A Little Fiction – An Item (Dinah & Shaw part 10)

Although, unofficially at least, an item, Dinah and Shaw had kept their own separate homes. The fact that Shaw slept in the office, was his reason for keeping Dinah’s name off the door – it would lead to confusion within the organisation of the Royal Mail he insisted – an inaccuracy she countered by sticking a large Post-it across the glass during office hours when she was, for the most part, alone with the phone and a laptop that was, for reasons known to Shaw alone, permanently connected to a Scandinavian server which had a default ‘wallpaper’ that left her feeling giddy and not a little nauseous. She considered herself a woman of the world, but not necessarily that part of it. Each Google search had to be translated into something that vaguely resembled English before she was able to make use of it. All attempts to use Google Maps to plot a route stalled at the earliest possible stage as the software refused to let her begin her journey from anywhere other than Copenhagen. She had not been able to afford data for her phone since meeting Shaw – a relationship with Shaw came along with few certainties other than poverty – and utilising the only local source of free internet access she could find ensured that she constantly smelled of kebab.

Most of her ‘work’ hours were spent fretting over the payment of bills. Shaw’s tendency to insist that his investigative methods only really functioned in full effect when he stumbled into cases rather than being employed to solve them meant that she was often left bereft of anyone to invoice. Dinah, for her part, contributed all that she was able; taking what money she could for locating lost cats, flyaway budgies, errant husbands etc, paying bills only as failure to do so became increasingly critical. Shaw painstakingly kept for himself all of what he considered to be the ‘big cases’ – although he seldom gave Dinah any indication of what, exactly, they might be and they rarely added anything other than expenses to the company accounts. On the few occasions Shaw called on her to help him, he did so by furnishing her with the very minimum of information possible. Often she had to adhere to Shaw’s own methods, taking the first bus she encountered and getting off somewhere that, for reasons unknown, seemed the right place. Sitting in a café with the dregs of a cup of coffee hoping that something might take her attention: that somebody might, in some indefinable way, strike her as suspicious. Hoping that she might find somebody to follow before the café owner (again) remarked on the fact that she had spent two hours over her latte and that he had placemats that were more profitable than her.

It was to her undisguised chagrin that whenever she did encounter somebody she felt there might be some point in following, she invariably found that Shaw was following them too, although he always claimed to have been ‘on to them’ first. Shaw always complained about this duplication of efforts but Dinah was always quick to point out that a) there was no discernible effort put into such ‘tailings’ by Shaw, who, as far as Dinah could tell from his crumpled ‘expenses’ at the end of the week, seldom left the pub and b) as nobody was paying for either of them, what difference could it possibly make? “When we find out whatever it is that we’re looking for,” was Shaw’s stock reply, “then whoever wants to know it will pay us.” To be fair, they often did, but almost always after it had cost Dinah Lunch and a bottle of wine. From that point on, although working together, they always worked apart. Their methods of tailing a suspect could not have been more different: Dinah employed stealth – ducking into doorways, hiding behind newspapers, carefully observing her suspect in shop window reflections, taking mobile phone photographs whilst pretending to be absorbed in a protracted phone call – whilst Shaw wandered around aimlessly, hoping that, in the fullness of time, his path would somehow cross with that of his prey again.

It never ceased to amaze her that she, Shaw and suspect would almost always find themselves together at some point, along with the client who was invariably blithely unaware of the very existence of the investigative duo. Dinah knew only that Shaw would wander away at some point whilst she dutifully stood in the pouring rain outside an office, or a bookies, or a lover’s flat for hours on end. When they were reunited some time later, a usually slightly flushed Shaw would drown her in beer breath and inform her that he had found the client who by some fluke of chance, wanted to know exactly what Dinah had found out in the previous few hours. It was seldom anything that Shaw himself did not already know – or at least so he claimed. The biggest annoyance was usually that he had already informed the client of whatever-it-was she had only just learned, without ever needing to discuss it with her and without ever leaving the warmth of whatever bar he happened to be in. How he did it, she had no idea, nor how he always managed to smell of beer when he never had a penny in his pockets.
“You know I couldn’t do it without you,” he always said.
“Yes, I know,” she replied, but it didn’t help.

…And so it was, her mind whirring over every detail of their relationship, their work, the mystery of how they ever paid for anything, of why nobody ever threatened to break their legs when they did not, that she entered the office expecting, as usual, to find Shaw absent and a scribbled note in his place. But there was no note. There was a real-life Shaw, a grinning Shaw who, had she not known better, she would have taken for excited, pointing at the glass panel on the door which now read ‘Shaw & Parnter. Investigators.’ “What do you think?” he asked.
“Well, I’m not sure what to think,” said Dinah. “What’s a Parnter?”
Shaw peered at the door. “Damn! I thought he was cheap. Do you think we can afford to get it changed?”
“No, parnter, it’s fine,” said Dinah. She hugged Shaw. “It’s fine.” She looked around the office, confused, and opened the door to the back room. “Where’s your bed?” she asked.
“I paid the signwriter with it,” he said. “I thought that if we were going to be… ‘parnters’ and this was going to be a proper office then I ought to find somewhere else to live.”
“Oh right,” said Dinah. “And have you?”
“Well, not quite yet,” he answered. “I wondered, well, what are you like for space in your flat?…”

It’s been quite a while since our last visit to Dinah and Shaw, which I managed to work into the ‘Writer’s Circle’ strand, so in case you want to catch up, episode 1 is here, and the last episode (Slight Return) is here.

Railcard

I have just seen myself as I very much hope that others do not. You see, I needed to renew my Railcard and they (the railway powers that be) required a new photograph of me, so I took a quick selfie, uploaded it and Bob, as they say, was my Uncle (even though, strangely, my father had never mentioned him). Job done. I awarded myself a gold star for being tech savvy and down with the kids. Great.

