Mortal

I have written before about my on-going battle with a prostate that the specialist described as ‘a beast’. (It was actually the subject of a very early post – here – and part of the reason I started this whole little miscellanea.) For the vast majority of the time it does not impact negatively on my life at all: it just sits there, quietly biding its time until it decides that the moment is right to sit up and shout ‘Don’t forget me. I’m here!’ It is the reason, however, that when I’m out and about I seldom walk past a public toilet without paying a ‘just in case’ visit, as I am acutely aware that if I don’t it might just bang its drum before I get to the next one. It’s ok. I take medication that appears to have no effect at all, until I forget to take it. I’m completely fine almost all of the time, but I cannot support a full bladder. If ever I am faced with a full bladder – can I actually ever claim to be faced with a full bladder, particularly my own? – I would be forced to accept one of the two options available to me in such a circumstance: a) be unable to find a public lavatory and widdle down the first available tree or b) find a public lavatory and find that I no longer seem to need it. I’m not overly keen on either alternative, so maintaining some vacant capacity in the system is by far the most sensible option available to me.

As I now have a new associated ‘issue’, linked to ‘the beast’, I have been summoned to the hospital for tests. These tests rely upon me having a really full bladder and – most pertinently – ‘May be subject to considerable delay’, which means that I, once again, am faced with two options: a) attend with a full bladder that will have to be emptied with undue haste if I am over thirty seconds late in being called¹ or b) attend with a bottle of water and an empty bladder that will still have to be emptied seconds after I have emptied the bottle. I cannot do what they need me to do in order to test me, as that is why they have to test me in the first place.

I should state, here and now, that in reality I am fine. 99.9% of the time I have no problems of any kind other than those that would have to be described as ‘age related’: I ache; I moan; I spend half of my life lamenting that ‘fings ain’t wot they used to be’; my arches could not fall any further without somebody being there to raise the rest of my foot; my gums could not receded further without coming out of my nose; my nasal hair could not get longer without requiring a fringe. My jowls have jowls, my chins have chins. My teeth have developed a disturbing tendency to look like teak in certain lights. I must use my own weight in tooth-whitening gunk if I am not to look like a betel-chewing heroin addict who drinks wood dye for kicks. And I know, I realise, that all of the above (and many, many more) are the natural consequences of growing old which, as the tag-line for this little blog of mine suggests, is far preferable to the possibility of not doing so. None-the-less, it doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t prefer a life without them. I understand when people say that growing old is a privilege. For other people it probably is. For most of us it is shit. The realisation that everything you are is not quite what once it was, is not a comforting one. The knowledge that it can only get worse, even less so. Half deaf, half blind, half incontinent and half-witted… Oh, hang on.

So, I ask myself, ‘What is there left to look forward to?’ and the answer is ‘Everything’, because whatever it is, it is all that there is and that is the point at which I begin to find joy in almost everything I do. OK, there’s not much joy to be had in ramming my hand down the ‘U-bend’, but there is satisfaction to be found in the gurgling sound that announces the dispersal of the whatever-it-was – don’t even dare to think about it – that was blocking it in the first place. There is no fun to be found in D.I.Y – some people claim that there is, but they are clinically insane – but there is pride to be found in a shelf that can bear weight without falling from the wall and decapitating the cat. There is little satisfaction in tidying up the house after the grandkids have gone home, but there is delight in making the mess with them in the first place. I am fortunate, I don’t need to work these days, and consequently I find that I enjoy almost every minute of it. I have deliberately eschewed as much pressure as I am able and I am – even for myself – better company for it. Even with a full bladder…

I probably ought to point out here that I do not, in reality, have incontinence issues. My problem arises only if I make the stupid mistake of thinking about it – e.g. the simple query ‘Where’s the nearest public lavatory’ accompanied with the certain knowledge that it is a decent car journey away – when the threat of it hangs over me like an unfortunately apposite wet blanket.

¹This, by the way, is most definitely a mental thing. If my mind is otherwise occupied, I can go for days. If, however, I deliberately try to occupy my mind, it merely serves to remind me of why I am trying to distract myself and the panic kicks in. If you have any suggestions that do not involve ‘growing up’, I would be very happy to hear them.

I probably will not use this post as my profile for on-line dating sites.

