Idle Hands

Surely I should have learned by now that having time on my hands is never a good thing, that idle hours are never well spent. My own idle hands clicked onto ‘Reader’ and typed ‘Humour’ into the search bar. It’s been a long time since I found a new blog to follow and my latest crop of followers clearly don’t want me as one of their own, or if they do, they obviously think that I am somebody else: somebody with even the slimmest chance of making an income out of this waffle. I scanned down the page of the ‘humorous’ blogs on offer and reminded myself that dealing with crushing disappointment is all part of the human condition – at least if you are me. Firstly, I did not find a single blog that could in any way, be described as humorous, unless my grip on the English language has become even more tenuous than I feared. As far as I could see, most of them were there because they had the word ‘Humour’ as a tag. If this is the way that tags work, then I am very tempted to tag my next post ‘Get £1,000,000 of free cash by clicking on this blog.’ I see myself with thousands of new, albeit disappointed, readers.

Secondly – and I must be honest, by far the more distressing aspect of my trawl, this blog hadn’t even made the cut! Now, I realise I am no Oscar Wilde – I miss that particular qualification on so many counts – but come on, surely I should be able to get myself onto a list that is otherwise filled with ‘What is the basic fundamental of joke construction?’ and not a single ‘Why did the chicken cross the road?’ This is a very small pond, belly laugh-wise, and I cannot even get myself hauled out in a very broad net. I fear my goose – along with all hope of golden eggs – is cooked. I have ‘Humour’ as a category for God’s sake! What on earth do I need to do? (OK, if you’re going to be picky, I concede that including a joke or two might help.)

I have spent my life attempting to wrangle some kind of joy out of words. Most of the time the words have put up a pretty good fight. I know from very long experience that on the rare occasion I am truly happy with something I have written, a sober read-through the following day will see it hurtle towards the bin. Writing alone is the process of making a hundred jokes that nobody else gets whilst completely missing the one that everybody laughs at. There is nothing more joyful than finding that ‘killer line’ and nothing more soul destroying than seeing it die a death. There is joy to be found in writing with another discordant soul, laughing at the other person’s jokes and realising that you can add to them. Joy is in reading through an idea you had and hearing laughter exactly where you thought it might be hiding. I have laughed so much during long-ago writing sessions with the wonderful Mr Underfelt that I have feared for my health and my sanity – something I have never done in the last thirty or so years of writing alone. (Laugh, that is. I fear for my sanity on a daily basis. If I ever manage to find it, I will give it a very stern talking to.)

Solitary writing is a form of self abuse – although without quite the same sense of guilt or fear of blindness. It is all about the release. It is all about the disappointment. It is all about the ‘I’m not doing that again.’ I never think about writing: I just write. Like everybody else with an enthusiasm that dwarfs talent, I know that I will get it right one day. Like everybody else who waits for the day that they will get it right, I wait, and write.

I know that many of you are far more professional in your approach than I. On the one occasion that I wrote a novel, I meandered through the first half of the book, found the ending, went back to the beginning and then slowly drew the two together. I never had a plan, it just sort of worked itself out in a way that all of the top publishers of the day described as utter tripe. Only in sit-com did I ever have a beginning, a middle and an end in mind, because each episode is really just a single joke and the trick is just in holding the attention long enough to get there. Normally I had given up the ghost myself long before I reached the end. My dialogue just wouldn’t follow my plot. The phrase ‘It’s almost there, but…’ is the one I will have chiselled on my tombstone.

For the last three decades I have passed my time banging out this kind of fol-de-rol. Generally I start with the first line – I know what you’re thinking, but let me explain… I have a bookful of them. I write them down constantly. A million first sentences with absolutely no idea of where they are going. Often I sit down and leaf through the book until something catches my eye. Always I will have something on my mind, although I seldom know what it is, and it somehow attaches itself onto what I have written and, hand in hand, the two of them wander off towards the horizon where, if I am lucky, I catch them before they fall over the edge. Comedy is the gift of a flat earth. I can agonise all day over a single sentence, or I can find myself with a thousand words on paper and no real idea of how they got there. Either way, it makes little difference unless I can find a way to search for them that does not include the word ‘humour’. (Before you suggest it, I have tried prefixing with ‘Vain attempts at’, but I’m still not there. In fact I have just typed my name into the search bar and I still do not appear to exist. How closely this blogosphere mirrors life.)

The Devil makes work for idle hands, so the saying goes. I’ve always thought that the Devil probably had the best jokes. I wonder where he keeps them…

I Should Be So Lucky*

My wife tells me that I always view the world through a jaundiced eye. She is wrong. I use both jaundiced eyes. Life is full of pitfalls and I feel that it is my responsibility to warn you of all of those that I have already fallen down. Never-the-less, I consider myself an optimist – although it would appear that I am alone in that – and in celebration of the fact, I would like to take the opportunity today to share with you my ten favourite omens of good fortune, in the certain knowledge that it doesn’t matter how you paint them, they are all a complete load of tosh, but you know, it’s just me isn’t it, always looking on the bright side:

It probably says more about the British psyche than anything else that we consider having a bird drop one on us to be good news. Being shat on from a great height is not normally something with which a person would associate good fortune. Whilst a sparrow turd on the shoulder might not be catastrophic, a swan stool on the forehead might be considerably more difficult to laugh off. Imagine how lucky we could be if cows flew. Apparently it is considered lucky because of how rare an occurrence it is – well I, for one, am not quite feeling it. It is pretty rare to be struck by lightning, but I certainly wouldn’t consider it a lucky break if it were ever to happen. I think it is probably fair to say that the only time I might feel fortunate to have a sparrow shit on me would be if the alternative was an emu.
Throughout most of the world, the black cat is seen as an omen of bad luck, whilst in the UK it is considered to be an augury of good fortune. Having a black cat visit your home is thought to be a harbinger of wealth and prosperity – unless, of course, it is a puma, when it is a portent of running away. Why we in the UK are so diametrically opposed to the rest of the world in this view, it is difficult to say, except to note that, if we’re honest, it’s that way with most things. “The rest of the world says that putting your head in a crocodile’s mouth would be stupid? We’ll see about that. Bring me a crocodile, I’ll show ‘em.” As Brits, of course, we carry the complete conviction that the rest of the world is just plain wrong. It is why they love us so much.
According to the legend, a chimney sweep saved the life of William the Conqueror by rescuing him from a runaway carriage in 1066. (I’m not entirely clear what kind of living there was to be made from chimney sweeping at that time as, according to the ever-reliable Wikipedia, chimneys don’t appear to have been invented for another century. Probably explains why he had so much spare time on his hands, wandering around, plucking folks from fugitive wagons.) Anyway, casting all logic aside, it would appear that the grateful king invited the sweep to his daughter’s wedding as a display of his gratitude – although I’m sure that, given the on-going non-chimney situation, he might have preferred money – and it has become traditional to have a chimney sweep at a wedding ever since; although if I’m honest, I’ve never seen one. Speaking for myself, the thought of Dick Van Dyke hoofing his way through the proceedings would lead me to seriously reconsider my intentions.
Finding a clover with four leaves is a relatively rare happenstance, but as far as I can see, not one to get too worked-up about. The most it is likely to get you is a bad back. If such a leaf had a bounty on its head, for instance, then the search might be worth the effort. As something to sellotape to the pages of a teenage diary, probably less so.
My paternal grandmother used to say that a horseshoe should be hung ‘u’-shaped over the house door, in order to keep the good luck in, whilst my maternal grandmother maintained that it should be hung ‘n’-shaped, in order to let the bad luck out. Convention appears to favour the former, for just as long as it takes the retaining nails to rust through. A falling horseshoe on the head is a certain sign of hospitalisation.
Not walking under a ladder has an obvious rational justification. I would argue that common sense is not an omen: that not walking under a ladder is no more a portent of good fortune than not putting your hand into a working waste disposal unit or not jumping off a very tall building. My advice? If it is likely to cause you harm, don’t do it.
The number seven is considered lucky because God decided to rest on the seventh day after creating the world. In both Islam and Judaism there are seven heavens. Snow White had seven dwarves (which was clearly lucky as she got picked up by Disney, whilst Goldilocks with her three bears, did not) and seven is the number I always hit when I aim for sixteen on the dartboard. It is a prime number and, well, that’s about it really. Basically seven is a lucky number simply because it is none of the others.
A baby born on the New Moon will always enjoy good fortune. Why? I have no idea. We all like things when they’re shiny and new, don’t we? Except a New Moon isn’t very shiny, is it? A Full Moon is shiny. Mostly, in my opinion, a New Moon is a bit spooky. The New Moon night is darker and you are much more likely to encounter Dracula on such a night (which is particularly galling if you have just broken a mirror). Apparently a New Moon on a Monday (Moonday) is doubly fortunate – although not if you have a dentists appointment, or you fancy a night-time ramble without having to festoon yourself with garlic.
Apparently rabbits’ feet are considered lucky because rabbits spend so much time underground where they are more easily able to communicate with the Gods and associated spirits. If that is true, then the Gods are clearly not over-fussed by it, because rabbits are also much more likely to get eaten by foxes and ferrets than we are. The practice of saying “Rabbits, rabbits, rabbits!” on the first day of the month to bring good luck is associated with this, although not if you own a terrier, which will be driven mad by it.
Wishbones, along with all the other internal paraphernalia of a chicken, are traditionally used in predicting the future. When a wishbone is pulled and broken by two people, the person with the biggest bit is considered to have ‘won the luck’. An unbroken wishbone, therefore, is considered to carry the promise of good fortune – particularly if you are a chicken and it’s still inside your chest. The wishbone shape is probably the most imitated shape to be found in all manner of talisman – unless you are in certain areas of London, where it is a stab vest.

So, there you are: the McQueen guide to good luck has been delivered, totally without misfortune, unless, of course, reading it has kept you away from doing something (anything) more important, in which case I can only apologise. It is just one of those pitfalls that the jaundiced eye is never good at picking out…

*It is perhaps worth noting that Kylie Minogue is pretty much charm-sized and that most men would probably consider themselves luck to be able to carry her around with them.

The Eternal Circle

Those of you who were with me on Tuesday (The Seventh Seal) will have found me in my usual state of angst, on that occasion about my inability to corral my thoughts along a predictable path from cogent beginning to rational end. Indeed. those of you stubborn enough to have stuck with me these last few years, through thin and thin, will be painfully aware that narrative thrust is not, figuratively speaking, my ‘thing’. I prefer to let my mind wander a little, to find its own way through my daily travails, in the hope that I can catch up with it sooner or later and corral it into a last sentence that ties in with all that has come before, that neatly bundles all the threads together and arrives both unexpectedly and yet as expected at ‘The End’. My style of writing involves little in the way of planning and a great deal in the way of staring out of the window whilst drinking coffee. I begin each little farrago with the conviction that it will wind up (or down, I’m never sure) if not in the same place then at least on the same page (see figuratively speaking above). That each piece has a dénouement of sorts is as surprising to me as everybody else. That beginning and end should fall into any kind of order after taking a waltz around my cranium is nothing short of a eiraclm. So…

The shower is up and was, briefly, running. You may gather from that sentence that this is no longer the case. It remains up, but it is no longer running. Not, I should point out, the shower’s fault. The reason that it is currently in an ongoing non-functional scenario is actually the fault of the new shower-screen which, having spent the short time since its erection leaking like a sieve, is currently back in its box and awaiting collection. (Fortunately I kept the box because I am old and I know how these things go: they go up, don’t work and come down again, whereupon they have to be returned to the supplier in original packing.) It will be ‘up-picked’, I presume as the result of using a dyslexic Cantonese/English translator, when the new one is delivered, except it won’t, because the carriers know nothing about a new one, as they have only the paperwork for a collection and nothing on the van left to deliver other than a gross of left-handed socks for a shop in Wolverhampton. This does not concern me: at some stage, when we are not in, the new screen will be delivered and left next door with a slow-cooker intended for somewhere in Hemel Hempstead. The new screen will go up without incident and will leak in a whole new range of places.