Except that I now have a Railcard that looks like it belongs to a deranged lunatic who has just awoken to find that he really should not have done so.

There were questions to be answered. Obviously, first of all, I had to ask what kind of idiot would blithely use such a photograph without checking it first? Well, the kind that looks like some kind of malnourished ginger Rasputin, obviously. You know the famous photograph, taken after he was dead? I know it’s hard to imagine anybody looking worse, but I do. How could I have failed to notice it before uploading? Somehow, it would appear, in the short distance between my face and the camera’s lens, I had lost about three stones in weight – and most of it from my neck. I have more wattles than Bernard Matthews¹. My eyes appear so sunken that I could probably see through the back of my head and something has happened to my hair that could only have been achieved with a chainsaw. The mirror tells me that I have a short and fairly neatish sort of beard, but in the photo it looks like somebody has pushed a couple of doormats into a giant amorphous blob of pink plastecine: Wallace after a three week bender. All of this under the shade of W.C. Field’s nose. I could not look more like a Victorian convict if I tried.

Now, I am under no illusion: I am no oil painting – although having spent an afternoon in the Tate Modern recently, I’m quite pleased about that. My face is not so much lived in as abandoned, but – and here’s the crucial point – it has never been as bad as that. I look in the mirror and it’s ok. No Brad Pitt – more disused colliery – but definitely human: a hint of a smile, a glint in the eye. It is a pretty normal, if bland, face. It fills the space between my chin and my hat quite adequately. It might not be anything to write home about – unless, perhaps, you have the free loan of somebody else’s pen – but it’s ok. It kind of suits me. I don’t think that it would frighten the horses – although I must admit that in certain lights it does have a tendency to look as though it has been kicked by one or two of them. It doesn’t look hideous in the mirror and it doesn’t look anything like so awful in the photographs of me holding various babies that are scattered around the house – wherever there are stains to be hidden. None of the babies appear too shocked by the fizzog on whatever-it-is that’s holding them. But the more I look at my Railcard, the more I am shocked by it. It is as though the camera had the ability to see into the future – a very long way into it I hope. The photograph certainly gives every indication that it might have been taken post mortem. It doesn’t even allow for the possibility of being a good-looking corpse. It leaves me wondering what I have to do if I am not to face a future walking about under a visage that serves employment as the ‘after’ photo on a thousand life insurance policies.

I’m relatively fit (for a man of my age²): I don’t smoke, I eat properly, I still run and exercise regularly³. I have spent my lifetime looking younger than I am and now, quite unexpectedly, I am faced with a photograph in which I look older than it is probably possible to be. I look like Keith Richards must look before he receives the attentions of the mortician (I’m sorry, I mean make-up artist) in the morning.

And then the hope kicks in. If, at the future date at which my Railcard photograph appears to be set, I am still looking younger than I actually am, then I must be very old indeed and, instead of hinting at a very bitter future, my phone could, instead, simply be predicting a very long one.

Of course, none of this helps me when I get to the train station. Imagine how irked I will be if they refuse to accept the card because it looks nothing like me. Imagine how much worse I will feel if they decide that it does…

¹A famous – in Norfolk – turkey farmer.
²This phrase can be attached to the end of any sentence which is clearly untrue, with the aim of making it seem vaguely possible.
³Once in a blue moon – regular as clockwork.

A Prose by Any Other Name

A return to a very old idea: a change of scene, the little Bluetooth keyboard and the mobile phone that keeps tipping over as I type. The same old words, just a different way of using them…

I was mulling over a return to The Writer’s Circle – exactly why I’m uncertain, as so very few people read it the first time around – but I think that I was really just hoping to find a new way of telling an old story. ‘What story?’ you might well ask. (Perfectly acceptable as long as you do not do it aloud and on the top deck of a bus.) Well then, here’s the thing…

Not unusually for me, I sat down with the ken to do something – in this case to write a little fiction – but with no real idea of the specifics eg what it was going to be about; how would it start; how should it finish; who kills the butler and why? You know, the usual trivial stuff: nothing to get too worked up about. I would, I thought, start with a name and see where that would lead me and… well, it led me here.

I toyed with Dirk Valiant initially. (Please don’t make up your own jokes – especially if they’re going to be of that ilk.) I couldn’t fail to build a plot around a name like that. Dirk would wear a suit, scarlet velvet probably, with a cravat. Possibly a hat. He would almost certainly be from the sixties – although not in them – and probably a secret agent of some kind, battling against some unlikely acronym or another. Oh yes, I was ready, except I couldn’t drag my mind away from The Avengers, or, more correctly, Tara King, which was an issue I had in fact faced before, in my childhood, long before I had any real idea of why. So I did away with Dirk and I tried to think of something a little more… erm… well, a little less Steed, all in all.

Geoffrey Chelmont, with whom I subsequently trifled, was an altogether different kettle of fish. Also impeccably dressed, although probably more chalk-stripe 3-piece lounge than velvet lounging, Geoffrey, I felt, was almost certainly ten years older than Dirk with a little of the Raffles about him, although with less of a tendency towards nicking other people’s stuff. Geoffrey would be an amateur Private Investigator – I pictured a male Miss Marple (more Hickson than Rutherford) with slightly less in the way of broderie anglais collars and sweet sherry, but with a tendency towards the odd ‘lost day’ in the seedy environs of a smoky Soho casino in the company of somebody, the like of which he hoped his mother – or his father come to that – had never become familiar.

He would need a sidekick of course, probably female, who would make his tea, straighten his tie and solve the crimes when he wasn’t looking. She would be called… not easy is it? It’s got to sit right: Morecambe and Wise, Ant and Dec, Eisenhower and Stalin, it has to trip off the tongue just so, and somehow the only thing I could think of was Lady Cecilia Pencroft, which was altogether too Agatha Christie. I couldn’t see me succesfully pulling a Whodunnit? together when, more often than not, I struggle to fully comprehend a whatdayisit?, so Geoffrey and Lady Cecilia remained, scrawled and embryonic for all eternity, on their little cradle of Wilkinson’s cash receipt and I hoped they would be happy there.