Stream

When you’re growing up and you’re small and you’re ginger, then you try to cope by being funny and you can always gauge the moment when you actually succeed for some, because someone else – normally much bigger than yourself – will be screaming in your face, tight and red and angry, “Yeh, you think you’re so fucking funny, don’t you?” and you have to try really hard to stop yourself from saying, “Well, now you come to mention it…” and that’s when you begin to associate laughter with pain. As you get older, it stops to be such a problem: you stop trying so hard because nobody ever finds you even remotely funny anyway – at least not fully clothed – and all in all, you are slightly less likely to find yourself grappling around in the mud with somebody twice your size whilst a crowd has gathered around you chanting’ “Scrap, scrap, scrap…” hoping to see blood, hoping to see snot and tears, hoping not to get collared by the dinnerlady. You may still, occasionally, seek to deliberately amuse, but mostly you just trip over your own feet…

Now, I thought about this whilst I was having a shower and I was adopting the pose that we must all assume, regardless of gender, while rinsing the soap from the undercarriage. In the shower, there is no other way of achieving this short of standing on your head, and as there is no worse feeling than that of soap lingering around the nethers as the day drags on, it has to be properly rinsed away in the morning. So, it occurred to me that we must all present this same twisted aspect to the falling water – the intended target being pretty well shaded from downward droplets by head, shoulder, belly and, for some (amongst whom I fear I must now include myself – muscled flesh having long-since morphed into pendulous manboob) – fleshy chest adornments. It’s a ridiculous, hip thrusty kind of stance, that ensures the descending rivulets have an appropriate route that allows them to wash over the necessary areas, whilst you endeavour not to put your back out and – should you have an un-steamed-up mirror within view – not find yourself laughing at your own reflection. It is an absurd stance in which, I envisage, we all find ourselves from time to time. A truly egalitarian posture. All life should be like it.

I don’t know what it is about a few minutes under the warming spray that brings this habit of maudlin reflection upon me: it’s like feeling sorry for myself, except that, of course, is something that only other people do. Today I have been reading the latest bestseller by A. Veryfamousperson, thinking to myself “I could write that” and in that moment of indignation I believed that I really could, failing to realise that even if I did, it would make not the slightest difference because, frankly, I am not A. Veryfamousperson and nobody gives a twopenny fig what I have to say. I could write the Bible and still not find a publisher…

So, this is the point – wherever I find myself in the day’s downward arc – whether still striking the pose in the shower, sitting on the loo, or attempting to explain to a 6-year old why a laptop keyboard and honey are not compatible, when I realise that it is probably time for me to get a grip and review the current situation:

What’s so wrong with a sticky keyboard? (Well, if you reaaaaaaaaaaally waaaaaaaaaaant to know, eaaaaaaaaaach time you press the letter AAAAAAAAAAA it just keeps on going on aaaaaaaaaaaaand the only thing you caaaaaaaaaaan do is to go through aaaaaaaaaaaaall you haaaaaaaaaave written aaaaaaaaaaaaat aaaaaaaaaaaa laaaaaaaaaaaater time aaaaaaaaaaaaaand baaaaaaaaackspaaaaaaaaaaaace it aaaaaaaaaaaall out. Aaaaaaaaaaaaargh!)
I am alive and, to all intents and purposes, fit and well.
I actually quite like playing the clown.
Fame and money would only spoil me.
I have grown up relatively well-adjusted. I am blessed with a loving family and far more friends than I actually deserve.

Too many of my best friends have died over the years. I have lots now, but if I’m honest, few of my own age. I’m a little scared of making new ones in case I kill them, but I know that I should make the effort. The problem is, how? I don’t do many of the things that people of my age are apt to do: I rarely catch the bus; I don’t have an ancient terrier to walk around the block and I don’t even own a cap. I thought of taking up bowls, but I’m not to be trusted in white clothing. The problem with almost all suitable hobbies is that they are so much more age appropriate than I am. I would like to take up fishing, I think. I would like every single thing about it, except for the catching of fish. I would be perfectly happy sitting on a riverbank watching the world flow by: the birds, the bees, the fishermen – I often walk along the river banks and despite encountering fishermen all the time, I am not certain that I have ever seen a fisherwoman¹ – the bird-sized dragonflies, the occasional wary rodent, the ducks and the swans. I would be quite happy eating foil-wrapped sandwiches and drinking over-stewed tea from a flask. I can talk about the weather with the best of ‘em. I have a cloth bush-hat that makes me look like one of the Flowerpot Men (I have no idea which one. There is a link here – you must judge for yourselves). I am fully qualified in all respects except that of owning a fishing rod: except that of wanting to haul a hapless Piscean from its natural habitat on the end of a nylon line and metal hook…

I did go fishing quite a bit when I was small, but I never really took to it. I got bored too easily back then: partly by the inordinate amount of time I had to spend doing so little and partly by having to go home so often to tell my mum that I had fallen in the river again so that she never knew that I had been thrown in by somebody much bigger than me, who clearly didn’t think that I was at all funny. Fishing trips then, even those in which I managed to remain terrestrial, always seemed to end when the cold had seeped into my bones, and I went home to thaw myself in the few inches of lukewarm water I was allowed. No showers back then – I don’t ever remember going anywhere with a shower. Even the kind of hotels we visited on high days and holidays had only a single bath on each landing – so no fear of dislocating a hip whilst rinsing the soap off. Mind you, being a boy of that age, I didn’t have a particularly close relationship with the soap bar, truth be told. Infact, the more I think about it, the more I think that might be the real reason that people kept chucking me in the river…

I have developed a stupid habit of leaving things half finished and open on the laptop so that I can return to them when the mood takes me, and thus I have now managed to write and delete today’s post a total of three times. I have absolutely no idea how this current incarnation compares with its mistakenly expunged counterparts: I remember the first couple of sentences, but I have absolutely no recollection whatsoever of what I found to prattle on about thereafter. It was kind of the idea if I’m honest, but I could certainly have done without the repeats. If you feel unfulfilled by what you have read above, then I can only seek to assure you that my first three attempts were almost certainly much, much better…

¹I have absolutely no idea why that might be.

