You know what it’s like, you fight against it with all you’re worth, but every now and then you just have to say what is on your mind. Now, don’t panic! I’m not going to assail you with my opinions. Let’s face facts here; there is nothing in the world more tedious than somebody else’s point of view, and I certainly don’t intend to inflict mine upon you. After all, what have you ever done to me? However, I’m pretty certain that you will all recognise the feeling: someone is fervently extolling an opinion that you passionately oppose. You know that there is no point in calling them out. You know that they won’t listen anyway. But there is a prickling at the back of your neck and a little voice inside your head is whispering “Tell ‘em. Go on, tell ‘em”. Best advice (in as much as anyone would want to take advice from me) is don’t. You know how it goes; you are certain of what you want to say, you understand the reasoned argument you want to make, you have even rehearsed a couple of witticisms in your head that you are prepared to drop in if the moment allows, but somehow it doesn’t come out as you intended and you just end up loudly refuting everything that the other person has to say. It will not end well. It never does. Your arguments may well be incisive and definitive, but they will count for nothing when your rival says, “What’s it got to do with you anyway, big nose?” Whatever you were told at school, nobody is ever swayed by reasoned argument. You stand a much better chance of swaying them with a bag of sweets. And, be honest, if you do definitively prove somebody wrong in front of all of their friends, are they likely to thank you for it? Are they likely to bless you for revealing to them the error of their ways? They may react in a way that you had not anticipated: they might thumb their nose at you; they might blow a raspberry; if they throw a punch, you are probably moving in the wrong circles anyway. Far worse, they will look at you tearfully and, with a slight shake of the head, move sadly away to sulk silently behind a half-opened door. (Don’t panic. The situation is not intractable, but the solution will almost certainly involve cake.)
The human body is awash with hormones that, for some reason and under certain circumstances, tell you that the time to have your say is now. Fortunately the human brain is strong and almost always has the power to overrule this primaeval urge to confront. In a life in which I have come to realise that it is generally essential to let your heart rule your head, I would say that this is the time, when you find yourself hot and agitated, when you know that you are drifting helplessly into a row, to let your head rule your heart (and apply a cool, damp cloth to the back of your neck) take a deep breath, smile serenely and walk away happy in the knowledge that the cake is still all yours…
Sometimes I hear my voice And it’s been here, silent all these years…
‘Silent All These Years’ – Tori Amos
I find myself wondering whatever happened to pen-pals? I presume that they may all have been killed by this interconnected world of ours, crushed under the wheels of Mark Zuckerberg’s little leviathan. Who needs a pen-pal when you have over a million virtual friends in bedrooms the world over?
I, like almost everyone of my age, had a pen-pal. For a short while anyway. They were arranged by the school I think. Usually French, German, or if you were for some reason particularly unpopular with the teachers, Belgian. The idea was that you wrote to one another in your native tongue so that you each had to translate what you had been sent before you replied. Eventually, if all went well, you would meet up and exchange tales of teenage derring-do in a sort of non-verbal Esperanto of signs and gestures (and we all know how good the French are at those). If he was French (we were all very carefully paired with members of our own sex I recall) he would get off with your girlfriend and when, in the fullness of time, you went to his, you would discover that his père was a Marseille docker who, in order to make you feel as uncomfortable as possible, insisted that you fed exclusively on sewage-sifting bi-valves, terrestrial gastropods and the rear limbs of amphibia for the week.
Not that I, personally, ever got that far… Generally I found it in me to scrape together a twenty word reply to my new pen-pal’s multi-page airmail missive, which I then didn’t post as the postage was almost exactly a week’s supply of Bazouka Joe bubble gum. Now, I’m not proud of my indifference, but in truth, I fear that my Euro-counterpart would have gained little from a ‘conversation’ with me that would not have served merely to deepen his cross-channel sense of distrust and puzzlement.