Anyway, if I’m honest, I didn’t really see myself writing about the past. Maybe the future might be more my kind of thing. Perhaps a future hero would need only one name: Trieste perhaps, Andromeda, Maffei, Doris… I became becalmed upon the seas of Blake’s Seven (which towards the end, I seem to recall, featured only five people, and none of them called Blake) and the memory of Servalan, who way-back-then managed to turn my young head in directions it really was not designed to be turned. Like a decidedly less wholesome Sally James, she made ‘leather-clad’ so much more interesting than a Hardback ‘Confessions’ Anthology and the ‘straight-into-lens’ Servalan sneer beat Samantha’s* cheeky nose-twitch into a cocked-hat when it came to stirring up hormones. However, as I don’t have as much of it left to me these days, I thought it might be better for me to forget the future for now and concentrate on the present. At least I know where I am with the present**.

Simeon*** Atterbridge sounded so familiar that I had to Google it in case I’d seen it somewhere before – a Liverpool gravestone perhaps, or a London roadsign. It sounded like a country name to me. It conjured up images of cycling in a raincoat, scraping the who-knows-what out of the tread of wellie soles with a teaspoon, and murder by gin-trap. It has a solid sound to it, like a restored country pile (and God Knows, I’ve suffered with those for years). Simeon sounds like the kind of a man who, although he might take a little time about it, will always get there in the end. He sounds like the kind of man who can simultaneously handle a glass of wine, a fork, and a plate of canapés without once dropping vol-eau-vent crumbs on the floor, tipping his Chateau Neuf on the cockerpoo, or dipping his tie into the punch whilst leaning over to help himself to the hostess’s cupcakes. He would, I think, be equally at home in Dinner Jacket, lounge suit or pastel-coloured M&S chinos and Ralph Lauren ‘T’ shirt. He would never stand on the dog’s favourite toy, tread something brown and sticky across the living room carpet, or sit in the baby’s dinner when visiting somebody for the first time. He would never drop a jam doughnut in a lady’s lap and attempt to rub the consequent mess off with what turned out to be a recently divested nappy. ‘Young’ Simeon Atterbridge – anything under fifty years of age, own teeth and tonsure that can be hidden under the average radius of a flat cap qualifies – would be able to handle himself, but only if he was attacked by a rotter who fully deserved a good thrashing anyway. Oh yes, I really like the sound of Simeon Atterbridge.

If only I could think what to do with him?…

*The oh-so delightful Elizabeth Montgomery in Bewitched.

**Usually lost.

***Pronounced ‘Simon’, the additional ‘e’ serving only to a) thoroughly hack off the registrar and b) lend an air of gravitas, particularly when wearing a name badge with gold stars attached.

N.B. In case you should think that I am ignoring the enormous and fearful problems currently engulfing this general part of the globe, you are quite right. I am just as terrified as everybody else about the possibilities that are presenting themselves, just as sick about the terror being experienced by innocent people, just as appalled by the absolutely pointless loss of life propogated by one man and a raging ego, but I am also utterly certain that there is absolutely nothing that I can say or do that will improve things in any way. There are plenty of wise people who might have the words to make an impact (although none of them has yet managed to lodge a whisper in the ear of the idiot in the Kremlin) but I am not amongst them. If I have a function – and it is very much open to discussion – in this world, it is not to change things, but to take minds off them. At worst, I hope that we all live long enough to regret it…

The Beginner’s A-Z of D.I.Y Subversion (Blindfold to Burglary)

BLINDFOLD If you have ever played Pin the Tail on the Donkey, you will know that it is practically impossible to properly blindfold anybody, especially if they do not want to be blindfolded. Placing a bag¹ over the victim’s head is generally more successful and easier to do. If you must go for a blindfold avoid handkerchiefs, which are never big enough; silk scarves, which are never opaque enough, and pink fluffy elasticated eye-masks, which, in my opinion, are never tight enough.

It is generally worth investing a few pence on a ‘Bag for Life’ rather than a supermarket plastic carrier, as, not only are they more environmentally friendly, they have less of a tendency to leave your abductee dead.

BLOOD It is my firm opinion that blood should be neither seen nor heard. Spilling blood is never good. If you feel the need to prove your commitment to the cause with the acquisition of a physical injury suffered in the pursuit of your principles, try to develop a blister or bloodless abrasion. Pain is one thing, we all know the discomfort a paper-cut can cause, but bleeding to death is quite another. Remember, blood on the external surfaces of the body is almost always a bad sign.

BOMB Explosive projectile. Explosives, effective as they are, are expensive, difficult to obtain and apt to blow bits off the unwary – so why not avoid them altogether and pop an empty crisp packet instead?

BOURGEOIS A person whose political, economic, and social opinions are believed to be determined mainly by concern for property values and conventional respectability. The Bourgeoisie are held in contempt both by those who have no property and therefore no interest in its value, and also by those who determine just what, exactly, amounts to ‘conventional respectability’. Heads you lose, tails you lose. This dichotomy was experienced most acutely during the French Revolution when the Bourgeoisie were reviled by both factions of the Gallic Class War. To be honest, I don’t think they lost too much sleep over it. ‘Here’s your options – the nobility are going to treat you with contempt because of your petty concerns over conventional respectabilities, whilst the proletariat are going to hold you down on a block of wood so that Monsieur Guillotine’s latest invention¹ can permanently separate you from the full range of bodily functions – now, who are you going to support?’ The Bourgeois are currently known as Liberal Democrats and, strangely, have a deep affection for over-priced French Red and pieds-a-terre² in Normandy.

