Elephants never forget,
From January through to December,
But I’m happy to bet,
Although with regret,
There is nothing they need to remember.
The perils of a pampered zoo life. You don’t need to remember how to cross half a continent in order to find a dry-season water hole when there’s someone to turn a hose on you every day. Maybe you just need to remember that this is not quite as it should be – and wait for the zoo keeper to leave the gate open…
…Down Which of Late I Cannot Help But Fall*’
Now don’t get me wrong. This isn’t going to be some kind of ‘Woe is me’ whinge. I have a house to be trapped in. It is warm and it is dry – if annoying at times. I can still do the three things that I like most in the world: I can listen to music, I can read and I can write this twaddle, but Lord knows, it’s hard enough to find something new to say sometimes even when you’re not trapped at home all day, doing the same things, in the same order, day after day, and working on the theory that you are not too interested in my toilet habits, my tooth-cleaning regime, nor the order in which I put on and take off my clothes each day, I must admit that even this – my thrice weekly psyche-shredding – has become something of a challenge. This last week has been filled with floundering attempts at finding something new to say about porridge, daytime TV (with special consideration to ‘Loose Women’) and the vagaries of the bin collection. If they were successful in any way, it was merely in teaching me that I have nothing amusing to say about any of them. I even tried to cut and paste pieces of them together, but I wound up sounding like David Icke on crack. There is only so much neurosis it is seemly to cram into a thousand words.
Of course, there are two of us in this house, circling around one another like all-in wrestlers waiting for the bell to go. We have been married for forty years now: there’s not much new that we can find that’s grating about one another. But we’re both trying. I, for instance, have been on this earth for sixty two years without once, until this point, realising that I talk too much, eat too much, drink too much and, quite frankly, breathe too much. We are currently both considering self-isolation – from one another. Not because we have any of the symptoms of Covid, but because it saves us having to be civil all the time. We have developed our own entirely new method of communication based solely on the grunt. Why waste precious syllables when different types of guttural expectoration will serve just as well?
I don’t watch a lot of TV, but my wife does – usually involving people being patched up, cut up, giving birth, or occasionally all three. Sometimes, whenever she decides to watch something that is not dripping in blood and pain, I join her in front of the telly screen, but I think, if I’m completely honest, my presence is not entirely welcome. She doesn’t really like me there. I ask too many questions. I have to be honest, if left to my own devices I would watch little other than old sit-coms and Columbo. I’m not good with the concentration required by TV programmes. How on earth am I supposed to remember the name of the detective’s third cousin by the time that part two comes around and there has been an advert for chocolate between it and part one? I had no idea that I am so annoying: I had no idea my wife would be so good at telling me just how annoying I am. I wouldn’t mind, but she’s got some really bad habits herself – I just can never bring them to mind when I need them. The mid-row, ‘Well you…you…you…’ is normal for me. All my carefully rehearsed rejoinders cast, stuttering, onto the breeze. All my irrefutable facts refuted…
It’s like cabin fever. Three hundred years ago, we would probably have murdered one another by now; be using the other person’s scooped-out cranium as a candle holder. It is Friday deciding exactly how he could fricassee Crusoe – the house is our desert island (although with running water, flushing loos and a distinct lack of coconut and swamp rat in our diet): it is Lord of the Flies with a cast of two; it is a recording session for Let It Be. We both cringe every time our partner reaches for the carving knife. I insist on pouring my own drinks. I have just checked whether it is possible to be poisoned with vitamin D**.
I get out of the house to run, it gives me space and air, and it saves me from going completely stir crazy. I have asked my wife if she would like to run with me. To give you an extremely truncated version of her reply, the answer was ‘No’. There were many reasons – principle amongst them, apparently, the lack of a sports bra. Obviously an excuse. I manage perfectly well without one. My wife walks instead. Unfortunately for her, I too like to walk and I generally go with her. Once again, I fear that my company is not always fully appreciated. I get my coat and hat and she gives me the kind of look that normally accompanies the realisation that your sixteen year old daughter is having a bra fitting carried out by Jimmy Savile. Surely she could try to pretend. We get on really in the fresh air: barely a bicker. Just a sixty year old couple out for a stroll – nothing much to write home about. And yes, that is where we came in, nothing much to write a blog about. If only one of us could fall and break a bone of some kind. Nothing essential, you understand. Nothing too debilitating. I’m pretty sure I could manage without the use of one of the fingers on my left hand for a little while. I could manage the inconvenience I think, if not the pain – my pain threshold occupies the same kind of space as Donald trump’s humility – long enough to write a post about it at least. It would give my wife the opportunity to roll her eyes at me. With any luck, that might be considered as a second period of exercise and we would both wind up in a police cell. That’s bound to be good for a couple of hundred words isn’t it?
