Well, despite my best intentions, I have once again peered into my Spam Folder to find many people offering me ‘Hardcore Photo’s’. Unfortunately, I do not need any concrete laying. Oh well, at least I’ll know where to look when I do…
If you missed part one of this little monologue and you have even the slightest interest in reading it, it is here.
…Take Benjamin Franklin, was his name Benjamin or was it William? William Franklin? Frank? I don’t know. One of the brothers anyway, one of the brothers, let’s say Benjamin. Benjamin Franklin could never have invented electricity unless someone before him had invented the kite. That being, I think I’m right in saying, that being the Chinese. Chinese people being, of course, several thousand years ahead of us at that time, in the invention of things like kites… and ancient paper folding… and opium burners… Things happen in order, don’t they? You can’t get to C, if nobody’s bothered to invent A and B first…
Except, except that I’ve just thought about the electric toothbrush. I don’t know why I never thought of it earlier. The electric toothbrush. Obviously… obviously an instance where the toothpaste we use now was actually invented for a non-electric toothbrush – a manual toothbrush you might say – and so, in that way, the toothpaste actually came before the toothbrush we now use to apply it. And you know, I’m sure, I’m sure that many people still use the conventional, manually-operated toothbrush, as it were, especially when they go away on holiday, or away for a night, I mean, perhaps staying at another persons house, with permission of course… nothing untoward… but, essentially, the toothpaste, having been invented for the manual toothbrush came along before the electric toothbrush ever had its first chance to flick it in your eye and was therefore backwards… the invention was backwards… It’s a bit like the chicken and egg situation: which came first – the electric kettle or the pot noodle? The electric toaster or the square-shaped crumpet? The freeze-chilled, calorie-counted slimmer’s meal or the flip-top bin? And wouldn’t it be nice if we could un-invent some things: the nuclear bomb, for instance; obscenely loud in-car stereo systems; Piers Morgan…
F.X. AN ELECTRIC TOOTHBRUSH IS TURNED OFF
…It’s strange actually how much it sounds like, the electric toothbrush, how much it sounds like the hygenic nasal hair remover, because it would explain why I did, on one occasion, having not turned on the bathroom light, so as not to wake my sleeping wife and children, actually manage to apply toothpaste to the end of my nasal clippers and, in fact, severely damage my front teeth whilst attempting to clean them with it. Also slightly damaging the blade so that it does have a tendency to leave a slight sore patch to the left hand side of my nostril when I use it. I would imagine, also, that most of us now have an electric razor, to save the inconvenience of shaving with a conventional blade. I, myself, continue to shave in the traditional manner, with a safety razor, because my electric razor never seems to do anything much but graze my skin, it sort of leaves the stubble where it is whilst removing the top layer of skin around it, so I do, as I say, carry on in the traditional manner, using the cream and the razor blade and, of course, the toilet roll to staunch the bleeding. That is, of course, when there is a toilet roll actually hanging on the dispenser. Having a family: my wife, myself and my two children, I tend to find that mostly, when I’m… not always, but mostly… when I’m in need of using the toilet roll, that I find there isn’t actually anything there. This tends to happen at a fairly… inconvenient time… and when it does, generally I have to call upon someone to fetch one for me or, if there’s no-one else at home, I shuffle along to the cupboard where they are kept. I obviously understand the inconvenience it causes, finding oneself in this situation, so I always endeavour to then put the roll onto the dispenser. For easy use of the next person and to facilitate them knowing whether or not the toilet roll does need changing immediately they get there. I like to have the leading edge of the paper hanging to the front of the roll and so, of course, that’s the way I tend to hang it. My wife, however, prefers to have the leading edge hanging to the rear of the roll and is therefore constantly taking them off after I’ve put them on and turning them around so that they hang to suit her preferences. Sometimes I wonder, is there, in fact, a correct way of hanging a toilet roll? Does etiquette, protocol perhaps, dictate that the sheets hang to the front or rear of the toilet roll? Should there be the merest edge of the front sheet in evidence, or should it