Monsieur Guillotine did not actually invent, but rather improved, this instrument of capital punishment – formerly known as the Scottish Maiden (Demoiselle Ecossaise). The guillotine replaced the previous method of execution, known as the Breaking Wheel (Rupture de la Roué) which was so barbaric that not even the French could stand it – and remember, this is the nation that dismembers frogs.
Literally ‘foot on the ground’ – because the kind of hovel that the French generally sell to the English will have mud floors, three walls and a roof that is fine as long as it doesn’t rain.

BREAK What you do to legs, arms etc.

BRICK What you do it with.

BUBO Pus-emitting swelling in groin or armpit. See Policeman’s Boot (below).

BURGLARY The act of entering a building or other premises with the intent to commit theft. Whilst this is not strictly an ethical act, it can be a highly efficient, if risky, method of raising funds, but then again, so can spending the day in a bath-full of baked beans. As with all such endeavours, the primary objective is ‘don’t get caught’. If you feel that this objective is not achievable, it is always advisable to pursue the secondary objective ‘persuade somebody else to do it for you’.

A TYPICAL D.I.Y BURGLARY – Walking along a quiet street, you notice an open window on the secluded side of a luxury, detached house. You scale the fence and climb in through the window, using the wheelie bin as a step. As you push your way through the open casement, the wheelie bin scoots away and demolishes the garden gate depositing week-old Indian take-away all over the drive way. Stepping from the window ledge, you catch one foot in the sink and the other in a giant potted hibiscus, which crashes to the floor followed by a) the better half of a twelve-piece dinner service and b) you. You attempt to clamber to your feet but find yourself staring into the glowering, yellow eyes of a giant, snarling bullmastiff. You exit the window in one bound, smashing your shin painfully against the kitchen tap and your forehead against the window lintel. Once outside you try to flee the scene, but slip on an extremely viscous Tarka Dahl and fall to the ground where you are immediately accosted by thirteen spitting feral cats and a postman with something brown and odorous on his shoe.

EXERCISE – Grow a beard:

Do not shave for at least six weeks.
Do you have a beard? (If the answer is ‘No’, you are a) a woman, b) a child, c) looking in the wrong place)
Eat a soft-boiled egg.
Try to look in the mirror, post soft-boiled egg without being repulsed by the aftermath.
Shave it off.

Letter ‘C’ of The Beginner’s A-Z of D.I.Y Subversion will appear 22^nd & 25^th March.

The Beginners A-Z of D.I.Y Subversion Index is here.

The Beginner’s A-Z of D.I.Y Subversion (Blackmail)

BLACKMAIL Money extorted by threat; hush money. A simple and relatively inexpensive method of subversion, requiring the minimum of equipment:

A smart phone with camera and voice recorder or, at a push, a camera and a voice recorder.
An insight into the daily routines and habits of a notable public figure who is likely to do something disgusting enough to make him vulnerable.
A large thermos flask and a Tupperware box for your sandwiches.

Blackmail is definitely not the kind of thing that you can go rushing into willy-nilly. Planning must be thorough, meticulous and written down in really big capital letters to avoid any confusion:

Take great care when identifying your victim:

He/she must be financially viable – there is little point in blackmailing someone who cannot pay.
Ensure that they are doing something that they shouldn’t be doing – paragons of virtue are notoriously difficult to blackmail.
Ensure that they care – you’ll get nowhere if your victim doesn’t give a toss what other people think about them.

In gathering the evidence you will require in order to execute your plot, you will almost certainly have to conceal yourself at some stage. Take great care when selecting your hiding place: there are some wonderful places in which to secrete yourself, but they are of very little use to you if they are on the other side of town to the naughtiness. Try and find somewhere to hide in the room where the action is expected to take place. Having decided on the wardrobe, ensure that the door can be opened from the inside – there is nothing worse than being trapped inside the closet whilst the action is taking place on the bed outside, particularly if the flash goes off.

Having leapt out of the wardrobe and captured an image of your victim(s) in flagrante, you must now face the biggest challenge of the whole operation – escape. Plan, plan and triple plan your escape. Have as many alternative escape routes arranged as possible and be aware that you will be attempting to negotiate them whilst lugging your out-of-shape frame along passages and alleyways at speeds far greater than furred-up arteries will appreciate, into a fire door that someone will, inevitably, have locked.

Should you manage to affect an escape, send a simple, straightforward blackmail note to your victim, informing him/her that you will turn the photographs over to husband/wife/police/avoid nausea, unless you receive £1,000 in used notes¹ before the end of the week. Don’t be dissuaded from proceeding if, in the excitement of catching them ‘at it’, you got the angle all wrong and cut their heads off in the finished photograph. There is often incriminating evidence to be found on photos of knees and ankles.

Arrange somewhere very unusual for the money to be left; get somebody else to collect it in case things go wrong and always count the cash before you post the evidence. Do not simply count bundles – remember they may be a ‘sandwich’ of real notes filled with carefully cut newspaper. Always be suspicious if they are carried in a suitcase and the carrier removes one bundle and flicks the corners in front of your face before closing the lid and handing it over. Also, beware of other people in the vicinity carrying identical cases, particularly if they sidle up to you whilst you are waiting for the bus.

A TYPICAL D.I.Y BLACKMAIL PLOT – You are probably the last person this side of Alpha Centauri to discover that your boss is having an affair with his secretary. Through astute investigation and by asking the cleaner, you discover the location of their weekend assignations, and fight your way into the wardrobe where you wait for the main event. You are woken by the 37 other subversives scattered around the room firing off their Yasichas in deafening unison. You leap to your feet, partially garrotting yourself on a pair of braces and take a brilliant flash photograph of the contents of your nose, which the local chemist over-develops. On leaving the hotel, you trip on the stairs and snap the shutter release from your Kodak.

Personally I always prefer crisp, new ones, but the secondhand appears to be the preferred subversive note of choice.

The Beginners A-Z of D.I.Y Subversion Index is here.