*Elbow – Grounds for Divorce
** Exceedingly fair skin means that the sun and I are extremely uneasy bedfellows, so, unable to absorb it in the normal way without assuming the colour of a ripe raspberry, I have taken a vitamin D supplement for many years. It is the only vitamin I take that is not a constituent part of either chocolate or whisky and the only thing I can find about the house that might be snuck into my food without me noticing.
Discussions revolving around the relative merits of different writing genres seldom made for an easy evening in the Circle, but revolve they certainly did: round and round and round, becoming ever more fractious and bitter. Alliances were swiftly forged and almost as quickly broken. By the middle of the session, nobody was talking rationally: voices were raised, tempers frayed, yet by the session’s end, all was light. Everybody was prepared to back-track, post-gin, and in the long term these sessions had never seen a permanent rift; although if you joined them in the moments before the bar opened, you would be hard pressed to conclude that World War Three was not about to break out. The truth is that almost all of the Club’s members enjoyed this monthly, ritual blood-letting and the opportunity to air unsubstantiated prejudices was one that was eagerly grasped by all.
Somehow it almost always began with an attack on Deidre and the relative worthlessness of ‘Romance’ as a genre. Deidre would defend herself and her domain by name-checking Jane Austen and Emily Bronte as fairly notable exponents. Frankie would point out that neither of these worthies were particularly well-known for their ‘tuppeny ha’penny bodice ripping contributions to the Mills & Boons cannon,’ and Deidre would fire back by pointing out that, if he considered an attack on her own publishers to be appropriate, it would be polite of him to name his own publishers so that they too could be held to account. Crude, but effective. Everybody knew that Deidre was the only member of the Circle with a publisher.
Phil Fontaine, who himself had a little kudos, being the only member with a professional agent, always defended Frankie who, if truth were known, was the only member of the group who actually made any money from writing. (The writing of jokes will never win you a Booker Prize but, if you are prepared to send them, uncomplaining, to the kind of comedians who are prepared to pay up front in order to claim them as their own, can put food on your table.) From here, the progress was predictable and inexorable; trenches were dug, pants were hitched and sides were taken. It was an unfortunate feature of the Circle that the divisions, themselves, seldom varied. A little variety would most certainly have added a little spice to the regular contretemps. Elizabeth Walton (Family Saga) would leap to Deidre’s defence – usually much to the dismay of the indefatigable Ms Desmond, who did not feel that she needed such support – quickly backed-up by Jane Herbert (Horror) and Louise Child (Thriller). Penny, anticipating an attack on her own literary niche, which she feared she was neither strong enough nor quick witted enough to debunk, would jump on-board later, when she was quite sure that the ship was not sinking.
Effectively the warring factions so assembled: the five regular female members pitched against the men. Frankie and Phil – almost always together, united by a shared sense of humour and the knowledge that none of it really mattered – accompanied by Richard Hart (who wrote reminiscences from his gangland past, largely involving axes, hammers and all manner of electrical equipment, most of which would have been more at home in a wood yard, and who scared the living daylights out of Terry Teasdale) Billy Hunter (Modern Playwright) and Terry himself (who realised that, if trapped in a small room, it was always wise to be on the same side as Richard in any argument that might, conceivably, be resolved via the swinging of pool cues), much to the dismay of Frankie and Phil who, if truth be told, would prefer other company. It was difficult to find reasons to feel bonded to these three men, and even more so to align yourself with them and their opinions, which, to put it charitably, veered at times towards the kind of incomprehensible and indefensible gibberish that could see them elected to parliament.