For the more romantic among us, the ideal method of gaining a new pen-pal relied upon the launching of a sealed bottle onto the bosom of the dun-brown waves of the English Channel. Unfortunately the chances, always slim, of it being picked up on some exotic foreign shore by someone with an innocent interest in your favourite edition of Smash Hits and a desire to swap postage stamps appears to have diminished somewhat over the years. Far more likely you will find yourself corresponding with somebody that wants to plunder your bank account rather than find out what you had for tea on Friday. In any case, I think that the whole business of lobbing a glass vessel (or even worse, a plastic one) out to sea these days would be considered, by and large, to be environmentally unacceptable. Let’s be honest, if you walked out today to find a hundred billion bottles washed up on the shore, you’d probably be more concerned about contacting David Attenborough’s agent than replying to Sting.
Which brings us back round to the internet: the true home of the Voyeur and the Conman, the Predator and the Weirdo, and probably not the best of places to search for someone to help you with your French Oral. Besides, the cosy one-to-one no longer seems to exist – nothing, it would appear, is worth sharing, if not with a group. The ballpoint tête-à-tête of a pen-pal correspondence has been replaced by the megaphone yell of a political rally and, in our contemporary paperless society, the art of writing a letter on gossamer stationery to someone you have never met, who speaks a different language and wants only to know if your girlfriend is fit, has disappeared as swiftly as the thousand words you didn’t save before going to bed…
My day began, as all my days begin, in the shower and it was not until after I had dressed that it became in any way different. You see, it was then, as I loaded my various pockets with pens, keys and loose change, that I realised that I had not rinsed the shampoo from my hair. A brief look in the mirror told me that much. My hair was sleek and shiny, like it had been steeped in a litre of cooking oil, with white lather gathering ahead of the comb like morons at the front of a bigot’s funeral. Anyway, at that point, I had three options as I saw it. Option one was the obvious one: ignore it – pretend that I had not noticed and simply get on with my day. The obvious choice, but rapidly dismissed. I cannot ignore stuff: stuff nags away at me until it is resolved. It becomes an obsession. The knowledge that a situation exists, deflects me from any other possible train of thought. Besides, nobody wants to spend the day with a sticky head. I could have rinsed my hair under the tap (option two) except that past experience has taught me that such an action would be fraught with possibilities. Would I belt my head on the tap again? Would I do something to my back that would require an elite squad of para-chiropractors to correct? Would I somehow misdirect the entire jet of lukewarm water onto my trouser crotch forcing me into an unplanned change of underwear and trousers or a fevered few minutes with a hairdryer, attempting to dry my groin without branding a metal zip pattern onto my wherewithal? Again… Option three became the only practical solution: undress, leap back into the shower, re-dress – a course of action I undertook with some degree of reluctance, in the certain knowledge that doing so would put me ten minutes behind schedule; a situation that I knew would persist all day.
Now, I have to stress at this point that I was never physically late for anything. I am always early, sometimes obscenely so, so although I was less early today, I was at no stage actually late. For me, however, those ten minutes are locked for the day. Mentally I am running ten minutes behind and I cannot make them up. Gaining ten minutes here or there does not compensate: I may have gained that time anyway, even if I had not started off late, in which case I remain ten minutes in arrears of what I would otherwise have been. Achieving a PB in a marathon when you started ten minutes after everybody else, does not cancel out the initial deficit to the other runners; particularly if you ran the race dressed as a fluorescent cockle or somesuch.
So, what it means, this failure to rinse the Head and Shoulders from my bonce whilst in the perfect position to do so (eg the first time I was in the shower), is a day of stress. The unrelenting pressure of continually being late – even if that is, in truth, actually just a little less early than normal. I am a martyr to my blood pressure. I have one of those little electronic gadgets so that I can monitor it at all times, although I choose not to because that just stresses me out and I am plagued by stress. When things are going badly, I am stressed. When things are going well, I am stressed in case they suddenly start to go badly. I have a pressure cooker between my ears that can whip up a full scale stew from the tiniest of worries in seconds.