The Beginner’s A-Z of D.I.Y Subversion (Bacterium to Bilbo)

(Author’s Note: a slightly different Monday, Wednesday, Friday vibe to this week as letter B proved to be particularly fruitful and, let’s be honest, nobody wanted it to leach into a second week…)

BACTERIUM Microscopic single-cell organism; a disease or germ. The subversive’s brain. Not to be confused with Bactrian, which is a camel with two humps on his back – similar to the shoulder/chip ratio of most subversives.

BALLISTA An ancient military engine for throwing stones or other missiles. Now known as a child¹. A ballista comprised a long wooden arm, tied back and weighted at one end before being released, hurling the missile from the other end over a considerable distance, causing a significant amount of discomfort to anyone unfortunate enough to be under it. Considerable physical effort was required in pulling back and tying the wooden arm prior to its release.

A child is a soft, warm frenzy of snot and noise, generally smelling faintly of chocolate, which will happily throw anything you give it – as long as you ask it not to.

Whilst most right-thinking people would deplore the deployment of children in the furtherment of subversive activity – it would have to be considered almost reckless to ignore the opportunity when it is there. Subversively speaking, little measures up to the explosive effect of a strategically placed baby in a full nappy.

BANG A loud, sudden, explosive noise. Result of a gunshot, an explosion or a teenager leaving the room.

BARBARITY Brutal or inhuman conduct; cruelty. ‘Brutality, Inhumanity and Cruelty’ appear to have taken over from ‘Liberté, Égalité et Fraternité’ as the basic principles of revolution in the twenty-first century. Unfortunately, nothing has taken over from the principle of slaughtering those who oppose the ‘revolution¹’.

In this instance, ‘revolution’ means ‘more of the same – and none of it good’.

BASTARD A person born of unmarried parents; an illegitimate child; a vicious, despicable, or thoroughly disliked person. Oh, come on, this is the twenty first century. There is no place in our society for blind, ignorant prejudice of this kind. Ok, he’s vicious and despicable – it doesn’t necessarily make him a bad person does it? Goodness knows, if most of us disowned everyone we know who fits this description, we would have no friends left.

If the word has any power as a term of abuse, then its significance must surely have been seriously eroded with the news that more children are now born out of wedlock¹ than in it. Perhaps, in the long term, it may become an accepted term of approval – maybe ‘legitimate’ will become an abusive term. Think of it next time you whack your thumb with a hammer.

Very similar to ‘arm-lock’, but with longer-lasting consequences.

BASTINADO Beating with a stick, especially on the soles of the feet. A method of torture that is reputed to cause excruciating pain whilst leaving no mark – a little like a James Blunt concert.

BATTER (1) To beat persistently or hard. Violence and subversion are often assumed to walk hand in hand – it is not necessarily so. Many subversives are deep thinkers; much more inclined towards cerebral rather than physical methods of sedition – especially if facing an opponent with a small vocabulary and a large stick.

BATTER (2) A mixture of flour, milk or water, eggs, etc., beaten together for use in cookery; to coat with batter. This is what politicians are really for – although subsequent deep-frying may be a step too far.

BAYONET A dagger-like steel weapon that is attached to or at the muzzle of a gun and used for stabbing or slashing in hand-to-hand combat. If you’ve any sense at all, you will forget this weapon, it is messy and unpleasant and, most importantly, generally used in circumstances where there is a 50/50 chance of being on the receiving end. If you are invited somewhere and asked to take a bayonet, go with a light bulb.

BEARD Facial hair. Generally speaking, subversives wear false beards as an occasional form of disguise – unless, of course, they normally wear a real beard, in which case they shave them off as a disguise. Either course of action is legitimate – as long as you are not ginger.

BEAT Strike repeatedly. A sort of all-encompassing bastinado, generally giving extreme pleasure to at least one of those involved.

BEG What subversives do when they’ve been caught.

BICYCLE Two wheeled vehicle propelled by the rider. A cheap and efficient method of getaway, particularly downhill.

BILBO A long iron bar or bolt with sliding shackles and a lock, formerly attached to the ankles of prisoners. Be honest, it’s not what you thought it was, is it? A modern adaptation of the Bilbo is the Electronic tag, which, whilst not actually physically manacling the prisoner, does make it extraordinarily difficult for him to wear novelty socks.

The Beginners A-Z of D.I.Y Subversion Index is here.

Magnificent

I am aware that my regular meanderings on this platform have an unfortunate tendency to veer towards the maudlin and may well give the impression that I am perhaps myself a little dour, but it’s not true. I am happy to tell you now – largely because I fear that nobody else will – that I am, by and large, a happy man and fun to be around. If I have a fault at all – and God knows, it’s hard to imagine – it is that I am, if anything, too jolly; just too much fun to be around. You would be surprised to find out how many people laugh out loud every single time I open my mouth. I suppose that is the price you pay for NHS dentistry. If I sound pessimistic from time to time, it is almost certainly because my red nose is in the wash. I am the life and soul, ask anyone. (Alright, not exactly anyone: my wife thinks I’m deeply unfunny and the kids just think that I’m losing my marbles. The grandkids like me, but they’re not overly sophisticated joke-wise. As long as I can make ‘rude noises’ with my tongue, I’m onto a winner as far as they’re concerned.) I am the man that everybody wants to sit with at the pub – which is why I never go. If I was a chicken, I would probably qualify for my own crossing. If I was a bowtie, I would spin enough to generate the electricity required to power both a secret hand buzzer and the water-squirting flower in my lapel…

As I get older and life begins to bombard me with all manner of shit, it becomes increasingly important for me to root out enjoyment wherever I can find it. I’m not suggesting that it’s a good idea to deliberately go out in search of a bad haircut, but that you might as well laugh about it when you do get one, after all, everybody else will. You fall over in embarrassing circumstances – usually whilst showing off or forgetting that you are a good few years older than you used to be – and everybody laughs at you, and before you know it, despite the pain, you find you are laughing at yourself. Laughter is infectious and, like most infectious things, you tend to catch it when you least expect it. You cannot get vaccinated against it, but you can marry an Estate Agent.

