beside me. He smelled like a dump in summer and something of which he appeared completely unaware, was moving around under his coat. He tried to release a smile, but it merely flitted across his face like a leer in a convent and as he sat, he turned his entire body towards me as though his head had become fused to his shoulders. He licked his lips revealing teeth the colour of teak. He had eyes like midnight and breath like petrol, his hair sat atop his head like a hat, threadbare, unkempt and matted like a cat that could no longer clean itself, undisturbed since sleep. He pulled a slightly threadbare fur coat tight around his shoulders, just failing to cover the lace neckline of the nightdress he wore beneath it, in an overt attempt to create a small space between us. In his hand he carried a small stuffed toy: a penguin I think, it was hard to tell. His stare forced me to look away and casting my eyes down I noticed that his shoes were several sizes too big for his feet, that one sole flapped loosely, mouth-like, allowing fleeting glimpses of an un-socked foot as he moved his toes rhythmically, as if they were accompanying a song in his head.
I had seen him before walking around the town, unhurried and unbothered by both drunken youths and bored policemen, and I ‘knew’ his story in my head, his name and everything about him. His name, I concluded, was Geoffrey and he had a St John in there somewhere. His surname was double-barrelled, probably featuring a double ‘f’. He was definitely aristocratic, devoted to his mother who had died unexpectedly – probably from Lassa Fever or something equally romantic – leaving him alone, vulnerable and, eventually, here on the upper deck of a midnight bus with me. A mental breakdown between then and now I surmised, life in an institution surrounded by his mother’s furs and nightclothes, and his own childhood toys, but nobody to care when he wasn’t there at night. Nobody to worry.
I offered him a mint which he took with thin, elegant but grubby hands and a nod of thanks. His nails were long and grimy, but elegantly filed into shape. It seemed strange that he should take such care over the shape of his nails, but show no concern over the filth that had accumulated behind and around them. I wondered if he cared for anything else in his life or whether this was the last thing he refused to let go. I noticed that he had worn a ring until recently, the mark still palely traced across his finger, and wondered if it had been stolen from him or whether he had sold it to buy… what? He didn’t smell of booze or cigarettes, just decay. He wore nothing that could have been even approximately new and I remembered that when I had seen him around the town centre in the past he had often worn long, white satin evening gloves, the kind that are only ever otherwise seen on overdressed women at the opera or by the murderer in an Agatha Christie mystery. Where were they now? Had they been taken with the ring?
The bus slowed to a halt and he half-turned his body so that he faced the curved mirror that allowed a view of the bus’s doors below. He seemed fixated on the doors, but they did not open. I guessed the stop was one of those where the driver had to stop – do they call them ‘timing points’? – but I wasn’t sure: I had never travelled the route before. I would normally have got a taxi home, but it was a warm night so I had started to walk, unaware of the rainclouds developing in the darkness above my head. I was sheltering in a bus stop when the bus came along so I jumped on and asked the driver where would be the best place to get off. I won’t pretend that his first answer was altogether helpful, but eventually we found somewhere acceptable so I paid the fare and took a seat upstairs that was, as far as I could tell, out of his view and beyond any unwelcome conversation, where I sat, happily disengaged, until my ‘companion’ stumbled into his seat.
Eventually, after I’m not certain how long, maybe two or three minutes, the bus sighed, juddered into gear and pulled away from the kerb, and my companion dragged his attention away from the mirror. I felt a sudden pressure to speak, but I am the king of the non-committal nod. I have perfected the shy smile and slight eyebrow twitch to such a degree that I seldom find it necessary to actually engage anybody in conversation. It wasn’t going to work here though, was it? I knew I had to speak, but how to start? “You know, you really could do with a bath,” was honest, but not entirely tactful. “Excuse me, but is your name Geoffrey?” might lead him to think that I was confusing him with somebody else – I had no real basis whatsoever on which to assume that it really was his name. How do you start a conversation with a smelly, old man upstairs on a midnight bus that is not open to misinterpretation? “What’s a smelly old man like you doing on a shitty old bus like this and why, in God’s name, did you choose to sit next to me, putting me in this insidious position?” was probably not going to cut it. In the end, societal cowardice dictated my subsequent strategy. “Excuse me,” I muttered, half rising. “I think this is my stop.”