I always believed that I would worry less as I got older: that, outside of the one big, major inevitability, I would have less to worry about. Wrong! I worry more. I worry more often and I worry with greater vigour. I worry about things that I should never worry about: e.g. running ten minutes behind my normal thirty minutes ahead of schedule. Of course, if you run a half hour ahead of schedule for long enough, then that itself becomes the schedule and you are no longer ahead of it. So what happens to those thirty minutes? Where do they go? I read somewhere that time itself is slowed down by a black hole. Does that mean that if I ran past one of those I might be able to get my lost time back? Perhaps I would end up turning up for things before they were even arranged. Perhaps I would be even later than when I started off the day with a soapy head – I’m not sure. It’s like trying to work out what happens to time when the clocks go back. I’ve found that the only way I can cope with the anxiety of the event is to alter all of my clocks the night before and then ignore them for a week. Of course, that means that I have to get everywhere an additional sixty minutes early, just in case I’ve got it all the wrong way round and, as I am ignoring my own timepieces, I have to rely on the radio news – and nobody should have to start the day that way.
Anyhow… having now been caught in this manner, I will respond by setting my alarm ten minutes earlier, in case it should happen again and that way I will always be ahead of the game. Except, of course, I will not. Life always fills the allotted time and if I lose ten minutes in the future to some other detergent-related incident, I will still be ten minutes behind all day and, if I’m ten minutes ahead when that occurs, well, that will be another ten minutes that I’ve lost and, sooner or later, I’m going to have lost more than I’ve got left and the stress of keeping ahead of myself will, no doubt, get me in the end. Until then, on a good day I will remember to rinse my hair in the shower and on a bad day I will scurry around like the Reverend Dodgson’s white rabbit, hoping above hope that I can manage to avoid the hole in the ground…
One pill makes you larger, and one pill makes you small And the ones that mother gives you, don’t do anything at all Go ask Alice, when she’s ten feet tall – ‘White Rabbit’ Jefferson Airplane (Grace Slick)
This is not about me. This is not about my wife. This is not about anybody I know. I feel that this is a point I must make before I go any further. The whole is not about anybody in particular, but the parts are about everybody. I have no idea why we all have the capacity to get on other people’s nerves quite so much – but we do. I am particularly good at it, I know. I don’t mean to do it, but my hit rate is unfeasibly high. My problem is that my tongue moves way before my brain has had time to slip into gear. I don’t (often) say bad things, just the wrong things. It’s a gift.
Anyway, this rhyme does not have a title because I know, if it did, it would upset someone and, quite honestly, it’s just meant to be amusing…
I know I shouldn’t breathe so loud, I know that I’m a fool.
I know that I am always wrong, that’s why you lose your cool.
I know that I’m a waste of space and always in the way.
I know you’re right to take offence at everything I say.
I realise life’s hard for you and that I just don’t see
Whenever things go wrong for you, it’s all because of me.
I apologise – I’m in the way. I know I stand too near.
I know that when you want me, I am never ever here.
I understand it’s true and that it needs repeated stating,
But every now and then I get so very irritating.
I know you need the chocolate – I can see what it has triggered.
It’s just a spot, I swear it’s not your whole face that’s disfigured.
I put the vase too near the edge, that’s why you knocked it off.
I know it’s not your fault and I would never, ever scoff.
So just lay down, relax a while; we really shouldn’t carp
And darling, please put down that knife – it’s very very sharp…
I’ve just realised that this is my 100th post. As I set out with the intention of posting just once a week, this landmark has arrived far more quickly than I anticipated. I will have been blogging for a year in November and, I fear that I might have to scale back a little at that time, both for the sake of my sanity and the good of your patience (which I may be beginning to stretch). I think that two posts a week will probably prove more manageable for me (Wednesday and Saturday perhaps) and I will be less inclined to repeat myself. If I write more, I will publish it anyway. The alternative is to publish shorter pieces, but, as I am such an old windbag, that will probably not work for me. Perhaps I can drop in these occasional poems (unexpectedly well-received) as additional pieces – that might work. Anyway, what I actually wanted to say was thank you for sticking with me so far, and I hope you will bear with me if, in the future, I do cut down a little.
You see, I have worked with the same person for thirty years now. We still speak to one another (which is amazing enough) but we don’t, perhaps, listen as much as we used to, and our conversations do tend to meander along the same old path every day…
“What was the name of that bloke who always used to come in on a Saturday?”