There is so much joy to be found in the every day – not least of which is the fact that it is the every day. In my dad’s later years, when he became too ill to get out and about, my mum used to cut his hair, but she hated doing it because he moaned so much, so I said I would do it. When I first started to cut – and believe me, I am no hairdresser – he duly started to moan and I, for reasons I cannot comprehend, started to laugh. The more he moaned, the more I laughed until, magically, he saw the absurdity of it all and he began to laugh as well. We finished the haircut in tears of laughter, so I decided not to destroy the mood by showing him his shattered head in the mirror. We both grew to look forward to our father/son time – although dad never stopped moaning and I never showed him a mirror – but we definitely grew closer through shared laughter.

Most of us who ‘go to work’ to make a living know that we find ourselves annoyed by some things and amused by others every day, and, as long as the laughter outweighs the misery we are happy. I am exceedingly fortunate, I am currently in what will without doubt be the final paid employment of my life, and I enjoy the company of everybody with whom I spend my days. I cannot begin to imagine what they feel about me, but they haven’t thrown me out yet. (Unless the letter’s in the post.) And all of this despite the presence of an electronic till that clearly dislikes me almost as much as I dislike it. Anybody who believes that Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a thoroughly modern thing should meet this early century fiend. It is choc-full of all manner of AI and every single molecule of it is malign. I am by no means certain that ABMI (Artificial Bloody Minded Intelligence) is actually ‘a thing’ but this little bundle of demonic computer chips sits like a malignant deity on the shop counter and dares me to press a button, ready to lock me out at any moment, ready to force me to rummage through my own pockets to find the customer’s change. It behaves impeccably for everybody else and I know that it shares in their laughter as I stare, uncomprehendingly, at its smug LCD face. I don’t know who invented it – I picture a brow-beaten Japanese inventor wreaking vicarious revenge on a scornful spouse and indifferent children – but I am pretty certain that DAVROS stuck a couple of castors under one of its siblings and taught it to scream ‘EX-TER-MINATE!’ If I turn up for work one day and find a sink plunger attached to its mephistophelian little head, I will be straight round to Wilkinson’s to buy a new sonic screwdriver (and £2 worth of Pick ‘n’ Mix while I’m there – let’s face it, there’s no point in missing an opportunity. A pack of Love Hearts always cheers me up*, even if I have to buy my own). And there you have it, I think of that black-hearted till and all I get is the taste of Love Hearts – and life can’t get more magnificent than that.

*It goes without saying that two packs make me twice as happy.

I called this post ‘Magnificent’ purely because I knew I was going to end it with the first verse and chorus from the song of the same name, by Elbow, simply because, other than me, it is the most joyous and optimistic thing I can think of.

“This is where the bottle lands
Where all the biggest questions meet
With little feet stood in the sand
This is where
The echoes slow to nothing on the tide
And where a tiny pair of hands
Find a sea worn piece of glass
And sets it as a sapphire in her mind
And there she stands
Throwing both her arms around the world
A world that doesn’t even know
How much it needs this little girl

It’s all gonna be magnificent
She says
It’s all gonna be magnificent.” – Guy Garvey

Truly magnificent, isn’t it?

After the Flood

I arrived home from work yesterday to be informed by our houseguest that our next door neighbour had knocked on our door some hours earlier because a water pipe had burst in her home and, in the panic and confusion of cascading water and plasterboard, she was unable to locate the stop tap. I rushed around there – painfully aware that rushing no longer provided any sort of solution to her problems – to find the house locked and in darkness. She had clearly fled the scene some hours earlier, before her rescuing hero had crested the hill, wrench in hand, some eight hours too late. (Although, as I was unable to see water bubbling out of the chimney, I presumed she had found some way of turning it off herself before she left.) Her house has changed quite a lot over the years, as has ours, but I was fairly confident that, save for one of her previous plumbers being some kind of ‘escape room’ fanatic, I would have – had I been present when required – been able to locate the stopcock fairly readily and thus ensure that her kitchen ceiling had not, in the company of several thousand litres of water, become her kitchen floor. I was not.

Our own stopcock is exactly where I remembered it to be and I’m fairly certain that, in extremis, I would be able to turn it off somehow. (Although I did not attempt to verify this as the kitchen cupboard in which it resides is full of so many chemicals that I would have felt safe to reach in there only if wearing a full hazmat suit and the kind of mask that is issued to frontline NATO infantry in combat.) However, it turns out that in my neighbours extremis I was actually in absentia and she had had to call somebody from the neighbouring village who arrived to find that the bathroom floor had found its way through the kitchen ceiling and that the goldfish that had been so carefully nurtured in a bowl on the kitchen table, had enjoyed the most fleeting of moments of liberty before ascending to fishy-heaven on the receiving end of the 240 volts of electricity that had suddenly found itself at a loose end when the tide came in.

The fact is that when needed, I was at work and therefore in no position to whack my pants on over my trousers, don my cape and fly to the rescue of my helpless neighbour*. In retrospect, I was more helpless than she: at least she knew what was going on. I was in my usual state of cluelessness, made even worse by the knowledge that even if I had known what was going on, I would have remained clueless. My dad always taught me that knowledge did not automatically equate to competence, and I’m pretty certain that he didn’t consider himself to be acquainted with anybody less competent than me. (In his later years I would often push him round to the pub in his wheelchair and I have never witnessed anybody grip the armrests so tightly. By the time he had finished his allotted two pints, he was ready for home and eager for almost anybody else to push him there**.) I am seldom called upon to rescue people. I am what is known in rescuing circles as the very last resort, however, whatever my proficiency on the wheelchair pushing front, I’m pretty certain that my neighbour would have been perfectly happy to accept my basic level of tap-turning competency in the midst of the prevailing torrent, if only I had been available to demonstrate it. It is like riding a bike – tap turning – you never forget.