hang one or perhaps two full sheets below the roll? I wouldn’t honestly know where to look for guidance on this, presumably there must be correct form, as it were, for instance in the royal household I’m sure toilet rolls have to be hung in a specific manner. A sort of Royal Decree perhaps. Maybe that’s a way I could look into it. Is there perhaps, in Buckingham Palace, a Master of the Queen’s Toilet Roll. A sort of toilet roll pursuivant, who ensures that every toilet is, at all times, equipped with a full toilet roll and not just the cardboard tube from the centre, which one is, of course, forced to use, from time to time, in extremis… I must admit, I’ve never seen such a job advertised. Perhaps it’s one of those jobs that one can only get by appointment. Perhaps you cannot apply to be the royal toilet roll changer, you have to be appointed to the job, perhaps being promoted from some more menial task around the palace like… like royal lint remover, perhaps… or the man who disposes of the royal cotton-buds for instance. Perhaps this task forms only part of the duties of a job with much wider scope. Perhaps the person responsible for this task is also resposible for ensuring that the royal soap-on-the-rope does in fact stay, as intended, on the rope and not down in the bath where it forms a sort of semi-coagulated mess that blocks the plug-hole. The same person may well be responsible for placing the little blue block into the lavatory cistern. And, of course, the very same person could very well be responsible for removing screw-top shower gel bottles from the royal bathroom, putting them instead in the staff showers, for instance, for members of the household who are probably far more manually dextrous than the Queen and Prince Phillip, and replacing them with what I think we have now established are the far more convenient and stylish hook-on-the-rail, flip-top bottles. By Appointment to The Master of the Queens Own Andrex I shouldn’t wonder…
F.X. TOILET FLUSHES.
N.B. This piece was written pre-beard when I undertook the daily, painful routine of scraping off my stubble along with the top layer of epidermis. I have pale skin and have always struggled with shaving. From the dawn of my facial hair to my mid-fifties I had a beautifully smooth, but sore face. I now have a permanently grizzled, but comfortable face in which to live.
On the very first day of Lockdown I lost a chunk of tooth. What was left of the errant molar then continued to shed lumps of itself at random intervals right up until the present day. Each time I found myself spitting out chunks of dentine, I phoned the dentist, only to be told that she wouldn’t see me unless I was in unbearable pain, unable to sleep, or could not eat. I will not lie, and none of the above options applied, so I chomped on to the best of my abilities.
Yesterday, the dentist rang me to say that they would see me in one weeks time. Great news? Should be, but you know how these things go. Today, my tooth aches. I cannot chew on it. I will not be able to sleep for the next seven days. Psychosomatic? I presume so. I can live with it. What’s of most concern is that six days from now I have to submit an online form to certify that I do not have any Covid symptoms – and I can feel the countdown ticking in my head as I type…
There’s something very therapeutic about mowing the lawn at this time of year, not least in the knowledge that you shouldn’t have to be doing it for too much longer. The sun, although as bright as ever, has lost its fiercest heat; the days are shortening perceptibly, the mower’s basket is less full. Even the ants have given up creating bare patches for now.
My lawns are not huge: well within the range of the mower’s cable. They are far from flat, but unlike last year, they are at least green. They are certainly no bowling green. They host various bouts of running, tumbling, football and cricket. The bounce is, at best, variable. It would leave Joe Root¹ staring at the sky, having vainly chased another one rising sharply just wide of off: it would leave Jordan Pickford² cursing his luck as he fished another one out of the net. But we manage ok, the grandkids and me. Lord knows, we even manage a bit of golf – although with very limited success, when we discover that the hole is full of clothes dryer instead of flag. I must admit that the combination of eighteen inch plastic putter, lightweight plastic ball, uneven surface and grass that is at least two inches longer than regulation does little to help. I would claim to be the world’s worst golfer, were it not for my granddaughter who, tired of constantly missing the ball, gradually takes to thrashing the plants in a manner that I do not think would be considered at all sporting at the R&A.
