The Running Man on Extending

Our back garden as viewed from my office window. Note our own extension in the bottom left, the clothes dryer that would have had to have been moved if my wife knew that I was taking the photo, and the pink shell sandpit that the kids carefully emptied out onto the patio during their last visit.

As I run around the village these days I find that almost every other house is clad in scaffolding. The whole place looks like a series of giant Meccano sets, constructed and curated by a strutting illustrated man clad in denim overalls talking like he’s permanently attached to an invisible megaphone, somehow managing to laugh and snarl at the same time. Half the world is extending whilst the other half is winter frog-like – in a state of stasis, like a jelly fish in the freezer. Unmodified homes are betrayed by their lack of gunmetal grey windows and buff-coloured rendering; naked housebrick standing out like the uncouth uncle at a family gathering: the man in the green checked shirt, blue striped suit and purple nylon wig. It can only be a matter of time until the children are warned to keep away.

I am a creature of habit and my running routes seldom vary, so I see these changes taking place. I witness the houses evolve in my own cataractal time-lapse eye and although it is very rare to lope past a finished job thinking that it shouldn’t have been done at all, I could obviously point you at one or two that look like they’ve had a shed velcroed onto the side of the kitchen. I never dreamt that this volume of builders even existed – the breaker’s yards by now must be completely devoid of all decrepit white vans. Where will they all go when the lockdown finishes and people no longer want to re-sculpt the homes in which they have been trapped? Does Brigadoon require knocking through? Most of the houses – presumably no longer homes – are put up for sale the moment the work stops. There must be a psychological explanation for this, but I’m buggered if I can find it – unless people find that they just cannot live without dust and noise, Absolute 90’s on the radio, a Portaloo on the front lawn and tea stains on every conceivable surface. The houses, when finished, look great – except that they all have the forlorn appearance of ‘property for sale’ hanging, shroud-like over them. I picture a kind of merry-go-round of upsizing and downsizing in progress with the clockwise half of the local population constantly tripping over the anti-clockwise balance.

Such homes that are not having internal walls removed and external walls skimmed are having the gardens done. Landscape gardeners have proliferated like Cane Toads in the Australian Outback. No garden is finished until it has been designed on a computer. ‘Hard Landscaping’ is the horticultural mode: remove as much green as possible and cover it with shingle, bricks and the kind of wooden structures that, around here, will succumb to woodworm before the autumn. Monty Don must be spinning in his cold-frame. The garden has become an ersatz house extension and the flowers have paid the price. My lawns are not great, but they are two of very few left in the village. Most of the green oases that pepper the streets now are of the ‘astro’ variety – lawns that are swept rather than cut – but do at least add a varied palette of green shades to the surroundings that would never be seen in nature.

I am no gardener, but I know that gardens are important, both for nature and for human well-being. Each spring I watch the green shoots begin to forge their way through my own small patch of winter-wizened soil and debate long and hard over which to leave and which to dig up, in the certain knowledge that I will get it wrong. Each summer I spend one of the two balmy evenings we are apt to get per year, sitting out amongst the flowers, cradling something warming in a glass. Each autumn I chop it all down and ram it into the compost bin, whence it forms a foul-smelling brown slime that I have to sluice away in the summer. This is the circle of life and I am sad to see it broken by grey slate and plastic lawns. My run is becoming more monochrome by the day as the town is moved into the country – a vista of white van and black Range Rover – and my glimpses of nature (outside of strategically placed dog-turds in bio-degradable bags) rarer.

Oh well, I’m sure that when the summer comes it will all look better. Who knows, I might just have an extension built to watch it from…

In England we can now have up to six people, or two households, meeting in the garden. Guests can even use the toilet! (I must tell next-door’s cats.) Accordingly, this week’s running diary is brought to you courtesy of a very elderly gazebo and a newly purchased patio heater.

This whole running shenanigans started here with ‘Couch to 5k’.
Last week’s Running Man ‘…on Setting Off’ is here.
You can find the next Running Man ‘…on Reasons Why Not’ here.

Zoo # 32 – Madoqua Kirkii*

Thompson had snapped up the last gazelle,
Melville had bagged him a whale.
Attenborough had almost half of a zoo,
Steve Irvine had all of a snail.