The relevant point, however, is nothing to do with my tap-turning acumen, but with the fact that I was both unavailable and unaware when I was, finally, called upon. Not my fault of course – things so seldom are – I was doing what all normal wage-earners do: drinking tea and gossiping about everybody else that I work with. My willingness to help, unlike my capacity to do so, was never in question: merely my availability.

I am left with mixed emotions: disappointment that I was unable to help, but relief that my ability to do so was not put to the test. I am not at all certain that I would want to feature on the insurance claim forms as the man who couldn’t turn the tap off. I would not like to give the assessor the opportunity to say ‘You called who? Well, you can’t possibly expect us to cover that!’ I enjoy a genial relationship with both of my neighbours, the thought of being held responsible for exacerbating the kind of domestic deluge that could have been halted by anybody other than Mr Bean with a monkey wrench, is not one that I wish to contemplate. Happily, I have been able to apologise for not being there when my neighbour needed me, and I’m pleased to report that it was much easier than having to apologise for wrecking her house…

*I think that I should probably point out here that an inability to find a stopcock in the midst of a crisis does not, in any way, constitute ‘helplessness’, any more than a pre-knowledge of said location equates to being a master-plumber.

**To be fair, I don’t think he ever told me that he had no faith in my wheelchair piloting skills, but, if I’m honest, I put that down to sheer terror.

“When the flood calls, you have no home, you have no walls.
In the thunder crash, you’re a thousand minds, within a flash.
Don’t be afraid to cry at what you see…” Here Comes the Flood – Peter Gabriel

Trainspotting

I did it when I was a child, for the shortest of times – trainspotting. I had a book I recall, given to me by my parents who thought that ‘getting out there’ might ‘do me good’, printed with rows of numbers which, to the best of my knowledge, I was just meant to tick off every now and then. You could go on the stations back then – a platform ticket was a penny I think – as long as you didn’t get on the trains. You could put your tanner in the chocolate machine for excitement. It never gave you what you wanted. Mostly it gave you nothing at all. And you never got your money back – no matter how hard you kicked, you never got your money back. Better to spend it in the buffet really. You could get a terminally watered-down orange squash and a penguin biscuit for your sixpence, but not a Fudge bar. They were only in the chocolate machine and it wasn’t letting them go.

More often than not I spent my money on the ‘I speak your weight’ machine because I was fascinated by it, but I was so thin that it never knew that I was on. I imagined it tutting at me – but it never gave me my money back.

Whenever a train chugged into the station I marked the number off in my little book, but I felt no excitement: just the slight rancour of a wasted life everytime I realised that it was a train I had already seen. Sometimes I just marked a different number anyway, and I felt like a real maverick. I began to mark numbers off at random every time a train pulled up to the platforms. It got so that I could do a whole days spotting in the bus on the way into town.

I was aware that for most of my fellow social outcasts, Saturday morning trainspotting was a real collective deal. They gathered in little groups and chatted about what to expect from the day. “567431 is coming in about ten,” somebody would say and there would be a general murmur of appreciation. I was never invited into the groups. I stood on the edge and marked off 567431 as soon as the number was mentioned. It was as good as. No point in wasting the whole morning waiting to actually see it. If it was a diesel train, then I knew what it would look like. Instead of becoming closer to my fellow hobbyists I was aware that I was growing ever-more distant to them. There was them and there was me and we had absolutely nothing in common but for our little books of numbers. They had bright hooded anoraks and nylon over-trosers whilst I had faded loons and a Gratton’s catalogue tank-top. They had waterproof rucksacks and I had a Tesco carrier bag. They had tea and cake from the buffet whilst all I had was a sense of loathing for the solid state that wouldn’t give me my money back. They were interested. I was not.

I did like it when the occasional steam train thundered through though. I lived through the very tail of the steam age and it was always a thrill to see them. They were not the gleaming red and green leviathans of today’s tourist lines, but decaying, smoke-blackened hulks chugging their way to the knacker’s yard. The best thing in the world was to stand on the bridge as they passed below belching lung-crippling blasts of steam and smoke into the air. The power was palpable. It went up through your feet, along your legs and reverberated around your chest like a firework in a can. The steam trains were always the highlight of any day – they had names rather than numbers – but they became fewer and further between. Mostly it was just diesels. Powerful, but clean and bland, and to me, the trainee trainspotter, very boring.

So I began to find other things to do with my time. I wandered from the station – no point in wasting a perfectly good penny on a platform ticket – to the town, to the castle, to the cathedral… You could wander on your own then, and mostly I was on my own. I loved the cold silence of old buildings and I would meander around them endlessly. There was a little hexagonal stone building in the Cathedral grounds – which I now know is nothing more than an ornamental well-head – where it was rumoured that with the right number of circumnavigations, you could summon up the devil. I tried every weekend, but he never came. Shame, I could have done with the company. Then one last wander back to the sweet shop, or best of all the joke shop, where I spent my precious accumulated 7d before crossing a few random numbers off my book and heading home for dinner. (In my world, ‘dinner’ was always taken about mid-day. Anything after 1pm was ‘tea’ and seldom involved potatoes unless chipped.)