The mowing is not a long job – although on a good day I can make it so – and I can sense that even my tiny electric mower finishes it with a wheeze of ‘Is that it? Is that all you’ve got?’ Well, yes, it is. Mind you, it’s alright for you little Bosch, you are blithely unaware of how scruffy a front hedge appears alongside a neatly cut lawn. My wife is not, and I am quickly apprised of the situation.
My electric hedge trimmers add a suitable level of jeopardy, if not actual danger, to the morning. When they were younger, they may well have been capable of excising an errant finger here and there, of chopping through an injudiciously placed cable; now, they would merely give either a nasty nag, but an unwelcome one none-the-less. Unfortunately I do not have the intellect to buy common-sense, and we remain uneasy bedfellows, electrical equipment and I. We are all much happier when anything with an external power supply is safely stowed away in the shed. Not quite so therapeutic is the actual process of ‘stowing’. There is nothing in my shed that does not strive to injure me in some way or another. Like Mr Magoo striding purposefully towards an upturned rake, I approach confidently, but there is inevitable harm awaiting. If I do not get punctured by some unseen implement, I get stung by a belligerent house-guest, or receive an eyeful of some noxious something-or-another that I had completely forgotten ever storing there. We have a very traditional love/hate relationship, the shed and I – although from my side it is all hate.
Still, that’s not the worst of it. ‘As you’re out there,’ says the voice from within, ‘the gutter’s leaking.’ My relationship with ladders is even more problematic than my relationship with all things electrical and pointy. I have never had problems with walking underneath them, it is the standing on top of the bloody things that bothers me. (On a scale of 1-10, where 1 = becalmed and 10 = an autumn day on Neptune, how much wind does there have to be to make you feel unsafe on a ladder? Answer, 0.) Anyway, I did it. Did I mention that I had to rest the ladder on the garage roof, having climbed up there via a step ladder? Still, not quite so far to fall. I didn’t, by the way, fall off that is. I cleared the gutter without mishap; got myself and the ladder off the garage roof without incident and stored the step ladder back in the shed completely without injury. Until, that it, I stubbed my toe on the lawnmower…
¹England cricket captain – widely regarded as one of the best bats in the world until, like many before him, the precise moment at which he was made captain, at which point, the wheels fell off.
²As I write, England goalkeeper, although that may change. Eccentric, like most goalkeepers, Jordan has elevated the state into full-on barking at the moon.
‘…Why do they even put backwards-facing seats into railway carriages?’ asked Shaw. ‘Nobody likes them.’
‘Well, I don’t think they are backwards facing all the time, are they? I mean, when they get to where they are going, they don’t turn around to come back, do they? They just get pulled from the other end….’
‘No, of course not. I know that,’ snapped Shaw, who felt that he had to say something, but really just wanted to concentrate on the fact that he was distinctly unhappy at having to watch where he had just been funnel silently away into the distance. Knowing that his future was looming up, unseen, behind him made him anxious and, as everyone that knew him would testify, an anxious Shaw was a spiky Shaw. For the moment, he occupied himself by staring malignantly into the distance, but Dinah recognised the signs, some kind of irrational outburst was just around the corner.
‘Would you like a coffee?’ she asked, all smoothing oil on troubled waters.
‘I would,’ said Shaw, ‘but that’s another thing: no buffet car. A two hour journey and no buffet car. What do they expect you to do, drink the sweat from your own brow?’
Dinah recognised the warning: a troubled sea fanned by a full-on anxiety storm. ‘’I’ve brought a flask,’ she said.
‘A what?’
‘A flask. I’ve brought a flask of coffee.’ She unscrewed the little metal cup and poured the black steaming liquid, watching as Shaw’s bottom lip began, petulantly to protrude. He opened his mouth to speak, but Dinah was ready for him. ‘Milk and sugar are in the bag, she said. Shaw’s mouth made the slightest twitch towards complaint. ‘And biscuits,’ added Dinah.
‘What kind?’
Dinah allowed herself the faintest of smiles. ‘Bourbon, of course.’