John Cleese got a furry young lemur,
Doc Salmon, herself, got a germ.
There are hundreds of folk got a beetle,
The Beatles, themselves got a worm

Nomenclature becomes daily harder –
A wasp was the option for Muse –
But when Kirk had accepted his Dik-Dik
There can’t have been much left to choose.

I’m always intrigued about the business of having things named after you. First it was animals, then insects, then bacteria and parasites. Why? I guess it was ok in the past, when you got an antelope or a whale, but now everybody seems to get an invertebrate of some kind. I never even dreamt that there were so many types of wasp** (although I will dream about the little buggers now). Nobody cares about the name of something that has just stung them: they care about squashing the blighter. And let’s face it, nobody wants a disease named after them. Just ask Mr & Mrs Covid from number 19.
Now it is planets and stars and I start to understand. Sooner or later, we are going to discover life out there and the odds are, I suppose, about 50/50 who is going to be hunting whom. If they turn out to be the hunters, I guess it must offer some kind of protection to be able to say, ‘Did you know, by the way, that your planet is named after me? Yes, honestly, I am Derek…’

**I do like the fact that Greta Garbo has a solitary wasp named after her.

A Confederacy of Poets in the Gewgaws (The Plan)

Photo by Trust “Tru” Katsande on Unsplash

‘Poetry is indispensable – if only I knew what for.’ Jean Cocteau.

It’s funny how readily random instances, like Saturday evening Hen Parties, can collide. Synchronicity mixes ingredients, throwing them together like a prospective Masterchef contestant, with equally unpredictable results: 49% tastes great, but looks awful; 49% looks great, but tastes awful; 1% both looks and tastes great but is served by a chef having at least one finger swathed in bright blue plaster and encased within a vinyl glove, and 1% consists solely of sliced finger and blood. It would be almost two years ago, and certainly recalled only by those of you of very long memory and very forgiving nature, in an occasional thread of poetry (The Haphazardly Poetical) that I wrote a poem called ‘An Appreciation of Poetry’ (reproduced below) in the realisation that I had none. Or very little, anyway. Outside of Wilfred Owen, Emily Dickinson and John Betjeman – all of whom I love – I have never fared well with any poetry outside of the scattergun genius that was Spike Milligan. It has always felt like a bit of a hole in my soul: something I really should attempt to fill, but frankly can never be bothered.

Yesterday I was reading a piece written by Alan Bennett about the poet Philip Larkin, with whom – like sashimi – I am totally unacquainted. Alan Bennett is a great fan (of the poet, not the raw meat – although I would not presume to pontificate on his attitude towards uncooked protein): such a great fan that he is happy to cast aside Larkin’s overt racism and misogyny as an irrelevance. I realise that this has the potential to close many doors on me, but I am unable to do so. I cannot admire one aspect of a person whilst I despise another*. Most people must, I suspect, have some redeeming features, but are they sufficient to actually redeem them? How saintly would Chris Evans need to be in order to make up for the fact that he is still Chris Evans**? The point is that despite his private opinions, what Larkin wrote for publication – exposed only what he felt would be acceptable to those who knew him only through his work: he laid bare his soul, but only the part of it he wanted the reader to admire***. I think to some degree we all hide – or at best disguise – pieces of ourselves that we fear others will find distasteful: I, myself, will never be seen in public without socks. Most writers will accept that they will be hated by some, but will not be happy to find that the haters hold the majority view, especially when all they have ever done is to read a first draft to their mother. Nobody – except for Mick Hucknall – wants to be Mick Hucknall. Everybody wants to be loved: perhaps viewed as fragile but plucky; best of all to be understood as misunderstood.

