The Writer’s Circle #20 – The Lounge Bar in The Steam Hammer

Jeff had read about the Circle in the local online ‘newspaper’ and had actually been to the pub twice already without finding the courage to join the others. On the first occasion he did not even enter the pub, on the second he followed what he assumed was a member into the Lounge, but left without ordering a drink as soon as he realised that there were more than a dozen members there already and he would have to introduce himself to them all en masse. He vowed to return at an earlier hour the following week, giving himself the opportunity to introduce himself to one or two members at a time. Much less daunting. Much more manageable…

So, here he was, a week later, alone in the velour-seated splendour of the Lounge Bar of the Steam Hammer, hovering between door and bar, and truth be told, on the point of leaving again before any of the members arrived when the landlord peered around the partition wall between the Lounge and the bar and smiled. Well, sort of smiled. It looked a little like a smile, although there were definitely some slightly disturbing elements to it.
“You’re here for the Writer’s Circle,” he said.
“Well I…” stuttered Jeff, once again on the point of fleeing. “That is I…”
“You came last week, I saw you, but you left as soon as you saw them. They don’t bite you know. You’ve no need to worry about them, they’re a total bunch of losers. You can’t be any worse than they are.” Jeff could feel the pressure of the prized manuscript rolled up in his breast pocket. He could almost smell the mediocrity of every single word leaching out into the air around him. “Go and sit in the corner over there; that’s where they congregate when they first come in. I’ll let them know that you’ve come to join. They’ll make you welcome. They’re always after new members. I thought of joining myself once.”
“Really?”
“No. Are you mad? I told you, they’re all losers – no offence – they all lack friends. They just come here for the company and to feed their egos.”
“You don’t like having them around?”
“I love having them around. Have you looked through into my bar? If I didn’t get this bunch in every week I’d come nowhere close to hitting my gin target. My only regret is that the licence doesn’t allow them to drink upstairs. Besides,” he continued, “it makes a change from having to spend my entire evening looking at the mis-spellings on the faces of the cretins in there.” He indicated that Jeff should look into the bar, which he leant forward to do. “Easy,” warned the landlord. “Don’t let them see that you’re looking. They wouldn’t like that.” Jeff sprang back with all the nonchalance of a chicken at a fox’s birthday party. “See the fella in the beanie hat?” Jeff nodded. “Got ‘LOVE’ and ‘HAT’ tattooed on his knuckles, on account of losing a pinkie while trying to break into a safe with a Stihl saw. The other bloke with him, Lucky we call him, the bloke with one arm, he was holding the safe.” Jeff made a gallant attempt to swallow his own Adam’s apple, but it wasn’t going down. “See the group around the pool table? They’ve all got teardrops tattooed on their cheeks. S’posed to signify that they’ve killed someone in prison, but most of them have never been inside. They got them done when George Michael died.”
“Really, I…”
“You didn’t hear that from me though, and I’d advise you to keep it to yourself. It’s easy to unwittingly stir up trouble, if you catch my drift. Besides, they’re good lads, they spend a fortune on pickled eggs. What’ll it be?”
“I’m sorry?”
“To drink. This is a pub. What do you want to drink? I’m guessing you’re a red wine man, am I right?”
“Well, I do like red wine, but I thought I’d have a pint, if that’s ok.”
“Of course. What do you want? Lager? Guinness?”
“Do you have any real ale?”
The landlord looked, just for a second, as though he was going to take offence, but then his face softened. “I’ve got Newcastle Brown in bottles,” he said.
“I’ll have red wine,” said Jeff.
“I’ll go and get it,” nodded the landlord. “I keep it upstairs. If I keep it down here, the locals interfere with it when I’m not looking.” He moved his own heavily tattooed frame towards the doorway before turning back. “By the way,” he said, “the lav over there is broken. If you want to go you can either go into the bar or hold onto it.” He looked Jeff up and down. “I’d hold onto it if I were you.”
Jeff was now uncertain whether to linger by the bar – he felt fairly certain that the landlord was unlikely to offer table service – or to head for the corner table so, eventually, he opted for loitering self-consciously, mid-way between the two.

Phil was the first member of the Circle to enter the room. Jeff felt the cold rush of air as the door opened just as he heard the landlord coming back down the stairs. Both men appeared at the same moment. “I’ll bring it over,” the landlord shouted into the otherwise empty lounge.
“Right,” both customers answered simultaneously.
Jeff moved over towards the corner table where Phil was already placing his coat over the back of a seat. “Can I join you?” he asked.
“Are you here for the Circle?” asked Phil. “I hope so; we could do with some new faces.”
“Yes,” answered Jeff, looking over his shoulder, still uncertain whether he should go over to collect his drink or wait where he was, but before he had the opportunity to reach a conclusion, the barman appeared carrying a pint of Best Bitter for Phil and a tumbler full of red wine with a cocktail umbrella in it, spearing a glacé cherry. Jeff looked at his red wine, the barman and then at Phil, who held out a hand to shake. “Phil,” he said.
“Jeff.”
“Erm, I hope you don’t mind me asking Jeff, but you look a bit uncomfortable. Are you ok?”
“Ok? Oh yes. Yes, fine. It’s just a little bit… Well…” Absent-mindedly he picked the umbrella from his drink and ate the cherry. “It just seems like a strange place to hold a literary meeting. Here, I mean.”
“Why?”
“Well, it’s just…”
Phil looked over Jeff’s shoulder and caught the unmistakable silhouette of the landlord convulsed in laughter. He looked at Jeff’s red wine. “What’s he told you?” he asked.
“Who?”
“Kenny.”
“Kenny?”
“Kenny. The landlord.” Phil sighed. “What’s he told you?”
“Well, nothing really. Much. He just… have you seen that lot in the other room? They look like a load of mobsters.”
“Ah… Well they are, sort of…” said Phil, light slowly dawning. “The Sharks and the Jets: local am-dram production of West Side Story. They rehearse in the room upstairs before us.”
“And Kenny? Is he really the landlord?”
“Oh yes, he’s the landlord, but he’s in play as well. He’s playing Tony, although, truth be told, he would probably have preferred Maria…”