“What bloke?”
“Tall bloke, always came in on a Saturday.”
“I don’t know who you mean. What did he look like?”
“He used to come in with that other bloke. Bald. Looked like Yul Brynner.”
“Yul Brynner?”
“Mm… Actually, I might have got it wrong. He’s bald. Might be Telly Savalas.”
“Kojak?”
“Yes.”
“No, I still don’t know who you mean… Wasn’t he in ‘The King and I’?”
“Who?”
“Telly Savalas.”
“No, that was Yul Brynner.”
“Oh, what was Telly Savalas in then?”
“Kojak. You said.”
“No, I mean films.”
“Oh… He was in ‘The Dirty Dozen’.”
“Was that with Clint Eastwood?”
“No, that was ‘Kelly’s Heroes’.”
“Who was in ‘The Dirty Dozen’ then?”
“Ernest Borgnine.”
“Who?”
“‘Bad Day at Black Rock’.”
“Oh yes, I know him. Still don’t know ‘The Dirty Dozen’ though.”
“Right… so, it’s about a group of convicts who are trained up to go on a commando raid in the Second World War.”
“Are you sure that’s not ‘Kelly’s Heroes’?”
“Yes.”
“Right… so, is it Yul Brynner or Telly Savalas?”
“‘The Dirty Dozen’?”
“Yes.”
“Telly Savalas.”
“And he looked like the bloke that used to come in here on a Saturday?”
“No, he looked like the bloke that sometimes used to come in with the bloke who used to come in here on a Saturday.”
“I can’t picture who you mean.”
“Well, he looked like that bloke out of ‘On The Buses’.”
“Telly Savalas?”
“No, the bloke who used to come in here on a Saturday.”
“Reg Varney… What did he come in for?”
“Just to chat, mostly. I can’t remember his name.”
“He was the first man ever to use a cash machine in this country, you know.”
“Who was?”
“Reg Varney.”
“How do you know that?”
“It was some kind of anniversary. It was on the news a while back.”
“… He had a dog!”
“Who did?”
“The man who used to come in with the man who used to come in on a Saturday. Yappy bloody thing. Jack Russell or something”
“I really don’t know who you mean.”
“You must.”
“I don’t.”
“You do.”
“I don’t.”
“You do.”
“O.K., I do.”
“Good. Who is it then?”
“I don’t know…”
“… What you got for lunch?”
“Cheese.”
“Was Ernest Borgnine in ‘The Poseidon Adventure’?”
“I think so.”
“Great film.”
“Wasn’t him out of ‘Planet of the Apes’ in it?”
“Charlton Heston?”
“No… He was in ‘Fright Night’ too. He had some sort of Roman name in ‘Planet of the Apes’ I think.”
“Nero?”
“No, not bloody Nero.”
“Well I don’t know, do I? Nero’s the only Roman name I know.”
“What about Julius?”
“Was it Julius?”
“No! I was just giving you an example of a Roman name.”
“Oh… Why?”
“Because I’m sure that the ape played by the bloke out of ‘The Poseidon Adventure’ had a Roman name.”
“… I didn’t know there was an ape in ‘The Poseidon Adventure’.
“No, he wasn’t an ape in ‘The Poseidon Adventure’, he was… Cornelius! He was Cornelius!”
“Oh, you mean Roddy McDowall.”
“Brilliant! That’s it! Roddy McDowall. Was he in ‘The Poseidon Adventure’?”
“No idea… Ernest Borgnine was.”
“Oh for f…”
“… Was his name George?”
“Who?”
“The bloke that used to come in on a Saturday. Was his name George?”
“I really don’t know. The only George I know is the ex-R.A.F man who goes next door for a coffee.”
“Ah, I might be getting him mixed up then. Does he have a mate that looks like Yul Brynner?”
“I’ve never seen him with one.”
“Dog?”
“Nope.”
“Does he look like Reg Varney?”
“… Jarvis!”
“What is?”
“The bloke that used to come in here on a Saturday.”