The third little thread of my crocheted blanket of fate was accrued yesterday when I stumbled onto a little hard-sleeved collection of poetry anthologies by (in alphabetical order) W. H. Auden, John Betjeman, T. S. Eliot, Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath and W. B. Yeats, at the back of a shelf filled with photographs, mugs, microscope, grey felt hat, knitted chimp, shells, fossils, and an empty Marmite jar. Why these particular six scribes had been assembled I do not know, but my hastily constructed plan is to read them all. Not all at once of course, that would be plain foolhardy, but I will as time goes by, let you know how I have progressed in reading them one at a time, although if I’m honest, this entire enterprise may result in nothing more than a short-course monthly footnote e.g. ‘Didn’t get on with Plath’. Certainly it would be as well not to expect an informed critique from me – that will not happen – the ramblings of an ill-informed oaf will not shine any light upon the works of literary giants, perhaps far more upon how wrong an ill-educated old fart can be. Just be assured, I will do it and I will let you know each time I finish a collected nosegay. You may learn about my heart-felt reactions to the collections, or, far more likely, what I was eating whilst I read them. I will consume the poetry, but what will subsequently emerge is anybody’s guess. Auden will be first. Wish me luck – as I do you…

*Not, I now realise, completely true. Spike Milligan himself had, by all accounts, a very questionable attitude to the women in his life (albeit one I was unaware of until relatively recently). I would love to tell you that this knowledge will lessen my opinion of his work, but it will not. Reading his books was, after all, the first thing my wife ever banned me from doing in bed – laughter, apparently is not conducive to sleep. Eating crisps dipped in Marmite – should you be curious – was the second.

**I refer here to the British Radio and TV personality Chris Evans, and not Captain America – whom I certainly would not choose to annoy. If you are at all familiar with the former, you will get the joke. If you are not familiar with the former, I can only point out that if you were, you would.

***‘The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth.’ Jean Cocteau (who was, himself, a poet, so Lord knows what he actually meant.)

An Appreciation of Poetry

The gilded art of polished phrase
That punctuated schoolboy days
Where words of love and joy and rage
Lay lifeless on each dog-eared page.

Majestic lines so flatly read
Drummed into every schoolboy head
And arch displays of erudition
Locked in brains by repetition.

Where verses raised in cool élan
Are lost to empty rhyme and scan,
Forget the words, but keep instead
The rhythm sounding in your head.

Observe the faithful paradigm
The rumty-tum of metred rhyme
That void of all emotion drips
Unthinkingly from idle lips.

And then recall a line or two
Of the poem writ by you-know-who
That told a tale of daffodils
And wand’ring over lonely hills.

Who said we should Stop All the Clocks?
And what on earth are Jabberwocks?
Why do I smile when I stumble upon
A Subaltern’s love for J. Hunter Dunn?

‘Come [something] bombs and fall on Slough’
(I must recall that word somehow)
And memorise a verse from Pope
Now… who had feathers – was it Hope?

Chorus: Though I know the lines and it sounds absurd
All I ever learned was a string of words.
My mind is full of couplets I can only half recall,
Which maybe makes them monoplets – if they’re anything at all.

P.S. ‘Hope’ (by Emily Dickinson) ‘is the thing with feathers’.

The Writer’s Circle #15 – The Mud, the Blood and the Beer

Penelope (Penny) Farthing had been named by her father just a matter of weeks before he walked out of the family home, never to return. He wasn’t missing, just gone – at least that’s what her mother always said. His absence was seldom discussed and Penny had never really felt the desire to try to find the man who had given her her name. Whenever anybody spoke of meeting him, she always thought of ‘A Boy Named Sue’* and how unsuited she was to kicking and gouging in the mud, the blood and the beer. Also, she always suspected that her mother knew much more than she was prepared to tell. Penny felt, instinctively, that she had been involved in some way with his disappearance – maybe she had killed him – but she had never dared to ask. It was her mother’s claim that she had been too timid to object when her father had registered her name, but Penny had serious doubts: her mother was many things, but never timid.

Why her father should play such a trick on his own child – a child he had never really got to know, a child he was planning to leave – Penny could never quite understand. Certainly her mother’s late-night, post-sherry taunts that “Nobody expected you to still be single at your age,” led her to believe that her role in the whole elaborate prank was far greater than she wanted her daughter to know. If Penny retained any desire at all to meet her father, it was so she could ask him that one thing. “Did the old witch know what you were doing? Was she a part of it?” She would never be able to do so now. The only thing that bound her to him – outside of DNA – was her mother, she held all the clues and she was no longer able to focus long enough to remember anything that she did not choose to. An almost selective form of dementia – so typical of the bloody woman to retain all of her defences whilst rationality abandoned her. To lose the facility to recall her own daughter’s face, but not the contempt in which she held it, it took a certain kind of mother. It is not an easy thing, to feel nothing for your own mother, not good for your soul, but it was all Penny had left since she had spat compassion back at her.