Whilst Deidre bridled easily at perceived effrontery, Elizabeth, Jane and Louise were somewhat more measured in their arguments. Together with Frankie and Phil they viewed the whole evening as a game of cut and thrust; points to both score and concede. These five disparate souls massively enjoyed sharpening their wits and searching for the kind of acid barbs that, if accurate, actually raised a smile on the faces of the ‘opposition’. Penny desperately wanted to take part, but she was horribly aware of her tendency to blush each time debate put her face-to-face with Phil and thus remained somewhat half-hearted in her participation. Everybody noticed, but nobody drew attention to it, other than Terry, who was completely without the kind of filters normally associated with social living. A man with no friends, he felt nothing but contempt for those who might attempt to befriend him and Penny was exactly that sort of person. She wanted – really wanted – to find the good in everyone: to find some reason in their past that might explain the need for aggression and unpleasantness. It was easy to find with Terry, but there was no reward for addressing it. Whatever it was that had pushed Terry towards the unpleasant, it didn’t really matter. He had allowed himself to be pushed; he had wallowed in his destination, and, as far as Penny was concerned, there was nothing to be gained from dragging the loathsome little shit out of it. She bristled each time he spoke and there was no attempt to soften her words of antipathy.
In fact, perversely, it was the heat of these occasional clashes between Penny and Terry that generally led to a softening of stances and a dampening of tempers. Frankie and Phil pointedly refused to support Terry’s attacks on poetry as an art form. Dick Hart, whose only connection with poetry was through his childhood attachment to Winnie the Pooh, had only to glower at Terry, for him to realise the error of his ways. There is nothing like the threat of a cleaver in the back of the head to soften a strident stance.
Mid-session alcohol further softens hardened stances and, when Richard Hart takes to his feet around half-past nine, politely making his excuses, but never disguising the fact that he has to be home before the ten o’clock curfew – husbanded by the ‘tag’ on his ankle – even Terry Teasdale determinedly becomes less abrasive. By the time the meetings are ready to close, even Penny has decided against vandalising his car. All alliances restored, all genres accepted. The writers back in their circle.
‘The Writer’s Circle #1 – Penny’s Poem’ is here.
‘The Writer’s Circle #2 – The New Man’ is here.
‘The Writer’s Circle #4 – The Number 12 Night Bus to Ashington’ is here.
My last three runs have been in the rain. This is a new thing for me. I have played sport in all types of weather. I once played football on a pitch that was both waterlogged and frozen. I skidded through a large puddle near the corner flag, broke the ice on top of it and cut my leg badly enough for a trip to A&E. It’s fair to say that the nurses saw me coming: my sport/weather record is not a good one. My wife will not let me out to run in the ice and snow as I cannot even walk on the bloody stuff. I am the man that always falls over on the High Street leaving all onlookers severely torn between concern and laughter. Laughter normally triumphs. It’s not a new thing to me. I cannot even blame advancing years. I have never been able to remain upright on anything even remotely slippery – and that most definitely includes wet leaves. I have been badly sun-burned playing cricket, I have been blown off my bike by the wind whilst still in the village and I decided in May last year, when I started this running malarkey that I would not run in precipitation of any kind. Instead I ran through the kind of early summer that my parents used to reminisce about. I didn’t actually try to fry an egg on the car bonnet, because I’ve always been sceptical about the veracity of the claim that it is possible quite frankly, but if it was ever possible, I ran through the kind of heat that made it so. …And this week I ran in the rain.
I have discovered a number of things during the course of this wet week. Firstly, I have discovered how much I sweat when it is not raining. I know this because my running kit is in exactly the same state when I get home, regardless of the weather. I always thought that as I got fitter – and I am fitter now than I was a year ago – I would sweat less, but it is not the case. Even the exertion of getting into my kit makes me perspire. I discovered that being fit for one thing (or in my case nothing) does not necessarily mean being fit for anything else. I did half an hour with weights last night as we are covered in a blanket of snow as I write. (Although almost certainly not as I publish – such things are very transient in the country.) Today I feel as if I have been run over. I stopped doing sit ups as both my hips were ‘popping’ loud enough to alarm the cat – and we don’t even have one. According to the internet, this is perfectly normal and not a problem as long as there is no pain. When do they mean? There was no pain yesterday, during the exercise. Today I can find only one muscle that is not giving me gyp, and that’s in my ear. Tonight I shall board the exercise bike, which I have just moved into the garage. It is cold in there, but not wet. I watch music videos as I pedal, and the world is good. Unfortunately, the garage is also where I keep the beer – and it eats into my brain as I strain through the last few virtual kilometres. It is waiting for me as I finish. And I am waiting for it.