“Of course. That’s it!… So what was his mate called…?”
I have just shredded today’s blog. It was preachy, and I didn’t like it. I read it through aloud, as is my habit, and I realised that it sounded like a sermon. I don’t know quite what I was thinking as I wrote it, but quite frankly, I need to keep it to myself.
I know that I began by fulminating about occasional ‘readers’ who are bent upon advising me how I can massively increase my readership, simply by changing everything I say and the way in which I say it, and it developed into a protracted whining rant about the terpsichorean chorus of nay-saying harpies that attempt to constrict us all, when it occurred to me that the communities of hate that currently appear to flourish online are quite unlike any other form of mass-zealotry I can recall in my lifetime (not that I would be able to actually recall anything that was not in my lifetime – but you know what I mean)… Anyway, it has gone now. It is hamster bedding – or would be, if we had one – it would take the world’s most determined (and least discerning) plagiarist to make anything of it now, and I am just beginning to coax my temper back down from the shelf.
All of which leaves me here, staring at a blank template, scratching my head, trying to decide how I should fill it…
I am, by nature, a squirrel – well, except for the sharp teeth, the bushy tail and the tendency to nest in people’s lofts – when I have a surplus (in my case incoherent twaddle rather than acorns) I bury it away. Unfortunately, like my sciuridael friend, when famine hits, I am seldom able to locate my subterranean morsels. Like Citizen Nutkin, the bottom has generally rotted out of anything I do find and I am left to ponder why I thought it was worth a decent burial in the first place. Anyway, it is at times like this, that I have a gentle rootle around in this larder. Occasionally, I find something that I have forgotten about completely and reading it, as if for the first time, it might make me laugh. I am capable of the killer one-liner from time to time (not today – obviously). Mostly, however, I am capable of the kind of stuff that cries out to be buried and forgotten – it seldom improves with age – and more often than not, this is what I find in extremis.
In the past, I would write something and then spend hours correcting the grammar and syntax before messing it all up by adding jokes. These days, I don’t bother so much about the grammar – or the jokes. I try very hard to maintain some variety in what I publish here. I fight against the tendency to develop an ‘identifiable style’ – I am pretty certain that I have cultivated a fundamental lack of it – to me, there is no fun to be had in treading the same path every day. Inevitably, words pop into my head in that micro-second before I find sleep. I still keep a book and a pen by me bed – although these days the book is usually a Jeremy Clarkson, which I keep for the sole purpose of underlining all the offensive passages – you’d be surprised how time can fly. In my head I play with a number of differing strands with which I weave this blog. ‘Getting On’ is my macramé plant hanger; a cranial crocheted blanket; a sort of Bayeux Embroidery (like a tapestry, but smaller and very much less consequential). Sometimes it’s about how I think fictional characters might face up to old age; sometimes it’s about how a real character should face up to old age and sometimes, it is all just a little fiction. Mostly, however, it is about me, not intentionally so, but a huge amount of navel-gazing does seem to occupy these pages. It is this umbilical lint that tends to get buried. Not always because it isn’t suitable for use, but often because, having just bubbled out of my psyche, it is not always ‘reliable’.
You see, psychologically, I only have myself for reference and I am about as unreliable a ‘control’ as you could ever wish to meet. I have the social skills of a gastropod and the conversational nous of a newt. My capacity for ‘getting it wrong’ is unrivalled. In the realms of the socially inept, I have few peers outside of Peter Griffin.
This is what I have to contemplate – that the voices inside my head are what keep me astride the tightrope, and that these voices will remain in a permanent state of conflict. The voice telling me I can and the voice telling me I can’t; the voice telling me I should and the voice telling me I shouldn’t; the voice telling me that I am in and the voice telling me I am out and, very occasionally, the voice telling me to shake it all about; the voice telling me I am chalk and the voice telling me I am cheese. Two voices attached to the Roadrunner and Wile E Coyote of rational reasoning: the entire rationale of my eventual decision-making process being dependent upon the effectiveness of the products supplied by The ACME Supplies Company.