And it was then that I caught the unmistakable glint of reflected light from the knife blade as I felt it nestle uncomfortably against my side. I felt shocked at first, not by the action, but my reaction to it. I knew that I would not be unable to lunge past him and all that I could remember thinking was, “How has he kept that blade so shiny when he can’t even wash his bloody hands?” but I felt it unwise to enquire. I sat down heavily. Should I shout out for the driver who, without question, would not put himself in danger to help me? Strangely calm, I wondered whether this was how it was all going to end for me, on the top deck of a bus with a smelly old tramp, when a sudden realisation hit me, that he probably felt he was just protecting himself, that he himself had felt threatened by something that I had said or done. I raised my arms, palms open, as I believe it is done, and opened my mouth to speak, but he merely lifted one grimy finger to his lips and shushed quietly. “Money, phone and watch,” was all he said.
It is a fact of life that some things become less important as you get older, and one of them is sex. Look, it’s ok, you wouldn’t turn it down if it was on offer, but would you give up a cup of tea and a slice of cake for it? It’s such a lot of fuss. All that… preparation… and always the nagging suspicion that you’re not doing something quite right. It’s fantastic when it works out well for both of you, but let’s face it, so is Sudoku. The temptation to retain at least some items of clothing grows daily – at least a cardigan and slippers in this house – and as mobility becomes more of an issue, it only really works anyway if you’re both laying on your back and staring at the ceiling. There is a growing realisation that a night together on a sheepskin rug in front of a roaring fire would just lead to slumber and the distinct possibility of a cocoa incident. Some things become less urgent and sex is simply one amongst many that takes second place to coffee and a Wagon Wheel*.
Age does bring some form of ‘body confidence’, a recognition that ‘it is what it is’, but seldom the desire to flaunt what now looks like sixteen stones of bleached tripe in front of anybody new. Certain conversations are never welcomed in the midst of bedtime activities: “Ooh, that’s a strange shape, isn’t it? Does it hurt?”; “Do you mind me asking, is that your breast or mine?”; “It’s no problem, I often do that when I bend my legs as well,” so it becomes imperative that any ‘companion’ is fully acquainted with what to expect before you accidentally switch the light on with your elbow and startle the cat.
One of the great advantages of long-term attachment is the absence of terminal embarrassment. How long is it before a partner becomes au fait with all of your physical peculiarities and emotional peccadilloes? I suppose it depends upon how many you have, but after a while it becomes increasingly difficult to surprise them any more. I have attempted to shock my own partner by leaping out on her, stark naked, when she least expected it, but she merely looked me up and down coolly and said ‘Are you going to get the doctor to look at that.’ Her mother though was far more startled.
Ambition is another thing that takes the fall as you age. My grandson is not going to be a racing driver, he is going to be the greatest racing driver ever. He is not going to be a pilot, he is going to be the test-pilot for the fastest jet ever built. He is not going to run further and faster than me, he is going to run faster and further than anybody ever. I retain ambitions, but they no longer involve anybody else. I will run, not faster or further than anybody else, but I will run. I will be a successful writer in that I will successfully write and should nobody else ever read what I have written, well, at least I liked it. I have ambitions for myself, but they no longer impact on anybody else. Nobody is ever going to be threatened by my presence; nobody’s prowess is ever going to be challenged.
