The Unicorn was no bright spark, He missed his place on Noah’s Ark While looking at his own reflection, Trying to find some imperfection In the flawless beauty he Supposed that he was meant to be.
Admiring each and every feature, Mother Nature’s favourite creature Buffed his horn and groomed his coat….. Sad to say, he missed the boat. Perhaps if he had been less vain, We might have seen his kind again.
(The moral of this story’s simple: Don’t get worried by a pimple. You should always view with scorn The story of the Unicorn. He worried over every flaw And now, alas, he is no more. So, if you have to be like him Perhaps you ought to learn to swim.)
Another poem aimed directly at children and at my two granddaughters in particular, but this time with a slightly more melancholic air. As I know that patience has a limit, this will probably be the last mythical creature to find a place in my zoo, which is anyway nearing closure. The unicorn had to be male because my granddaughters know that no girl would be so vain…
An open letter from the absent Deidre to the members of The Writer’s Circle.
Dear Everyone
Just a short note to apologise for my absence from this week’s meeting. I had truly intended to return to the fold this evening if it were not for the receipt of a far better offer. I am certain that you are all, by now, aware of the circumstances pertaining to my recent nonattendances – why I have not been there – as I swore Francis to secrecy and, after a week in his company, I know how untrustworthy he really is. (On a side note, I would say to any of you, that if you are ever in trouble Francis is the man to call – a true rock, a steady head and an unwavering guardian – although you might find it wise to fill the biscuit barrel first.) I am sure that you all have a certain vision of me: a lonely, ageing spinster – and I cannot deny that, the facts are there. I have learned a great deal about myself over the past few weeks; most importantly that I do not need to be lonely – I just need to be less picky about the friends I choose. I would be proud to call any of you ‘friend’ – although I would be grateful if you did not bandy that around in the kind of circles within which I tend to circulate. (If we’re honest, that’s not entirely likely, is it?) I must endeavour not to crave the friends that I deserve, but to accept the ones that I have. Class strictures are not what they once were and I believe that mixing with those from a lower stratum is now probably viewed as a virtue. (A special nod to Billy: I won’t tell if you don’t!) I look forward to broadening my horizons in this effect within the next few weeks, although I will draw the line at tripe and cockles, and I refuse to wear any clothing that has not been starched and ironed to within an inch of its life – and yes, Phillip, that does include my underwear. I know that Francis has given you all my new telephone number and it was a joy to hear from you all – especially since I now know how easy it will be to change the number again in the future. As you will all be aware, I am not a great one for hiding my light under a bushel – my thanks to Vanessa for enlightening me on the nature of my bushel and for furnishing me with the phone number for Weight Watchers – but my darkest hour has, in fact, been accompanied by a gratifying degree of bushel-illumination, in that this week sees the release of my latest novel – I will allow myself the use of that word, and not the one that Terry suggested as I am sure that they are never released in hardback – and I have made the shortlist for Richard and Judy’s Book of the Month. Consequently I am currently ensconced within a very swish London hotel awaiting the private car that will whisk me away to my interview at Television Centre and therefore unable to bother myself with you lot. I have, of course, already loaded my handbag with shower gels, shampoos and conditioners – all, allegedly, smelling of hyacinth – as well as sachets of cheap instant coffee and bags of what PG claims to be tea, as nobody in their right mind ever uses a hotel kettle. I have not packed the Rich Tea biscuits as not even Francis will eat those. Nor have I put the complimentary shower cap in my ‘swag-bag’ as it is currently covering the TV remote, so that I don’t have to touch it. I do not know whether I will be interviewed by Mr Madeley himself, but I have made it quite clear that I will not be examining him for lumps regardless of the circumstances. I mention this, of course, not only by way of an explanation for my absence from this evening’s meeting, but also to remind you all of how successful I actually am. Whilst I know that in the future, many of you will achieve similar success, I would like it noted that I was the first! I would love to read you all a chapter or two of my new book at next week’s meeting, but I am sure that you will have all read it yourselves by then – especially since it is on Special Offer at W H Smiths. (Although not – yet – in the bargain bin.) I will return next week, when I will accept your praise and congratulations with my usual degree of grace and humility – as long as nobody overloads with empathy – and I will be happy to autograph anything that is not flesh. Hopefully, thereafter, following a week of understandable adulation and fawning, we can return to the normal routine of petty squabbling and back-biting, of which we have all grown so fond. Most importantly, we can once again agree that I am in charge. I am, yours truly Deidre Lingua in maxillam – do what I did, look it up.