This story started its life as a simple conversation with the landlord at the end of which Jeff once again bailed out before the Circle members arrived, but just as I was writing the final sentences, the absurd possibility of West Side Story occurred to me. So, having written the new ending, I had to go back to the beginning and rewrite the whole thing. I wish I was more organised…

The first story from the Writer’s Circle, ‘Penny’s Poem’ is here.
Last week’s story ‘Natalie’ is here.
Episode 21 ‘Smile’ is here.

The Running Man – Twelve Months of Becoming Er…

A year has now passed since I first downloaded the Couch to 5k app, chose to be accompanied by the dulcet tones of Jo Whiley and launched myself on the village roads, a lumbering, perspiring, gasping mess. I have no doubt that not even the effervescent Ms Whiley, soothingly urging me on through my headphones, had any idea quite what she was taking on at that (or any other) stage. If I’m honest, I am quite proud of myself for persevering through the program, and not a little surprised that I managed to find the determination to do so. I’m sure that the circumstances of Lockdown must have helped in that respect: the streets were largely empty even though, I seem to recall, the sun shone a lot. I seldom ‘bumped into’ anyone that I knew and Lockdown restrictions meant that, when I did, they could legitimately move as far away as possible from me without embarrassment. This was a period when we were all too scared to share a pavement with anyone – especially if their breathing came in the kind of wheeze normally associated with the elephant’s graveyard – and crossing the road to avoid your neighbour became the norm. This was the time when the whole country’s social calendar revolved about banging saucepan lids at 8pm every Thursday. Like Global Conflict, we just referred to it as The Lockdown at the time, not realising that it would too soon become The First Lockdown when the second one started.

In the past twelve months I can definitely claim to have become more ‘er’: I am definitely not quick, but I am quicker; I am not fit, but I am fitter; I am by no means thin, but I am thinner. Ask me why I still do it and I most certainly will say, ‘Er…’. I can’t actually remember what prompted me to do it at the time, but I was one of many. The streets were full of people following the run/walk/run regime. We began to recognise one another, to wave, but most of the Lockdown Runners appear to have stopped now. Far more people are running these days, but I don’t seem to recognise any of them. Nobody appears to be quite as past it as I: they are all younger, fitter and altogether better dressed for the occasion. Some of them even chat as they run. I have to devote my entire attention to breathing without inhaling wildlife. There is nothing less conducive to a steady pace than trying to cough up a wasp.

What I most recall about the early runs is the sense of dread that hung about me as I prepared to set off; particularly on the final run of each week when I stupidly allowed myself to look at what the following week’s stepped-up regime was to demand of me. The joyous sensation of hearing the half way bell ring, meaning that I could turn around, was spoiled only by the knowledge that I now had to try and get back home without attracting the attention of a Coroner’s vehicle. I have kept myself going by setting targets. My early thirty minute runs were nowhere near 5km in length (they still are not) but I set myself a 5k course and I started to run it, trying to speed up week on week until I realised that I had peaked at a speed which would have shamed an end-of-round electric milk float, so instead I started to go further. These days I do not set goals – reaching them is such a disappointment when you realise that all you can then do is to set a new one – so I rely solely on the grim determination I have to keep going. The determination comes from the knowledge that someday, sooner or later, my body, the doctor or friendly paramedic will tell me that I have to stop and I will be able to say that the decision to stop was not my own. I will never be a good runner, but I am dogged and, for good or bad, it is now twelve months since I first found I had something to be dogged about. My anniversary run was the same as all of the others: breathless, hot and plodding, but I did it and, in a year’s time I will… er… do it all again.

My original post about starting to run, ‘Couch to 5k’ is here.
Last week’s running post, ‘Getting on with It’ is here
The next ‘Running Man’ installment, ‘Bangers’ is here.
And there are many branch-line stops on the uneven path between then and now that you can visit if you choose – just follow the links.

Zoo # 36 – Lynx

Despite what he thinks
The smell of a lynx
Is really not very alluring.
I’d wager my hat
To smell like a cat
Is something you won’t find assuring.

I’d probably say,
If someone should spray
You over with ‘eau de la feline’
As odd as it seems
The girl of your dreams
Towards you will not make a beeline.

I think it’s a fact
If you hope to attract
A lover, then don’t be too free
With a spray that is meant
To give you the scent
That a bobcat might spray up a tree.