The Beginner’s A-Z of D.I.Y Subversion – Index

I will attempt to keep this up-to-date as I go. If I do not it is almost certainly not a subversive act in itself, but a consequence of growing old and finding that the ‘memory’ part of my brain has got sidetracked by whisky and chocolate.

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

ACCUSED Person charged with crime or offence. Try not to get accused of too much. Being hounded by MI5 is all very well for a little while, but it soon becomes exceedingly tiresome. Far better to be an accuser and accuse MI5 of hounding you, even if it’s not true – which, of course, it is not.

ACQUIESCE To comply; to admit without interrogation. Acquiescence is not encouraged in subversive circles unless, of course, it saves a lot trouble. It can certainly spare you an enormous amount of pain during interrogation. Admit everything: be remorseful; weep uncontrollably; call everybody sir.

AD NAUSEUM Latin term to describe anything that has continued to the point of nausea. E.g. Noel Edmonds.

ADZE A type of axe. But a far more exclusive word. Why be the 357^th Mad Axe Murderer, when you can be the first Mad Adze Murderer? Exclusivity is the key¹. Make the spelling clear to the newspapers and make sure that the handle is fixed good and tight. There’s nothing worse than your adze-head flying off, mid-assassination and ruining the wallpaper.

^{1. Unless you’re trying to open a lock, in which case it’s probably a Yale.}

AMBUSCADE Ambush. Conceal yourself in some bushes, wait for your victim to appear, leap out from your hiding-place yelling ‘This is an ambush – you’re surrounded’ and try not to look too embarrassed about the fact that you are alone.

Surrounding a victim is not easy for the solo subversive. You could try using mirrors, but beware – the reflections are indiscriminate. A subversive friend of mine was reduced to a gibbering wreck when faced with the multifarious images of his victim staring out at him from the 17 strategically placed mirrors that he’d forgotten all about.

Be certain of your reasons for wanting to attempt an ambush. Is kidnap the motive, or perhaps gang-violence? Perhaps you are just not very good at making friends and this is the nearest you ever get to normal social interaction. If the latter is true, you could always try to ambush a psychiatrist¹. (You will find this impossible during the summer months, unless you live in the Caribbean.)

^{1. If you do decide to detain a psychiatrist in this fashion, ensure that you have enough cash to pay his bill. Psychiatrists seldom accept cheques – nobody trusts a loony.}

AMMUNITION The painful, nasty bit that fits inside the weapon: the bullet in the gun; the pebble in the catapult; the lie in the politician.

ANARCHY Lack of government within a state; lawlessness; confusion. Creating a state of anarchy is the penultimate aim of all subversion, because, only when this is achieved, can one move onto the ultimate aim of all subversion e.g. installing a government that represents all your own views¹.

In going about your legitimate subversive activities, you may be able to take the opportunity to accuse the government (or, more likely, the Parish Council) of ‘allowing a state of anarchy to exist’, which is both a damning indictment and the ideal springboard for your efforts to create such a state. As in all matters, the wise subversive must be wary of public opinion. The general perception of anarchy is not terribly good; it invariably receives a very bad press. There is little that the solo subversive can do about this – good P.R. men² are very expensive. If you are caught out and accused of being an anarchist yourself, try this argument – ‘In a truly Utopian State there would be no laws, as there would be no law-breakers. Hence, the truly Ideal State would be an anarchistic one. Just imagine that. You may say that I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope some day you will join us and the world will live as one.’ If at all possible, attempt to end all public statements with a quote from John Lennon, but be prepared to paraphrase Salman Rushdie or Good Housekeeping in an emergency: it is unlikely to convince any but the terminally stupid, but might just work with a journalist.

^{1. Better still; install a government that is you.}

^{2. Game of the Page – Spot The Oxymoron.}

APATHY

ARSON Crime of intentionally setting fire to property or possessions. Although burning things can be politically prudent, one has to accept that setting fire to the seat of our government is perhaps a little ambitious for the solo beginner. Try burning unpaid bills. Utility bills are a nice size in general and suitable for warming your hands by after you have been cut off.

ASSASSINATE To kill by treacherous violence, especially for reward. Don’t get involved in this sort of practice; it does not help your image. If you feel that you really must rid yourself of a troublesome person, try sending them somewhere with a message and then changing all the locks before they return.

