Super Nigel and a Covid Adventure

For crispinunderfelt.

These characters were all created by myself and my great buddy, Chris (the afore-mentioned Mr Underfelt) for a long, long ago radio series called The Globetrotting Adventures of Nigel Tritt (which I have written about briefly here).  In keeping with the ethos of this blog, I felt that it was high time that I looked in on them to see how they are all coping with advancing years in this age of ‘New Normal’ – in short, how they are getting on.  This is what I found…

Super-Nigel Tritt tucked himself tightly within the folds of his tartan ‘Slanket’, becoming increasingly agitated as he fiddled with the buttons of the TV remote.  ‘Corinth, Corinth!’ he called, ‘Can you do something with this TV?  The remote is not working and all the programs seem to be in Bulgarian.’

Corinth walked into the room.  She still held the pneumatic promise of a twenty-something, although it did appear to be deflating in places.  ‘That’s the telephone’, she said, taking it from his hand.  ‘The TV remote is on the coffee table next to your glasses and your pills, which you haven’t taken as usual.  The man on the TV is Danny Dyer – he always sounds like that.’

Nigel shifted uncomfortably in his chair: his leotard was giving him merry hell.  ‘I don’t suppose you could just…?’

‘Again?’  asked Corinth, ‘I don’t know why you insist on wearing that thing these days.  Just wait a minute whilst I go and get a couple of spoons.’

‘Remember to warm the cream,’ Nigel yelled at her retreating back.  ‘You know what the cold stuff did to me last time.’

‘How could I forget,’ Corinth mumbled, with an involuntary shudder.

Covid isolation had proved to be particularly difficult for the retired Super-hero.  Granted, his globe-trotting adventures had become increasingly rare in recent years – particularly since he now found it difficult to dodge anything more lethal than a speeding marshmallow – but this enforced isolation from his friends, How, the Professor and Freddie the Spy had left him low.  They had tried Zoom calling on a number of occasions, but never with great success.  The Doctor, as How preferred to be known, was struggling with his electric wheelchair – assembled from the bottom half of a Dalek – which had developed an alarming tendency to do exactly as it pleased.  He suspected tampering by Davros, or possibly Huawei, but whatever the reason, he was seldom able to be at his laptop when the call came through – especially since his ‘assistant’ kept leaving it upstairs.

The Professor, the most technically gifted of the team, had become deeply suspicious of any post-millennial technology, believing that it was responsible not only for Covid, but also for the financial crash of 2008, the ceaseless seep of the gourmet coffee shop and a particularly persistent carbuncle with which he had been engaged in battle since 2013.  Frankly, when they did manage a virtual ‘get-together’, his extreme moodiness ensured that he was never the best of company.  Like Nigel, he desperately wanted to get back out into his world of do-gooding, but he had become, of late, concerned about How’s ability to pilot his time craft in anything approaching an acceptable manner; indeed, their most recent adventure, back at the dawn of time, was a perfect example.  If Corinth had not somehow managed to bang two stray atoms together, Lord knows what might have happened.  Besides, the on-board toilet arrangements were appalling and in no way equal to the requirements of four men with failing prostates and a woman whose pelvic floor was practically subterranean.  In the Professor’s mind, it would be no bad thing if Nigel were to hang up his super-leotard for good.

The one member of the team who could always be relied upon to be present for their on-line chats was Freddy, although his paranoia had blossomed to such an extent that his many layers of auto-encryption meant that, in practice, it was almost impossible to see him unless you viewed the screen through a colander, and his voice emerged sounding something like a man-sized cockroach, which did rather set the teeth on edge.

Corinth herself, determined to confound her air-headed reputation of old, had studied every scientific home course available.  As a result, she was perfectly capable of constructing a working nuclear reactor out of two kitchen spatulas and a selection of cutlery – although her efforts to work out what day it was still left much to be desired. 

Even Nigel’s leotard, the seat of all his super-powers, had been less effective since Corinth had attempted to remove ‘certain stains’ by popping it into a boil wash, and it was only by dint of the ancient elastic going that he was able to struggle into its shrivelled remains at all.  Yet despite its tendency to bring on the worst of his rashes, Nigel still liked to feel cocooned within its sagging mesh during times of stress – and times seldom came more stressful than these.

‘I’ve been thinking,’ he said to Corinth as she re-entered the room.

‘Oh gawd,’ she muttered.

‘We need to get the team back together.  I have a plan to defeat this viral scourge.’

Corinth gazed into his glaucous eyes, for once sparkling again with a hero’s zeal.

‘Well?’ she said.

‘Well,’ he queried.  ‘Well what?’

‘You just said about getting the team back together.’

‘Did I?  I wonder why?’ he stroked his chin and small flakes of yesterday’s boiled egg fluttered down onto his lap.  ‘Oh yes, my plan!’ he said at last.  ‘My plan to save the world from Coronavirus.  It is, I believe, infallible.’