Everywhere I go, I smell Africa – not the country, but the body spray. It is the smell, not of a generation, but of a decade. An across-the-board odour of what a boy believes a girl believes a boy should smell like. In truth, it’s not a horrible smell it’s just… well, how do you know whether the man has made an effort or the restroom smells clean? (Men’s ‘conveniences’ smell the same the world over, just some of them more so.) Also, Africa is a wonderful continent, full of all manner of things that it would be great to be associated with, but I am sure, like everywhere else, it has places that you do not want your armpits to smell of. It’s a very big place. Surely the makers could be a little more specific: a picturesque area of Tanzania that always smells of lotus blossom; a small town in Mozambique that always reminds me of rose buds. Also, the pedant in me keeps banging on about the fact that there are no Lynxes in Africa. Lynx Iberia has a ring to it – it doesn’t, unless it has one of those dinky little collars that people put around their moggy’s neck in order to announce its presence to birds – Lynx Eurasia sounds faintly exotic; Lynx Canada might well appeal to the kind of man who likes to smell of wood, leather and elk, but I think they’d need some special kind of advertising agency to successfully push a scent called Bobcat Musk – unless it was to another bobcat…

The Heart Grown Fonder

The pen is mightier than the sword, said someone who had clearly never been faced by a rapier-bearing maniac whilst brandishing only a Bic rollerball, but I get the drift. A few well-chosen words can change the course of history providing, of course, that you don’t get skewered before you can write them. There are times when an épée with ink might come in handy. When words fail you, silence can be the most potent weapon of all. We all understand the power of the non-speaking partner – especially after a night out. When you feel so passionate about something that you lose control of your tongue, the best advice is to hold it. If you say nothing in the heat of the moment, you seldom live to regret it later. (Unless, of course, it was not telling Aunty Thelma that there was a runaway bus heading towards her.) There are times when you have nothing to say; when you are literally unable to add anything to the conversation. I find myself out of my depth more often than a toddler in the deep end of a swimming pool, but in my case any willing hands that may appear are more likely to try to push me under than haul me out. Why do people react so badly to ‘I don’t know’? Whenever I am asked a question to which I do not have the answer, I say ‘I don’t know’ and it enrages people. They believe that I am either disinterested or that I am fence-sitting. Frankly, there are times when the fence is the only safe place to be; when you can see both sides of the argument whilst the protagonists can see nothing of value on the other side. The grass might grow greener, but if you can’t see it, it doesn’t matter. What is the point of a point-of-view if you can’t make everybody else accept it as the one absolute truth?

Every now and then I feel the desire to stop writing, but I never do: it just gives me something else to harp on about in the end. What I should do at such times is stop, put down the pen (or sabre, depending upon company) and pick up a book. I love to read, but seldom do. My wife has an unrivalled range of ‘Have you really got nothing better to do?’ looks for such occasions. In truth, other than checking the unrolled cardboard tubes from toilet rolls for secret messages from zombie workers and my wife’s magazines for grammatical errors*, I have read very little of late, although by next week I could well find myself unable to get my nose out of a book – the penalty for letting the grandkids loose with the superglue.

Anyway, most of the time I write: it is a constant thing for me and you’d think that after all these years I’d start to show some improvement. I have a very tenuous grip on grammar and I have never lost the tendency to prattle on for far too long. It takes as long as it takes for me to tell a story. Jeffrey Archer does it in about two hundred and fifty thousand words (or perhaps it just seems that long), whilst I tend to stall at about a thousand. Language is a precious gift; it seems a shame to be cavalier with it. And yet I have the ‘gift’ of couching a six word story in multiple layers of marshmallow. I should be concise, but that would involve me in the kind of methodical thinking of which I am totally incapable** My style (forgive me, I still work on the assumption that I have one) is conversational and my humour (forgive me, I still work on the assumption that I have some) lies in the minutiae, so it is natural for me to waffle on far too long about things that do not matter; that reside in Cul de sacs and back alleys away from the paths that I should be following, covered in broken fencing and bicycle parts. I may be going from A to B, but sometimes I find the diversion around the hidden ‘T’ junction beguiling. I constantly promise myself that in the future I will try to be more succinct. I strive to be very careful with words: I always try to make proper use of them, but maybe I should, like George Orwell, remove a whole raft of them from my dictionary or adopt a more economical style, reminiscent of Orwell himself, or Hemingway. (Although the result is likely to be that I will simply end up sounding like a local politician, with the vocabulary of a two year old and the narrative thrust of Roger Hargreaves.) Introspection is all very well when you’ve got something to look in on, but most of my time is just spent staring into the vacuum between my ears and wondering why fat-free mayonnaise leaves a greasy stain on everything it touches.

Anyway, this started out as a means of explaining my absence from the platform today – the lack of anything to say – but as soon as I started to write it down I realised that I never have anything to say, but that never actually stops me from saying it. And if you want to know why, I don’t know…

*I pass many a happy hour in this fashion, such magazines as currently survive are apparently put together by monkeys who failed to produce Shakespeare when given typewriters and are therefore very cheap to employ.