Everyone at The Circle had noticed the change in Penny over the last few weeks. She was just that little bit more assertive, more spiky somehow; still the little mouse, but more inclined to nip if cornered. The unexpected appearance and subsequent disappearance of Charlie had preyed on her mind. His failure to return, to explain, had somehow brought her father to mind with a presence that she had not felt in many years. She would not in any way compare Charlie with her father; Charlie was a good man, she had missed him while he had been away and his return had kindled some kind of hope inside her, but both he and her father had disappeared from her life and the disappearance of the man she missed had, once again, made her curious about the man she did not. What if he had been a good man? She had only her mother’s word that he had not. What if it wasn’t him that had given her that hated name at all? Again she had only the unreliable word of the hollow woman that she visited daily, religiously, in the home. She cursed herself for not doubting her sooner, for not pressing her for answers whilst she still had them, but she had trusted her mother, just like she had trusted Charlie when he said he was coming back, that he was getting better, and she didn’t fully understand herself, why she felt it such betrayal. Except… Charlie was a member of The Circle, a good man, whom she felt had, in some indefinable way had let her down. The Circle was the closest thing that she had to a family now and, like a family, nobody else ever seemed to notice if you weren’t at your best. Nobody noticed if you were just that inch or two out of your depth…

The consoling arm on Penny’s shoulder took her by surprise. She opened her mouth to speak but, as hot tears swelled unheralded into her eyes, Terry put a finger to concerned lips and silently handed her a tissue. “Wipe your eyes,” he whispered, “and as long as you don’t tell, neither shall I.” He winked. “After all, where would The Circle be without a little feud to keep it going?” Penny took the tissue and smiled weakly at Terry as he retreated slowly, back to his customary place on the periphery. “That,” thought Penny “is the problem with families: you never quite know where you are with them…”

*‘A Boy Named Sue’ by Johnny Cash

The Writer’s Circle stories started her with ‘Penny’s Poem’ here.
The previous Writer’s Circle story ‘Funeral Songs’ is here.
Episode 16 ‘The Lure of Summer’ is here.

The Running Man on Setting Off

I was very pin-toed as a child and my mother was told that it was very unlikely that I would ever walk properly, let alone run. (They were wrong, of course. I realise that you know I wouldn’t have mentioned it otherwise.) I do have a slightly unusual gait to my walk – picture a slightly camp giraffe on ice – but, although not quickly, I do run and I have played sport all of my life, even if most of my ‘upright’ time is spent in a stance that can best described as ‘a teeter’. (I caught sight of myself in a mirror once whilst playing squash and it reminded me of ‘modern ballet’ – the kind of dance that is accompanied by music that exists only in the notes that never quite made it into formal notation; where you witness a move and wonder whether it could possibly have been intentional. The image was so shocking that I paused for a second and wound up with a bruise the size of a fried egg on my forehead.) At any speed above ‘dawdle’ I always give the impression of a man on a tightrope.

Since I began to run, a year ago, I have never done so without wearing supports on both knees. It is likely that my pin-toes are to blame for the weakness in my knees, although I always blame a lifetime of playing sport, because it sounds so much more glamorous. In fact I have a distinct memory of inadvertently attempting to fly as a child, across a space where a stone staircase should have been and crash-landing on my knees, leading to what the doctor described as ‘water on the knees’, which he treated with crepe bandages wound so tightly that my feet turned blue and my eyes bulged in my head like balloons in a microwave. Whatever the cause, my knees operate on a basis of more or less permanent ache which, against all expectations, is lessened by running. Early on in ‘my running journey’ I was troubled by hip pain, but I learned some stretching exercises and now the only time I get pain in my hips is after a couple of days without running. It is my body’s way of telling me to get my arse into gear.