Shaw looked into Dinah’s face as passed the cup towards him. She smiled and he felt the tension leave him in an instant, tingling away from the nape of his neck.
‘Now, do you mind telling me where we are going – and why?’
‘There’s something we’ve got to see,’ said Shaw.
‘What?’
‘I’m not sure.’
‘Well, where then?’ persisted Dinah.
‘There’s the thing…’
Dinah sighed deeply. ‘You don’t know do you?’
‘Not exactly, no, but I think I’ll know when we get there.’
‘How? How will you know?’
‘The man in the tartan hat,’ Shaw nodded, indicating the man on the seat behind him. ‘He’ll be getting off there.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Well, he has to get off somewhere, doesn’t he?’
‘I suppose so, but why him? Why are we following him?’
‘To see where he gets off, of course.’ Shaw sipped his coffee, indicating that, as far as he was concerned, the matter was closed.
Dinah, as ever, absorbed and understood the subliminal message, but ploughed on anyway. ‘I mean, you must have some reason to want to know why he, in particular, is going to get off the train, wherever he might choose to do so.’
Shaw drank slowly, eeking out the silence as long as he could. Finally, his cup empty, he sighed resignedly and said, ‘Do you think we should be following somebody else?’
‘Well, no,’ Dinah stuttered. ‘That is…’
‘Good,’ said Shaw, settling back in his seat and revelling in his moment of triumph. ‘That’s settled then. We’ll stick with my original plan.’
Despite a billion reservations bouncing around in her head, like a zero-gravity hailstorm, she decided that the time had come to just go along with the flow and enjoy the day out. She would have said ‘watching the world go by’, but she had to agree with Shaw, there was little fun in watching the world that had already gone by.
Slowly, imperceptibly, she surrendered to the steady sway of the train, and her head sagged steadily towards Shaw’s shoulder. She drifted off into a soft, dreamless sleep, unaware of the gentle rhythmic snoring of Shaw in her ear…
…They both awoke in the otherwise empty carriage to the first lurch of the return journey. Outside the carriage, all was dark. ‘Typical,’ said Shaw. ‘We’re facing the right way, and now there’s nothing to see…’
Previous snippets from the lives of Dinah Shaw are here. Part one, part two, part three and part four.
I found this in my Odds and Sods file simply labelled ‘1’. There is a ‘2’ and a ‘3’ as well. The title tells you all of what it was intended to be. To get the full effect, you should read it out aloud. Try it – you will be so grateful for social distancing. This is the first half of episode 1. I will publish part two in a later edition of Odds and Sods – unless somebody sends lots of money to stop me…
A SHOWER IS TURNED OFF
…Why do they put shower gel in screw-top bottles? I mean, you pour the shower gel into your hand and by the time you’ve screwed the top back on, it’s all washed away and dribbled on your foot. You get clean feet, but I can never understand it… I always buy the bottles with the little hook on top, you know, you hang them over the rail on your shower and they have a little flip-top that you flip down and get the shower gel directly into your eye… Whenever people buy shower gel for me, and people do, a lot… I seem to get an awful lot of shower gel for birthdays, Christmas, father’s day… very… very thoughtful… it’s very thoughtful… it’s a very thoughtful thing to buy isn’t it, shower gel, very thoughtful… but whenever people buy it for me, it always seems to come in screw top bottles. And it always has the word ‘Sport’ in the name of it somewhere. ‘Sport’ like if the shower gel is ‘Sport’ shower gel, it comes in a screw top bottle. Perhaps if you’re a sportsman you can get the lid on quick enough, you know, so that it doesn’t wash away and dribble down your leg…
It’s a funny thing, shower gel, it’s not something we used to have you know, when I was a kid. We had soap. And no shower, come to think of it. We had a bath… once a week as I recall… with soap, but no shower gel, we never had shower gel…