So, all in all, running in the wet is definitely safer than the alternatives. Being locked down does, at least, mean that I do not have to run in the dark. 5k in the cold, wet and dark is a very daunting prospect. Just thinking about it brings me out in a cold sweat…
The next instalment of my running diary, ‘The Running Man and the Hip’, is here.
The last instalment of my running diary, ‘The Running Man and Beats per Minute’ is here.
The whole sorry saga started in Lockdown#1 with ‘Couch to 5k’ here.
There was an old lady from Hull
Who waved her red pants at a bull
She did it for kicks –
She was wetting her knick’s –
But the beast found it terribly dull.
I do love a limerick. Maybe I should use them more…
There was a young girl from Penzance
Who found she had ants in her pants.
Her humour quite faded
When the damn things invaded
And it certainly altered her stance.
Or maybe I shouldn’t…
I have no idea what my dad would have made of it.
It was a feature on our local TV news today, showing a man having an engagement ring delivered to his fiancé by a grocery delivery robot that finally tipped me over the edge. Yes, you read correctly, a grocery delivery robot. A robot that delivers groceries. Who knew that such a thing existed? Who ever thought that this could be a good idea? I can see the planning meeting now:
‘So, what we do is when somebody phones up with an order, we pack it into this wheeled receptacle and it finds its own way to their house.’
‘Really? Who programmed the satnav, because if it’s the same person as did my car, it can’t get me to Birmingham without going through Hull? What’s the range of this thing anyway?’
‘Well, at the moment it’s about two hundred yards…’
‘Two hundred yards? Just across the road then. At least I suppose there’s no chance of it going to Hull.’
‘No, actually it can’t cross roads. Can’t manage the kerbs.’
‘Right, so the shoppers have to live within a couple of hundred yards from here and be on this side of the road?’
‘Initially, yes.’
‘Initially?’
‘Yes.’
‘…Just how lazy are these people?’
‘It’s not intended for the lazy, you’re forgetting the elderly and the infirm.’
‘Wouldn’t it be easier to just send a robot round to pick them up and bring them here?’
‘Well I…’
‘And when you say ‘wheeled receptacle’, excuse me for asking this, but in what way is it different to a dustbin on skates?’
‘It’s a very hi-tech piece of kit.’
‘Right. What’s to stop other people taking all the groceries?’
‘You need a secret code to open the lid.’
‘Or a can opener, presumably.’
‘It’s all very secure. It’s been tested.’
‘Really? So tell me, what is the code?’
‘Well, it’s 0000 at the moment. There’s a slight hitch in the software. IT are looking into it.’
‘Fine, so we send out our dustbin on wheels…’
‘It’s not a dustbin on wheels! It’s a robotic delivery system and it’s super-smart.’
‘…we send out our super-smart delivery robot, providing it’s not going further than the corner and it doesn’t have to tackle a kerb, around to a house that’s thirty seconds away by foot, and it spits out its contents to anyone who’s bright enough to try 0000 in the keypad. What makes you think that it will get there anyway?’
‘Sorry?’
‘What makes you think that anybody that sees it coming will not just stick it into the boot of their car and Sellotape it to the lawnmower when they get home?’
‘Well, we have to go on the delivery with it for now.’
‘For now?’
‘For now, yes. It’s not good with dogs. IT are working on it. Soon it will be able to go on its own – providing it doesn’t rain…’
‘Well, that all seems fine with me…’
You do have to question why anyone would think it a good idea to have their engagement ring delivered with the groceries anyway. Let’s face it, having your ring scanned into a bulk order with a Savoy Cabbage and a six-pack of baked beans doesn’t always add up to the most memorable of romantic gestures, does it? And I’m not sure of how much of a ‘catch’ it makes him, this man, co-opting a toothless Dalek to do his dirty work. I imagine the family asking’ ‘Did he go down on one knee?’