Like everybody else (this is my belief and you will not persuade me otherwise) I have an internal dialogue that helps to guide me through my daily life, and when one of these competing voices becomes dominant – maybe as a result of caffeine, alcohol, general disaffection, having spent a shitty day decorating the kitchen or Armageddon on the news – what I write tends to lose balance. The internal conversations that flit between the synapses of my frontal lobes are seldom the stuff of entertainment. For much of the time in fact they are actually monologues – even my subconscious is anti-social most of the time. The interminable whine of self-doubt, although ever-present, asserts itself only when I give myself the time to think – so I tend not to do that too often. The voices that jostle for my attention are only heard when I am alone. The need to drown out the nagging little mental manifesto is my reason to avoid silence. It is the reason why I am always so happy with the grandkids. It’s the chatter of life that keeps the pointless, badgering, mithering nonsense inside my head at some kind of manageable distance.
Silence is the void into which all the turmoil of the universe swirls before gurgling down the plughole of inconsequentiality. Like a new record by Simply Red.
Silence is seldom shared, and when it is, it mostly ends up in the shredder.
Turn your back – And you might understand – Become your destiny – And you’ll be a lucky man ‘Killing With Kindness’ (Orzabal, Smith, Pettus) Tears for Fears
Mentally, I am not best disposed towards the rush. Physically, I am as capable as the next man – unless the next man is Usain Bolt – or in fact any one of the many, many millions of people who are actually more capable of rushing than me, in which case I am patently not as capable as the next man. OK, I withdraw that. I’ll start that sentence again… Physically, I am quite capable of the last minute dash, but it does not suit me temperamentally. My morning routine has to be quiet, sedate even. I am a sloth on a mission. I factor in every manner of unforeseen circumstance (which I now realise renders them foreseen, but you get my drift) and rise about an hour and a half before I actually have to. My daily shower, dress, coffee, breakfast etc custom, takes up a fraction of the time I have available to me and, consequently, when all of that is done, I watch quite a lot of morning TV before I leave for work: specifically BBC Breakfast, and it is due to this regular TV consumption that, more and more, I find myself facing the day with a burgeoning sense of dullness in the soul. Not so much pessimism as the grinding realisation of ‘how things are’. The realisation that no matter how long I close my eyes, when I open them it will all still be there. And when our world leaders move over, it will just be for an even bigger schmuk.
Now, I do understand the restrictions imposed by the BBC Charter. I do understand that in order to physically demonstrate its impartiality, the beeb must give equal voice to both sides in any argument and, in order to do this, it is often necessary to interview representatives of both opposing parties simultaneously, whereupon I can do nothing but admire the interviewer for having the tenacity to get a word or two in edgeways every now and again. The ramming in of pre-prepared ‘soundbites’ would be accompanied by an audible ‘clunk’ were it not drowned out by the cacophony of two parties talking over one another at an ever-increasing rate of decibels, yelling ‘If you’d just let me finish…’ at some hapless reporter who is attempting to respond to a producer’s call to ‘wrap in thirty’ without punching somebody on the nose.
One feature of these confrontations is often an accusation by one party (and quite often both) of intransigence by the other; an unwillingness to negotiate. This is usually accompanied by the bald statement that a return to the table for full and frank discussions – without precondition is, in fact, conditional upon ‘the other side’ conceding to all demands before the negotiations begin, e.g. ‘We’re calling you out for not negotiating whilst we are demonstrably willing to negotiate – providing you give in first.’ What has happened to the English language? At what point did Negotiate come to mean ‘Earnest discussion on a subject of disagreement undertaken only after the point of the discussion has been conceded’? It’s nonsense, and it worries me.
In all aspects of this life, compromise is essential. Compromise works, but it is a two-way street. It only works when both sides compromise a little – otherwise for one side it is ‘giving in’ and for the other ‘total victory’; both are unhealthy options that can lead only to bitterness and disappointment – like grapefruit sorbet. Total victory smacks a little too much of bullying, and no-one is able to pick the positives out of total defeat. You are right to believe in the veracity of your own opinions, but wrong if you believe that you will persuade anyone else to support them by shouting loudly. Opinions are wasted if decisions have already been made. An imposition of definite outcome does little to engender positive suggestion and ‘I see your intransigence and raise it by my own obduracy’ will seriously help no-one. Disagreements are not settled in that way – even if you allow yourself an extra hour and a half in the morning in order to do it.