‘I’ll make the call,’ Corinth stammered with genuine pride.  ‘I always knew you’d come up with a plan…  What is it by the way?’

‘What?’

‘The plan.’

‘Plan?  What plan?’

‘To defeat Covid.  You said you had a plan to defeat Covid.’

‘Oh that,’ he said.  ‘Didn’t I tell you?’

‘No,’ she said, feeling the optimism drain from her like water down a dentist’s sink.

‘Oh bugger,’ he said… 

I haven’t met these people in years.  I enjoyed the catch up.  I hope that I was faithful to their spirit.

First published 22.08.20.

I felt that my last Little Fiction Brendan, was a tad dark and therefore I chose this little piece to re-publish simply because it is pure nonsense. As the title suggests, this was written in the depths of Covid (a dreadful period which I dealt with in my plague diaries – this links to week five. I am sure you could find more if you felt so inclined. ) At the head of this piece it links to In Lieu of Nothing in Particular. The best thing about that post is the wonderful Hunt Emerson cartoon that accompanied Super Nigel’s listing in The Radio Times back in the days when such a thing existed…

Brendan

Brendan’s head was flat.  It looked as though somebody had sliced the top off before gently rounding the sharp edges.  His ears were cauliflower, the whites of his eyes like raspberry ripple ice cream, his brow more beaten than a French meringue, his nose attempted to point to all four points of the compass simultaneously giving the impression that his face was in continuous motion.  He was not a good looking man, indeed many had called him repulsive, but it didn’t bother him.  His unusually short-cropped red hair (kept that way to combat the ubiquitous headlice) sat him apart from most of his more elaborately coiffed classmates, as did his build.  As broad as he was long, he assumed the nickname ‘Cube’ from his first day at school.  It wasn’t bad, as nicknames go; pretty inoffensive and some of the girls quite liked it, and Brendan liked the girls, but he always found that love was unrequited.  Girls quite liked having him around, like a pet dog – the kind of pet that would snarlingly defend you if you got into trouble – although not the type you would allow to lie on your bed.  But it didn’t bother him.

Brendan fought – a lot – at school.  He fought those who called him ugly, he fought those who called him dumb.  He had spent more time in the headmaster’s study than the headmaster himself and his secretary always kept some of his very best biscuits back for Brendan.  He didn’t mind being kept out of lessons: they taught him nothing he needed to know.  He didn’t need to add, he didn’t need to take away, he didn’t need to spell, he didn’t need to know who The Sun King was. (Actually, it was Louis XIV of France, Brendan knew that.  He loved history, although he didn’t care to admit it to anyone, particularly his History teacher.)  Everyone laughed at Brendan in lessons because he never knew the answers to the simplest of questions – even the teachers sought to ingratiate themselves with the class hierarchy by humiliating him for the general entertainment of all.  Brendan didn’t react, he just smiled and remembered.  It was difficult sometimes, he wasn’t bright enough to get an education, but it didn’t bother him.

At least being held in the headmaster’s study generally meant that he was going to be kept behind after school (again).  Brendan didn’t mind being kept behind; it was preferable to being at home.  It was warm and he got Garibaldi biscuits.  There were no cosy fireside scenes at home for Brendan.  He had got used to finding mother unconscious on the sofa and he had grown to realise that it was better than finding her awake and aggressive.  Violent and remorseful by turns, she was much nicer when she was sleeping off the vodka… or recovering from one of his dad’s monumental benders.  Dad was ‘a big man’, providing you were smaller and weaker than him.  He had the kind of weight that he didn’t mind throwing around.  Mostly, if he was available, it was thrown at Brendan, but it didn’t bother him.

Brendan left school, home and the ‘protection’ of a disinterested state at fourteen years old and followed a path perfectly suited to his physique and his intellect.  It wasn’t pretty, sometimes it was messy and it required the kind of emotional detachment that Brendan had spent his whole life developing.  His heart was as empty as an Estate Agent’s.  He became rich somehow, but he never forgot where he came from and he had a fair idea of where he was going.  He could have had his nose fixed, but he found that sometimes it was to his advantage for others to think he was perhaps a little bit vulnerable.  They would discover the errors of their ways soon enough.  His teeth were dazzlingly white and perfect.  He was proud of those.  He’d had all of the work done without anaesthetic, partly because he would have felt too vulnerable if he had lost his ‘edge’ whilst in the dentist’s chair, and partly because he quite enjoyed the pain.  It helped him keep things real.

Through the years, Brendan himself had caused considerable pain to quite a number of people.  He had removed quite a lot of teeth, but he wasn’t a dentist.  He wasn’t an Undertaker either although he had buried a great many people, and if he was honest, it didn’t bother him…

This whole little story started with the simple line ‘but it didn’t bother him’.  I decided to see where it would take me, but I didn’t realise quite how dark it was going to be..