**If I’m honest, in most of what I write it is not even necessary to read the words in the right order.

The Writer’s Circle #19 – Natalie

Natalie had never been a member of The Circle, but she was known to them all. She was an ever-present on ‘Club Nights’ in the Lounge Bar of The Steam Hammer, always happy and welcomed to join in the mid-session conversations that took place. Bright and witty, if at times a little too lugubrious, she was a welcome addition to every discussion. All the members of The Circle felt that they knew her, but only for this thirty minute spell each week. When the circle reassembled upstairs she melted away and was never present when they came back into the lounge later in the evening. She was not known to any one of them in any other circumstance and, consequently, became a bit of a mystery woman, and the only topic of conversation on the rare occasions on which she did not appear.

“…I just asked the barman,” said Frankie, passing a glass to Phil as he rejoined the small knot of members in the corner of the room. “He says he doesn’t ever see her other than on Circle nights.”
“I always thought she was a regular.”
“Apparently not. Only ever appears when we’re here.”
“I wonder why she’s never actually joined us upstairs?”
“A bit too far away from the bar, I think.”
A smile filtered its way around the group. She clearly liked ‘a wee one’ did Natalie. None of them could ever remember seeing her without the customary gin and lime in her hand: ‘No ice dear – they do something to it under the bar, to make it freeze more easily I think, probably to save money – It gives me a headache.’
“I wonder what she does for the rest of the week?”
“I think we all know what she does, the question is where does she do it?”
“She told me,” started Elizabeth, pausing only to help herself to Frankie’s Cheese & Onion, “that her great grandmother was the baby daughter of Tsar Nicholas and the Empress Alexandra, snuck out of the cellar by a soft-hearted Bolshevik guard and smuggled into Britain on a coal barge. She said that she is the rightful heir to the Russian throne, but that she can’t go back because she doesn’t like beetroot. Apparently it is all that stands between her and her birthright.”
“And Putin?”
“Well, yes, and Putin. Beetroot and Putin. Plus, she told me, she can’t drink vodka. It gives her hives – she would show me if I bought her one… She said that she was once invitied to the Russian Embassy, so she went – to show that there were no ill-feelings – but they plied her with borscht and vodka and she woke up in the park next to a man with a rolled up copy of Pravda under his arm. She was eventually led to safety by a man from the Salvation Army. ”
“She told me that she was on the run from Mrs Thatcher,” said Billy.
“Ah well, I don’t suppose that’s much of a worry for her now.”
“Well, apparently once you’re on the MI6 hit list, you are never taken off it. You die on it – one way or another.”
“Isn’t it MI5, the Security Services? MI6 is foreign spies and all that isn’t it?”
“The CIA according to Natalie. Apparently Mrs Thatcher took charge of the CIA during one of Ronald Regan’s lost weekends – ‘Nobody knew about them, dear. They were never made general knowledge. There are still no official records. If anyone ever asks you about it, deny all knowledge. Say you’ve never met me. It’s for the best. I have grown used to being persona non grata, even in the Co-op.’ – and she never gave it back.”
“So why was Mrs Thatcher after Natalie then?”
“Poll tax, apparently. Natalie was the leader of the main organised opposition to it.”
“Really?”
“Only you never saw her face. She said that she was undercover and always wore a cap in public: she gave up all property ownership in the struggle and she handed in her Tesco Clubcard. She became a marked woman. She was ‘Most Wanted’ in every one of the World’s nuclear powers, including Lichtenstein – ‘It’s not common knowledge, dear, so don’t go bandying it about in conversation.’”
“I only met her last week,” said Tom. “She told me that she was an incognito literary agent keeping tabs on local talent; looking for the next big thing. I asked her who she was looking at here?”
“What did she say?”
“She said that she couldn’t possibly tell me. Mind you, if we were to have a quiet chat over a nice double gin and lime I might find out something to my advantage.”
“And did you?”
“I found out never to put ice in a gin and lime, and also that a gentleman always buys a lady peanuts with her drink.”
“I wonder where she is?”
“I wouldn’t worry,” said Deidre, glancing at her watch. “This isn’t the first time she’s missed a week. You might remember that the last time she was absent, she reappeared the following week with cuts and bruises all over her, but she wouldn’t tell anyone what had happened; said it was best for our families’ sakes that we never knew.”
“Best not mentioned, dear,” mimicked Phil. “And ask the bar man for a slice of lime, but watch that he cuts a fresh one. He fishes them out of other people’s glasses if you don’t watch him. I always suck mine so he can’t re-use them.”
Even Deidre’s face softened into something approaching a smile. “I’m sure she’ll be back next week. Shall we go back upstairs?”
One by one the writers of the Circle drained their glasses and joined the little knot of fellow authors as it made its way up the narrow staircase and into the meeting room, where it stopped as a single entity, host to a collective breathlessness: eleven faces, twenty two eyes turned in a single direction.