P.S. If I have learned just one thing from these past few weeks – and only time will tell just how much I have learned – it is that life in general, and I in particular (like the grammar in this sentence) is not to be taken too seriously…
***
N.B. Richard Madeley is a daytime TV ‘star’ in the UK who once famously chaired the first live ‘testicular cancer’ check on UK television – although I should point out that it was not in fact he himself who had his old danglers massaged by the rubber-gloved TV doctor. Books chosen to appear on Richard and Judy’s (his wife and co-presenter – it was also not her old danglers that were massaged by the rubber-gloved TV doctor) Book Club traditionally benefit from a huge surge in sales and almost automatically become ‘best sellers’.
Way, way back in 1980 I bought a book entitled ‘Jogging from Memory’ by Dr Rob Buckman1 who had the rare gift of reducing me to tears of laughter with his prose. ‘Jogging from Memory’ is a collection of articles he wrote for various publications and it contains the article, also titled ‘Jogging from Memory’, which I now realise is the 1,000 word distillation of everything I have spent the last three years trying to crowbar into my own paean to misplaced youth – only funnier. Much, much funnier…
Dr Buckman was twenty-nine years old when he wrote about agreeing to take part in a charity ‘jog’. Thirty minutes – how hard could that be for a fit young man, finely tuned on bagels and coffee and primed for action – as long as it wasn’t too early? Sadly the realisation confronted him with a nerve-shredding ‘clang’ as he was ‘lapped by a fell-walker and two marathon runners’ within eleven yards of the start: he was not as young nor as fit as he used to be (nor, he suspected, had ever been). I could quote a hundred different brilliant lines to you – although not without being sued – but I will not because, frankly, I am not up to that sort of comparison. I can only urge you to buy the book (I’ve checked, you can still find it) and for goodness sake, sit down before you read it.
I am sixty-two years old as I write this (I think, it’s so hard to remember) and the ‘ageing, crumbling frame’ to which the erstwhile, barely out of his teenage years, Dr Buckman refers has been clinging to my bones for a number of decades now. Delaying the decline, which was taking me from man to jellyfish, was the main reason I started to run – I love my time with the grandkids and I want it to last as long as possible: they will put up with me smelling faintly of wee and boring them to death with stories from the past only as long as I can still kick a ball and climb a tree. I have rarely enjoyed running2 but I do enjoy the fact that my physical well-being is much better since I started. I still feel like an old man – god dammit, I still am an old man – but I am now an old man who can run (in a fashion) without retching before I reach the garden gate; who can keep up with the grandkids when those, much younger, around me falter; who can pull up his own socks without the need for a chiropractor; who can wear a T-shirt without looking like a hippo in a sports bra; who can breathe in deeply without attracting dogs… I have found that, though running makes me, for the most part, somewhat more miserable than my normal curmudgeonly demeanour would have you believe, overall it makes me happier by allowing me to do more of what I want to do and – who knows – might just buy me a little more time in which to do it. It also means that I don’t feel quite so bad about the fact that I drink too much, eat too much and, given the option, do far too little – I remain a human slug, but definitely fitter than the slug I used to be.