‘Don’t be silly, it’s a robot. Robots don’t have knees.’
‘I meant Derek*.’
‘Oh Derek, no he was too busy trying to re-open the lid, because it had closed on his humus.’
‘No big proposal then?’
‘No, but I did get a big jar of Marmite and a box of tampons.’
What I really want to know is where do these people live? If they’d have sent a robot out carrying food where I was brought up, it would never have made it out of the car park. It would have been mugged within a hundred yards. Its wheels would have been nailed onto a wooden go-kart and the motor fastened onto grandad’s wheelchair within minutes. Even if it did, by some miracle, make it to its destination, it would most certainly be empty and in urgent need of critical care. They would have to send it out with robot bodyguards if it were to stand any chance of going about its duties unmolested. They would need to arm them. Doesn’t seem such a cute way to get your engagement ring delivered now, does it? Let alone your four-pack of rhubarb yoghurts and a pound of sprouts. It is only one step away from Terminator. A robot assassin in charge of your Clubcard. How long before they’re fitted with a little voice-box to say ‘I’ll be back,’ after each delivery?
I believe that Amazon are planning to do a similar thing with drones. Brilliant! There is nothing quite as thrilling as the knowledge that your birthday present has just brought down a commercial airliner. We will all have to fit little landing strips at the bottom of the garden. ‘You can’t put the pond there; it’s where the drones land.’ You would have to build a little island for them to land on. Like China in miniature. At least it might stop the cats taking them out the moment they touched down. Mind you, depends on the size of your pond, I suppose. Nobody wants to have to don the waders every time the post arrives. And who’s going to fly the bloomin’ things. If it’s the guy who drives our local delivery van, I may never leave the house again.
I suppose it’s a good thing to find a new way of doing things. I’m not sure that I ever actually ‘popped the question’ to my wife. I think it was just a mutual decision. We chose a ring and it seemed a shame to waste it. Mind you, we had a much more limited range of robots to choose from back then. Robbie the Robot from ‘Lost In Space’ and I Speak Your Weight machines on railway platforms were about as far as it went. Oh, and the vending machines that stole your tanner and never dispensed the chocolate until late at night when the rest of the world had gone to bed and the station master got a hatful – that’s what my dad always said happened anyhow… I’m not quite sure what he would have had to say about grocery delivering robots. Sadly, he’s no longer here to ask – although my wife keeps looking at me and saying, ‘Oh yes he is…’
*I don’t know whether his name is actually Derek, but if it isn’t, it should be.
It is traditional to give the floor to new members, to allow them to introduce themselves.
“…I think that most of you will probably know me: I’ve been in the papers quite a lot from time to time. My name is Terry Tease and I’m a warm-up man. Not my real name, of course. Not quite. Terence Teasdale I was born, but everybody called me Tease at school and it just kind of stuck. My mum hated it of course. More the ‘Terry’ than the ‘Tease’. ‘You were christened Terence,’ she used to say. ‘If God had wanted you to be called Terry, I would have christened you Terry.’ She wasn’t happy when the local paper started to call me Tease the Sleaze either, but it was all a simple mistake and it soon passed. Mother spoke to the girl and I don’t know what she said, but she stopped saying things almost straight away. It didn’t really matter anyway though, because she moved away soon afterwards. Bought herself a new car as I recall. Mother never spoke about it afterwards, but she made me promise never to go on any of those websites again. Not that I had a lot of choice; the computer stopped working soon afterwards and mother refused to have a smart phone in the house. She approved of mobile phones only as long as they didn’t have pictures. Ungodly she called them, so I never bothered. She took all my calls anyway, so I never really needed one myself.
I always wanted to be an entertainer. I was never good at school work so I didn’t really have the skills to do anything else. I wasn’t class clown or anything, nobody ever found me very funny if I’m honest, and I didn’t really have many friends. Well, any really. I always preferred the company of the girls, tell the truth, but they didn’t have much time for me – always kept me at arm’s length – and the lads just called me a mummy’s boy. So, anyway, I went to school – mostly – and sat quietly, and kept myself to myself as much as I could: kept my head down, tried not to make enemies; it’s what we all do at school, isn’t it?