HOMEWORK

Carefully plan an ambush: prepare maps, timetables, escape routes etc, and then think of 101 reasons why you should not go ahead with it.

Subject to legal advice, ‘The Beginner’s A-Z of D.I.Y Subversion’ will return with the letter ‘B’ in 4 weeks time.

Beginner’s A-Z of D.I.Y Subversion – Index, is here.

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

This was supposed to appear on Tuesday, but life got in the way…

ABDUCTION The felonious carrying off a man’s daughter, wife, etc. More often referred to by the media as kidnapping (see below) this is an excellent method of raising cash, but it is wise to be cautious:

a) Before deciding on your victim, carry out some basic research: is anyone likely to want them back and, if they do, can they afford to pay the ransom? There can be little worse than being stuck with someone whom you can’t return, who eats like a horse and insists upon attempting to ‘discern the rationale of your didactic approach’ every evening over the cocoa.

b) When operating solo, always kidnap someone smaller than yourself. If that is not possible, try to snatch his dog – as long as it is neither big and vicious nor small and yappy.

c) Do not get over-ambitious. Kidnapping the mayor might seem like a wonderful idea after thirteen glasses of your sister’s homemade rhubarb wine, but it is unlikely to prove practical, and it is doubtful that you will be able to carry out your scheme without eventual exposure, capture and humiliation.

d) Do not attempt to kidnap someone of above average IQ¹. There can be little more embarrassing than losing so many games of chess that you are forced to pay the ransom yourself before releasing the brainbox with money for train fare and a sandwich on the way home.

PLANNING AN ABDUCTION – Honestly, it is probably better not to. The moment you start to get involved in meticulous planning, you will realise how fraught with problems the whole thing is and, like as not, will decide not to bother. My best advice is to go into it as one of those spur-of-the-moment things. Have a room set aside and fully prepared: buy a clean bucket, but other than that, take the whole thing as it comes and sooner or later, a suitable victim will walk into your life.

A TYPICAL D.I.Y ABDUCTION – Walking through Tesco’s car park one Friday afternoon, you spot a frail old man pushing a trolley piled high with luxury goods. You make a split-second decision to abduct him as he starts to load up his car. It is not until you get him home that he manages to convince you that neither the trolley nor the car was his own, and that he is himself an habitual thief. Worse, he is old, small and frail – he is also poor and lonely. You give him a hot meal and attempt to release him, but he refuses to go.

^{1. This is an immutable law of subversion – if it were not so, Stephen Fry would have been taken long, long ago.}

ABSCESS A gathering of purulent matter. All of the main political parties have an annual abscess, usually at the seaside. A subversive is expected to study this sort of thing carefully in order to understand what the enemy¹ is up to. If this doesn’t put you off, nothing will. Actually, it is not difficult to discover what the political parties are planning, as they are rarely off the television during the abscess season and go to great lengths to tell you, ad nauseum, what they intend to do next². If you belong to a subversive group, you will probably have an abscess of your very own – probably in the pub on a Friday night.

^{1. As a subversive, you may decide to view all organised political parties as ‘the enemy’ – this is perfectly normal and, frankly, not terribly subversive.}

^{2. In truth, what they want you to believe they intend to do next. What they actually intend to do next is exactly the same as every other party in power over the entire history of the world e.g. feather their own nests.}

ABSCOND To hide oneself; to fly from justice. Flying from justice will probably prove to be totally impractical for the do-it-yourselfer, but you can run away. Ignore all the rubbish about attack being the best form of defence; run away and, if at all possible, hide. Disguise has always offered additional scope for the prospective escapee and, in the case of a male disguising himself as a female, allows him to employ the supplementary safety net of tears if cornered.

ABUSE Bad language addressed to a person; insulting words. In order to be effective, abuse must be witty and incisive. Abuse is never effective. If you wish to employ abuse as a subversive tool, try to obey three simple rules:

Never waste wit on anyone you suspect may not be able to understand it.
Never abuse anybody you feel may be likely to beat you up as a result.
If you feel that you really must abuse somebody who may beat you up, do it very quietly and from a very great distance.

The Beginner’s A-Z of D.I.Y Subversion (Accused to Assassinate) will appear on Friday 28^th January 2022 providing I remember.

Beginner’s A-Z of D.I.Y Subversion – Index, is here.