There, sitting primly on a chair within the circle, dressed head to toe in ill-fitting tweed, hands folded neatly across her knees was Natalie. She looked nervous, but she wore a determined smile. She barely acknowledged the club members as they slowly, silently, made their way back to their seats. Natalie did not move, although her eyes flitted from person to person, watching them all as they settled. Nervously they looked from Natalie to Deidre and hoped, for once, that Deidre would take charge of the situation, but she was just as non-plussed as the rest of the group. Of course they were all happy that Natalie was there; had, presumably, decided to join the meetings on a more formal basis, but they were thrown by the manner in which she had chosen to do it. So they sat and they waited for Natalie to make the first move. Silence hung like a pall around her until, with a nervous cough and something that could have been a sigh, Natalie rose to her feet. She cast her eyes around the circle and then, fleetingly down at the ground, before raising her head and, staring resolutely forward.
“My name is Natalie,” she said “and I am an alcoholic…”

The first story from the Writer’s Club “Penny’s Poem” is here.
Last week’s story “As It Is” is here.
Episode 20 ‘The Lounge Bar at the Steamhammer’ is here.

The Running Man – Getting On With It

I started to run during the first Lockdown because I was getting fat, I was getting creaky and, because of the restrictions, I needed an excuse to get out of the house. I continue to run, but unfortunately, I also continue to be fat and creaky. I get out of the house, but I am surrounded by a cocoon of music and perspiration which ensures that I interact with no-one, save those kindly souls who enquire about my wellbeing. I cannot speed up somehow and I cannot run further. Not even a cycle-borne outrider carrying chocolate could spur me on. I am at ‘Max’. It’s not much of a max, but I dare not creep into the red band now.

I am of an age when there is precious little to do other than to worry about the age I am: when I see news stories about amazing, ‘with it’ centurions and think ‘Wow! That’s incredible,’ before realising that it is only just around the corner for me, and my marbles are already slipping from my enfeebled grasp and rolling under the sofa, just out of reach; when every malady from which I suffer (or believe I suffer) is associated with old age; when my back tightens in direct inverse ratio to my bladder and my feet ache permanently, on the simple basis that they have to prop up the rest of me. I find myself constantly excusing my inadequacies by saying, ‘Well, I am sixty-two you know.’ I can still do everything I did twenty years ago – only not as well. My mind remains open to new experiences – it’s just that I forget what they are before I get the chance to try them.

I am fortunate – although I would never admit it: it does not pay to give Fate a target – that my brain still works relatively quickly and my humour is, broadly speaking, still in nappies. Occasionally I think that I might be developing a mature, sophisticated sense of humour, but then I realise that such a thing does not exist: nobody laughs at ‘clever’. Sophistication is just an excuse for jokes that fail to make people laugh, despite mentioning Kant. I can ‘turn a phrase’ from time to time, but I still laugh at the skirt inadvertently tucked into the knickers.

Perhaps if growing older serves any purpose whatsoever it is in allowing you to give yourself a break every now and then. My expectations have not been lowered, but I realise that I can no longer reach them without a ladder. My chances of attaining fame, fortune and an illicit liaison with Sandra Bullock are exactly as far away as they have always been, but my ability to cross the divide is now hampered by knees, bladder and a recently developed ‘What the fuck’ attitude which means that I am reappraising the desirability of everything from money to chocolate, love to whisky, and sex on the beach to nine holes on the putting green. There remains a tiny piece of me that believes I may still be ‘discovered’, but a much larger piece that questions ‘For what?’

What age does bring is the realisation that, outside of a very small number of family members, nobody actually believes that you are in any way ‘special’, nor that the world in general will be in any particular way poorer for your absence from it (although, in my case, there may be a distiller or two in Scotland willing to disagree). In short, age tells you that what is gone is gone and what is left doesn’t really add up to much, so make the most of it while you can and if that means you have to run about a bit every now and then, well, you might as well just get on with it.

My last ‘Running’ post, ‘…on the Running Man’ is here.
My first ‘Running’ post ‘Couch to 5k’ is here.
The next ‘Running’ post ‘Twelve Months to Become Er…’ is here.

Zoo #35 – Somali Wild Ass

Forlorn Somali Wild Ass –
A kind of mini-horse –
Critically endangered,
So in the zoo, of course.

A diet of leaves and grasses,
They barely need to drink,
If they weren’t so bloody tasty
There’d be many more, I think.

So very few are out there,
The African plains bereft,
The humans in the neighbourhood
Eat all that there are left.

They haunt the arid desert,
A landscape filled with rocks;
They look just like a donkey,
But they wear a zebra’s socks.

No longer will you find them
Out in the wild for sure:
They still remain a wild ass,
But Somalian no more.

A new reader to this fol-de-rol (also friend and employer – I know, a charmed life) suggested this particular animal for a rhyme and I said ‘Sure’, without actually knowing anything about them at all. As usual, Google (after an unproductive, but diverting few minutes on ‘Images’) came to my rescue. Somali Wild Ass are, as the poem says, critically endangered, with just a few hundred left in the wild, spread, in fact, across Somalia, Eritrea and Ethiopia. As far as I can see, their only predator is man. They are to all intents and purposes a donkey; in fact, according to what I read, all Italian donkeys are descended from them. (I have to own up here, I had no idea that Italy was a hotbed of donkey eugenics, nor that its donkey population had been kept distinct from that in the rest of Europe; to be honest, I’m surprised the EU even allows it. Surely there must be some kind of a Euro-donkey edict out there somewhere. I can only imagine that the Franco/German donkeys are in some way superior – at least, I’m sure they believe they are.) They are amazing creatures that are supremely adapted to conserve water. The females maintain a higher temperature than the males so that they sweat less – a trait only otherwise seen in Gwyneth Paltrow. Visually Somali Wild Ass differ from other donkeys only in that they appear to be wearing pyjama trousers – a throwback to the zebras with which they are closely related. Presumably where they come from they didn’t need to camouflage anything above grass level. I will have to research if the lions are particularly tiny in Somalia (if, indeed, they have them*). They do, of course, have humans and they are extremely unlikely to be deceived by the fact that the Sunday roast is tottering about on invisible legs. One way or another, it would appear that the Somali Wild Ass has reached a population in the wild, so badly denuded as to be unsustainable and, as such, probably something that your children will be able to see only in the zoo, whilst Wild Ass burger fans will have to be content with the farmed stuff…