I had a few jobs after I left school. Well, quite a lot actually. Mostly in shops, stacking shelves, that kind of thing – never got to work with the customers really. Never got near the till. Never lasted that long. Mostly ended with mother telling me not to bother getting my smart clothes on when she brought my tea up in the morning. Something would come along, she always said. Mostly it did, I couldn’t seem to stop it.
I’ve always been single. Never seem to have met the right girl really. At least, none that mother thought were right. Stopped trying after a while. You come to an age where everybody is already married or divorced with kids. I’ve never been any good with kids. They don’t seem to take to me. I don’t know why. Mother got me a job as Santa’s Little Helper one year in a department store. That didn’t last long I can tell you. Little sod. It took me hours to get the chewing gum out of my hair. I mean, what was I supposed to do? You’ve got to be so careful with children. I thought it was safer for everybody if he stayed in that cupboard until he calmed down. His mother didn’t agree, of course – no idea about discipline – but the store said they’d have to let me go – just as soon as they’d persuaded the shrieking woman not to press charges. So, another job bit the dust. Still, it’s an ill wind and all that.
I was held in the manager’s office for a while with a young lad who I took to be a shoplifter. We got talking. Richard Danvers he said his name was. He was actually from the warehouse, working part-time while he went through Uni. Something to do with catering, I think: food hygiene, that kind of thing. He had dreams of becoming a celebrity chef, but unfortunately he couldn’t keep his hands out of the till.”
Terry cast his eyes around the circle. Many of the jaws were slack, but the eyes were all fixed. One or two of the group appeared to be shifting uncomfortably in their seats, but he put that down to the hard chairs. All in all, he had never enjoyed attention like it.
“Well,” he resumed. “I’m sure most of you know my story from there on. You look like an intelligent bunch. All read the papers, that kind of thing. I started on the club circuit much to my mother’s disgust. She took to her bed and slowly faded away – it took her three years in the end. She said she couldn’t handle the shame: her only son a ‘showman’. Mind you, when it finally came, her death still managed to take everybody by surprise. I’d made her a nice fish pie, just for a change, that kind of thing. She said she’d never had one before I remember. Who could have guessed that she was so allergic to shellfish?
Anyway, I worked my way up from third support to compere within the year. I didn’t do the kids’ nights, of course, but I made up for it by doing a double shift on Thursdays, Cabaret Compere and Bingo Caller and, as many of you will know, that is where I once again bumped into a young comic called Dick Devine. He was just starting out back then. Changed his name from Danvers. No-one would ever have guessed that he would become the UK’s Quiz Show King. But I took him under my wing, gave him a few tips where I could, introduced him to a few people – on the council mainly – watched him grow up. Become a man you might say. I like to think that I set him on his way and, to be fair, he was very helpful to me when mum took ill. Oh the stories I could tell…”
Terry smiled briefly. It was not comforting.
“When Dick first moved into TV I sent him a little letter, to congratulate him and to remind him how far we went back, the memories we shared, that kind of thing and before I knew it, there I was, a BBC warm-up man. The man that got the audience ready for Dick! I loved that job and I was good at it. ‘Never be too funny,’ they told me, ‘it upsets Dick if you’re too funny,’ and I never was. He used to pat me on the back sometimes as we passed in the studio. ‘Great job,’ he would say. ‘You make me look so good.’ And then, one day, out of the blue, I got the news. Sacked. Direct from Dick, they said. They said he would text me personally, but he never did. He had just been given a new show, prime time Saturday slot and he said he needed a proper warm-up man, not some sleazy ex-bingo caller apparently. Sent me a cheque and said not to bother to come back to collect my things as he was having them burned. He said he would love to be able to recommend me to the other studios – but he didn’t intend to lie for me anymore.
So, that’s why I’m here really. I’ve had an interesting life and I think it’s probably time I wrote some of my stories down. He’s a powerful man is Dick, everybody loves him, and the papers really want to hear all about what he was like on the way up. So I’ll tell them, and if they want me to tell them all about how to test for shellfish allergies, I’ll tell them that too…”
‘The Writer’s Circle #1 – Penny’s Poem’ is here.
‘The Writer’s Circle #3 – Alliance & Antipathy’ is here.