The Beginner’s A-Z of D.I.Y Subversion – Author’s Footnote

I am aware that a footnote generally lies at the end of a text, but I intend to get this one in early for a couple of – to my mind – particularly valid reasons:

As this little ‘guide’ is likely to be what might generously be described as ‘episodic’, I would like to get my disclaimers in early. I do not wish to find myself up before the beak answering for my shortcomings before I have had a proper chance to fully express them. I do not wish to find myself serving twenty years at her majesty’s pleasure when I have not, as yet, even had chance to pull my balaclava on. I am of an age. I feel that if I can get my excuses in early enough – e.g. before I have committed the misdemeanour – all will be well.
The guide, itself, is not proving to be an easy thing to write. It may not get finished. If it does not reach a conclusion – I dare not even think about what will occupy the lines of letter Z – then I may never be able to apologise to anybody that has been offended (anyone under the age of fifty) by what I have, at that particular point, failed to say. My intention is to post one letter per month, but it was also my intention to be a lithe, bronzed millionaire by the time I reached forty, and I’m still working on that one too, so, in case this whole tutorial remains unfinished, I intend to get my mitigation in now. Sadly, I am neither alcohol nor drug dependent, so I fear a custodial sentence may await me. My only chance is to plead terminal stupidity – I don’t think even the sharpest of lawyers could deny that one…

For those of you who may scan the pages below (when they appear), open-mouthed with disbelief and indignation, I offer my fulsome and unconditional apologies. I am a man of a certain age and my command of the ‘gender-neutral pronoun’ is not great. In short, outside of using he/she throughout the text (unwieldy and itself open to misinterpretation) I have found myself floundering in the post-prepositional sentence phase and have tended, consequently, to flit between the two main gender-specific options available to me. Furthermore, I fear that I may have somewhat overloaded with he, his and him to the detriment of she, her and (er…) her. Let me explain. There are many, many female subversives out there – I have met them – but few who would require the information offered in a guide such as this. This type of subversion is largely male¹ and the truth is that the majority of those reading this guide will be men. Men need help. And as a man, this is the best I can do to help them.

I understand that most men will require the services of the gender-dominant fifty percent plus of the population in the pursuit of their long term objectives, but outside of providing the old man with an odd flask of hot tea and clean pants every Wednesday, most will keep their heads down and observe the futility of failed action and impotent rage with a wry detachment. If you are a woman reading this book in an attempt to understand what is going on between a man’s ears – well, now you know. It’s not pretty, but at least, thanks to all of those gender-specific pronouns, you know that I’m not talking about you …

Furthermore, I understand that when reading a book, most men never make it this far…

[1] The female approach to subversion is largely at odds with that of the male and, unlike the tactics noted in these pages, by and large far more successful.

Beginner’s A-Z of D.I.Y Subversion – Index, is here.

The Beginner’s A-Z of D.I.Y Subversion – Introduction (part two)

I urge you, now, before it is too late, to consider what it is that has drawn you to this subversive path. Perhaps you have always harboured an urge to behave subversively. Perhaps only now, after (comfortably) more than half a century of life’s travails, have you built up sufficient resentment to act. Remember: into every life a little rain must fall. There’s always sunshine after the rain etc. etc. Except that there’s not, is there? After rain, there’s normally even more rain, followed by fog on high ground and flooding in low-lying areas. Subversion comes in many guises: think Guy Fawkes attempting to blow up the House of Commons; think ringing a call centre and leaving your phone off the hook; think taking an unfeasibly long time to read all of the myriad delights laid out before you on the Starbucks menu before asking the extensively over-qualified barista, ‘do you do Nescafé?’.

Whatever subversive action you decide to take, even if it is just sticking your tongue out at someone when they’re not looking, somebody is almost bound to take exception to it. If they react badly, you will find yourself in ‘a situation’. At this point adrenalin will kick in. You are unlikely to experience the fight or flight dilemma as you will be too busy running away. Whatever you do, always make certain that you have a suitable means of escape. Bicycles are excellent, but only if you are heading downhill. If you plan to escape by public transport, always ensure that you know the location of the easy access stops.

Broadly speaking, subversives fall into two categories: a) those who consider themselves torchbearers for the right and good – enemies of injustice and inequality – warriors for a righteous cause and b) those who would really quite like to get their name into the newspaper. Many of those who fall into category a) will enter into politics, whilst many of those who fall into category b) will also enter into politics. The Houses of Parliament are the subversive equivalent of the elephant’s graveyard. Politics is the domain of those who have lost all conviction – or at least home to those who have sued the press for releasing details of their convictions. Subversion is simultaneously the enemy and the father of politics – whilst politicians are often simultaneously the father and employer of any number of tax-deductable children. Winston Churchill remained subversive throughout his political career but then, so did Tony Benn and Dennis Skinner and look where it got them. For most, subversion and political success are mutually exclusive – in much the same way as hand-knitted cardigans and sexual excess. Indeed, for the majority of subversives, subversion and normal social intercourse are also mutually exclusive. Show me a subversive with friends and I will show you a liar. Subversion, like golf, is a group activity in which no member trusts any other member; consequently, most D.I.Y subversives also become solo subversives. After all, what is the point of other opinions if they do not agree with your own?

Somebody once said that 99% of all subversive activity takes place between the ears. They obviously associated with different subversives to me. 99% of what goes on between the ears of the subversives I have met is… well, zilch, quite honestly …and the other 1% involves sexual exploits – 99% of which are fictitious.