The start is always the hardest. If I get up in the night – ‘if’? who do I think I am kidding? – my stagger along the landing is a joy to behold as neither hips nor knees are prepared to bend without a substantial period of notice. The imperative to reach the bathroom combined with the intransigence of my joints means that the midnight walk is more of a controlled fall forward. In fact, that is the only way that I can set off on a run. I slowly tip forward until I reach a point where the gyroscope in my head (obviously sub-standard since fitting) tells me that either I start to move my feet or ditch on my snitch. The state of the paths around here means that either result is equally plausible. In my head I am a cool runner, but in the eyes of the world I am an old man fighting a futile battle against gravity; I am a pin-toed Rowan Atkinson attempting to catch a crowded train as it pulls out of the station. In reality, of course, the train has long-since left and I’ve no chance of ever getting back on board. Just as well really, it would almost certainly be heading for the wrong station…

As always, I would refer you to the start of this running around business in ‘Couch to 5k’, here.
Should you want to know what happened last week, you can join me running ‘…on a Bicycle’, here.

N.B. At the end of a recent Running Man, I included a little footnote about my coloured pen ‘editing’ process which drew a little comment. I think I should clarify that this is not some kind of ‘professional’ methodical process, but a desolate routine that almost invariably follows the same pattern:
1. Write piece in pen on paper.
2. Transpose onto computer and print.
3. Read through and despair.
4. Take red pen and add jokes.
5. Read through and despair.
6. Take green pen and attempt to make some sense of it.
7. Read through and despair.
8. Take black pen and correct grammar, syntax and opinion.
9. Read through and despair.
10. Feed into shredder and revert to original.

So now you know…

My running diary started with ‘Couch to 5k’ here.
Last week’s little tarradiddle ‘The Running Man on a Bicycle’ is here.
Next week’s run out ‘The Running Man on Extending’ is here.

Zoo #31 – Cygnus Olor

Be careful of them – vicious things
Can break your arms with beating wings –
And if you venture near their eggs
I’m sure that they could break your legs.

And if they’ve got a Cygnet brood
Don’t try to calm them down with food:
You won’t appease them with your bread
They’ll only peck your heels instead.

They’re always ready for a fight,
Like Al Capone all dressed in white.
Don’t think that this is Donald Duck,
These giant birds don’t give a damn*.

The fearsome reputation of the swan is undeserved and erroneous. I have fed swans from my hand many times, if anything they are more circumspect than ducks or geese – and certainly less likely to take a chunk of flesh than a squirrel. The trick is to let them approach you. Like all birds, they will attempt to protect their nests and chicks – they will make themselves look as big as they can**. Swans, like most birds, have hollow, lightweight bones: their wings will snap much more easily than a human arm. They do have powerful legs though, and clawed feet that you might want to keep out of the way of. We all know how the upper, serene part of a swan’s body is at odds with the maelstrom that is paddling madly below-decks. I think if I was expected to remain impeccably stately at all times, whilst being obliged to paddle like the clappers beneath the water line, I might just get a bit short tempered myself from time to time…

*For those scant few people of the same age as me – like Nausius in ‘Up Pompeii’, I couldn’t think of a rhyme there.

**Q. How big can an angry swan look? A. Very.

A Guided Tour

“Good afternoon everyone and welcome to today’s tour. A word of warning before we start, please be careful as you walk along; it is a little slippy underfoot and the walls can be a little wonky. And please, please all try to keep together, it is very easy to get lost in here, even if you think you know where you are going. There are many, many dead-ends and cul-de-sacs dotted around – you may even find a lost marble or two in there as you rummage around – but it is very easy to become disorientated. If you should find that you have become separated from the rest of the party and you are unable to navigate yourself back to where you should be, please remain calm; after all, what is the worst that could happen? Well, yes, there is that, of course… so try not to get divorced from the rest of the party and, should you inadvertently find yourself alone, in surroundings that you do not recognize I would probably recommend screaming. It’s always worked for me when I’ve needed to attract attention – especially in the shoe shop. I always find that the foetal ball is a very calming position.