My ‘shuffle’ is trying to kill me. On my last run it gave me Foo Fighters, Foo Fighters, Foo Fighters and, just as I was beginning to feel that something had gone radically wrong with it, Muse, more Foo Fighters, Led Zeppelin, Seasick Steve and Wishbone Ash. I am no aficionado on BPM, but I do understand what happens to my heart rate when my loping run is spurred on by the kind of tunes that have no place in the ears of a sixty-year old in the advanced stages of hyperventilation. Don’t get me wrong here, I love all of the tracks it gave me, but it does normally mix them up a little here and there. There are currently only four Foo Fighters songs on the entire playlist, because they tire me out. I can accept that I may get more than one per run, but back-to-back? It had a few Muse tracks to choose from, but it chose Stockholm Syndrome; Led Zep, it chose Rock & Roll; Seasick Steve, Back In The Doghouse and Wishbone Ash Runaway. You cannot tell me that it was not being wilful; it has Bryan Ferry and Elbow lurking about on there somewhere for goodness sake.
I have plenty of plodders on my list: great tracks, but with a beat that eases me along rather than driving me on. They give me the opportunity to get my breath back to some extent (that being the extent that I do not actually expire) and ensure that I do not melt my bobble hat from the inside. The weird thing about the tracks I got today is, although they exhaust me, they do not actually speed me up. My pace is metronomic. If running were a dance it would be slow, slow, slow, slow, slow. Like the ancient couple you see at Blackpool tea dances, but without the twirling. I’m not good with time signatures, but it feels like my running playlist songs are all the same. If they’re not, I find a way to make them so. Somehow they all fit in with ‘plod, plod, plod’.
My brain, no longer filled with ‘fifty reasons why I shouldn’t be doing this’, has decided to take in the music and allow entrance to nothing else whilst I run. I don’t know where my conscious mind goes off to, but it is seldom with me whilst I run. I can feel it emptying as I take to the streets. I am a brainless man on a mission – although I’m not alone in that respect, am I? If I carry on for long enough I could end up running a country (into what, I could not say). It’s interesting – to me it is, however, you may choose to pick lint from your navel or trim the hairs in your ears instead – that something up there takes the opportunity to de-clutter whilst the sitting tenant is out. I’m not conscious of it happening, but I am conscious of the mess between my ears when it has not done so. Going for a run has become my way of allowing me to make sense of the world without my brain sticking its oar in. Unfortunately, even though my running capacity is very time-limited, by the time I get back home I have already begun to realise that, actually, there is no sense to it all.
And that brings me back to my shuffle because, whilst this piece sat half-finished on my computer, I went out for another run. (Perhaps I should explain here that pieces often sit around on my laptop for days before they get finished. Sometimes they are only a first sentence. I don’t want you thinking that, short of the house being on fire, I would ever go out running twice in the same day.) Today my shuffle gave me Bryan Ferry, Blue Oyster Cult, China Crisis, Bowie, Fleetwood Mac, John Martyn and Judie Tzuke; altogether more sedate, I’m sure you’ll agree. And yet I was quicker than my last run and less tired at the end of it. Answers on a postcard please…
The last Running Man episode, The Running Man and Lockdown, is here.
The next Running Man episode, ‘The Running Man and the Weather’ is here
The whole sorry saga started here.
Consider now the two-toed sloth,
Gamely hanging on with both
His sharpened claws onto a tree,
Whilst envying the sloths with three.
It struck me that the last couple of rhymes – although undoubtedly nonsense – have drifted away somewhat from the original short and sharp, in and out, ethos of the earlier zoo rhymes, so this is intended as something of a return. Truth is, it is impossible not to love a sloth with their big smiley faces – even though they are, apparently, covered in fleas, ticks and even moss. They can’t scratch them off can they? It’s so easy to lose your grip when you’ve only got two toes…
I am shedding teeth like a snake sloughs skin. What was once a slightly crumbling Acropolis within my mouth now more closely resembles Stonehenge. I dare not venture out on the Spring Solstice for fear of being continually turned to face the sun by druids. If I grin in artificial light, the shadow I cast resembles the Andes. If I floss, I have to use 4-ply wool in order to touch the sides, and I have to carry a bucket to capture the enamelled escapees. If I eat a biscuit, I attract a crowd of children whom, it would seem, enjoy listening to the sound of dental fragments as they pitter patter down onto the plate. I can no longer eat anything harder or more chewy than a marshmallow. I can only really be at peace with a meal if I am able to suck it. I would not be able to eat out if ‘Soup of the Day’ did not exist.