I wonder who actually invented shower gel? I can’t imagine it was one of those Eureka! moments, you know, like, ‘Hey, look at me, I’ve invented shower gel, now, does anybody round here have a shower?’ I think probably more like ‘Oh dear, I’ve just spilled the shampoo… perhaps I’d better rinse it off before it goes sticky… Oh hang on, just look at that…’ I don’t know what the difference is, really; between shower gel and shampoo. I remember my dad always used to say, when we’d run out of shampoo, ‘It’s only detergent,’ he would say. ‘It’s just detergent with a few additives. You might just as well use washing-up liquid. If it leaves hands that do dishes as soft as your face, then it’s bound to do a decent job on your hair.’ So we did, use washing-up liquid that is, and I just can’t help wondering how different that is from shower gel. I suppose it’s possible that somebody spilled washing-up liquid down themselves and went to wash it off in the shower… although that would mean that they’d been washing the pots in the nude, not completely impossible, but not entirely hygienic I would imagine, not the normal thing, unless, of course, you are a middle-aged German…
I imagine most inventions must come about by accident, really… you know, like blue water in the toilet… I can’t imagine anyone would have said ‘I know, I think I’ll invent coloured water for the toilet.’ No, they must have sort of… I don’t know… accidentally dropped ink perhaps, ink, yes, ink perhaps… or a felt pen, a blue felt pen perhaps… into the lavatory bowl and the water turned blue, and they thought ‘Oh, that’s very nice. That looks very nice. Now, how can I make it do that all the time? I suppose the disinfectant came later… You know, they thought ‘That water’s nice blue, but, well, if we put some disinfectant in it then there’d be no stains around the toilet to spoil the overall… blueness. The blueness of the water. That would be right, I think.
Accident see, it’s the way things come about. I mean, who would have thought that for want of finding somewhere for an astronaut to fry an egg, we’d have all ended up with Teflon frying pans? It’s amazing. Amazing. I suppose, to be fair, they must have had fairly explicit instructions you know, like, ‘Look, you’re going to need breakfast up there and it’s not going to be easy to… to wash a frying pan, you know to wash out bits of stuck-on fried eggs from a frying pan in the weightless conditions of space, I mean, as you scrape the bits off the pan they’d go flying around the spacecraft and I don’t suppose the computers can deal with that… I don’t suppose they can deal with that at all. So, I think perhaps in that case, I’m wrong, yes I’m wrong and it was, in that case, deliberate… a deliberate invention and in that respect of course, quite unlike the blue water in the lavatory…
I remember when they first came out, you know, non-stick frying pans and my mum she just… she wouldn’t have one, she wouldn’t have one in the house. She said, ‘Son, nothing works as well at not sticking as a good old-fashioned metal frying pan absolutely full of lard and I suppose in that respect she was… she was quite right of course, because nothing ever did stick in the frying pan. Well, well at least not until she set fire to it of course and then the sausages took a little bit of shifting, but, of course… yes… The point I’m trying to make, I think, is that new inventions are not necessarily an improvement on the tried and tested. I mean, does a… does a self-erecting, telescopic umbrella for instance, keep you any drier than an old fashioned one. The sort that you have to raise, manually as it were. I mean, if there’s a broken strut in the umbrella, for instance, and it sort of dangles down and drips the water down your neck then a fully-functional umbrella is obviously better. But, that can happen with one that puts itself up of course… a gust of wind, you know, catching on a tree, in somebody’s ear which… which, strangely, is exactly what happened to mine and these things can have an effect, but the modern-ness, the cutting-edge, of the invention doesn’t really seem to affect this… I mean, in my case… certainly… the problem may actually have been exacerbated by the umbrella actually erecting itself, as it were, because, because… well, it happened in a lift and, well, the problem could have got seriously out of hand… which, of course, it actually did…
Not that I’m in any way against progress of course. Some modern inventions are absolutely fine. You’ve only got to take into consideration that great boon to twenty first century living, the micro-chip. I mean, it may sound obvious… it may sound obvious to you, I don’t know, but the micro-chip would never have been invented but for the earlier invention of the micro-wave. I mean, without the microwave, you would have nothing to cook your micro-chips in. And of course, we now have the micro-pie to go with them. One thing must lead onto another. Nobody, for instance, is going to say, ‘Look! Look everybody, I’ve invented the micro-chip!’ and leave themselves open for somebody saying, ‘Well that’s very nice, but what exactly are you going to cook them in?’