There are things, of course, that become more important with age. Comfort begins to outweigh fashion. Velcro shoes, elasticated waistbands, zip-up cardigans, all designed for easy dressing rather than easy removal. Nobody over sixty ever wears buttons because top button never, ever aligns with top button-hole. The doorway to torment stands ajar for those with a button fly in a public toilet. It’s not that you want to look like a dork, it’s just that you know that you will, so you might as well do so comfortably. It’s a thin line we walk between dressing inappropriately young and inexcusably old. Nobody wants to be the man who looks just like his dad – well, maybe in some parts of Norfolk that can’t be avoided – we all want to look younger than our parents’ generation. There is a sudden and unpredictable point at which dressing in fashionable clothes simply makes it looks as if you’re trying too hard: when your whole appearance screams ‘desperate old man on the pull’. Walk into any pub in the country and you will be able to spot the middle-aged man waiting for his Tinder date by the fact that his clothes are ten years too young for him and his haircut is designed for the age he has claimed to be.
It’s a sad fact of life that as some of us live longer, more of us find ourselves alone and looking for new partners with whom to totter off into the void. Dating does not come easily as you get older. First date conversations could make a worktop anxious. We’ve all spent too long being ourselves to start pretending we’re somebody else: “Oh yes, I love to read” (the directions on a microwave meal for one); “I’m a great walker” (the off-licence is just around the corner); “I enjoy an odd glass of fine wine” (and many a gallon of Tesco Finest strong cider); “Oh yes, these are all my own teeth” (my father left them to me in his will). Telling the truth is not really what it is all about, is it? And there’s so much to misunderstand. “Do I want a ‘physical’ relationship? Well, I’ll arm-wrestle you if you like.” “Of course I believe in female equality. Shall we go to yours for a coffee? Mine’s like a shit-hole since the wife died.” “What do I know about the clitoris? Well, I think they make Allsorts out of it?”
In the end, it’s just as well that sex has become less of a priority and the time is right to ask the important question, “Do you like Countdown?” Sooner or later, you will get the right answer and it will be time to get the Hobnobs out. And if she asks you to stay the night, you can always hide her glasses…
*A chocolate-covered marshmallow and biscuit confection that, ironically, everybody believes used to be much bigger than it is now.
“You, my friend, were drunk.” “I was not drunk, Frankie. I have not been drunk in many years.” “You were slurring your words. Were you having a stroke?” “No.” “Then you were drunk.” “Nobody else said that I was slurring my words.” “Well, they wouldn’t would they? They wouldn’t want to upset you, in case you were having a stroke.” “I was as sober as a Methodist christening. I was not slurring my words. I was not drunk.” “You were most definitely not sober. I walked the several miles home with you.” “Several miles? We were only across the road. Eight hundred yards at the most” “As the crow flies, Benny, I’ll give you that. Eight hundred yards in a straight line, but you were not walking in a straight line. You, Benny my friend, walked as far backwards as you did forwards, and twice as far to the side. You were bouncing off parked cars and garden fences like a pinball. You were singing to the lamp-posts.” “You’re exaggerating again. I know what you’re doing. Alright, I had drunk a little – as had you – but I was not drunk.” “Ah well, ok, have it your own way. Have you checked your coat pocket, by the way?” “My coat pocket? What for?” “Why don’t you go and check?” “…A mushroom vol-au-vent. What does that prove? Everybody sneaks food away from a buffet. It’s expected.” “We weren’t at a buffet, Benny. You went through the baker’s bin on the way home. Check your other pocket.” “…What the?