So, if you’re all ready, I think we can move on. If you could just extinguish the torch sir, I really don’t think you’ll want to see where you’re going: it’s very messy in there. Ok, here we are in the bit that receives all the information from the eyes and ears – or as we know it, the seeing and hearing bit. You will notice that everything that comes in here appears to be skewed, just a tiny bit, off-centre. There are two reasons for this: one is that he has not been able to get his eyes tested during Lockdown and the other is that his hat is too tight. Also, he has to try very hard not to wrinkle his brow, because his earpods fall out. To the rear of us, through the door that looks like a rather unpleasant warty growth (Well yes sir, now that you mention it, I can see Michael Gove – although I rather wish that I couldn’t.) is the bit that makes sense of it all. Unfortunately we can’t go in there, because it’s shut at the moment. Something to do with Jack Daniels I believe.

Through the little gap there that looks uncomfortably like a haemorrhoid, we have the ‘taste’ centre – obviously out of use at the moment, as it has been since he turned seventeen – and just behind that – yes, now that you mention it, it does, although only when you tilt your head a little – is the bit where smells are sorted and attached to memories. No, no, I’m afraid we can’t go in there at the moment because there has been a bit of an incident with a glue stick and a trip to the zoo. They’re all very busy in there.

Now, if you will all just be careful where you tread here, we are now crossing the ego. It is very delicate and does have a tendency to self-absorb, so just watch your feet: one wrong step here and the neurons in the ‘perspective’ department will be on overtime for a month. It’s like crocheting with wet tissue paper trying to put that thing together. Yes, yes, it does look a little swollen doesn’t it? I’ll get ‘reality’ in to give it a bit of a check over. And now, finally, here is the bit where the magic happens – currently shut for renovation I’m afraid and, yes, before you mention it sir, it does look a little like a sow’s ear, but we are working on it…”