In fact, what Dr Buckman’s little piece has done is to remind me that, although at certain times in my life I have been very fit, I have never been very fit at everything and most tellingly, when I played football regularly, cycled and circuit-trained (much to the dismay of my fellow work-out’ees, one of whom memorably asked me if I was on some kind of mental welfare scheme3) I was always useless at running, but now it doesn’t matter because I’m better at running than almost everything else I do4. At my age, it’s the memory that’s the problem: ask me what I was doing in 1965 and I’ll have a pretty good idea. Ask me what I was doing twenty minutes ago and I’ll have to sit down whilst my head stops spinning. My problem is not with jogging from memory as much as remembering why – and, in fact if – I was jogging in the first place. Mind you, if you’d asked me in 1980…
1. I previously mentioned this book, Dr Buckman and my very tenuous connection to him in a 2020 post entitled ‘Odds & Sods – One of My Socks is Missing’. (You can read it here if you feel so inclined.) Dr Buckman died, although possibly to his own surprise, not whilst jogging, in 2011(I include a link to his Wiki page here). In my post I also mentioned Des O’Connor who has also since sadly passed away. I would have included a link to his Wiki page, but since it does not mention ‘Dick-A-Dum-Dum’ I have not bothered.
2. I do actually remember feeling almost deliriously happy running one bright, sunny and warm spring morning during lockdown (I forget which lockdown) but it didn’t last long and I put it down to dodgy ceps.
3. I am slightly prone to the ‘hyper’ and my mouth can run-on several feet ahead of my brain.
Clearly a part two to last week’s ‘It’ and just as much of a ‘children’s’ rhyme. My three-year olds don’t get the joke, but they still think it is funny – and that will definitely do…
I am just back from a week away in a caravan with my kids, my grandkids and (in a near-by ‘van) various accumulated ‘in-laws’* and during those seven days I have learned many things about the world in general and more specifically, about myself and my place within it as I get older. I lay before you here, in no particular order, some of what I have learned…
The caravan, like the world in general, is filled with good intentions and disappointing outcomes.
There is nowhere in a caravan in which the keys cannot be lost.
The world’s most efficient noise-amplification system is also known as the caravan bathroom.
There is a huge amount of storage in a caravan – which you will discover on the day you leave.
A single raindrop inadvertently introduced to a sealed caravan can render everything within it damp within twenty four hours.
It is possible to sleep whilst a fox evenly distributes everything from your bin across a thirty acre campsite.
It is not possible to sleep whilst someone is snoring in a caravan three blocks away.
A banana is just a banana – unless it is the last banana.
Never give your opinion when your shoe size will do.
Life is always easy when one person knows the answer. Life is never easy when two people know the answer.
It is easy to understand how easily history is manipulated when you realise how quickly your own contribution to any conversation is erased from it.
The sun may well shine on the righteous, but when it rains on the beach, you all get wet.
The only person more right than the person with proof is the person who doesn’t need any.
A watched kettle never boils – especially when you can’t work out how to turn it on.
I am just as strong as I have always been – just not for as long.
I am physiologically incapable of tolerating the North Sea at anything above knee level.
There is absolutely no point in fighting it – I am to blame.
I hope it helps…
PS the caravan was absolutely nothing like the caravan in the picture at the head of this piece, although I did spend a great number of the weekends of my youth in such a tin can. If you would like to read about it, you can do so here in ‘A Pied-a-Terre of Yellow-Glossed Metal – The Van Beside the Sea (and Will There Be Cockles Still for Tea?)’.
*Hence I have not really been able to keep up with blog reading, an issue that I will endeavour to rectify over the next few days.