Being Me

Photo by Gratisography on Pexels.com

I do realise that there are many things (e.g. everything) that I am not very good at.  Nevertheless, whenever I do turn my hand to something, I always try to give it my very best shot.  It has taken me many years to realise that for some, my best is never good enough; it has taken me even longer to realise that there is absolutely nothing I can do about it and, if I am honest, nothing I particularly want to do about it.

If I am content that I have done my best, then I am content.  If someone can show me how to do it better, that’s great.  I am more than happy to listen, I am more than happy to try, but – and here’s the rub – I seriously doubt my ability to improve much.  Sixty odd years of being crap has ingrained it into me.  I find that practice often makes me worse.  Boredom sets in.  Once I find that I am bad at something, I know that repeated attempts to get better will merely mean that I – like TV actors asked to take over a previously established role – become progressively poorer.

Whenever I find imperfection in what I have achieved I am aware that each successive attempt at finding a remedy will make things shoddier.  The more I try to re-stitch my silk purse, the more I end up with a sow’s ear.  I am surrounded by them because, whenever I spot flaws in the results of my endeavours, I cannot resist the temptation to titivate, almost always resulting in carnage.  A slightly mis-placed drill hole with an ill-fitting wallplug will almost inevitably result in a hole in the plaster the size of a window and a shelf hung exactly where it isn’t wanted.

In common with almost everyone I know, I do vow to address my major personality flaws with a regularity that makes every successive New Year’s Eve a complete trial.  Soul-searching is an annual midnight fare.  High hopes are succeeded by low expectations and the knowledge that I will never – in that respect – change.  My intentions are generally honourable, my reality is filled with regret for everything I have not achieved due to my inability to leave shit alone.  In many ways I have amended; rounded off sharp corners and buffed over abrasive surfaces, but fundamentally, the odd shape of me prevails.

I am a thoroughly asymmetrical peg with no suitable hole to call home, so I have had to make my own.  This is the space into which I slot – an action that is usually accompanied by the sound of a giant plunger being withdrawn from a blocked toilet.  My life is a blancmange in which the lumps are the only points of interest.  The facts that I cannot find the correct length for my beard, that I over salivate when I clean my teeth, that my urgent desire to urinate is in direct inverse proportion to the availability of urinals, constitute the only grist to my mill.  I do have some kind of influence on the planet, let’s call it ‘The Moth Effect’: similar to ‘The Butterfly Effect’ but bland and visible to far fewer people.  And before anyone feels obliged to point it out, I do realise that moths, like all of God’s creatures, serve a purpose.  It’s just hard to fathom what it is.  Perhaps they pollinate the kind of flowers that nobody ever sees because it is way too dark.  I know that they properly used to scare my granny and, coincidentally, play merry hell with her winter wardrobe.  They provide work for outside lighting and windscreen cleaners.  Mostly, it seems to me, their value to the world is as a food source for any other nocturnal creature that finds itself further up the food chain: birds, lizards, bats, frogs, large spiders, small mammals, toddlers who you could have sworn were asleep in their pushchair.  My wings beat and somewhere in China someone is accused of farting in the chow mien.  It’s not much is it?

I digress (of course I do, otherwise I’d have nothing to say) and the point I sought to make, however feebly, at the start of this tract now eludes me, but perhaps inadvertently I have stumbled upon the truth about being me.  Maybe that is my gift: moving from A to B via all points west, tripping over everything that finds itself in my way en-route, prior to bumbling through to my destination – which may or may not be the destination I was originally heading for – with little to show for it but the experience of the journey.  The drive would be easier if I could just manage to get on top of setting the sat-nav, but so much shorter and the last thing you want to do when you get to my age, is to shorten the trip.  Even if you haven’t made much of as job of it so far…

Selling Snow to Eskimos

It was said that Julian could sell snow to the Eskimos and, whilst he had never actually tried it, it was certainly true that he had on occasions managed to sell the actual straw that broke the camel’s back and had misappropriated along the way so many mickles that his muckle* was now the size of a luxury three story bolt-hole on the Algarve, paid for in tight wads of ill-gotten gains.  Thanks to him, Westminster Bridge had more Japanese owners than Sony and The Shard had more stakeholders than it had windows.  He had sold more fragments of The True Cross than four woodyards across the city were able to keep up with and if the slivers of the Elgin Marbles he had allowed Greek Visitors to repatriate over the years (for a small fee, obviously) were gathered together, the British Museum would have to open a new wing.

Julian wasn’t a bad man; anyone that knew him would tell you that.  As a young man he had been a successful Estate Agent, but he could not stand the accusations of falsehood that were continually levelled at him, so he became an even more successful car salesman where the falsehoods were never his own, but the symptoms of a dysfunctional workshop.  Later, after a very short, but extremely lucrative few weeks selling worthless credit-scheme encyclopaedias door-to-door, he felt that he was prepared for a future of living off his own nefarious wits.  He had never married; he had no children and all of his relationships tended to be short-term – not through choice but through necessity.  He could not stay in any place for long, he could never allow his friends to know his next move.  The longest relationship he had ever maintained was over the three years in which he had shared a Strangeways prison cell with ‘Slasher’ Murdoch and his abominable socks.