*They do. Also cheetahs and hyenas – so why evolution decided to protect the Wild Ass from the knees down only I have no idea.

Faking It

I belatedly took a Social Sciences degree in my late fifties (some kind of mid-life crisis: the kids had done it, why shouldn’t I?) and as part of that I became familiar with a little bit of psychology, and consequently an even slimmer understanding of body language, but never mind, you know the score: what I don’t know, I make up. I am not alone in my vague cognisance of these subconscious signals: most people these days have sufficient understanding of the rudimentals to make them redundant. For instance, no liar worth his salt will ever touch his ears (or is it nose – I could be getting side-tracked by Pinocchio here) these days whilst lying – everybody knows that it is a giveaway. They will face you, they will look you in the eye, they will sit on their hands. Politicians are taught this lesson from birth, but it doesn’t really help them: you can always tell if a politician is lying, because… well, a politician is always lying. We all know that crossing your arms is a defensive gesture – although how you are meant to defend yourself with your arms folded, I do not know. Maybe it is just a warning, like the black and yellow stripes on a wasp: ‘Don’t annoy me, or I’ll sting you. In fact, fuck it, I’ll sting you anyway.’ We all know that open arms and palms means, ‘Oh come on ref, it was an accident.’

There are, however, lesser known examples of body language that are expressed, particularly within family units – and it is to these that I address this post-graduate mini-thesis. Let us imagine the standard UK Middle England Family Unit* at the Village Hall May Day Ceilidh, Barbecue and Beetle Drive. Observe the familial interactions:

The paternal pat on the child’s head following a minor public behavioural infarction – ‘Boy, are you going to get it when we get home.’
Hunched shouldered helplessness – ‘I have a plan…’
Dramatic double-take of mobile phone – ‘I’m going to say that the babysitter has had an issue with the brandy and we have to go home.’
Playful clip of son’s ear – ‘The kids are both here, why would we have a babysitter?’
Long stare at mobile phone screen – ‘Dog sitter?’
Sad shake of head – ‘When did we get a dog?’
Long, long stare at partner – ‘When we get home, I am going to eat your goldfish.’
Crinkled brow and slightly open mouthed glance – ‘I don’t have a goldfish, otherwise you could return home to the goldfish sitter.’
Stifled yawn – ‘An evening with the goldfish sitter would be more entertaining than this.’
The affectionate pat on the bottom – ‘The boy is young enough to be your son and he’s got more spots than a box of dominoes.’
The patient, forgiving smile – ‘I hate you.’
The supportive pat on the back – ‘Boy, I wish I had a knife.’

For the more advanced observers amongst you, I refer you to the couple we all know, perma-smiling, everybody’s friend, centre stage:

He stands with his arm casually, but patriarchally draped around her shoulders whilst (there are subtle vocal signals to look out for too) telling everybody within earshot – he may be an estate agent: everybody will be within earshot – how much he loves her. He has had an affair.
She stands facing him with both arms around his waist, staring up into his eyes, telling everybody within earshot – she is the mother of two children who just will not do as they are told: there will be many – how much she loves him. She has had an affair.
They both maintain a permanent physical bond, always in one another’s arms, telling anyone who will listen – by now, just the poor bloke in the embarrassing apron who cannot leave the Barbecue to top up his lukewarm German wine – how much they are in love. They have both had an affair.
Any of the above accompanied by the news that they are to renew their marriage vows in the Caribbean. They both have had an affair and neither of them wants to risk forfeiting their pension.

There are, of course, many, many more sub-conscious (or even unconscious) bodily postures to be studied that can reveal far more about us than we ever anticipated divulging (particularly at the school gates) but, at the same time we have to be wary: we have all become increasingly aware of how easily we can be led up the garden path by them: think Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, Abbot and Costello, Blair and Brown, all oozing the body language of best buddies: eye contact, occasional bodily contact, laughing at one another’s little jokes, asking the solicitor to find some way out of it… Not accidental fraud, but deliberate obfuscation: a syncopated posture of diversion; physiological misdirection; non-verbal malfeasance. We are becoming acutely conscious of the subconscious signals we emit, and are all capable of taking steps to hide them – now so deeply ingrained that we may do so completely unconsciously (oh dear!). Now, I’m not suggesting that these bodily signals are all misleading, just that they can be faked, and if there’s one thing that we humans are really good at, it is faking it, even if we can no longer remember what it is we have to fake…

*Two teenage children, each with an axe to grind and bedding crying out for incineration; Mother and Father, mid-thirties, claim to each drink fourteen units of alcohol per week, but actually stop counting by Monday teatime; one designer dog (we used to call them mongrels) that cost more than the family car and is responsible for infinitely more pollution.