It was unusual for Deidre to be late and it was unheard of for her to be this late. Gradually, as the evening wore on and the group attempted to conduct normal business without her, distraction set in and all talk within the Circle revolved around her absence. “Maybe her bus was late,” said Penny. “She drives in normally,” said Vanessa. “She’s picked me up occasionally.” “Well maybe the car has broken down.” “She’d have rung.” “Could she have lost her phone?” Despite all appearances, everyone involved in the group was quietly fond of Deidre and starting to worry. A number of attempts were made to call her, but her phone was turned off and, despite the determination of the group to carry on as normal, the meeting petered out after the mid-session break and Frankie agreed that, as he lived the closest, he would call round to her house on his way home and speak to her. After much confusion – during which Phil ‘took charge’ of installing the App onto most of their phones – a WhatsApp group was created so that Frankie could contact them all with ‘the news’ as soon as he had it. It was doubtful that some of them would know how to open it, but at least it was there. Deidre, for one, would not approve, but she probably never needed to know.
In the event, Frankie’s message popped up on the group at eleven o’clock that evening. It was short, only moderately assuring and, for the rest of the group, deeply intriguing: “She’s OK” it said. “Back next week.” But as it turned out, she was not, and it was Frankie who took control of the meeting. “She’s been cuckolded,” he said. “Cuckolded?” asked Terry. “What’s that?” “I think,” said Jane, “that a cuckold is a man whose wife has been unfaithful.” “OK, not exactly cuckolded,” said Frankie. “Although I’d argue that in the twenty-first century she could have been. She’s been scammed, I’m afraid; conned by an online ‘boyfriend’. She’s mortified. She can’t face you yet even though, as far as she’s concerned, you don’t know what has happened. It has really knocked the stuffing out of her – and, as most of you know, she was always choc-full of it.” “Scammed how?” asked Billy. “Part romance, part vanity. She’s just ashamed of herself.” Frankie dropped his head slightly. “None of us, and I most certainly include myself in this, gives much thought to Deidre outside of Circle nights. None of us ever contact her. She’s lonely… She was duped by a Romance Scammer who slowly managed to weedle enough information out of her to know how he could really hurt her. He told her he was involved in a TV production company and he persuaded her that, with just a little capital to ‘grease the wheels’ he would be able to convince them that her first novel would be ideal material for a full-scale series.” “How much?” asked Vanessa, who like everybody else was beginning to feel increasingly uncomfortable. “Twenty grand,” said Frankie. “Oh God, she didn’t…” Frankie shook his head. “She didn’t have it – at least not immediately to hand, which of course was what he wanted.” An audible sigh of relief crossed the Circle. “She did have five though… She sent it to him by money transfer and then, almost immediately realised what she’d done, but she didn’t feel that she had anybody she could tell, so she just turned off her phone, ate cake and sat in the dark feeling stupid.” “Well, it sounds to me that she’s five thousand pounds wiser now,” said Elizabeth. “Is there any way that she can get it back?” “I don’t think so,” said Frankie. “But at least she hasn’t given him any bank accounts or anything. I’ve spent the last few days helping her change all of her bank details, her phone number, her email, everything… The cyber Deidre Desmond of last week no longer exists.” “So, when is she coming back to the group?” “Why don’t you ask her?” said Frankie. “I’ve got her new number here, and I persuaded her to let me put WhatsApp on her new phone. If you look, you’ll see that she’s been part of the group for a few days now…” They all looked. None of them had looked before. “So, is she ok?” “She’s still Deidre; your guess is as good as mine. Her new book is published next week so, if we can manage to get her back, I’m sure she’ll be just as insufferable as ever.” “Insufferable is a little harsh,” said Penny. Frankie smiled at her and raised an eyebrow – a trick he had learned from Roger Moore in ‘The Man with the Golden Gun’ – and Penny blushed slightly. “Alright,” she said to a general murmur of approval around the group. “I’ll give you slightly insufferable, but I miss her.” “Well hopefully you’ll be all be able to persuade her to come back next week then.” “How?” “I don’t know. Tell her you want her to. Promise never to bother her on WhatsApp again and swear that you’ll never be late to the meetings… but don’t mention that you know about the scam. She asked me not to tell you. She’ll know that I have of course, but as long as we never mention it, I think we’ll all survive…” Penny scanned the phone in her hand. “Is WhatsApp the blue one, or the green one?” she said…
Episode 1 of The Writer’s Circle ‘Penny’s Poem’ is here. Episode 28 ‘Jeff Reads to the Room’ is here.