Built-in obsolescence has reached such a stage that things are now obsolete before they are built in. The expectation is that things will not be as expected. Modern life is all about managing disappointment. In days of yore you could rely on a washing machine lasting until the very day after the guarantee ran out. Then they changed the law: goods, these days, are effectively guaranteed to last as long as they can reasonably be expected to last. It is impossible to plan. You have to spend hours researching the reasonable lifetime of a tumble dryer before you can work out when to get the man in. You have to be aware of the expected durability of a cooker before you make a note of the local takeaway’s number. Things will last just as long as expected, and if they don’t, well, what do you expect? To tell the truth, I did expect the shower screen to keep the water out – or in – somewhat better than it did. If I’m honest, the shower made less of a puddle without it. It strikes me that, if you buy a computer, it is easy to argue that it might not be powerful enough for you and the expectation could be that it might go out-of-date very quickly, it is less easy to maintain that a shower screen is meant to be porous.

So now I’m back in the bath – not ‘this second’ now, you understand, as my laptop has a battery life that is measured in zeptoseconds and has to be plugged into the mains, making it less than ideal for in-bath use, unless you’re writing a piece about the practical effectiveness of defibrillators – and, as much as I appreciate I am taking a risk by stating this, you know where you are with a bath. The water (unless the bath is full of children) stays in it. So constantly reliable is the bath that Archimedes was correctly able to assume that he displaced his own weight in water – and also that it would be cold before he managed to top it back up. It is not the bath’s fault that the towel is always out on the banister nor that the grandkids need a poo the second you settle down in the bubbles, and the downstairs loo is out of use until you can get the teddy bear out of it. Baths have a single function: hold water – much like the bladder which, at my age is far less dependable.

At which point I begin to consider the built-in obsolescence of body parts. What is the reasonable lifespan of my lungs, my heart, my kidneys? (I decided to leave my liver out of this – it has quite enough problems of its own.) Do I need to book the paramedics for the day after my seventieth birthday? I know that medical science has moved on, but what of flesh and blood? Are we destined to see out the balance of our lives waiting for spare parts? Are the ones we have obsolete? Does everything fail at once or can I expect my brain to outlive my lights? Will I be told that I’d be much better with a new one, or will they tell me that they don’t make them now like they used to? And then, of course, we face the inevitability of asking the obvious question, the one to which none of us actually wants to know the answer. Because that is the ending that nobody wants to see coming…

The Seventh Seal

‘Explaining a joke is like dissecting a frog. You understand it better, but the frog dies in the process.’ – E.B. White*

My greatest failing as a writer, I think, is that I get easily sidetracked by the desire to make sense. (My second greatest weakness is that I continue to think it acceptable to describe myself as a writer. I have, in the past, painted many a ceiling, but I have never viewed myself as Michelangelo.) I have a gift for vacillation matched only by my tendency to forget whatever point it was I wished to make before I decided I didn’t want to make it. My finger is so rarely on the pulse that I have no idea whether what I write is alive and well or ready to be minced and pressed into a burger. I try to keep things as simple as I can because, if I’m honest, I’m not much good at tying up loose ends: my macramé skills are not now what they never were then and even as a boy scout with an impeccable woggle, my clove hitch left much to be desired.

I now (or, if I am truthful, at some point in the past, as there is always a considerable lag between writing this stuff and publishing it, giving myself the time to consider who I might have offended, how I might have offended them, what is, or isn’t, funny and why) inhabit a body in which all of my various bits and bobs appear to be engaged in a battle to determine which can fail first: a battle which my teeth are currently winning hands down. (Or is it my hands, teeth down?) In days of yore, dental hygiene was a vigorous business; buffing and scrubbing my way to the kind of white and uniform pegs that I never actually achieved: this is the result of a youth spent opening beer bottles with ill-equipped molars and repeatedly swilling my tonsils with super-strength black coffee. My mouth now resembles a church graveyard from a Hammer Horror film: tombstones lurch at erratic angles, pieces drop off with a haphazard regularity that always takes me by surprise, there are gaps with something (I have no idea what – could be spinach) growing within them. I expect Iron Maiden will book it as a concert venue some time soon.

I find this deterioration incredibly depressing. Even more troubling – because I can no longer gnash my teeth in anguish – is the knowledge that it can only get worse. However much I have the frontage repaired the infrastructure continues to crumble. My mouth contains so much mercury that I am an inch taller in the summer.

Age, unlike life, does make sense. Surely it is perfectly acceptable for stuff to stop working when it is no longer needed. Why worry about retaining teeth when all you really want out of life is a bowl of warm soup and a slice of bread to dip in it? The heart does not need to pump so strongly, to pump blood hither and thither at a pressure adequate enough to stop the arteries collapsing like an Italian government, when the body in which it assiduously oscillates does little but sit in front of the radiator and moan about the buses. What is the point in nature making efforts to retain 20/20 eyesight when the most dangerous thing you are ever likely to encounter is the doormat? Who needs hearing when the telly turns up so loud? Might as well let everything slide a bit – you’ll be dead soon enough.