The Writer’s Circle #14 – Funeral Songs

“…I’d like loads of fuss: anguished wailing, gnashing of teeth; the whole nine yards…” It was a typical mid-session conversation at The Circle, this time sparked by Frankie’s passing mention of having ‘Don’t Fear the Reaper’ as his funeral song and Phil, as usual, was having his say, although what was coming out of his mouth bore little relation to what was going on in his head. “Can you still get those horses with big white plumes on their heads? I’d like those. White horses, of course. Nothing tacky…”
“Well,” interjected Deidre, the venom in her voice just about concealed by the syrup in her smile, “I’m sure we all look await the occasion with bated breath.”
“What is bated breath?” asked Elizabeth. “I mean, why is it ‘bated’?”
“I think,” said Billy, “it’s ‘abated’ shortened, so kind of postponed. Your man Shakespeare again, I think.”
“Right, so if we all bate our breath whilst waiting for Phil’s funeral, it’s very likely that we’ll all get there before him.”
“I used to work for a man who loved funerals,” volunteered Louise. “He used to go from church to church, sitting at the back, singing hymns. He loved to sing.”
“I hate funerals,” ventured Penny.
“They certainly don’t have much to recommend them,” said Terry.
Penny stared at him hard. “Some might,” she whispered.
“My grandad was the same,” offered Frankie, picking up the stitch that Louise had dropped. “He loved a good funeral did my grandad – although he did, at least, restrict himself to people he knew. Broke his heart when he couldn’t go to my grandma’s funeral.”
“Why couldn’t he go?” asked Deidre.
“Because she wouldn’t die.”
“Ta-da!” said Phil who, unlike Deidre, had seen it coming.
“It’s weird though, isn’t it,” started Elizabeth as the laughter subsided, conscious that Deidre was about to say something that would almost certainly dampen the mood, ‘how all that tension in the church dissipates the second the first sherry is served.”
“And why sherry?” asked Jane. “Does anybody drink sherry other than at funerals?”
“Great aunts on Christmas Eve” suggested Vanessa.
“Well, that’s a given,” said Jane.
“I had a great aunt who drank nothing but Milk Stout,” Said Billy. “It killed her in the end.”
“Don’t tell me,” laughed Frankie. “She was knocked over by the delivery truck.”
“No,” said Billy. “She had cirrhosis. As I said, she drank nothing but Milk Stout.”
“Always one of the first signs that Christmas was on its way,” said Terry “the adverts for British Sherry.”
“I prefer mine dry,” said Penny, which brought a smile to Terry’s lips.
“When I was a kid, my mum used to send me to the local offy with a pound and an empty milk bottle for a pint of draught sherry.”
“Didn’t it make your tea taste funny, Bill?” quipped Frankie, who never learned.
“It was always snowballs in our house at Christmas,” said Deidre. “Instead of sherry, I mean. A snowball. Although we never had lime in it, or a cherry come to that. Just advocaat and lemonade. Oh, what was it called?”
“Warninks,” answered Billy. “‘Eveninks and morninks, we all drink Warninks…’”
“I think we had Bols.”
“I bet that took some swallowing.” Frankie was in his element.
“Yes, thank you very much for that, Francis.” Deidre was not.
“I never knew my mum or dad to visit the pub,” Terry said. “When my dad died – I was very young – but I remember mum put a fiver behind the bar to buy all the drinks. The landlord ended up footing the bill, because he didn’t like to tell her it was nothing like enough. As we left, she told him to keep any change there was. I really didn’t like the way she winked at me…”
“I wonder why we make the association between funerals and Christmas?” asked Vanessa.
“And alcohol,” added Phil.
Vanessa nodded. “And alcohol… Forced bonhomie and conversations with people with whom we would rather not spend our time…”
“Family gatherings,” said Billy. “Like carbuncles: hard to endure, but when they’ve gone, the relief is immense.”
“So what’s you funeral song then Bill?” asked Phil.
“I don’t think I’ve got one,” he answered, just a beat too quickly.
“You have,” said Phil. “I know you have. You must have. Everybody has.”
“Well, my dad had ‘My Way’ and my uncle Derek had ‘Always Look on the Bright Side of Life’…”
“A bit clichéd, don’t you think?”
“Exactly my point,” said Billy. You either go for something ridiculously clichéd or totally bonkers.”
“I like a song by Judie Tzuke called ‘Joan of Arc’,” said Penny. “I think I’d have that.”
“I’ll make a note,” said Frankie.
“You’ll be gone long before me,” Penny laughed, despite herself.
“Mm,” Frankie stroked his chin, “I suppose I am probably the eldest here,” he chuckled. “Together with Deidre, of course.”
Deidre groaned, as if shot, but not wanting to ‘protest too much’, she smiled wanly.
“Would any of you come to my funeral, I wonder?” asked Terry. “Other than Penny of course, who can’t wait to dance on my grave.”
“Well, not ‘dance’ exactly,” said Penny.
“Shame,” said Terry, “because I was thinking of having ‘I’m in the Mood for Dancing’ by The Nolans.”
“I hate that song,” said Penny.
“Me too,” laughed Terry, “but fortunately I won’t have to hear it.”
“I’d have ‘Magnificent’ by Elbow,” said Jane.
“That’s a great song.”
“I know, I’ll be sad to miss it.”

Sitting at the end of the bar, just on the fringes of the group, cradling his half-pint, Tom Bagshot listened intently, but did not interject: it was, after all, his first meeting and, truth be told, although it was far less intimidating than he had feared, he would be pleased if he could make it through without having to provide any input. He nodded from time to time, laughed when everybody else laughed and quietly attempted to assemble in his mind a map of where everybody fitted in. And then, fleetingly, he caught Frankie’s eye…
“What about you, er?…”
“Tom…”
“What about you, Tom, sherry or snowball?”
“Sherry, I think, but dry like…”
“Penny…”
“Like Penny.”
“And what about your funeral song?” asked Phil.
“Maybe ‘One World’ by John Martyn, although I do think ‘Magnificent’ is a great shout.” He smiled at Jane and Deidre glanced at her watch. “Well everyone,” she said, “as hard as it will be to drag ourselves away from ‘The Joy of Funerals’ I think it is time that we went back upstairs to hear what Penelope has got for us this week.” Tom, along with the rest of the group, rose to his feet and Deidre smiled at Penny. “Is it about birds again, dear?” she asked…

If you enjoyed this week’s Writer’s Circle meeting, it all started here with ‘Penny’s Poem‘.
Last week’s Writer’s Circle, ‘Charlie’s Diary’ is here.
Episode 15 ‘The Mud, the Blood and the Beer’ is here.