Remember, subversion is not all glamour. Che Guevara was indeed glamorous, but not until after he was dead. If you want glamour, you are reading the wrong blog – look elsewhere – there must be one somewhere about existing purely on the calories extracted from cigarettes and cocaine.

I do not seek to persuade anyone that committing subversive deeds could in any way be seen as a desirable course of action. Indeed, I consider it imperative to advise against any activity that may, in any way, be associated with terrorism or extremism and which might, ultimately, lead to the suspicion that it was me who placed the fake dog-dirt in the butcher’s doorway. Amateur subversion seldom involves killing your enemy – although it may necessitate tying his shoelaces together. If you are happy living your life as a friendless bozo, perpetrating small acts of subversion whenever and wherever the opportunity arises distil from this such succour as you are able – then, for God’s sake, go out and get yourself a life…

The Beginner’s A-Z of D.I.Y Subversion (Author’s Footnote) will appear as a supplementary post on Sunday 23^rd January 2022

Beginner’s A-Z of D.I.Y Subversion – Index, is here.

The Beginner’s A-Z of D.I.Y Subversion – Introduction (part one)

It is over two years ago that I wrote ‘The Gentle Art to Subversion’ parts one and two, which I now realise are crying out to become the introduction to the opus that will be ‘The Beginner’s A-Z of D.I.Y Subversion’. I hope that you will excuse me for publishing them again – together with a footnote, which I hope will buy me patience and, if not exactly sympathy, then perhaps some protection from litigation – before I begin the serialisation of my masterpiece in earnest…

This is not a terrorist handbook. If you are scanning this page at random whilst pretending to peruse some far more worthy thread, you need not be concerned – it is highly unlikely that you will receive a knock on the door from a shady-looking character with a rolled-up umbrella and a GCHQ security pass hanging from a purple lanyard around his neck. You can read on in relative safety. You are unlikely to find yourself on the receiving end of a polonium enema just yet.

Perhaps we should begin with a definition. My hastily Googled enquiry offered this – Subversion: the undermining of the power and authority of an established system or institution. I see it more as the art of being a bloody nuisance. Like stretching Clingfilm over the toilet bowl, it seldom ends well. I tend to think that the aim of undermining the entire established system might be a slightly ambitious one for a long-in-the-tooth loner such as you. I am happy to discuss subversion in all of its forms, from hacking the Pentagon computers to leaving a drawing pin on the Bowl’s Club Secretary’s chair, but I urge you to consider – those on the receiving end of acts of subversion do not necessarily share your healthy regard for democratic rights and may just call the police if you continue to shout rude words through their letterbox – worse, they might just open the door and chase you.

Subversion is a gift for life. The desire to subvert is there from birth. Any parent will recognise the look on a baby’s face as it widdles on the changing mat or poos in a freshly changed nappy. The urge to subvert grows with the child. School brings unrivalled opportunities: bird whistles behind a raised desk lid; innocently made smart-arse remarks during class discussions; getting lost on the way to classes; falling to sleep during them… all of the things that teachers love. In adulthood, the opportunities to act subversively occur daily. I am not talking about the kind of actions that could cause physical harm; I’m talking about the slight discomfort of a rubber band on the back of the neck, a dried pea in a brogue, an unpicked seam in the underwear… And I’m not necessarily thinking about actual physical irritation, I’m thinking mental too. I’m thinking about moving the most expensive suit you can find onto the Bargain Rail at Next; I’m thinking about casually pretending to pick up a loose bolt from the floor near the railings at the top of the Eiffel Tower or producing your own bottle of tomato ketchup at an oyster bar. It might sound like little more than a practical joke, but it will put a bat up the nightie of a) the multi-nationals, b) the French and c) people who insist on eating raw molluscs in public.

Subversion that results in violence is often linked with religion. Religion is, in my opinion, not something with which the subversive should become involved. Too often, the incorporation of subversion and religion can lead to shed-loads of anguish and not a little bloodshed – just think back to the Sunday school outings of your youth. If you are decided upon a career in religious subversion, there are other websites out there for you, although I would not necessarily recommend accessing them on your mother-in-law’s laptop.

I am no connoisseur of violence – I haven’t queued for a bus in years – but I am aware that some factions quite like it. I am a firm believer that blood is designed to remain within the body. As far as I am concerned, a pool of red liquid around a person’s feet can only spell trouble – unless it is being lapped up by the cat, in which case it probably spells strawberry sauce. I would certainly never encourage risky behaviour: life and limb are not designed to be exposed to danger. Extreme pain is nature’s way of telling you to stop whatever it is you are currently doing, even if it is just sitting cross-legged on a concrete floor. The only advice I can offer is that violence is seldom the answer (unless, ironically, the question is ‘what is seldom the answer?’).

Beginner’s A-Z of D.I.Y Subversion – Index, is here.