Except, most of us are not prepared to simply slide off into our evermores without at least a small amount of resistance, are we? We accept age, but we don’t surrender to it – unless, of course, avoiding it requires an awful lot of effort. It does become increasingly difficult to put too much endeavour into confronting the inevitable, but most of us are determined to put up at least some degree of fight. Like Cnut (King Dyslexic I) we cannot hold back the tide, but we can soak up a lot of it into our socks. Age will teach us new tricks: you cannot stop a speeding truck by standing in front of it, but you can deflect it slightly by standing to one side and throwing drawing pins. You cannot avoid Death, but you can stall him a little with chocolate and banana skins. Chess, for me, is not an option – I get confused by the little horses. Could Death be tempted into a game of Trivial Pursuit – I feel I always stand a chance with the inconsequential? (I’m sure that my assumption that Death is male must be due to a 1960’s upbringing and Max Bygraves on the TV.) Keeping the brain active, that’s the thing, isn’t it? Sudoku, Countdown, Crossword, Pointless and Only Connect: keeping the brain vigorous is surely the only way of stalling dementia – although after thirty minutes of the delightful Ms Coren-Mitchell’s show, nobody can honestly avoid feeling that they must have something seriously adrift between the ears. It is like listening to a Scott Walker CD – the conviction that there is something not quite right with at least one of you is overwhelming.

I have learned in these last few years that fingers cannot be taught new skills beyond a certain age and that no amount of pain and perseverance will lubricate the transition between G and E⁷ without dislocating ancient knuckles. I have discovered that no matter how hard I try to concentrate, the computer will still get me in checkmate within fourteen moves, even on ‘beginner’; that no matter how closely I follow the instructions on the macramé kit, all I ever make is a knot; that no matter how prepared I feel at the beginning, I will always be left with a piece of wood that ought to belong somewhere when I have constructed my latest bookcase.

It’s the knowing, isn’t it? Do you want to be sound of mind, but feeble of body, or vice versa? I cannot decide: I cannot make up my mind and yet, even if I could, I am aware that it would make not one jot of difference. What will be will be. What fails, fails. What persists, persists and no amount of reading books you do not understand will change that. There’s no point in trying to make sense of it. Don’t let the Devil lead you into a cul-de-sac of rationalisation, unless, of course, you are confident that he is going to be the one who can’t find his way out. And if he does manage to button-hole you into a game of chess, make sure that you are fully acquainted with the rules before you start. Try to understand how come the clergy slide around the board ineffectually, approaching everything obliquely, never tackling anything head on (oh, hang on…); how come the little horses manage to turn in mid-air when they’re jumping over things and, come to that, how come a castle can even move in the first place. But don’t fret too much about it: it isn’t good for you at your age and, after all, it’s not as if your life depends on it…

*I included this quote because it was the starting point for today’s ramble. That it did not, in the event, go anywhere near where it was intended to go is entirely par for the course. I am sure I will return to the theme in the future – although not necessarily when anticipated…

Christmas Future

I realise that this is a little premature, but there is so much admin to get through these days – scanning the internet, matching gift and price with impecunious aunt and miserly cousin, making allowance for the additional time involved in shipping deliveries without lorry drivers that means that you will not know that something is out of stock until some time in March, not to mention the simple logistics of finding somebody with an open fire who is prepared to let you shove your note up their chimney in the certain knowledge that it might play merry hell with their flue. You may be well ahead of me, but my Christmas planning starts here:

First on everybody’s list of things to do before ‘the day’ is the traditional visit to ‘Ye Olde German Xmas Fayre and Market’ in the only town in the county without a single car parking space and a train station that stands a two-hour yomp from your destination. The burning disappointment of this event is a seasonal rite of passage as fundamental to the occasion as kneeling on the glass baubles and attempting to get the dog to cough up the turkey wishbone. You will be surrounded by so many desperate people that you will not notice that your credit card has gone missing until you attempt to use your absent mobile phone in order to report the drunken Santa for swearing loudly at the Elves. Fortunately, this state of penury will insulate you against the temptation to buy hand-made penis-shaped Christmas baubles, felt Santa hats with flashing lights, a novelty scarf that plays ‘I Saw Mummy Kissing Santa Claus’ and which unravels before you reach the nearest bin, gluhwein that both looks and tastes like drain cleaner and a hot dog that is only one of the two – and that isn’t hot. Female toilet arrangements that involve a single portaloo and a queue that would take a week to clear even if the flush was working. Male arrangements that involve a bush. By the time you manage to find your way out of the yuletide melee, you will have sore feet, three full squirts of tomato ketchup down your crotch and the conviction that the withered Christmas Special turkey ‘n’ bread sauce bap at the Rat & Cockle is maybe not so bad after all. The bottom will have fallen out of your bag for life, the flicker will have gone out of your L.E.D candle and the sparkle in your eye will have been caused by a faulty glitter canon and will require four hours in Casualty to get it removed. YOGXF&M is traditionally held at the beginning of November and may be cancelled if the weather is not perfect e.g. cold and raining. It is no place for children. The pall of shattered-illusion hanging over the event will be visible from Mars.
Second on the list is the traditional trip to Poundland in the search for gifts for all the people you do not like but who always insist on sending you something inappropriate for Christmas. It is best to choose something that will not survive unwrapping as it cannot then be re-parcelled and sent to you next year. Remember that in most cases, the packaging will be far more robust than the contents. Cheap chocolate is always an acceptable gift, especially for diabetic friends, who will have the perfect excuse for not touching it. This can also be a suitable occasion on which to purchase a whole pack of Christmas Crackers that do not ‘crack’ and feature a range of gifts all of which will result in a trip to A&E with the baby, and a joke that didn’t quite survive the translation from Taiwanese.
Update your Christmas Card List. Begin by crossing out all of the people who did not send you a card last year, all of those with whom you have agreed not to exchange cards, all of those who you have completely forgotten ever having known and all of those who laughed when your knickers fell down in the Parent’s Sack race at last summer’s school sports day. Do not attempt to personalise the message in each card as it will only lead to confusion when the cards are placed in the wrong envelope for delivery to a thirteen years out-of-date address. Leave them in the box with the intention of getting them in the post before the last posting day. Throw them in the bin when you next find them in April.
Prepare the sprouts. Christmas sprouts require at least eight weeks cooking before they go in the bin.
Plan the Christmas Menu. Don’t forget the practicalities: how big a turkey can you fit in the oven; how big a turkey can you fit in the bath when it hasn’t defrosted by Christmas Eve; why do the pigs always throw the blankets off during cooking; why does grandad always manage to get a cocktail stick wedged under his top set? Properly planned (e.g. ordered through ‘Just Eat’) Christmas dinner can be a stress-free experience. Lock anyone with whom you may have a difference of opinion out of the kitchen – or preferably the house – and never attempt to follow grandma’s traditional recipe for anything: it is a doomed enterprise and the recriminations will persist for years. If you plan to set fire to the pudding make sure that Uncle Derek has insured his wig.
Write down – or preferably print so that there can be no mistakes – your own Christmas Gift List. Include all makes and specifications. Do not be vague. ‘A nice perfume’ in the hands of a vindictive aunt may well be something with which you would strip down pine furniture. ‘A box of chocolates’ will have a petrol station price ticket and a sell by date from the 1980’s. If you want a bottle of gin that hasn’t come out of an enamel bath in a disused car battery factory state the make. Include a number of inexpensive alternatives, but not so many that your spouse can get away with buying one.
Take all necessary steps to eliminate stress. Sell the cat, farm the kids out to relations, feign illness and, if at all possible, move without leaving a forwarding address.
Do not buy in so much alcohol that you think it safe to start drinking it beforehand, but also do not be tempted by last year’s advocaat. It may look innocuous, but at heart it is twelve month old custard with a garnish of British Sherry.
Find blanket to pull over head until second week of January.