Today has been another ‘Dentist Day’: preparation for a crown that will take me one step closer to repairing the crumbling façade of my smile. The procedure involves, as far as I can tell, having the remains of my shattered molar ground down to a stump using something that feels as though it might well have been made by Black & Decker – or whoever it is that makes the rigs for the North Sea. It would be of no surprise to me to find that the vibrations have, Terminator-like, liquefied my existing fillings and, from the feel of it, bounced my brain around in my cranium like a pea in a beach ball. My poor, emaciated dentine is currently encased within a ‘temporary crown’ that feels like a tea tray suspended on concrete has been affixed to my jaw. Little bits of… something project from the edge at angles that consistently take me by surprise. I most definitely dare not chew on it. It has to last me three weeks before its permanent* replacement is ready. I’m pretty certain that it will not survive the gnashing associated with the next Prime Ministerial Broadcast. I feel as though breathing might unsettle it.
I am pretty certain that the dentists have notes on my file to warn them that I am a nervous patient: something along the lines of ‘If you don’t want him to die on you, keep him calm.’ They are very kind, but it doesn’t help. Nothing in my brain can make sense of being laid down, beyond horizontal, whilst people fish about inside my head. It doesn’t help that they currently look as if they are about to deal with toxic waste. Understanding the explanation of what they are about to do with what looks disturbingly like a thermal probe is not helped by communication taking place through an industrial-strength surgical mask and a visor that would be at home in a riot. Why is it, that not until I have four hands in my mouth and I am robbed of all alternatives, do I discover that my nose has stopped working? Breathing through the mouth is definitely too risky: nobody wants the tube of a vacuum cleaner down there. (Although, unless I produce unfeasible volumes of saliva, they certainly do not seem very efficient those little tubes. Today, the dentist actually stopped, mid-drill, in order to mop me down – and, I suspect, herself, her assistant and possibly the walls too.) I have tried to inhale through my ears, but they do not provide a viable alternative to the oesophagus. I’m pretty certain that there is a route through to the lungs down there, but I am unable to make it work. What I do is to freeze, breathing neither in nor out, until there is a natural break in proceedings and I can gasp in a lungful of air without the risk of swallowing a latex glove. If my dentist appointments become any more frequent, I will have to develop the lung-capacity of a sperm whale.
I am back in three weeks to have the new crown fitted. My face should have returned to its normal colour by then. The burst blood vessels should have re-buried themselves. Currently my jaw aches, my tooth throbs and my gums feels as though they are too sensitive to accept the application of ‘Sensitive Tooth Paste’, so I at least know that the Anaesthetic is wearing off. Why does a worked-upon tooth always feel far too big for the mouth? Currently I feel as if an inadvertent chomp might just force something up into my brain.
I wouldn’t mind, but since the ministrations of the paid-by-the-filling school dentist in the 60’s and the need to open beer bottles in the 70’s, I have taken great care of my teeth through my adult years. I have brushed and flossed with the best of them. Fear, I will admit, has always been a big factor. The fear that I would have to visit the dentist more often than twice a year for a simple check-up has always been a great motivator in the dental-hygiene stakes for me. But now? Well, my teeth have started to take on all the hues of Rembrandt’s palette and bits of them, like Sugababes**, break away at will. I cannot use a mouthwash for fear of washing them out. It is the price we pay as we get older. We either pay the dentist or we end up being unable to eat anything that will not puree. Like Rome, a decent set of gnashers are not built in a day and, like that great city, nothing can prevent their decline and fall.
I have the time on my hands now to search for an alternative: a life without teeth. I may research whether it is possible to survive on bananas – it will at least give me something to chew on…
*Dentist’s Joke.
**If you are not British and ‘of a certain age’ you may well have to make your own joke up there – relax, it will almost certainly be an improvement.
Getting On 