After his release he had crossed the Channel and armed with nothing more than a smattering of schoolboy French and the ability to talk nonsense in something that sounded vaguely like Italian, managed to make a perfectly decent living selling the Eiffel Tower to Asian tourists, many of whom had only recently availed themselves of an outstanding investment deal for part-ownership of one or another of London’s prime river crossings, but he found that the custodians of French law and order were not as forgiving, nor as amenable, as many members of our own capital’s constabulary, and he was forced to move a little further down the continent, where the police were too busy to waste their time on a sixty-year old chancer, where the suckers were plentiful and the deals were simple, even if the pickings were slimmer.

Still he was happy there.  He was older now; the weather was good, the sun shone most of the time and overheads, in general, were considerably lower than the two capital cities he had worked before.  The natives were easy-going and the tourists as naïve as anywhere else.  The living, although meagre at times, was easy.  The villa was his latest acquisition, his putting down of roots, and it had been such a steal!  Julian’s ‘experts’ had found it oh-so-easy to persuade the yokel owners of the fragility of the foundations; the weakness of the walls; the rude health of the Death Watch beetles in the joists.  The money had, on its way to the seller, found its way through more hands than a Pokeman card in a schoolyard, along a path that was so labyrinthine it probably had a Minotaur as its guardian: it had been laundered more assiduously than his underwear.  His currency was clean, clean, clean, and he was confident that no-one would be able to find fault with any of the paperchain, so it was with some surprise that he found himself being ushered into the office of Mr Ferreira, manager of the bank through which all of his financial transactions had, eventually, progressed. 

The dark wooden room felt like the court rooms with which he was much more familiar.  He felt unusually vulnerable and the discomfort danced around the features of his face.  He did not have to ask the question which was banging around his head – Was there some problem with the deal?  Had someone, somewhere, questioned the source of his capital? – Mr Ferreira read it in his eyes and answered it without hesitation, his whole demeanour signalling a major pothole in the road.  “We have the paperwork for your house, senhor” he said.
“And?… Is there a problem?”  Julian knew he would not be there otherwise.
Mr Ferreira sighed heavily.  “The problem, senhor?  The house, it is not your house.”
“What do you mean?”
“It is not your house because it was not the house of the man to whom you paid your money…”
Julian was aware that he was gaping like a stranded fish.
“…You see senhor, you really should have been more careful.  The Algarve, it is full of con men…”

*‘Many a mickle makes a muckle.’ a Scottish ode to thrift…

First published 22 February 2023

I loved the TV series Hustle about a team of ‘long game’ London conmen and women.  The plots were incredibly intricate and always featured a previously considered mishap, used to great advantage.  Those who got conned were always the greedy ones.  I know little about the world of conmen, but I imagine it is very much more seedy than glamorous, and the cons are altogether more basic…

Not Knowing

I have written before about my unfortunate tendency to say “I don’t know” when I really don’t know the answer and how that is misinterpreted by some as “I don’t care.”  I struggle to find a way around it.  What should I do?  If I pretend to know the answer, I will be asked what it is and subsequently exposed as a liar.  I am happy to be seen as ignorant, but not a fraud.  I have taken to saying “I don’t know, but I will try to find out,” which puts me in exactly the same position as the question setter, e.g. asking the smart speaker.  (So, the answer is apparently ‘I’m sorry, I do not understand your question.  Would you like to hear some music by Milli Vanilli?”)

The main problem is that there is just so very much that I do not know: if the universe is a giant vacuum and the planets in it are all very heavy indeed, why don’t they just fall down to the bottom?  If not knowing stuff was an academic subject, I would be top of the class.

Back in my schooldays, there were always two types of ‘top of the class’ classmates: the quiet boring ones that nobody minded and the ‘look at me’ smart-arses that everyone wanted to flick with a wet towel after P.E.  Some people are effortlessly brainy and – as it is nothing special to them – generally unassuming.  They will seldom be the one with their hand up in class.  They will have their head down.

My head was seldom down.  It was more normally up in the clouds.  When pushed into a corner, hemmed in by unfathomable facts, my mind takes flight.  Concentration is all well and good, but it gets very boring after a while.  My brain had far more adventures than my body as a child, most of them in the midst of the failings of The League of Nations or the formation of an occluded front in the mid-Atlantic.  I enjoyed Art, because ‘going off on one’ was a requirement and I loved English (right until Geoffrey Chaucer and Thomas Hardy sucked every molecule of joy out of it) because I had a teacher who actually allowed creativity in Creative Writing, but I also had French (which seemed like Double Dutch to me), Latin (Dead Double Dutch), Physics (in which my own misunderstanding of all around me began to develop), Chemistry, Biology, History, Geography, as well as woodwork (in which my ineptitude was given new bounds by various sharp and pointed implements) and Sport, which distanced the barriers of my stature from my combative spirit.