I’ve lost count of the number of times I have heard half of the England football squad, Joe Wickes, doctor Raj, Piers Morgan and Katie Price telling me that I must ‘listen to my body’ whilst I exercise. Well, I’ve tried it and, quite honestly, all it does is moan: ‘You’re going too fast,’ ‘You’re going too slow,’ ‘I’m feeling dizzy,’ ‘Ooh look, an ice cream van…’ It is also easily distracted. Worse yet is my brain. Brains, I have discovered, are not easy company for those taking exercise. Unlike the rest of the body, they become easily bored. Give your legs a simple job to do, e.g. running, and they will do it until they drop, but the minute the brain gets involved, everything goes to pot: ‘Are you ok leg? I sense that you are feeling a little bit hot/tired/wobbly. Would you like me to tell him to slow down? Would you like me to register that knee twinge? Should I make him aware that total collapse is just around the corner? If I have a word, I can almost certainly make the other knee come out in sympathy…’ The problem is, I can find no way of listening to my body other than through my brain and, fundamentally, listening to my brain is like listening to a speech from a Trades Union Congress Conference in the 1970’s – lots and lots of worthy words, but very little in the way of light relief, lots of beer and sandwiches but not enough smashed avocado on toast: big shoulders, even bigger chips.
And anyway, if I’m going to waste time in listening to what my body has to say, perhaps it ought to take a little time to listen to me. I tell it we need to be careful with what we eat and it says ‘Give me chocolate!’ I tell it we need to watch what we drink and it opens the whisky. I tell my body that we’re feeling good, and it seriously begs to differ. I tell it that I am about to die and it laughs in my face, tells me to get a grip, but I know that my brain is just filtering out the messages it is being sent by my limbs, lungs and assorted lights. Basically, all that my body wants to do is to tell me that I am wrong – and I have a life-full of people willing to do that for me. I play music whilst I run simply to stop it haranguing me. Frankly, if my body wants to talk to me it can either shout or wait until I get home and then it can speak to my wife. I don’t want to hear it…
The first entry in the Running Diary ‘Couch to 5k’ is here.
Continuing the rather more fanciful little spate of zoo poems aimed more directly at children.
This thing is like two balls of string With half a horse between. Its head is like a cream éclair; Its feet like butter beans.
A tail of green, a mane of blue, With spots along its back – A cheerful disposition Although its mood is black.
It could be `He’, it could be `She’, It could be `Them’ or `They’ (I think it knows the answer But is not inclined to say).
Its eyes are green, like tangerines, It hasn’t any hair. It’s really very common Although extremely rare.
In fact, I’ve never seen one, I promise you, it’s true, And if you stay awake all night You’ll never see one too!
Q. What is it?
A. I haven’t the faintest idea.
I’ve always written ‘children’s poems’ (even when I’m trying to do otherwise, my output seldom rises above the infantile). The absence of any call for logic is incredibly refreshing and saves hours of time in Wikipedia research. Spike Milligan had the greatest gift of writing for the child in all adults. It is something to which we should all aspire…
Another excuse to use Hunt Emerson’s glorious cartoon from the long-ago radio comedy ‘The Globe-Trotting Adventures of Nigel Tritt’
PRESENTER The modern world is a dangerous place. Enemies crowd in upon us from every angle and we are individually defenceless against them, so we entrust our safety to those of superior powers. America has given the world ‘The Avengers’ and here, in the UK, we have Mr. Alfred Wonderman, the world’s first Welfare State Superhero, who has today – in our greatest hour of need – stunned the country by announcing his retirement from all… superdoings… and we are very fortunate to have him here in the studio with us today to discuss his reasons.