Superpowers

Frankie squatted down with his back against the redbrick wall, his knees pulled up to his chest, his fingers entwined and white at the knuckle behind his neck, his eyes screwed tightly shut. The noise around him was deafening even through the barrier of toilet paper he had managed to cram into his ears before playtime, but he wasn’t actually as aware of that as the voice inside his head yelling at the children to quieten down, even though he knew they never would. He didn’t really need them to. He didn’t even want them to. He just needed to step back from it. If he faded far enough away into the background, then the noise would no longer exist. Frankie could make that happen. That was Frankie’s superpower.

With the noise turned down, Frankie was able to think much more clearly. With his eyes and ears shut tight and his back to the wall, he could join in all of the playground games: the push and the shove, the running, the climbing, the tag and the chase – he was the virtual schoolboy. When played behind his silent wall, he loved football, he was good at it. He was Messi. It was as if the threadbare old tennis ball was tied to his boot and none of the other kids could push him away from it. Except for Maureen Jackson who was bigger than him – much bigger – and super-keen on inveigling him into a game of kiss chase that was both diminutive in the size of its teams and liberal in its interpretation of the rules. Once engulfed in Maureen’s over-zealous embrace it was entirely possible that they would never make it into school dinners again.

Not that that was a great concern. Even on his ‘quiet table’, tucked away in the corner of the hall, down by the wallbars, surrounded by the smell of socks and baked beans, he was engulfed by a discordant riot of sights and sounds that he found it impossible to process. Not even the foreknowledge of Spam fitter, lumpy mashed potato and tinned tomato, chocolate sponge and pink custard could calm his mind. Not even his superpowers could shield him on a pilchard day. That was the day of the headteacher’s study, a glass of weak orange squash and a biscuit that looked like a sheet of cardboard filled with flies. He didn’t mind flies. At least they didn’t try to kiss him.

Frankie enjoyed lessons at school, even if they often meant sitting alone. He was really good at spelling, and at maths he was second-to-none, but he wasn’t quite so good at sitting round the table and building with straws. He wasn’t good with scissors.

Mrs Cook, his teacher, often sat with him whilst Mrs Cass spoke with the rest of the class. She smiled a lot, Mrs Cook, and Frankie loved her. She helped him to understand the words he did not know and when he didn’t want to drink the warm, playtime milk, she didn’t force him, but she always left it there in case he changed his mind. He never changed his mind. Superheroes don’t drink milk. They drink acid or something like that. They eat girders. They can turn down the noise with the blink of an eye.

If he’d had the choice, he would have been Spider Man. Spiders can hear through their legs. If he was a spider, he would wear thick trousers. Jimmy told him about the spiders. He said they also have loads of eyes. Dozens, he said. A thousand, he said, like the night. Frankie didn’t understand that. The night doesn’t have eyes at all. The night is pitch-black, isn’t it? If it had eyes, it still wouldn’t be able to see. In the dark. Frankie liked the night. It was like the world was wrapped in cotton-wool; soft and mute like a swan, but without the capacity to break your arm with a flap of its wings. Sometimes Jimmy told Frankie that the two of them were put together because they were the same, but sometimes he said it was because they were different. Frankie wasn’t always sure that Jimmy really meant everything he said. Sometimes he made him mad and sometimes he made him laugh. He told jokes that Frankie didn’t understand – his favourite was ‘What’s the difference between a frog? One leg’s the same.’ – but it never really mattered because Jimmy didn’t understand them either. His jokes were their little secret. Nobody else got them. Nobody else even heared them. He never said them out aloud: that was Jimmy’s superpower.

The boy who never spoke and the boy who didn’t want to hear, two wise monkeys, faced playtime together, squatted down with their backs against the redbrick wall, their knees pulled up to their chests, their fingers entwined and white at the knuckle behind their necks, their eyes screwed tightly shut. The school bell rang and the two boys rose as one, for once welcoming the clanging cacophony. Side by side they joined the ragged ‘snake’ of children meandering its way back into class. It was afternoon, and ‘quiet play’. The two superheroes took their places at the big table in the centre of the class, alongside all of the other children. The voice inside of Frankie’s head was unusually still. With a wink, Jimmy told him a silent joke and together they laughed. Frankie smiled at Maureen and, hesitantly, together they began to build a house of bricks, whilst Jimmy, clearly happy, faded slowly away…

Season of Mists and Mellow Fruitfulness

Of one thing it is certain, John Keats, to whom the title of this piece belongs, may well have been many things – great Romantic poet, prolific letter writer and consumptive – but he was most definitely not a gardener. Had he needed to tend my own humble little patch of England’s Sward, his ‘Ode to Autumn’ would have had a very different feel…

My Dearest Fanny

I have spent the entire morning gently perspiring over my latest ode on account of having to wear thirteen layers of clothing due to the fact that three solid weeks of rain have ensured that I cannot set fire to the kindling in the grate without first dosing it in brandy which, of course, I cannot afford as I am a poor, impoverished poet etc etc and so forth. I am sick of this weather, my shortness of breath and the constant hunger that grips at my very soul. I would sally forth and collect some of the abundance of mother Earth’s autumnal bounty – apples, pears and other assorted seasonal fruits – but due to this incessant bloody fog I keep walking into trees.