The school allowed me to stay on to the Sixth Form – I have no idea why: academically I was not close to good enough and through those two years my application to learning was close to zero.  I like to think that I was good for morale.  In reality, I fear that all I was actually good for was the school budget: one more boy off the government’s unemployment bill.  I learned how little I knew that could ever help me in life and how much I knew that could help me in a pub quiz.  This is the story of my life.  I have a jumble sale head, full of tatty, unloved remnants of knowledge, but not a single shiny new air-fryer.  School taught me to say ‘I don’t know’ and I did it a lot because, more often than not, I didn’t.  And I don’t.  I hope you understand…

Let’s Talk About Blogging

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I don’t know if everyone stumbles into the blogosphere the way that I did, but (for me) what started off as a slight diversion became an obsession: a world into which I fully invested.  Self-obsession balanced by curiosity, empathy and (fancifully perhaps) friendship.  If sixty-six years of life has taught me anything at all, it is that you can’t have too many of those.

It becomes painfully when, through no fault of your own (in as much as you can ever be totally absolved of blame for what happens in your life) you miss – as I have just done – posting, and possibly more importantly, reading (blogging being an all-round participation sport) for a few weeks.

Today I feel a little like a footballer (non-league obviously) who has ‘come back too early’ and broken down almost immediately.  I came back to the blog after an enforced lay-off, I wasn’t very good and then I disappeared again.  I blame the physios.

Two weeks on the treatment bench afforded me the opportunity to review.  Getting On is about getting older, not about being old.  It is about how the world looks through an older person’s eyes and it has, incidentally, become about the old person himself.  Life (a seventy year progression from one nappy to another) is short and the end of it becomes ever-closer day by day, ill-advised meal by ill-advised meal, speeding driver by speeding driver.  Life becomes increasingly fragile.  Run into a lamppost as a child and you simply have to laugh off an ‘egg’ the size of a football on your forehead.  It won’t slow you down.  Do it at my age (a possibility made all the greater by failing eyesight and the tendency to become distracted by irrelevances) and you will almost certainly wake up on a trolley in a corridor in A&E with an overworked junior doctor attempting to reconcile your injuries with somebody else’s case notes.

For reasons I do not understand, my retirement having offered up the potential (fully embraced) for seven-days-a-week working has led to a to-do list that has grown exponentially.  For each job ticked off the top of the list, two more appear at the bottom.  The need for a drop of oil on a door hinge will lead inexorably to the need for new hinges, new door ‘furniture’, a better lock and – oh bugger it – let’s just change the door.  Maybe brick up the hole and move it a foot or so to the left…  DIY imposes a kind of pyramid selling scheme: each little job necessitates two more.  The butterfly effect in bricks and mortar.  Knocking in a nail is like firing the starting pistol on an obstacle race of such fiendish complexity and Gordian intricacy that not even Victoria Coren Mitchell* would be able to map a way through.  My wife’s ever-shifting hierarchy of urgency ensures that the task I am currently attempting to complete is never the right one.

But that’s ok.  There is little I do these days without thinking, ‘could I write about this?’  When it all goes tits-up, it’s ok, I can write about it.  That is what blogging has done for me.  I don’t beat myself up for making a mess of stuff, I write it off.  Somehow that gives me the space to think myself through putting it right.  Not that it means my second attempt will be any better, just more considered.  Knowing where something has gone wrong does not mean that I won’t fall down the same wormhole again.  Generally it just means I get straight there without the initial meandering.  I have always been comfortable with my ability to write.  I am no Shakespeare, but then, he’s dead and I’m not.  I feel that I would read, and enjoy, what I write, but… you know… I wrote it.  And I’m old.  I am what I am writing about.  Would young me enjoy it?

It bothers me because, if I’m honest, that’s why I write it.  It’s kind of a warning for the young: live long enough and you will end up just like this!  I understand that you might find me saggilly repulsive, but I am envious of your drum-tightness and the fact that you can stand from the squat without sounding like a lovelorn hippo.  I am envious of all the time you have left, but I am mindful that – as much as I moan about your woke sensibilities and your sense of entitlement – we are fundamentally the same.  It is life that has changed.  You have mobile phones, you eat out, you drink out, you have a social life that does not revolve around home-brewed wine and canapés featuring Dairylea Cheese Triangles, but you cannot (and you really cannot) afford the deposit to buy a house.  We bought a house when I was twenty.  We definitely weren’t rich, we were both shop workers, and the interest rate on our mortgage was 17% (I know, I’ve just looked it up) but our expectations were so very different.  I do have a house and I do have a pension, but I fear for my future.  I have no idea what – if I have one – it will bring me.  We will scrape by, and then we will die and you (young people) will do the same.  You will retire much later, but also live much longer and (I sincerely hope – I have grandchildren) in much better health.  We all work a life away in the hope of a happy autumn and a comfortable winter.  I am in my autumn – ok, late autumn – and winter is much closer than I ever thought it would be, but there is one thing that I am just as good at as I ever was: finding joy wherever it is hiding.  It is much better at hiding these days, but I have lots of time to find it.  Stay tuned, I will tell you all about it.  It is what I love about blogging…

*Daughter of Alan Coren: razor wit and stellar intellect, professional poker player and presenter of the most obtuse of all game shows ‘Only Connect’.