(THE CAMERA FOCUSES ON THE BACK OF A SWIVEL CHAIR WHICH TURNS DRAMATICALLY TOWARDS IT. IN IT SITS WONDERMAN. THE CHAIR DOES NOT STOP, BUT SPINS ALL THE WAY AROUND, UNTIL IT STOPS ONCE AGAIN FACING AWAY FROM THE CAMERA. AFTER A PAUSE THE PRESENTER STANDS AND TURNS THE CHAIR AROUND. WONDERMAN LOOKS AROUND HIM, CONFUSED, BEFORE SHIELDING HIS EYES WITH HIS HAND AND STARING OUT INTO THE CAMERA LENS.)
PRESENTER Erm, so Mr. Wonderman, why have you decided to call it a day?
(WONDERMAN STARES BLANKLY AT THE CAMERA.)
PRESENTER Mr. Wonderman?
(WONDERMAN IS UNMOVED.)
PRESENTER Mr. Wonderman!
(WONDERMAN REMAINS UNMOVED.)
PRESENTER (SHOUTS.) Mr Wonderman!!!
(WONDERMAN CUPS AN EAR.)
WONDERMAN Yes?
PRESENTER Would you like to tell our viewers why you have decided to quit?
(WONDERMAN IS CONVULSED BY A FIT OF COUGHING. PRESENTER HANDS HIM A GLASS OF WATER, BUT HE IS SHAKING SO BADLY THAT HE SPILLS IT ALL. EVENTUALLY THE COUGHING SUBSIDES AND HE STARES AT THE PRESENTER.)
WONDERMAN Well?
PRESENTER You were about to explain to our audience why you have decided to quit.
WONDERMAN Ah yes, of course, I was… Was I? Well, I wanted to quit whilst I was at the peak of my powers, Terry. I feel that if I stay on much longer they may start to wane.
(HE PUTS HIS HANDS UP TO HIS MOUTH AS HE COUGHS AGAIN. HE LOOKS BLANKLY AT THE DENTURES IN HIS HAND BEFORE, WITH SOME DIFFICULTY, PUTTING THEM BACK IN HIS MOUTH.)
PRESENTER But this is an increasingly dangerous world. Don’t you feel that it will be a more dangerous place without you?
WONDERMAN No David, and the reason for this is that I have carefully selected and trained my replacement – May I introduce my apprentice…..
(WONDERMAN SPINS HIS SWIVEL CHAIR TO THE LEFT, IT SPINS ALL THE WAY ROUND LEAVING HIM FACING THE CAMERA AGAIN. HE SHRUGS AND LOOKS OVER HIS RIGHT SHOULDER.)
WONDERMAN …Wonderyouth!
(WONDERYOUTH ENTERS FROM THE LEFT AND STANDS, UNNOTICED, BEHIND HIM, HANDS ON HIPS. HE IS WEARING AN ILL-FITTING LEOTARD AND A HAND-KNITTED CARDIGAN.)
WONDERMAN Come on.
WONDERYOUTH Excuse me.
WONDERMAN Come on, come on.
WONDERYOUTH (LEANS OVER WONDERMAN’S SHOULDER AND SHOUTS.) Excuse me!!
(STARTLED, WONDERMAN SPINS ROUND IN HIS CHAIR, KNOCKING WONDERYOUTH OVER. HE STILL DOES NOT SEE HIM.)
WONDERMAN Where are you?
WONDERYOUTH (GETTING UP WITH SOME DIFFICULTY) I’m here.
WONDERMAN Oh, nice ploy. You see, Trevor, he has already developed the skill of entering a room undetected.
PRESENTER Very impressive. It can’t have been easy to choose a suitable replacement. Where did you find him?
WONDERMAN The Job Centre, Philip.
PRESENTER And he immediately struck you as the right person for this unique position?
WONDERMAN No, he immediately struck me for trying to jump the queue.
PRESENTER I see, so how has his training progressed?