Dinner over and Saturday afternoons throughout autumn, winter and spring were spent in our own little corner of the Sincil Bank stadium watching the Mighty Imps get trounced by whomever it was that was lucky enough to be playing them that day. It didn’t really matter that they lost so habitually back then, I was part of the crowd and we all wanted the same thing. The fact that we so seldom got it was of little consequence. Two hours on the freezing terraces in the company of the same group of people every other week was what weekends were made for: stewed tea out of a steel urn, a slightly faded Garibaldi biscuit out of a crumpled paper bag and a nip from my grandad’s hipflask if I was lucky. People around me that always seemed happy to see me and all I had to do was sing, cheer and groan as appropriate: one of the gang. There have been ups and downs for the team in the half century and more since, but I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed my football more than I did back then. From the ground at full time, the whole world it seemed traipsed as one over the two railway bridges back to the steaming buses home, and I would often spot a determined little gaggle of weather-proof anoraks on the distant station, waiting still for the 4.45 from Peterborough. I had no desire to be with them then – even their little tartan vacuum flasks of now lukewarm Bovril were unable to ward off the clawing cold by that time, their fold-away kagoules no match for the stalking wind and biting sleet – but never-the-less, when I got home, I always crossed another number off my little book, just so that I still felt at least a little bit a part of it…

Squirrels

I am fully aware as I start to write today’s little potage de vie, that I will lose about 50% of my readership by the mid-way point. I remember my dad telling me a similar tale and I had to beg him to stop. (He didn’t, of course, but that’s just the way it is with dads.) Although I know that the way I tell my little ‘stories’ often has a tendency to make things sound as if I have just made them up on the back of a particularly lurid acid trip, it is not the case – particularly so today. The story I am about to relate is not only completely true, but relates back to a very old thread within this blog and whilst I cannot honestly claim that I have not embellished the facts in my own style – there is no point in putting profiteroles on the table if you can’t cover them in cream and sprinkles – they do, none-the-less remain ‘the truth’: buffed up perhaps, but not made up.

It is the time of year when the squirrels in the local park will take food from your hands and, should you not be quite quick enough in offering it to them, will think nothing of running up your leg and nipping your fingers by way of a reminder. Food is at a premium and when it is available, they will do all that they can to get it and to hang on to it. The sun was shining, the grandkids were happy and we were all enjoying our commune with sciurus nature when my phone rang. Following on from my recent ultrasound scan (see ‘Mortal’ here) I had an appointment later that very afternoon to see a specialist at the hospital which had been rescheduled from a later date just the previous day, bringing it forward by forty-eight hours, and so, knowing the difficulties under which the health service is currently operating, I presumed they were calling me to postpone and reschedule out little chat in favour of a more convenient time – say sometime in 2025. I was consequently happily surprised when the voice said “We have a cancellation. Can you make it to the hospital for 2pm?” It was noon. I said “yes”, happy that I would be seen early and anticipating that my treatment, whatever it might be, would be thus expedited, e.g. pushed to the front of the queue.

At 2pm sharp I rocked up at the relevant department and was immediately ushered through to a small side room by a very pleasant uniformed nurse who sat me down and started to write down my details. All I remember thinking at this stage was that she didn’t look like a consultant. However, she put me at ease whilst cheerfully jotting down my answers, even laughing when she had to start again because of my inability to answer a simple question with anything approaching the right answer, and then quite out of the blue she asked me, “Have you ever had this procedure before?” A little bell tinkled somewhere in the depths of my poor brain but, if cogs had begun to whirr at all, they were connected to nothing that in anyway helped me to process what she had just asked.
“Procedure?” I queried.
“Yes, procedure.”
“I didn’t know that I was having a procedure.”
“Oh yes,” she said, “you’re having a procedure.”
“What kind of procedure?” I was aware that my voice had now lost all of its affected carefree tone. There was a definite hint of strangled cat.
She sighed quietly and returned to her note-making. “We’ll talk about it when I’ve finished the paperwork,” she said…

Now, I am not the kind of person who carries a medical dictionary between the ears, but the words ‘flexible cystoscopy’ managed to paint the kind of picture that it is hard to ignore. I tried to explain that I had not come prepared for a ‘procedure’; that my wife was waiting for me outside and that I hadn’t discussed with anyone the need for it, but she smiled reassuringly and said, “We need to check for cancer. And anyway, you’re next. It will only take twenty minutes.” All reasoned argument had departed: she had me at ‘cancer’. She led me through to a little room occupied by two female nurses and a male doctor*. I was instructed to “remove everything below the waist. Put the gown on, but do not fasten it, and then put your shoes and socks back on.” I saw how absurd I appeared. How much did I really want to look like a complete berk whilst walking into what I now realised was to come? “We don’t want you getting cold feet,” said the nurse.
“Believe me, I’ve already got ‘em.”

Of the actual ‘mechanics’ of what followed I can say little except that both of my ‘below stairs’ exits were used as entries – and I am not a fan. The two nurses – who were exactly everything that a nurse should be – kept up a barrage of pleasant smalltalk, obviously designed to distract me from the awfulness of what was occurring, and it very nearly worked, but let’s be honest, you know that when a doctor says “This is going to sting,” it is never actually going to be better than expected. Watching a high resolution television picture of your own interior probably has the edge on Eastenders, but little else. I can only tell you that when, having finished what he was doing, the doctor said “Turn onto your side and pull your knees up to your chest,” it actually came as a relief.

I am immensely relieved to be able to report that whatever it was they hoped not to find, they duly did not find it and so discharged me from their care with the knowledge that there was no cancer, but that I would experience ‘some discomfort’ when urinating for a couple of days. In fact the knowledge of the former just about made peeing nitric acid for the next forty-eight hours tolerable.

When I got home I read and re-read my letter but could find no pre-warning of the ‘procedure’ they had scheduled and I am left thinking that the whole thing – including the shifting timescale of the appointment – was just a very clever subterfuge to prevent me, the patient, from getting too nervous about what was to come because, if I’m honest, had I known what lay ahead, I might well have found myself at one with the squirrels: grasping everything in the vicinity of my nuts in both little paws and steadfastly refusing to let go.

*I am uncertain of the etiquette involved here. He may have been a ‘Mr’ rather than ‘Dr’, but whichever he was, in view of what he then did, I certainly hope that he held some form of medical qualification.

N.B. This post is merely a short record of my own naivety and is in no way intended as any criticism of the care I received, nor the people who delivered it. Both were absolutely exemplary. Thank you N.H.S!