Next door’s cat hath not been put off its daily business by the seasonal deluge and has, indeed, left remarkably weather-resistant parcels of the stuff wherever I happen to put my fingers in the flower beds. Mine fingers are designed for the purposes of creating great art and I should not need to keep scraping under the nails each time I settle to write. I do not know what they are feeding the bloody thing, but I note that the mangy dog they used to keep chained by the door has disappeared of late. It is sad, for I oft felt at one with the animal which seemed to be increasingly wearied by its lack of fur, its diet of rat and the fact that it couldn’t raise a paw without wheezing. Had I, myself, owned more than the clothes I cough up in, I would have offered him some solace. As it was, I was instead forced to give him a sharp kick every now and then due to his ceaseless night-time barking and his tendency to seep into neighbouring properties..

Unwell as I am, I have been drawn into the garden owing to the fact that the lawn hath taken on the proportions of pampas plains during this month of rain and may well be harbouring herds of large game animals, or moles of similar size. I tried to mow it but one of the titchy wheels on the mower has seized, so I just went round and round in circles for twenty minutes before falling to the ground, spent and hungry. I was sorely tempted by some of the berries that hang full, ripe and juicy from the bush near the cess-pit, but I remembered the last time I tried them when I woke up naked in a Mexican barber’s chair, next to a man with half a moustache and decided, instead, to avail myself of the mushrooms that grow so readily around the old oak tree stump. In the five days that have since disappeared, the lawn has grown longer and something has eaten my trousers.

Around me, everything that was once green and vibrant is now brown and limp – except for the bits that are spiky. I do not recall it being a feature of my planting scheme that everything within this garden should have such potential to cause harm. There is nothing I must prune that does not have the capacity to pierce me from at least three feet away. Besides, the secateurs are rusted solid, having been left under hedgerow last September, and I have been forced to trim such foliage as I am able with the nail scissors. The rest of it I have taken to battering back with a spade, during the course of which I think I might have located next door’s dog.

My spirits were greatly lifted by a short time spent dead-heading the plants that grow along my garden borders. The colours – a million luscious shades of dead – are so inspiring. I will try to write something about it, as soon as I have thought of a rhyme for mildew. I have attempted to lift a number of precious bulbs and rhizomes that they may be stored safely over the winter, but as most of them have already taken on the appearance and odour of one of the cat’s little piles, I am not holding my breath. (Not with my chest, I’m not!) Besides, the shed in which I would normally over-winter them appears to have been partly digested by a rat colony of such size that I was forced to try and drive it out with sulphur candles. The man next door was most understanding about the consequent conflagration involving his own shed, pig-pen and bedroom and stopped punching me as soon as exhaustion set in. The rats have now taken up residence in the compost heap which, since the rains, occupies approximately four acres and twenty six kitchens.

As usual at this time of year, my gutters have become blocked with falling leaves and as the woodworm have taken out all but three of the rungs on my ladder I have been forced to stand on an upturned bucket and push the foliage out with a broom handle. I am sure that, given the state of it, it will soon decompose and stop blocking the downpipe where it is currently stuck. Mind you, it is at least currently holding the roof tiles up. I will attempt to mend the wall as soon as I get the splint off my leg.

As I compose this letter the sun has started to set over the bright western horizon and my autumnal garden looks truly wonderful. The colours are quite staggering – the bright red stain where my head connected with the window sill being particularly vivid – and the smells issuing forth from the flora that surrounds me produces a lump in my throat – which is just as well, because it keeps the content of my stomach down. I cannot wait for the pitch blackness of autumn night when my garden looks just as good as everybody else’s.

I am yours, as ever

Everything You Never Needed to Know About Inspiration and Where to Find it.

The real secret to finding inspiration, I am told, is to simply look more closely at what surrounds you every day…

Well, I am currently sitting where I always sit, at some stage, almost every day of my life. Directly behind the laptop screen that I spend a fair chunk of my life staring blankly at, is a cork notice board. It has photographs of my wife, my kids, my grandkids, my mum and my dad all pinned haphazardly to it in a manner that reminds me uncomfortably of the incident boards in TV detective dramas. If I had some red string, I could be Vera. There are no photos of me though. Nobody is going to be able to think through that. There is a wooden ruler, a memory stick on a piece of string (I have no idea what is on it – when I plug it in, the lights go out), a gizmo for getting the sim card out of an iphone, and what appears to be a small gobbet of pizza. I don’t think that it actually is pizza but, if I am honest, I am not inclined to investigate too closely as I’m pretty sure that I didn’t put it there and I have the uneasy suspicion that it is growing a beard.

Along the wall above the cork board are shelves. This is the only room in the house in which I am allowed to keep ‘my stuff’ and it is consequently choc-full of crap: shells and fossils from trips to the beach, a selection of mugs, a hand-forged nail I found on the floor at my daughter’s wedding, a ukulele, a hand-painted pint glass from my fortieth birthday, my felt fedora, my snakeskin boots, many many books, even more and manyer CD’s, DVD’s, a Melodica, a brass sundial, a selection of Victorian bottles dug from a golf course at the dead of night, a Marmite jar, a porcelain duck whose back lifts off to store God-knows-what, an anxious looking stress ball, a Meccano radio-controlled car, a mini-drone (still boxed, because I know my limitations), a microscope with a plastic penguin where the eyepiece should be, a knitted monkey and dust. Lots and lots of dust. Perhaps that is what is clogging my brain.