Stand Down

Yes, well, I’m sure you must all know the feeling. I started to write today’s post early on Wednesday evening and by the time I was ready to wrap up the day I was confident that I was ready to wrap up the post. I was happy with almost every single aspect of it. I read it through again on Thursday evening, by which time I was happy with some of it, and I tinkered around the edges with the bits that I thought could be better. This morning I read it through one last time before scheduling publication only to find that overnight some malevolent little spirit had toyed around with my carefully chosen prose and turned a thousand handsomely woven words into a complete dog’s-dinner. It is awful. I have not got the time to edit it into any kind of shape – it has, by some means that I do not understand, contrived to bear no resemblance whatsoever to anything I had set out to say: it was a random chapter ripped summarily from a jumble sale Jeffrey Archer, run through a cross-shredder and reassembled by a three year old, dyslexic chimpanzee – it had to go. I hit ‘delete’ with the kind of relief usually only experienced when the police car that has been following you for three miles finally pulls off into Starbuck’s car park, at which point I immediately realised that I had nothing left to say today. I rooted about the scrumpled papers that line my desk and finally found one that said… “It is a recurring nightmare. I am performing a stand-up routine in front of everyone I have ever known and not a single person is laughing…” so, here we go then. Please excuse spelling, grammar, syntax, lack of logicality – if that’s even a word – but I haven’t left myself with the luxury of enough time to edit it into any kind of shape, nor to bin it if it’s beyond salvation…

It will come as no surprise to anyone who has ever known me that I have never actually delivered a comedy routine on stage. In fact, I can recall performing before a massed audience only once in my life, that being in a schoolboy ‘Mummer’s Play’ which featured myself forgetting whatever line of mediaeval gibberish I had been entrusted to deliver and instead, possessed by the sheer panic of an empty head, blurting out from astride my broomstick steed a decidedly non-period joke, with which my English tutor was pointedly unimpressed. I have always found writing jokes easy, but I have cherished the luxury of blaming other people when they fall flat to the stage with the kind of ‘splat’ more usually associated with the back end of a cow.

Stand-up comedians are, by tradition, young – older stand-ups are usually known as ‘washed-up game show hosts’ or ‘didn’t you used to be?…’ and generally know much better. Occasionally I imagine this could be my ‘way in’: an old man telling jokes to a drunken, student audience: how cool would that be? Young women have so much time for old men, and young men know better than to upset young women; it’s fool-proof. Could I be the fool to prove it?

I know how a stand-up set works: you don’t go for the big laughs too early (just as well really) you introduce yourself and get the audience on your side. The big laughs come in the middle of the set, although in my nightmare-set, I have never actually got that far – I usually wake just as the audience mood begins to darken. I have no idea whether my ‘big laughs’ would, in reality, be bangers or damp squibs. I have no idea, in fact, of exactly what they would be at all, nor of how I would deliver them. Would I stalk around the stage acting out the scenes that I picture in my head, or would I lean casually on the mike-stand, laconically weaving my comic tapestry with a wry smile on my lips? The stage ‘prowl’ is probably not likely for me – not with my knees – but at the same time ‘laconic’ is not a word that is easy to reconcile with my general demeanour. I am not so much an uncoiled spring as a tightly wound-up spiral of anxious inconsequentiality. An unmanaged de-coil could have, what I believe are known in psychiatric circles as ‘far-reaching consequences’.

It doesn’t help that I have the tendency towards the tongue-tied stutter when I’m stressed. In reality, it could take me hours to tell my first gag. I do have a strategy to cope with it in restaurants – uniformed waiters stress me out – I tell everybody what I am going to order and then, when the waiter stares expectantly at me, I say something completely different. Surprise is the trick. Dinner in a restaurant is like a lucky dip for me. I’m never certain what I am going to get – even after I’ve ordered it. The same strategy could give me a certain air of unpredictability on stage, but I’m not at all sure of how I would handle the knowledge that I had no idea either of where I was going, nor how to get out of it. I fear for my sanity and my underwear. I have a similar problem with social gathering ‘chit-chat’: pre-party small-talk with me can be unpredictable – and seldom in a good way – particularly when I’m not at all certain of who I am talking to. My friends know what I am like – they make allowances – but whenever I am invited to mix with an unfamiliar set of people, I simply apologise in advance and pretend that I am somebody else. My whole demeanour, combined with my social ineptitude, reminiscent of a man attempting to overcome the confusion of just having woken up…

(…I enter and walk to a stool, centre stage, carefully placing a folded towel over the seat.) “The management insisted. They’ve just had it re-covered…” (I sit down.) “Hello. My name is Colin McQueen. That is Colin, as in dead Scottish forename and McQueen, as in dead American actor, and the only reason that I started by telling you that is to prove that I don’t have to look it up from the label in my pants. Now, if I appear to be a little uncomfortable, by the way, it is because my pants are on their third day – I did inside-out yesterday and today is back-to-front – never the most comfortable of days… I’m sure that many of you will have seen me walking on and thought to yourselves, ‘He’s a bit old to be doing this sort of thing, isn’t he?’ and you are, of course, correct. I have crossed the threshold between checking my pants in case I should get lucky, and giving them the once-over just in case I have already been very unlucky…

Thankfully, I normally wake then, bathed in sweat, uncertain of where the boundaries of reality lay, and aware only that all I can hear is snoring. How closely dreams resemble life…

Now, Where Was I?