Episode One – A Brief Synopsis

It was the morning of Fabergé’s wedding to Claudio.  Her mother and father were beside themselves with excitement – so much so that, as soon as they had left their respective lover’s bed (they shared the same one) they sat together for breakfast, she toying with the carving knife and he wondering whether he could asphyxiate her by filling her nose with peanut butter.  Fabergé was also beside herself (that’s part of the problem with split-personality) but Claudio was somewhere else entirely.  Claudio’s mother did not approve of Fabergé or her step-foster parents (Derek and Doreen Clench) because she felt they were beneath her family (as they lived in the coal cellar) but Claudio loved Fab (as he called her – which really annoyed her mother who much preferred ‘Ergé’) and would do anything for her, other than change his name to Ethel.

It was ‘The Wedding of the Year’ on The Close (Formerly Archibald’s Close before it was discovered that Lord Archibald had once shared a bed with a yak and Royal Mail had objected to the fact that he was not, in fact, close) and the street was festooned with brightly coloured bunting and light emitting festive orbs (formally known as Fairy Lights, until the council decided the term was offensive).  Everyone was in a state of high excitement and good will abounded.  Nobody had been pushed up a wall and threatened for hours.  Dave’s ‘Sausage In A Bap’ van (formerly Hot Dog van before somebody pointed out that it didn’t serve dogs and what it did serve was at best lukewarm) was parked up in front of the local pub and ready to go.  Surely there could be no problem associated with a van containing two ersatz propane tanks, each having cheap Taiwanese fittings, twenty gallons of cooking fat and a fuel tank filled with something made from reclaimed vegetable oil, bath-tub gin and illegally imported nail-varnish remover being positioned exactly where everybody threw their fag-ends.

Fabergé looked at the photograph of her Equally Viable and Non-Dependent Other-to-be (formerly fiancé before somebody decided that owing to discriminatory spelling the word was demeaning) and sighed.  She would tell him about the sex-change at the reception.  Mo Cringe, mother of Derek, step-foster grandmother of Fabergé, secret lover of Claudio and family matriarch, was trying on her hat.  “Do you think that black is really the right colour grandma?” said Dirk, her youngest half-step grandson-in-law.
“It’s a dark day,” she said with her now familiar perma-scowl.
“Why?” asked Dirk.
“I think it’s something to do with the cloud cover,” she said.  “Is she ready yet?”
“Fabergé?”
“Who else?”  Dirk swallowed slightly.  “Erm, nearly,” he said.  “She’s having a bit of trouble fastening her dress.  She bought it before she… you know…”
“…Got herself pregnant with that brush salesman’s lovechild.” she said.
“But,” asked Dirk “isn’t it Claudio’s baby?”
Mo laughed out loud and catapulted her dentures across the room.  “Him?  He can’t have children.  Not since the incident with the Hen Party from Grimsby and the over-inflated sheep.”
“Does Fab know?”
“He might have mentioned it to her during the course of ante-natal classes…”

One by one the residents of The Crescent readied themselves for The Wedding of the Year (which, by The Close tradition, generally took place about three weeks before the Acrimonious Divorce of the Year) finalising their plans to use this best of opportunities to settle past scores with neighbours, friends and family.  Claudio climbed out of bed and having woken both of the bridesmaids, sent them home to get their dresses on, smiling evilly as he watched them scurry away.  But not as evilly as the maid of honour for whom the antibiotics had still not worked…

Now read on…

First published 19 May 2023

As I write this, Eastenders is celebrating its 40th year of misery.  The Close is my Albert Square (setting for Eastenders).  It’s a good deal sillier than the flagship BBC Soap, but no further from reality.  I always feel that silly is my forte and I know that I should do it more often.  I will make it my mission… 

History of the World (part 239)

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1. There was no room at the Inn.

2. In a small, cob-webby garage in the town of Scunthorpe, Mrs Mary Smith lay on a mouldy canvas camp-bed, giving birth to a son.  Her eyes were heavy and swollen and a bump on her forehead glowed angry in the meagre candle light. Her husband was an angry man.  He just would not listen.

3. Granted, it must have been a bit hard for him, coming home from a year spent brick-laying in the Saudi Arabian sunshine to find his wife decidedly pregnant.  He wouldn’t listen.

4. Bleedin’ visitation by a wossname spirit?  What you take me for?  Milkman more like.  With gin maybe.  Son of GOD?  Do you expect the blokes down the boozer to believe that?  You’ve made me a bleedin’ laughing stock, an object held up for ridicule, narmean?