A compromise is an agreement where both parties get what neither of them wanted – Anon
I was going through some old files on my computer when I found this. It is just titled ‘New Book – Title Unknown’. I thought you might like it…
i.
The first time I saw him he was peering under the bonnet of a car, pulling at wires and whistling “Blowin’ Free”. “Wishbone Ash,” I said. “You know them?” he asked. He neither looked my way, nor ceased his wire pulling. I took a couple of steps backwards to stand alongside him. “Every note,” I said. He lifted his head from his work and peered at me. He had a smudge of oil across the bridge of his nose that I wanted to wipe away. He didn’t speak. I fidgeted, unnerved by the silence. I looked down at the engine. “You got a problem?” I asked. “Just looking for something,” he said. “Anything I might know?” “I think there’s a sensor.” “What kind of sensor?” He straightened his back and looked at me properly for the first time, swatting his hand across his face, aiming for something that as far as I could see, wasn’t there. And then he leaned back under the bonnet and recommenced his wire pulling, but I noticed that he’d shifted over a little, just enough to allow me to stoop down at his side. I peered inside. “The lights,” he said finally. “The lights?” “The lights. They know when I’m coming. They turn red… always.” I stared at the engine, uncertain whether he was serious. He could have been psychotic, or neurotic, one of them, I’m never sure. He turned towards me, his face now only inches from my own. I realised he wore spectacles and it struck me as strange that I hadn’t noticed them before. Underneath his beard his face was tanned, not overly, but he had a weatherworn skin that actively defied any attempt to age him. There was something, I don’t quite know what, but there was something in his eyes. Was he mocking me? I felt uneasy and I realised that he hadn’t blinked. I don’t know why I noticed that. Why should I notice that? He turned back to the engine and pulled enthusiastically at a wire that might just have been very important. “I don’t know too much about cars,” I said, “but I don’t think you want to go pulling too many of those.” He grinned, suddenly and fleetingly and I wondered whether I had imagined it. “Don’t worry,” he said, “I know I’ll never find it, but it’s important that they think I’m looking.” He shook his head in a theatrical way and eased himself upright. I followed and he closed the bonnet. “I don’t drive as much as I used to. Don’t seem to have much of a place to go these days.” We lapsed into silence again. “Well,” he said, wiping his hands on his trousers. “Yes,” I said. “Well…” He held out his hand and I shook it. “Better be going, I suppose,” he said. “You have oil on your nose.” I pointed and he wiped across his face with his sleeve. The oil spread further, the stain became paler. “OK?” he said. “OK.” I continued on my way and he wandered off across the road ahead, when a thought struck me. “Your car,” I shouted after him. “My car?” “Your car, you haven’t locked it.” I could see the amusement bubbling across his face as he slowly turned away. “Don’tworry,” he said. “It’s not my car.”