Bernard had a lovely beard He kept it nice and clean He’d bathe it with conditioner It brought up quite a sheen He’d trim it, stroke it, wax it, poke it Comb and brush and preen Until the day he got it caught In a slice and dice machine Last one on the shift that […]
Beard — A Badly Chewed Pencil
This is the fourth poem published by my great friend Chris (Crispinunderfelt) on his new blog – A badly chewed pencil. Just thought that I would like to point you in his direction. If you like a funny poem, you’ll love him…
This is not a unique situation for me. I have no idea what I am going to write about, but, whatever it is, I feel that I ought to get started, so, well, you know… I normally scrawl notes on various scraps of paper during the course of the day, but today I haven’t had the opportunity, so I am sitting at my laptop with no crumpled prompts and no idea of where I’m about to go. As I say, not a unique situation, but all I’ve got at the moment.
To be honest, I have been wondering for some time whether my posts in general are a little too long. Through my many years of peddling this kind of tosh to various publications I was generally required to work to 800-1000 words, and I just seem to settle there somehow. It is not a conscious thing, it is just where everything kind of… ends. Anyway, I thought that it might be a good idea to write something a little shorter, get to the point a little sooner… If only I had one. Anyway, there’s shorter and there’s shorter. I’m currently a little way short of 200 words (a little tip for you here, if you need to increase your word count, never express a number in figures, always write it out in letters and never hyphenate) and that’s really a little too short isn’t it?
Besides, I’m not entirely sure that I have the focus to follow a point to its conclusion without a little… You know… I tend to drift away from the point a little, especially when I haven’t started off with one, and, well, you know what it’s like: one thing leads to another and before you know where you are you find yourself wondering what measurement shoe sizes are based on. (Apparently barleycorns. There are twenty six barleycorns in a standard size eight shoe – although I’m still not sure how that actually makes it a standard size eight.) And then I start to remember how I once stumbled upon a website full of photographs of the feet of the rich and famous and all I could think about was who took them? Surely it must be quite difficult to covertly take a photo of an unsheathed celebrity foot. Perhaps the ‘rich and famous’ were implicit in the deceit. Perhaps the photo’s were posed. I have now been forced to take off my sock and spend some time staring at my own gnarled hoof. It is not rich and it is not famous, but it is a good foot. It is an honest foot. It does not harbour ideas above its station (it does not dream, for instance, of one day becoming a knee). It is the kind of foot on which one can rely – unless you are trying to run up stone steps, when it is not. But anyway…
Mostly I like my posts to have some kind of ending, a denouement if you will, and I don’t always find it possible to get around to one if the words available to me are too strictly limited. (I do not mean in an Ernest Hemingway kind of way – that is the thing with words – I mean in purely numeric terms. I’m not thinking of an over-restricted vocabulary, I’m thinking more of a – perhaps I should look in the thesaurus – punitively restricted word count.) I fully agree with George Orwell about the need for simple language, in exactly the same way as I agree with doctors about not consuming alcohol. If I took out all of the surplus words from my posts I… well, I couldn’t, could I? If you choose to look at it in that way, there is no necessity for me to use any words at all. They are all surplus to requirements – especially if what you are actually looking to find is how to construct an IKEA wardrobe. There are no adequate words of consolation if you are in that position.