The books tell a bit of a story, I think*: Alan Coren, Spike Milligan and Tom Sharpe, all of whom, at one time or another, I have aspired to be. Sherlock Holmes books – which I love for the slyly hidden comedy that runs through them – although, on occasions, I fear only seen by me – Inspector Morse books – which are brilliantly written, but far too complicated for my poor brain to hold together (I read them all many times without ever remembering whodunit, to whom they dunit or why they dunit) – Woody Allen – whose prose leaves me breathless, although I don’t read it so much since the ‘doubts’ set in – and a boxed set of The Lord of the Rings, upon which the dust is very thick indeed. I have a ‘history’ of over fifty years with that particular trilogy. It was the ‘must read’ of my sixth form days that I never quite managed to get through. It left me cold – which wasn’t cool – and although well-meaning friends continue to try and draw me into this Elvin world, I remain defiantly detached from it. It is part of a literary litany of books that I am not quite bright enough to enjoy (nor, in truth, to ever finish): Ulysses, To Kill A Mockingbird, The Grapes of Wrath, Catch 22, The Catcher in the Rye, Pride and Prejudice, anything by Salman Rushdie (even the stuff that hasn’t quite managed to upset half the world) – I do not get lost in these books, I get lost on the way to them. It is some form of selective dyslexia in which I understand the words, but I have absolutely no comprehension of (nor indeed interest in) what the sentences mean. Give me Orwell, Bradbury, Stella Gibbons even, and I will read all day; give me Tolkien or Joyce (that’s James Joyce, not my Aunty Joyce, who to the best of my knowledge has never written anything more lurid than a note to the milkman) and I will stare at the pages as the words swim in front of my eyes like Busby Berkeley on acid, whilst my brain drowns behind them. Inspiration lies in Coren, Milligan, Sharpe, all of whom I strive to emulate, all of whom I am desperate not to copy. I cannot read Milligan when I am writing as everything emerges in substandard Milliganese. I cannot read Coren because I am left limp by the knowledge that I cannot come close. I cannot read Sharpe because I laugh like a drain and my mind becomes full of ever more elaborate plots from which I cannot begin to draw a coherent thread.

Atop the Milligan Shelf is a box of ‘Chinese Puzzles’ – little interlinked bits of fiendishly-shaped wire that you are meant to twist and manipulate in order to separate them. I can only ‘solve’ them with pliers. The box has a thick layer of dust on its unopened edges. I don’t remember who bought it, but if ever I do, I will give it back. I am also surrounded by musical instruments: the Melodica, the ukulele, a harmonica, two guitars and a box of kazoos. I cannot play any of them, but I can make a noise. It helps.

Most of the time, inspiration actually lies for me in three large tubs filled with pens and pencils of all types and hues. I choose my pen before I write. My pen decides what I will write and how I will write it. Today it is green biro, the letters sloping gently forward. Yesterday (checking back through my feint lined ‘School Essay’ book) it was red roller-ball and it sloped backwards**. I haven’t yet tried cutting letters out of the newspapers, but it will come. Meanwhile, I pluck away tunelessly on the red ukulele (which may or may not be in tune – who can tell?) and ponder my inability to get to grips with Hobbits, Irish drunkards and irony. Most of all, I am left wondering why my green pen has just run out mid-word and pondering whether the time has come to look for a new colour of inspiration. Anything as long as it is not indelible black…

*Oh come on. It was there to hit, I couldn’t ignore it.

**Yes, I too have looked this up on Google and I am sure that it is wrong. I am not mad! Wibble.

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Men, but Were Afraid to Ask

Being one myself*, I feel uniquely equipped to answer your questions…

At what age do men reach sexual maturity?

Men do not reach sexual (or indeed any other kind of) maturity. Men will giggle at the word ‘moist’ until the day they die. Men will spend hours watching the most dreadful Scandi-detective series if someone at the pub has told them there’s a naked breast in it somewhere. Take a man into Anne Summers and he will always try the panties on his head.

Why do men insist on wearing clothes that are obviously too tight for them?

Whilst some men believe that by cramming their mid-life bodies into the clothes they wore half a century ago they will look accordingly younger, most simply believe that if they use their bodies to stretch the material, they will no longer have to iron it.

Why don’t men like visiting the doctor?

This is a many-faceted question, which explains why it is not understood by men themselves. Men perceive illness as weakness. No man wishes to be seen as weak, unless it is advantageous to be so – eg they are allowed sugar in their tea and a chocolate biscuit to dunk. Men believe themselves to be immortal: by ignoring illness, they know that it will just go away and they will live forever. No-one was ever killed by something they did not admit was there. Well, alright, they were, but they obviously didn’t ignore it hard enough. Men will happily discuss the state of their bowels with anyone on the bus – but never with a doctor. Men do not like visiting the doctor because it might involve admitting to an uncomfortable degree of frailty, or possibly the even more uncomfortable exposure of an acreage of flesh that might speak volumes about human decay. Mostly, men do not like visiting the doctor in case he should turn out to be a she who wants to know something about his sex life. Men would rather drown than admit to a female doctor that they might have a prostate problem – which is odd, because in most cases, women have much smaller fingers.

Why don’t men like discussing their emotions?

Because, by and large, unless someone drops a peanut in their pint, they don’t have any.

Why are men so regular in their bowel habits?

The daily sojurn behind a locked toilet door is one of life’s few pleasures. It is something to look forward to, it is healthy and it is sure to get you out of the washing up. Men with children have been known to read the whole of ‘War and Peace’ at a single sitting if it means not having to go through another game of Hide and Seek. The simple adage ‘Never get up until you’ve got pins and needles’ is one held dearly by all men. Generally speaking, men will observe the daily custom of toilet visits whatever the outcome. Like England batsmen** they do not let failure get in the way of routine. Given the choice, men would have a more secure lock on the toilet than the front door.