The Writer’s Circle #18 – As It Is

Frankie stood before the Circle assuming the general demeanour of a schoolteacher in charge of morning assembly, a smile (as always) tracing his lips. He held a very small piece of paper – suspiciously like a beer mat – with a small number of felt-pen bullet points scribbled across it, fading and merging together into something that could possibly keep a psychiatrist happy for months. It was his turn in Phil’s little game. Autobiography. If only he had a story to tell…

“Memories. Strange things, memories: eccentric things. Like a film you half-remember – never having made it to the end. A sense of deja vu in eveything you do. As memories increase, so they diminish; gaining clarity, but losing detail, except for those you choose to cherish. Selective things, are memories: recalling good that wasn’t there, forgetting bad unless it was comic. Past lives becoming clichéd anecdote. Six billion people becoming Frank Skinner.

Recent memories, now they should be easy. Easy to remember. Easy to recall in sharp, focussed detail. Edited, like the news, in full colour flashbacks. Accurate, like a page from The Sun. But they’re not. Why do we have such a problem with today, when yesterday seems so easy? Why do we stand at the toilet door, flies undone, wondering why we came in here, what’s this doing in my hand? Why should this be when you can remember exactly what you were doing fifteen years ago – same thing, probably.

Old memories, really old memories, seem frighteningly clear. At once graphic and vague. Dream-like in a way. A few sparse facts, reality in there somewhere, couched in hope and marshmallow. Could-have-been’s, would-have-been’s, should-have-beens becoming history. Becoming solid fact. The foundation stones of your current-self conjured from the air and built into a maze, with no way in and no way out. Just dead-ends and U-bends.

Some claim to remember their birth. The whole trauma. The terror, the cold, the pressure and the relief. Remember the smack on the arse that welcomed them into the world and the pat on the back that heralded departure.

For most of us, life is a scattering of random, unfocussed voices and images. Sentences plucked hap-hazardly from a book and reassembled to form some pattern of a life. A certain toy; an early potty triumph; the smell of an elderly aunt forcing a kiss. Of laughing, of sitting, of standing and walking. Of setting fire to Uncle Bill’s trousers. Such memories are clear and private. You. Your memories, all your own. Tiny rivulets, running alone, down a crowded window-pane, separate and unmolested, bur heading, none-the-less, inexorably towards the pool of life on the caravan window-sill.

So, how do you even start to decide what to put into an autobiography? How do you determine which memories are real and which are ‘received’: instances you only ‘think’ that you remember because you’ve heard them discussed so often. ‘Remember the time that you…?’ until eventually you do. Even if you didn’t. Memory is a mirrorball and wherever it is viewed from its reflection is different – particularly if it’s at four a.m. in an Ibiza nightclub. It is a goal in a football game: for some it is a work of genius; for some a bit of a fluke; for many it is unjust and for others it never happened. Some see the clarity of every move, whilst others see nothing beyond the centre circle because of the fourteen pints of pre-kick-off lager that are buzzing across the frontal cortex and casting the kind of fog that stops aircraft taking off.

Obviously there are things that you know you remember: school reports, test certificates, marriage certificates, birth certificates, scars and unrequited loves that never fade, but there are also so many things that you know that you don’t remember… possibly. Ask anyone to tell you a story of a time you have spent together. If they begin with ‘Do you remember when…?’ then you won’t remember. If you have to look it up in the local paper, then it really doesn’t count. If you have kept a diary for the whole of your life, then an autobiography is a viable option, but otherwise, you are relying on a threadbare memory and the embroidered recollections of others. The camera may never lie, but it seldom tells the absolute truth. Look at your passport photo: the customs officials will be immediately alerted if you do not look deranged. If you are looking for the truth, then read a biography, preferably written long enough after the events to mean that there can be no other ‘first hand’ recollections of events, suggesting not only that your account is wrong, but just possibly stolen straight from David Niven*.

Nobody writes an autobiography in order to be hated. Autobiographies may tell unpleasant stories, but they will never leave the author in a bad light. “OK, I mugged the old lady, but you have to remember that there was no love to be found at home. We came from a one TV house. Every day was a battle between one of our five-a-day and a Sherbert Fountain. The old bag had a smart phone that she couldn’t use and all I had was a pay-as-you-go Nokia: she deserved everything she got…”

I’ve never kept a diary. I don’t think that I’ve got a story to tell. If I wrote an autobiography it would be 90% fiction – so, in that way, no different to any other autobiography – my life as I would have liked it to be: high on redemption, but light on historical accuracy, like ‘Braveheart’, but without the tartan. But not now. In a few years maybe, when I am much closer to death: when I can hint at the possibility of senility rather than egotism. For now, I’ll keep my memories to myself – and I’ll let you have them only when I’ve properly made them up… So, gin anyone…?”

*David Niven wrote two wonderful autobiographies ‘The Moon’s a Balloon’ and ‘Bring on the Empty Horses’ both of which were ripping yarns of the highest order, but were notoriously filled with many misappropriated recollections and apocryphal tales – like a chat with grandad, but without the rum.