I attempt to edit what I write, but I always read my posts out aloud before I publish them and, if I’m honest, I do like a verbal flow. I like words, so if I cross a hundred out, I tend to replace them with two hundred more. I never use a word that I do not understand – although I cannot guarantee that my own understanding will coincide with that of the OED. I know what I mean. Anyway, what I am trying to say, I have just decided, is that a shorter blog will probably just not work for me: I do not want to write plain, but ugly sentences, I do not want to get to the point before it is at all polite to do so, and most importantly of all, I do not wish to end my posts in the middle of nowh…
Carol had been working at the Wilton Tribune for seven years, but never allowed to report on anything more glamorous than the Ryland cat show, the local ‘am-dram’ production of ‘All Quiet On The Western Front’ and The School Friend’s Fancy Dress Disco, Barbecue and Charity Beetle Drive. She was officially titled ‘Community Correspondent’, but known amongst her colleagues as ‘Our Man at the W.I.’.
Today she was scheduled to be reporting on the long term effects of a burst water main outside the Wilton sub-post office. The leak had been cleared up over a week ago and as far as she was aware, the only long term effects had been felt by a cardboard box-full of Reader’s Digest ‘You may already have won…’ cards. Still, it was an assignment and it didn’t pay to argue with the editor. It would get her name in the paper and if all else failed she could always make something up. Perhaps if she tried really hard, she would be able to find a water damaged water bill…
Not to be. The Tribune’s senior leader writer had been taken ill with something that the whole staff sincerely hoped would be fatal and a replacement had to be found to cover the annual Society Bash. Carol was to hand when the Editor went ballistic and was duly despatched, party frocked and coiffured, to the local conference centre.
It was a nightmare. Wall-to-wall swank… and swankers. A room full of the kind of people that only ever get to fill a room of this kind. Carol stood, spiral bound notebook and pencil in hand, and watched as the dinner suits and sequined frocks wafted by: all designer-label mating-plumage, silicon-breasted, botoxed and lipo’d, carved and padded, a room full of semi-clothed and penguin-suited egos and shoulder chips. A human menagerie, doused in expensive perfume and naked ambition, smelling of pride and envy, jealousy and impotent rage.
She had tried to get a ‘star’ interview. She had tried to get any interview. She had tried to get some inside information from the caterers, from the waiters, from the bar staff, from the cat….. It was impossible; no-one willing to talk to a reporter wearing a borrowed frock and less-than-expensive perfume. No-one willing to talk to a woman who was asking questions that didn’t appear on the crib-sheet. No-one willing to talk to a woman who was ever-so-slightly tipsy…
She yearned for her long-since burst water main and its all-too-difficult-to-find water damage. She began to crave her W.I. meetings, lukewarm tea and soggy biscuits, interminable lectures, dried flower arrangements and crocheted blankets. She began to ache for the company of people in pleated dresses, high-necked woollies and sensible shoes. She began to long for gin and tonic. A very large gin and tonic, with very little tonic…
Then salvation arrived. It was in a face she knew. It was wearing an expensive dinner jacket of immaculate fit. It was looking cool and comfortable in a silken shirt and bow tie. It was tall, slightly ungainly, but none-the-less relaxed and at home in these opulent surroundings. Damien West, the most eligible boy in the whole class of ’99 strode easily through the gathered throng towards her.
“Carol… It is you, isn’t it?”
“I think so,” she said, aware of the banality of her answer and desperately eager for the floor to swallow her up. He laughed. He laughed! Joy of joys, he laughed. She wanted to laugh too, but embarrassment led her to try and hide it and, in doing so, she merely succeeded in contorting her face into some kind of grotesque halloween mask. She feared she might be dribbling. “Save me, God. Please save me…” And then she remembered that he had crossed the room to come to her. Of all the people in the room, he had come to her. And he’d remembered her name.
“So, what are you doing at this boring old lot?” he asked. He sounded friendly, he sounded interested and Carol felt closer to heaven than she thought she had ever been.
She took a deep breath, determined to speak without stumbling over her words. She looked up into the crystal blue eyes and knew that it wouldn’t be possible. “I just, that is I… I work for a newspaper. I have to cover this… I have to get, that is, I have to try to get some interviews. I haven’t done very well up to now. Nobody wants to talk to a nobody. I might have had a glass or two of wine…”
“You could interview me,” he said before leaning in and whispering conspiratorially into her ear “I don’t blame you, I don’t think anyone can make it through one of these evenings sober.”