5. In his anger he smote her.

6. But now he was kindness itself.  True, she would have preferred a bed in a maternity hospital, but he had assured her: Do as you are bleedin’ well told.  Don’t want people talking now, do we?  Pointing the wossname finger.  Anyway, he had read the books and she had to admit it was very clean, as garages go.

7. She screamed again, and all around her the ferrets paced their cages.

8. Later she held the boy child and sighing, lay back, banging her head on the bumper of the old Ford Cortina he was doing up to help with the rent.

9. Day passed into night and the musky smell of nappies hung, humid in the frost-sharp air.  It was then that the first of three wise men arrived bearing an unsolicited gift.

10. He was called Ted and he had travelled for what seemed like forty days and forty nights on the Inter-City from London.  He was Customs and Excise and none could stop him entering.

11. He spake: What we got here then, where’s the grass?  Come on, don’t play innocent with me, we’ve had a tip off.  I know your sort, hippies, all junkies.  ‘Ere, that baby looks high.  You breast feeding are you?  We can tell you know, run tests.  Better off if you own up now, save a lot of bother.  We could talk to the judge, you know, young mother, educationally sub-normal, very helpful, that sort of thing.  That’s best.  Otherwise we turn this place inside out.

12. I don’t know what you’re talking about.  You can’t do that.

13. Oh yes I can, I got the gift of this ‘ere piece of paper from the DPP.  I can impound the baby if I feel like it.  And so saying, he began to search the alimentary canals of seventeen severely disgruntled ferrets.

14. The second wise man was called Tom, he was from the Inland revenue.

15. He spake: I come bearing a gift.  Fill in this form and sign it at the bottom.  Don’t lie, because we always get you in the end.  You’re not putting the baby down as your secretary are you?  Get a lot of that we do, but we got tests, we can tell.  I’ll ask him to take down some notes in shorthand to prove that he can do it, like.

16. He’s not my secretary, he’s my dependant.  I’m claiming Family Allowance.  It is my right.

17. The Tax Inspector turned puce.  The Tax Inspector ground his dental implants to dust.  The Tax Inspector wiped his spectacles with a grubby handkerchief.  The Tax Inspector broke his Government Issue pen.  He spake: Another bloody loop-hole!  There’s no bloody fun in this job anymore.

18. The Tax Inspector stamped away from the garage, squashing a snail between his thumb and forefinger.

19. The third wise man was, in fact, a wise woman.  It was unusual to see a woman in such a position, but she was, of course, paid less than the two wise men.  Still, that’s life, isn’t it?  Also, she had bad breath and an embarrassing skin condition causing her to squint and peel on her superiors.  That is not life, that is type-casting.

20. Her name was Hermione.

21. She spake: Sign this.

22. What is it?  Asked Mary.

23. Questions, questions, questions: always bloody questions these days.  Nobody ever signs without asking stupid bloody questions.  Dear me!  I used to commit fourteen old ladies in a single morning not so long ago.  All of ‘em signed straight away.  No problem.  Had ‘em in the van before they could reach for the bath chair brakes.

24. What is it you want me to sign? she asked, wiping sump oil from her forehead.

25. Educationally subnormal, wrote the wise woman on her notepad.  She spake: just sign will you stupid, before I phone for ‘the boys’.

26. But what’s it for?

27. For?  For?  What is anything for?  Why was paper invented?  Why do you suppose some bright spark invented the biro?  It’s for our files.

28. Look, you can’t tell me that it’s right bringing a baby up like this.  One of my sources tells me that you actually gave birth in here without a midwife being present.  That’s against the law for a kick-off.  And where’s your husband, eh?

29. A tear swelled in Mary’s eye.  He’s out at work.

30. Oh, absentee father eh?  look, you don’t stand a chance.  Just sign the bloody form, I’ll take the baby and that’s the end of it.  It will all go through the courts and he’ll be legally adopted within the week.  Now won’t that be a weight off your mind?

31. You’ve come to take my baby?

32. Yes, we don’t hang about, you know.

33.But he’s my flesh and blood, he grew inside me.  I’ve fed him at my breast, not to mention changed his mucky nappies and wiped his important little places.  You can’t do this.

34. Of course I can.  Come on, just sign, it’s only to say that I’ve taken delivery.  It doesn’t really matter, I’ll take him anyway.

35. Come on, sign.  I’ve had a hard day.  I was up at seven repossessing my mother’s walking frame.  Crafty old cow got up at six and tried to run off with it.  She’s nearly reached the gate by the time I caught her.  I told her, you should have kept up your payments, a contract’s a contract.  That’s what contracts is for.  ‘Course, she turned on the tears, but that don’t work anymore, on account of how I caught her practicing in front of the mirror.  It took me ages to make her sign and then, when I got back to the office, I found she’d written ‘Micky Moose’.  I’ll give her what for when I get home, silly cow.  She’d better have my tea ready, that’s all.  Now, just sign will you?