…” “Chicken Chow Mien, I believe.” “I don’t even like Chicken Chow Mien.” “I know. You kept bothering a young couple at the bus stop, telling them your life story and eventually they offered you some of their food to go away. You said that you didn’t actually like the fore-mentioned concoction – I seem to remember you showed them how the noodles get under your dentures – but that you’d take some home for the dog.” “I don’t have a dog.” “Indeed you do not. Nor do you have a parrot, but you also took their prawn crackers.” “Oh dear. I must admit, I do have a bit of a fuzzy head this morning, but I don’t remember any of this. Are you sure you’re not winding me up here?” “No. No, not at all… Well ok, maybe just a little bit. The landlord brought out the vol-au-vents after the quiz, that’s where you got that from.” “And the Chow Mien?” “That was from the couple at the bus stop.” “Oh God… What were we even doing at a quiz, we’re both thick aren’t we?” “I believe that is indeed what our teachers told us Frankie. A verdict I have never felt equipped to contradict.” “So why were we doing a quiz?” “There was a prize.” “What?” “A bottle of whisky.” “And did we win it?” “No, but we did drink one.” “I think I’ll put the kettle on. Do you want a tea?” “I wouldn’t say no. If I’m honest I feel a little out of sorts myself.” “Do you want a biscuit?” “Yes, and a couple of aspirin if you’ve got them.” “…Why do we do it?” “What?” “Drink too much. At our age, why do we do it?” “Well, I think that if we were sober, Benjamin my friend, we would not do it, but as soon as we get drunk, then we start to drink too much.” “So you’re saying that if we didn’t start to drink at all, then we wouldn’t drink too much?” “Precisely.” “Well, that’s cleared that up for me then. Here, have a biscuit. I’ve only got Rich Tea I’m afraid.” “Rich Tea? What happened to the Hobnobs?” “I don’t have any.” “You do, I was with you when you bought them yesterday.” “I ate them.” “When?” “Last night when we got back from the pub. I also appear to have eaten several slices of toast and fried my last two eggs.” “You ate your last two eggs?” “You should listen to what I say Francis, perhaps clear some of that wax from your ears. I did not say that I ate my last two eggs, I said that I fried them.” “So what did you do with them then?” “Well, one of them I appear to have put in the fridge with a beer mat and a half-eaten spring roll.” “And the other?” “I have just found in my slipper…” “So are you not going to wash your foot then?” “I think I’ll just sit a minute first. Drink my tea… I might need to take a minute or two before… The yolk, you know… So how many of us did this quiz thing then? I mean, how many were in our team?” “Just you and me old chum. Just you and me.” “So we came last then?” “Oh yes we did indeed. Very. But we did win a prize.” “Really, what?” “This.” “A tiny cup. Very nice. I’ll keep it in my trophy cabinet with all the others. What does it say on it?” “‘Wankers.’” “Oh classy. Charming that. Quite a wag, that landlord, isn’t he?” “He did apologize. He said that if he’d known we were going to take part, he would have had our names engraved on the loser’s trophy in advance.” “Oh well, fair enough.” “Yes, fair do’s, he could have insisted that the losers at least scored some points.” “Did we not score any?” “We never answered any, Benny. We spent the whole night arguing over our team name. I wanted to call us ‘Frankie and Benny’ – everyone knows who we are anyway – but you said it should be something clever and witty.” “And?…” “We couldn’t think of anything… How’s your head now?” “Not so bad. I’m starving mind, how about you?” “I could certainly go a fry-up.” “Come on, I’ll just get this yolk off my sock and we’ll go and get one.” “Ok. I fancy the whole works: fried bread, black pudding, mushrooms… That’ll sort me out.” “Mind you, we did spend quite a lot at the pub last night. If you want, I could warm us something up here instead.” “Oh yes, and what have you got?” “How do you fancy Chicken Chow Mien?”
These chaps are currently my favourite characters. You can find their previous appearances here and here.
Apparently there are only two things that continue to grow, no matter how old a man gets, and these are his ears and his nose. This morning I looked in the mirror and contemplated life as Dumbo. Why does nature arrange for the two things of which I am already most conscious, to become an ever greater feature of my ebbing life (and, as it happens, face)? I suppose if things continue to develop as predicted, I might be able to wrap my ears around my face like a scarf and thus hide my giant conk. Why does age do these wild things to the body? I already have a prostate the size of a football and a bladder the size of a peanut: my brain has more holes than a Boris Johnson alibi. I don’t think that I am losing my memory yet. I don’t think that I am losing my memory yet, but I am acutely aware that my marbles stock is not what it was.