The Running Man on a Bicycle

I was dragged out of my running routine by the head-cold that dictates that every step I take is accompanied by a bass drum between the ears. I anticipated problems with breathing as I prepared to run, but not with percussion. I could not return to the weights, as a recent snot-fuelled attempt had me sounding like a hedgehog trapped beneath the shed, so I went for the exercise bike. However, by the time I had decided to lug it from its current resting place – in the arctic garage, between the deep freeze and the tumble dryer – the bass drum in my head had been accompanied by a hi-hat in each ear and any attempt at forward perambulation exceeding the speed of a geriatric sloth resulted in some kind of trans-cranial military tattoo. Imagine – if you can – Cozy Powell’s ‘Dance with the Devil*’ slowed down and piped directly into the cerebral cortex**.

Another dose of synchronicity: the lateness of the hour can no longer be relied upon to bring on the night – days are getting longer although, alas, no warmer – and there, just behind the exercise bike, I spotted my actual bike bike. It seemed a whole lot more sensible to haul myself aboard that. So, I wheeled it out, donned my helmet*** and rode away into the distance****.

I am incredibly fortunate to live in a place that means that I can be on quiet country roads within minutes of leaving my door. Often I do not see another vehicle for miles around – although, when I do it is almost always a small hatchback (formerly mother’s and noisily driven to tears by the change of operator) piloted by someone who is clearly unfamiliar with the function of two of the three pedals, and for whom steering appears to be a pointless frivolity. These cars, on any other day unused to the rev counter turning above vertical, are usually wheezing worse than me. It is, though, because of this narrow country lane/automotive nutcase juxtaposition that cycling proceeds without a soundtrack and I am forced to contemplate the voices inside my head. I fear that, especially in view of cold-constrained faculties, even the slightest diminution of my otic acumen could leave me vulnerable to ending my days as a grotesquely articulated hood ornament.

Cycle runs take me further afield – it is virtually impossible to stay upright on a bike travelling at my running pace – which does affect my ‘baggage’. When I run, I feel that all I need to carry is some means of contacting the nearest paramedic; as a cyclist I am forced to consider the possibility of mechanical as well as physical breakdown. I carry my little repair kit with me: ready to mend a puncture with the best of them – although not to any great advantage, I must admit, as I do not have a pump. Back in the day, all bicycles had a pump attached to the frame and, like the strange squeaking noise from the back wheel, it accompanied you wherever you went. In those days, I recall, the tyre could be inflated with little more than an angel’s fart; now, with tyre pressures three times greater than the car, it requires either biceps like Arnold Schwarzenegger or an electric generator. When I head out for a trip on my cycle, my wife sits in the car with the engine running and the back seats down.

As my cold starts to lift, I will return to running, as I do not feel that cycling exercises me fully*****. By next week I anticipate being back on my trainer-clad feet when cycling will return to the roster of recreational activities and running will, once again, become my king of pain.

*If age precludes you from doing so, you can at least view the original here.
**I have absolutely no idea of what that is.
***This is worn at my wife’s insistence. There is an interesting psychology attached to bicycle helmets as, for some reason, motorists give you much more room when you are not wearing one.
****A very liberal use of the word ‘distance’ as I suspect that I seldom move beyond one that makes me invisible from an upstairs window of my house.
*****Naïve supposition that the worse I feel afterwards, the more ‘good’ the exercise has done me.

N.B. today I have fully surrendered to the vagaries of old-age and pressure-washed the bins!

My original ‘running’ blog ‘Couch to 5k’ can be found here.
Last week’s ‘Running Man on Being Antisocial’ is here.

Zoo #30 – Chimpanzee

The chimpanzee would be a fool,
To turn his brain to making tools:
To evolve himself to number one,
Far better if he made a gun.

I’m always puzzled by why, exactly, we became what we are whilst chimpanzees did not. They have brains, they have opposable thumbs, they are bloody minded and, at times, blood thirsty – why are we the ones with the overdrafts? Why do whales allow themselves to be harpooned, why do dolphins get caught in fishermen’s nets? They must know something we do not – and God help them if we ever find out what it is…

I have just realised that chimpanzees also appeared in week 12 (although a completely different rhyme) of our little glide around the zoo. You know what it’s like, constantly finding yourself back at a cage you’ve already seen…