36. My baby, she sobbed.

37. Don’t you start, she spake, it makes the ink run.  A signature’s no good when the ink’s run.  It messes up the computer.  Here, use this ballpoint.

38. My baby, she sobbed.

39. Oh come on love, she spake, putting her arm around Mary’s shoulder and steadying her signing arm.  You know that’s not true.  That nice Mr Jehovah paid you £1,000 to have the baby for him.  You can’t go back on your agreement now.  It’s the law.  Sign here.

40. With a sigh, Mary signed the paper and took the cheque for one thousand pounds on delivery.

41. The wise woman took the baby.  They’re going to call him Nigel, she spake.

A slight diversion from the usual Sunday repeat today because this story has never appeared on this platform before.  I wrote it over forty years ago (and reproduce it here verbatim) and, as far as I can see, is probably the first magazine piece that I was ever paid for.  I found it during the house move and thought it was interesting.  It doesn’t seem to have aged too badly – except perhaps for the sum of £1,000 – but I’ll leave you to decide how much my view of the world might have changed since way back then…

Happy Place

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Well, here I am again: same spot, but in a much better place.  The house still seems to be losing its pants around us, but we’re finding ways to hold them up – mostly with paint.  In a few days time we should at least have a handle on what is necessary to resolve the electrical problems and then, like kids with Lego, we start to knock it all down and build it up as something else – almost certainly wonky. 

Decorating, decision making, electricians, plumbers, builders all lay ahead of us but for some reason upon which I am unable to put a finger, I feel relatively happy.  It is not like me.  Morose is my middle name.  I am King of morosity – now that I know that it’s a real word (and probably a nearly-hit for a 1980’s band of brothers) however, today I am bordering on sanguine and I have no idea why.  If I had, I’d probably do it more often.

Odd, isn’t it, how being happy makes you happy.  I am sixty-six years of age now and it has happened to me… mmm, well, I’ll be honest, this could just be the first time.  Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean that I have spent my entire life miserable… maybe the last few weeks… It’s normal.  There are so many metaphors for ‘unhappy’: ‘down in the dumps’; ‘heavy hearted’; ‘got a face like a wet weekend’; ‘lost a pound and found a penny’; ‘has the weight of the world on his shoulders’, ‘somebody’s pissed on his matches’, but only one for someone who is happy all the time: ‘the man’s a f*cking nightmare!’  Moderation in all things is the way forward: it’s ok to be happy, but only when you’re eating chocolate.  People who smile all the time will quickly find that they are kept away from children.  Those who smile in the face of adversity probably need to get a dictionary: they almost certainly do not understand the concept of ‘adversity’.  Catastrophe, like a Roy ‘Chubby’ Brown concert, is no laughing matter.

There are many historical instances of people facing impending disaster with a grin: it never helped; the disaster still happened and the grinners simply appeared deranged.  With wailing and gnashing of teeth is the only sane way to face disaster.  Life, for most people is little more than a gentle slide into calamity.  A permanent smile simply points to rigor.  No rational person smiles in the face of okra.

I must have been a bit of a smiler myself as a boy because my school day memories are filled with instances of incandescent tutors (we were not allowed to call them ‘teachers’) sneeringly enquiring “What are you grinning at, McQueen?  Do you find Shakespeare amusing?”  “Only the comedies, sir.”  I seem to remember I was sniggering because Hymen had just appeared in ‘As You Like It’.  A furious, red faced tutor, bellowing cheese and onion fumes into my face, should have wiped the smile off it, but I do have, I must confess, the unfortunate tendency to laugh uncontrollably when under duress.  The vast majority of my laughter occurs in inappropriate circumstances: when being lectured by people in authority; when I feel certain that my house is being burgled; every time I go to a funeral.  Sadly, as a lifelong fan of sit-com, I can tell you that there is very little to laugh at these days, yet in reality I must confess that I am actually one of those excruciatingly annoying cheerful souls I so despise. 

Despite a tendency to worry at length about anything and everything, my life is generally one of joy.  I am on constant whistle watch.  Whistling while I work is, if not exactly my biggest flaw, a fairly considerable one and bloody annoying to all around me, so I try my very hardest not to do it.  In my head I hear a tune, but I’m fully aware that, to everyone around me, there is no tune, just a mind numbingly monotonous shriek and I’ve begun to realise that ‘mind numbing shriek’ is how I see myself.  If I had to be around me, I think I would rather do it when I’m mardy and therefore not whistling.  I think a droning moan is probably less off-putting than mindlessly cheerful shrieking.

A happy man is almost always an inane oasis in a desert filled with dehydrated haters who would rather die than go near it.

So here I sit, still on the sofa with the netbook on my knee, but around me various problems are beginning to resolve, mostly in a happy way and a move into my little office sanctuary grows ever closer.  This little house may yet become my happy place.  I may soon have a desk to rest my keyboard on – away from the distractions of house and TV – and a window to stare out of and that prospect fills me with joy.  Happy being happy, that’s me…