There are times when I sit down to write – whether because I feel I need to for the sake of my sanity or simply because it is Tuesday and I have nothing ready to post – and I have no idea of what I intend to prattle on about. It is hugely important at these times that I do not get distracted. (Prattle, by the way, according to Google, means to talk at length in a foolish or inconsequential way, so at least I can be sure that I choose my words well. Google, if you are interested (according to Google) means that somebody – I have no idea who, I will need to look it up – invented one word just because it sounds like another; in this case Googol (itself invented by Milton Sirotta) which is 10¹⁰⁰, e.g. lots. Anthimeria, incidentally, is what allows me to google although, if I’m honest, what it actually means at the moment is that I’ve lost my thread…

Anyway, here I am, all ready to go, but with no idea of where I’m going. It’s not like writer’s block: if I could just think of what to write about, I would have no trouble at all in writing about it. Writer’s block, as some of you may remember, has been the subject of a number of my past blogs (My Unceasing Battle with Pratchett’s Californians and A Return to California for instance) and simply because some of you may remember, I dare not use it again. How could I possibly be sure that I was not repeating myself? How could I possibly be sure that I was not repeating myself? Well, other than actually reading what I wrote then – and there are some lengths to which I will not go (such as ending a sentence with a preposition or starting one with ‘Well’) – I could not, and so won’t…

Anyway, as I was saying, the problem is not in writing, but in deciding what to write about. (About what to write?) As a rule I would just contemplate what has recently happened to me, but latterly that has not proved to be quite so effective. Nothing much happens to me these days, and what does, has generally happened several times before. The odd discussion over how to stem the bleeding after I have tried to trim the hairs up my nose with the kitchen scissors is just acceptable – is it? – but probably not suitable for regular repeats, and I suspect that some of my more singular little peccadilloes may have already outstayed their welcome, so where do I go to now?

I could look to the news as a resource, but I seldom publish what I have written before the news has become history. I am very aware of my propensity to be asinine and I try not to lay anything before a potential six billion souls before I have had time to check out that I have not got it completely around my neck. The news has a terrible habit of un-making itself within a few days. Besides, even when my output is in no way topical, I need to check it again and again before I post, as much of it, if I am perfectly frank, has a disturbing tendency to drift towards the drivel if I’m not careful (I was about to tell you here that drivel simply means ‘nonsense’, but I got sidetracked by the fact that topical can mean ‘directly applied to the body’ and I wondered if I should rewrite the previous sentence). That’s ok, I am happy with nonsense, but I do have standards. I have a file (quite full) on my computer titled ‘Not Good Enough’ and whilst I am aware that most of my readers will now be wondering ‘Exactly how bad do things have to be?’ I would ask them (and by definition you, now that you have made it thus far) to just think yourselves lucky that it is there at all.

Local news is a possibility, but, If I’m honest, I would struggle to make some of the stories any more bizarre than they already are and I’m not at all certain as to how I would even start to work on ‘Door bell camera picks up man urinating on hydrangea’ or ‘Local man’s third cousin knows someone who once met a man who spoke to The Dalai Lama’s stepmother in Swahili’. By and large, I think, I have to find other seams to mine. (The Dalai Lama’s favourite hobbies, incidentally, are listed as meditating, gardening and mending watches, although not, probably at the same time. Surely, if he bought himself a sundial he would be set for the day.)

The worst thing of all is the nagging feeling that I started the day with the certain knowledge of what I intended to say. Well, not necessarily the day if I’m honest, it could just have been the journey up the stairs. The amount of time I need to forget something is breathtakingly short. I have stopped worrying about it. Often it will come back to me when I least expect it, and anyway, ideas are a little like buses: there’ll always be another one along any minute. If only I knew where the bus stop was… There is something of the Time Portal about the foot of the stairs. Somehow in every terraced ascent, I appear to head off in one direction whilst my memory lopes off in another. Sadly, if I turn around to return from whence I came, I seldom find my lost marbles. In truth, I am far more likely to lose another. Pen and paper are my only salvations, which is fine as long as they too are not at the top of the stairs.

Anyway, whichever way I do it, sooner or later I have to sit myself down at the laptop and… Now, where was I?

‘There’s a lady who’s sure all that glitters is gold, and she’s buying a stairway to erh…’ – the real reason Robert Plant will no longer sing the song.