Why are men so bad at keeping secrets?

Secrets require organisation. Keeping a secret requires a conscious effort that cannot be overridden by the dull ache in a testicle, the desire to poke a hole in the sock with a toe nail or the temptation to wear your wife’s bra as a hat. Men must be totally focussed in order to keep a secret and will be distracted by uncomfortable underwear, pot noodle or a dog in a hat. The best way to get a man to keep a secret is to tell them something else. No man can remember two things at once and so, in an egalitarian frenzy, will forget them both.

Do men believe in Fairies?

Well, somebody does the cooking and the house work…

Why do men insist on talking all the way through Strictly Come Dancing?

In times of duress – eg whilst watching extremely fit young women in lycra, men in make-up or Tess Daly in something that appears to have been created in order to cover a toilet roll – men are known to gibber. Although what comes out of the mouth may seen annoyingly coherent – ‘He’ll never get nine if he keeps splaying his feet like that’ or ‘I don’t know how he’s keeping that hat on; it must be nailed to his wig’ – it is actually merely a random string of syllables designed to cover up indifference and the fact that it is him that has just farted and not the dog.

Why do men believe that football is more important than decorating?

Well, it just is, isn’t it?

Why do men insist on meat with every meal?

Man is the hunter. It is genetically programmed. Man cannot assert himself by pulling up a carrot. No man ever felt the adrenalin rush of picking a stick of rhubarb. No man ever felt empowered by chasing a soft fruit with a sharpened stick. Ask any man to get the shopping in, adding ‘Get yourself a nice steak while you’re there,’ and he will leave with a spring in his step and an imaginary spear in his hand. He will return, beaming, some time later with two steaks and no toilet roll. He will have eaten a pork pie in the car.

Why don’t men like shopping?

Men do like shopping – just not for clothes, things for the house, presents, things that might involve work, furniture or food. Anything else, no problem.

Do all men become their father?

Yes. Mostly much sooner than you think.

Why are men so conscious of people watching them eat?

Oh, just me then? Oh dear…

*A man, that is.

**I use the term advisedly, so that England’s women batters do not get tarred with the same brush.

Lost and Found

I have been waiting for a while now to get my mojo back and, with no sightings of the perishing thing anywhere, I decided that I ought to try and check out what it is, exactly, that I have been looking for…

Well, as ever, my first recall is to Google, from which I discover that mojo is ‘a magic charm, talisman or spell’, ‘influence, especially magic power’ and a bar in Nottingham. As I have never before had any of the above, I doubt that I stand much chance of getting them back, so I think I probably need to look for something else.

Firstly, I have to ask myself, what is it that I hope to find? What is it that I think I have lost? When did I last have it? And was it insured? If so, is its loss through Act of God (not covered), political unrest (also not covered) or personal incompetence (also not covered when I finally get down to checking the small print)? I think that what I am seeking is some kind of spark, some whatever-it-is that makes my fractured and uncertain prose something over which you might choose to linger. Something that marks me out from all of the other navel-gazers that inhabit this platform: something that, like a useless metal strip along the wing of a car, marks me out as ‘special’. Sadly, I fear, that I am destined merely to skulk in the shadows, unremarkable, un-noticed, like a Romanian spy with a loaded umbrella and only the vaguest idea of whose ankle to prod. What formerly stopped me blending into the background? What was it that I once had? If, indeed, I ever did – have it, that is. Maybe this absent mojo is nothing more than a fantasy, a distant aspiration: something that I saw in me that was not seen by anybody else. Like the feeling that people are happy to spend time with me, when really they just don’t have the bus fare home. Perhaps my mojo exists only in my mind – or out of it even. What, exactly is my mojo, if nothing more than vanity? Surely a man with my talents cannot be so vain*.

Of course, like everybody else, I can’t help but think how much easier it would be if I could just contact Mr Bezos and have one – albeit of the wrong size – delivered to the wrong house three days after it was due, in a box that could easily contain a cathedral. Sadly, life is not so easy. You cannot buy an off-the-peg mojo – they do not come w ith one sleeve longer than the other, a zip where there should be a button, unrequested turn-ups. Nor is there any point in taking a trip into town to find one: most of that has passed away under a layer of whitewash and blockboard during the pandemic and, anyway, I do not suspect that I’d be able to pick up a single mojo at Wilkinson’s: they will all be blister-packed in threes, and I don’t have room to store the other two in the garage. It’s doubtful that Poundland will have recently received a batch of slightly shop-soiled models, so I would probably be forced to rake through the boxes in the charity shops, and I’m pretty unlikely to find anything to lift the spirits there – unless, of course, it’s a tenner in a £2 pair of jeans.

Ideally, I would persuade somebody to search with me, but it’s not that easy when you don’t know exactly what it is that you are looking for: ‘It’s my essential spark, I think. It might be quite small. It used to flicker – a bit – now and then, but I suspect it might have gone out now…’ Not easy to admit that even if you find it, it might not be up to much. Like the little toy in a Kinder Egg, it is likely to take an unreasonably long time to put together, only to be, ultimately, deeply disappointing – but without the chocolate.

I am told that I shouldn’t worry about it; that like the family cat, it will come back to me when it is ready. Providing, of course, that it doesn’t find somebody that feeds it better: possibly still twitching, none of that tinned rubbish. And, anyway will it come back the same as it left? Will it return with a world-weary shrug; disappointed that it was not able to do better for itself; tired, flabby and lethargic, like the sales assistant at the health food store in a motorway service station? I’m not entirely certain that I even want it back if it’s going to smell of mung beans.

Maybe I should just give up searching myself and place an advert in the local paper shop instead: ‘Lost, one mojo. If found, please return to Colin McQueen. There is absolutely no reward for its safe return.’ After all, I can’t think why anybody else might want it and anyway, if nothing else, the phone calls are sure to pep me up…

*If I was writing this in a text, I would include a little emoji here to indicate that I am joking and not actually that vain. After all, what narcissist would use an emoji, right?