WONDERMAN A little slowly, Mike. We’re building up his strength opening tomato ketchup bottles; sharpening his reflexes by filling his leotard with itching powder and we’re improving his hearing with the regular application of cotton-buds. His flying is still a little dodgy and when we persuade him to try out his x-ray vision, all he manages to see is the back of his own skull, but he is improving… You will notice that he has been standing there, totally unaided, for several seconds now and has not yet fallen over.
PRESENTER That’s hardly exceptional, is it?
WONDERMAN It’s not bad for a man with a wooden leg.
PRESENTER He’s got a wooden leg?
WONDERMAN No, but I was just making the point; he does have potential.
PRESENTER I see, so can you tell us exactly where this potential is being realised?
WONDERMAN Certainly. He is beginning to master the art of levitation, Barry.
PRESENTER Can we see?
WONDERMAN Of course.
(THEY BOTH TURN TO FACE WONDERYOUTH, WHO JUMPS CLUMSILY.)
WONDERMAN Of course, there’s still room for improvement.
PRESENTER He jumped!
WONDERMAN Pardon?
PRESENTER He jumped!
WONDERMAN When?
PRESENTER Just then, he jumped.
WONDERMAN Did he?
PRESENTER Yes, he did and you said he was going to levitate.
WONDERMAN Did I?
PRESENTER Yes, you did.
WONDERMAN Well, there you are then.
PRESENTER What?
WONDERMAN Well, it’s a start isn’t it?
PRESENTER A start? The world is hardly going to be safe in his hands is it? The only thing he’s got to recommend him is that he hasn’t got a wooden leg.
WONDERMAN (AFTER A PAUSE FOR THOUGHT) He has got a pushbike.
PRESENTER Oh fine, fine. Well as long as the world’s master criminals all plan cycle-borne getaways we’ll know exactly who to call then, won’t we?
WONDERMAN Yes, we will… We will? Will we?
PRESENTER Oh yes, I’m sure we’ll all sleep soundly in our beds tonight…..
(BEHIND THEM, WONDERYOUTH FALLS OVER. THE PRESENTER STARES DISTRACTEDLY AT THE PRONE YOUTH WHO MAKES NO ATTEMPT TO GET BACK UP.)
PRESENTER Yes, well, thank you very much for coming along today. Mr Alfred Wonderman….
(HE TURNS HIS CHAIR TO ONCE AGAIN FACE WONDERMAN WHO, EYES CLOSED AND MOUTH OPENED, BEGINS TO SNORE LOUDLY.)
“…You know the sensation, it’s a spark of light; barely perceptible, like a camera flash from behind you: sharp, sudden, no afterglow, just the sensation that for a split-second there has been a crack in the darkness and time has frozen just for you. Nothing more than a nano-second, but you’re aware that something – you can never quite put your finger on what thing – but something is not exactly as you left it. And you find yourself wondering what could have happened? Where you could have been? What you could have done? Still not entirely sure, really not at all certain, that anything has actually happened at all… Well, that’s what happened.
As usual, I took a circuit of the house, checked the doors and windows, peered out into the street, that kind of thing. I don’t need to turn on the lights; the vestigial glow of stand-by lamps is always enough to guide me. My attention was caught by everything and by nothing. The everyday contents of the house introduced itself to me piece-by-piece; imprinted itself onto my memory, slightly adrift of its normal position, but somehow unmoved. My home was speaking to me, article by article, trinket by trinket, memory by memory, telling me “Take a good look around you. Not one thing in here is yours. You own it all, but none of it is yours. You live here, but you don’t inhabit an inch of the fabric. When you go, there’ll be no sign that you ever lived here.”
This revelation, of course, was not instant. There was no thunder flash, no sudden awareness, no insight; my brain just doesn’t work like that. It can just about cope with a slow, oozing seepage of relevant information and that is what it does; it just about copes. Regardless of the pace at which facts are thrown at me, my head allows them to enter only at its own pace: when it has had enough, it shuts down. Anything mid-process is disregarded until it wakes me up in the middle of the night, with the kind of nagging urgency that is associated only with the need for food, sex or urination.