Carol studied his face. He meant it, he really meant it. She smiled in gratitude, hoping that it didn’t look too much like a gloat. And then she noticed for the first time the elegant woman at his side. Her blonde hair was expensively styled, her clothes had obviously been designed especially for her, her perfume was intoxicating. She was every inch the professional woman, every man’s dream and every fibre with Damien. She leaned towards him and whispered into his ear before slipping away into the crowd. He smiled and nodded before turning back to Carol. “Do you know, at school, I used to loiter around the corridors, waiting for you to come along, hoping I would be able to speak to you, but you seldom came my way. When you did, I could never think of anything to say.”
“I was hanging around some other corridor, waiting for you. I could never speak to you either.”
“It’s strange,” he said. “When you look back, things could have been so different.”
“Would you have wanted them to be?”
“Not everything, for sure, but you always wonder, don’t you. ‘What if’s’.” His colleague/agent/companion/partner/wife (bitch, bitch, bitch!) appeared carrying champagne. She handed a glass to Carol and one to Damien before taking up station once more at his side.
Carol coughed her thanks and stared hopelessly from her notebook to the floor, to Damien and his tall and perfectly proportioned odalisque and then back to Damien, who was looking at her expectantly. She took her cue.
“You’re a famous person these days. A well-known and respected author. Is there any facet of your fame that you find difficult to handle?” An obvious, but sensible attempt to get the interview back onto some sort of professional footing.
“Evenings like this,” he said. “Usually…..”
“I used to stand in the trees, you know, watching you playing football.”
“I know.”
“You know?”
“Well, I know that you used to stand in the trees. I thought you were watching somebody else.”
She laughed, more loudly than she should have. “Half the Sixth Form was in those trees,” she looked down at her feet.
“I didn’t realise teenage girls had a ‘thing’ about uncoordinated boys with gangly limbs and knobbly knees.” Embarrassment flashed across Damien’s face. He turned to his companion who smiled benignly, like a mother. Suitably assured he turned back to face Carol and she realised she had shocked him. Oh God, she didn’t want to blow it now. She had to get a decent interview. “I’m sorry.” She was stammering again.
“Don’t be,” he said. “It’s erhm… flattering, I guess.”
Carol coughed, nervous and excited. “Did you… Have you based any of your characters on people that you have known?” She was trying again, to get the interview back on track, but at the same time, she couldn’t help but fish.
“No.” His answer was definite and a profound disappointment. “But you’ll be in my next book, I promise.”
“The villain?”
“The love interest.”
He smiled. She swallowed and felt her whole body flush red. In her mind, they were now alone, the crowds around them ethereal, insubstantial. For reasons she did not understand she was overcome by anger and hunger and injustice and need, mostly need.
“You must have known how I felt about you then, but I suppose I was just one of many. Besides…” she was becoming indiscreet and she knew it. The couple of glasses of wine were actually many and they had been washed down with an equal number of gins. They had fortified her resolve, galvanised and empowered her ragged self-belief and honed her indignation into a dagger. Carol Massingham felt herself rising. She prickled with resentment and exhilaration. “…You had someone special, don’t you remember? The skinny redhead from the fourth form. She had the most awful buck teeth. She wouldn’t leave you alone, stuck to you like glue she did. You must remember. I wonder what ever happened to her?”
“I got myself a dentist,” said the goddess at Damien’s side. “Put some weight on; dyed my hair…”
I have a file of poems that I wrote specifically for reading out aloud, but other than for an audience of one (and he being in the mirror) I have never done so. One or two of them have appeared on these pages before. I quite like the ebb and flow of this one. Try reading it out for yourself, but make sure there’s no-one listening when you do…
…And the incident in the envoi was a true one!
NB – I apologise for the formatting. This lovely block editor does something (I don’t know what) to pasted-in poems that puts them in a different (as far as I can see unalterable) font and puts each individual line in a separate block. Infuriating!
Getting On 