The Writer’s Circle started with ‘Penny’s Poem’, here.
Last week’s episode ‘New Beginnings’ is here.
Episode 19 ‘Natalie’ is here

The Running Man on the Running Man

I have still not returned to running. I will soon, but currently sloth-life pulls too hard on me. Somehow, since the Lockdown has started to ease and I have returned to employment, my current two days per week appear to leave me less free time than my previous five. I have neither time nor energy to press the clutch far enough to allow me to get my arse into gear. In order to address my problems, or at least understand them, I decided that a ‘Why I am not running’ list was in order:

I am a lazy git. OK, I’ll get this out of the way first. It is, after all, the ‘Big One’. I try very hard not to be lazy – well, as hard as being very lazy allows – but God knows it is tempting: it’s blowing a gale outside, scything down with icy rain, turning just dark enough for me to stumble through a heap of freshly deposited horse doo-doo and wind up on my arse on somebody’s front lawn, but just think how much better I will feel if I just get out and do it. Mind you, just think how much better I will feel if I simply stay exactly where I am, with Columbo on the telly, a giant-squirrel sized bag of dry-roasted peanuts in one hand and a tumbler full of Scotland’s finest in the other. Also warm and dry. I may be lazy, but I am not entirely stupid. If I concentrate hard enough, I can imagine the aches and pains. Pour a gallon of water over myself and block my airways with a furry doorstop and no-one need ever know that I have not actually ventured outside of the house.
I am not entirely stupid*. I realise that, at my age, it is imperative that I get exercise. I just wish that it wasn’t all quite so tiring. I realise that looking as godawful as I do mid-run is good for the soul. I realise that thirty minutes a day is not too much to ask of me. Thirty minutes to exercise heart and limbs, to clear my mind and to put my life into some kind of perspective before diving under the shower and wishing that I had remembered to put the head back on it after clearing the limescale from the tiny little nozzle bits. Then I think ice cream and coffee, and the world no longer seems so monochrome…
I have many reasons to keep myself well, but… I am the King of ‘but’. Everything makes perfect sense, ‘but’… I know exactly what I need to do ‘but’… I am also prince of ‘if’ and archduke of ‘except’. If ever there was a Nobel Prize for dithering, my ‘if only’ would be a shoe-in for the big one.
My age. The balancing act that inhabits the space between what will enable me to and what will prevent me from reaching my next birthday: another doughnut might just kill me, but if you stand between me and it, death may still occur, although it won’t be mine. Each action requires balance between its capacity to point me either towards, or away from, death. A life without risk may not actually be any longer, but it will certainly feel it. Think of anything you love (I don’t know why I decided to allow free-choice there, as we are all, in fact, thinking of chocolate and wine) and consider the choice: you can live ninety years with it, or ninety one without it. Maybe if you continue to run, you could push your sinful lifespan up to ninety one as well, but if you don’t, you will be able to fit in so much more chocolate. How much time is a small pleasure worth? Put a Mars Bar in the fridge overnight and then eat it carefully layer by layer. Now tell me that wasn’t worth losing a couple of days for.
My aching limbs. Even I have started to struggle with this justification for indolence as everything now aches just as much, if not more, when I do not run, although somehow, if I haven’t run then I can’t help but feel that I am not to blame for it: my knees feel as though they have been bent along a plane in which they were never intended to operate, but I haven’t been running, therefore it is not my fault – I can live with that.
D.I.Y. The jobs I have to do. The jobs that running prevents me from doing. ‘No, I haven’t finished the painting, but I have put several centimetres between myself and death.’ ‘No, I haven’t stopped that socket from fusing out the whole neighbourhood each time you attempt to make coffee, but on the other hand, my caffeine intake is well down.’ ‘Yes, I do realise that it is only a thirty minute run and it really shouldn’t absorb half of the day, but just think of how much more healthy I will be for a couple of hours.’ ‘Fix the shelf? Tomorrow maybe – I’m knackered.’
Lassitude. A wonderful word that I learned some fifty years ago through the wonderful ‘The Ascent of the Rum-Doodle’** and which has fizzed about whichever part of my brain is responsible for improbable excuses ever since. I will never admit to being a lazy git***, but suffering from lassitude, I can’t do anything about that, now can I?

In reality, like an errant monk evicted from the monastery on the grounds of uneven tonsure and the failure to adequately decorate the first letter of every diary entry, I will emerge into the real world next week, blinking in the unaccustomed glare of sunshine on May frost and, DIY tasks left firmly behind me – whilst I ponder how I am going to afford somebody to come in and put it all right – I will without doubt, almost certainly, probably, possibly start to run again and you will be able to look forward to settling down to five hundred finely-honed words on ill-fitting trainers or the advisability of supportive undergarments with loose-fitting shorts – unless, of course, you have something – anything – more invigorating to do…

*I am
*‘The Ascent of the Rum Doodle’ by W.E.Bowman. If you have never read it, I cannot recommend it highly enough.
***Of course I will, and did at the start of this piece – denying it is just too much like hard work.

The running diary started here with ‘Couch to 5k’.
Last week’s Running Man, ‘…on Reasons Why Not’ is here.
Next week’s ‘Getting On With it’ is here.