I remembered a story I had read once, one of those comic-book things I think, about a man for whom time stood still whilst the world carried on, unaffected, around him. Unfortunately, I couldn’t actually remember what had happened, why it had happened or how it had ended. I was fairly certain that there was some sort of moral attached to it, but I had no idea what that might be. I couldn’t focus. My brain had decided to do the shutting-down thing. It was telling me, in no uncertain terms, ‘Ok, I’ll hold everything together here, just long enough for you to get back to bed. But don’t take long mind or you’ll wake up with a very sore neck again, pins and needles in your legs, the pattern of the cat-flap embossed upon your forehead…’
Keeping a person awake for long enough to get to their bed is, you would think, a relatively mundane task for a brain. Linking forward motion to ocular input should be a piece of cake to the average lump of grey matter. Thirty billion neurons working as a team should surely be able to get a person to the bedroom without skinning the full length of their shin on a doorframe that hasn’t moved from the day that the house was built. The knowledge that your own brain hates you, is willing to do you harm, does not sit easily in the darkness hours. It can lead to worry. It can lead to neurosis. It can lead to just one small glass of whisky to help you sleep – if only any number of certain death traps did not lie between the fragile flesh and bone and the water of life. I took my shattered limb back to my bachelor bed.
I had moved from the marital bed and into the single bed in the spare bedroom as soon as it became clear to me that my wife was never coming home. I found it easier to sleep without space. There is something cocoon-like about a single bed. The early morning spaces that I stare into are not infinite in this tiny room. The walls and ceilings are always visible; even with my eyes closed I can see them. When I move, I can feel them. They are solid and dependable the walls of my little womb. Even when I dream, they do not move. They hold my little world and cradle it securely within its box-room universe.
The final stretch of my journey to sleep was illuminated by the mega-watt output of my bedside alarm, which was set, as always, ten minutes fast. The alarm itself set ten minutes early to allow for one cycle under the snooze button and a further ten minutes early just in case something went wrong with the snooze button and it decided to let me nap on for a full eighteen minutes. It was pointing as always towards the wall so that I couldn’t see the flashing green figures that illuminated its front, which meant that it was useless for time-keeping purposes, but absolutely ideal for strobe lighting the whole room metronomically from midnight to mid-day. I climbed between the sheets and looked over to the corner of the room with the small pile of books and cd’s which, outside of my clothes, and despite the three years that had elapsed since my wife’s departure, were the only things that were truly mine. They pulsed with the light, seeming to move forward and backwards like flotsam on the ebb and flow of radiance – looming out at me before scuttling back into the shadows like a… like a… well, like a really sinister pile of books and CD’s… I made a mental note to move them in the morning. I filed the mental note in the special compartment of my brain, along with all the other mental notes that were never acted upon; the reminders to cut my toe nails, trim my nasal hairs and pay the milkman. I wondered for a moment why I had not removed any of the things that I so despised: the furniture that I loathed; the pictures that made me cringe; the wallpaper that made my head spin. Was I hoping she would return? I don’t think so. The sexual pleasure that I had got from burning all of her underwear in the bath was far greater than any I remember whilst she was there.
Laziness, that was the truth. Inertia. The inability to do anything that required an actual decision outside of whether to microwave my curry from the tin or from the freezer; whether to drink my beer at the pub or in front of the TV; whether I could stretch another day out of these socks. I was surrounded by all these things I loathed simply because moving them would require me to take positive action of some kind – and the only thing I was positive about was that I was still not up to that.
I closed my eyes, decided what I wanted to dream about – a trick I perfected as a child – and allowed my body to become heavy, to sink into the mattress as my mind drifted away into… into… Why do my legs always do that? What makes them twitch like that? Another night and yet again the trick I learned as an adult – lying awake, counting the ripples in the artex ceiling and worrying about my aching, twitching legs…”
Getting On 