I have developed an alarming tendency to take myself very much more seriously than it is sane to do, so I have resolved to give myself a metaphysical slap around the face whilst I slip a virtual whoopee cushion under my ever-expanding arse. I try very hard to pop my own balloons. My mantra since returning to this bloggy fold has been to lighten up. I’m sixty three years of age, if I had anything of importance to say, I’m sure I would have said it by now. I have a head full of mulch, and if I’m going to start taking that seriously then I fear that an odd loose slate may well prove to be the least of my problems. This little blog of mine has always been about the vagaries of growing old. I write it, and I am getting old. It is a sad fact that, at its heart, it has always been all about me. (When I see that written down, it seems far more vain than it feels. It’s never been intended as a ‘Look at me’ kind of thing. It’s about me casting myself as some kind of ‘everyman’, imagining that if it happens to me, it must happen to everybody else and… Yes, ok, now I’ve read that out aloud it does seem even more vain now than it did a sentence ago…) As a man who is growing old, I feel uniquely qualified to write about what it feels like to be a man who is growing old – and mostly, it feels like this…
Age brings a two-pronged attack with both the brain and the body taking direct hits. Everything I once knew, I still know as well as I ever did – although it often takes a little longer to locate. I can work things out and I can think things through, but I’m sadly aware that the bit of the brain that learns ‘new stuff’ has, of late, developed a tendency to let its attention wander a bit. It doesn’t always remain present for the whole tutorial. It doesn’t necessarily put its hand up when it doesn’t understand what the flip is going on. It might, in fact, be wondering how long it can decently leave it before asking for a toilet break, instead of concentrating on left clicks and right clicks and how to stop taking selfies of its own ears.
I have a laptop at home and I’ve been bound to the countless variations of Windows for many, many years. I use an Apple computer at work and, despite it being for all intents and purposes merely a bigger version of the phone I have had for many years, it confuses the hell out of me. Why does it not do the same things, in the ways that I am used to? It would appear that I can cope perfectly well with the ‘new’ as long as it works exactly the same as the ‘old’. I am not one of life’s great adapters. Nature has not designed me to bend easily to the unfamiliar as I get older. I wonder, in fact, whether it actually intended me to do anything past the age of sixty. As far as life is concerned, I think my work is probably done. We are placed on this earth to have and to raise kids. Many of us have done that now and, with some element of relief, left it all behind us. We are now contributing to the nurture of our grandchildren: other people’s children / other people’s rules. I do not recall that being in the manual when I first became a parent. Grandparent Rules are different to Parent Rules. Who knew that they shouldn’t have chocolate if they don’t eat their greens? Who knew that ice cream and a ghost story is not the right way to tackle sleeplessness? Who knew that we were meant to say ‘No’ so often? As an old man I am well-versed in the absurdities of life: if I can teach my grandchildren to laugh at them, surely that must count for something.
As for the body, well, each successive blow does tend to knock the wind out of me just a little bit more. I can still run and chase well enough to tire out the kids, but I bet that they don’t need a hoist to get them out of bed in the morning. A single head-over-heels does not leave them needing traction. I am of an age when mutating cells conspire to overwhelm me and I would be lying if I said that in the quiet moments the prospect didn’t terrify me, but nobody wants a bedtime story from a fearful old man, so I become the me who is not concerned and therefore, by extension, not old. Growing old is just what happens. As the strap to this blog says, whatever its drawbacks, growing old is better than all the other available options. Life is not a battle: it is all we have got. It is full of love and laughter as well as an occasional pain in the back and a strange tic in the eyelid.
So we do what we do: we ease our conscience by buying a funeral plan – because we always wanted a free Parker pen – and in all other respects we completely ignore the specifics of what lies ahead. We learn to live for the day, and even with the realisation that ears the size of satellite dishes do not allow us to hear the television without cranking the volume up to eleven, we laugh about the fact that everybody mumbles these days. Surely a nose of this size (and growing) should mean that quite shortly I will not snore anything like so loudly during the Antiques Roadshow.
And if I’m honest, I’m not exactly certain how much bigger my lugs and hooter can get before I start to get blown over by the wind, but as long as I can still find a pinch of salt to take with my life, I think I’ll just about get by…
Getting On 