There is, apparently, an epidemic of loneliness amongst the middle-aged and elderly. Opportunities to meet other single people in an ‘organic’ manner are vastly reduced as we get older and for some people, many of whom may have been in a stable relationship for many years, the whole business of meeting new people can be a bridge too far. It is with some surprise, therefore, that I learn that Speed Dating, the most synthetic and pressurised mode of social intercourse that humankind has yet devised, has, for an increasing proportion of ageing singletons, become the preferred manner of meeting people and, perhaps, finding a partner. I tried to imagine how this might work…
DING! Mary: …Are you alright? Tom: Yes, it’s these chairs. What’s the point of the arm rests? It’s a bugger of a job to get into them without popping the front of your shirt out of your trousers – not ideal when you’re trying to make an impression; especially when you’ve not really had time to change your vest since last Sunday’s gravy incident – also, could put your hip out; twist too far trying to get your knees under these tables… Mary: Right… well… I see. Yes. Well, I’m told that the best thing to do, because we’re obviously time-limited, is to get the personal details out of the way first, so, I’m Mary, I’m a retired teacher. I like walking on the beach in the early morning. I love music and books – clichéd I know, but true – and I’m allergic to cats. You? Tom: I’m… ooh, excuse me. I had beans for lunch. Always do that to me, beans, still, better out than in eh? Mary: Well… I suppose… Tom: Tom. I spend my time in the pub mainly. Don’t have many friends, that’s why I’m here: thought that I might be able to get a bit of… well, you know, woman of the world and all that. Teacher. Don’t just learn about such things, if you catch my drift, eh… Mary: Er… well, I don’t really… Oh, there’s the bell. Tom: Bell? Mary: Yes, the bell. Time to move on I think. Tom: I didn’t hear a bell. Mary: Really. I definitely heard the bell. Tom: Nobody’s moving. Mary: I am…
DING! Mary: Hello. Dick: Hello. Mary: How are you? Dick: I’m ok, thank you. Mary: I’m Mary. Dick: Dick. Mary: And this is? Dick: Ah, this is my mother, bless her. Can’t leave her at home on her own – don’t want her setting fire to the beds again, do I hey mum? Always bring her along to these things, don’t I? Yes, gives her a bit of a day out… doesn’t it mum? Mary: So… you do this regularly then? Dick: Oh yes, every week. We get a nice cup of tea – although it could do with a bit more milk if I’m honest – and a biscuit, and mum gets to meet all of my new lady friends, don’t you mum? Mary: Lady friends? Dick: Oh yes. Like to check people out, don’t you mum? Spends hours when we get home going through people’s Facebook accounts. I think it’s so important that older people have a hobby, don’t you? Do you have a Facebook page? Mary: Oh, there’s the bell. Dick: No, we have another two minutes and fifty-two seconds yet. Must have been somebody’s phone. Mary: I definitely heard ringing. I’m sure it was the bell… Actually, I feel a little hot. I must just go and powder my nose. Don’t wait; I might be a while… and can I have my phone back please. I’m not sure that I’m comfortable with your mother licking it…
DING! Mary: Hi, I’m Mary. Harry: Harry. Mary: Hello Harry. Look, I hope you don’t mind me asking, but do you do this sort of thing often, only I… Harry: No. No. This is my first time. It’s been a couple of years now since my wife died and I… Mary: Oh, thank God! Harry: Sorry? Mary: No, not thank God that your wife has died… obviously. It’s so sad, I… It’s just that you’re the first person I’ve met here who actually appears to be sane. Harry: Oh, I see… I’m sorry, I’m not very good at this… Mary: No, it’s fine. It’s my first time too. Although my wife hasn’t died. Well, husband… probably. That is, I have never had either, so they couldn’t have… died… at all… How old was she? No, you don’t have to answer that. I don’t know why I… Look, just so that you know, if I’d had anyone that might have died, then it would be a husband and I haven’t. I had a partner, but he isn’t dead, unfortunately. He’s in Tunbridge Wells with his wife. I made him choose, you see – so he did. Harry: I’m sorry… Mary: No, don’t be. I’m over him. I’m better off without him. I… oh bugger, now I’ve made my lip bleed again. Harry: I think you bit it. Mary: Yes, yes, I know, thank you very much. It’s just something I do when I… It’s just something I do. So, you say your wife has been dead for two years now… Harry: Yes Mary: How do I know I can believe you? Harry: I’m sorry, I… Mary: How do I know you haven’t got her tied to a chair somewhere? How do I know she’s not waiting back at home for you with a freshly opened bottle of Chardonnay and a packet of those wrinkly little black olives? How do I know that you don’t have half a dozen children waiting for you to read them a bed time story? I know your kind. You’re all the same, you… Harry: Oh, there’s the bell… Mary: Bugger…
Clocks are such maudlin devices: ‘tick’ there goes a second of your life, ‘tock’ and there goes another one. I wish I could live without them really, but I have an almost pathological hatred of being late, so it’s not terribly practical. Still, I do not like clocks, particularly the pendulum ones that beat away, ‘you live/you die’ hour after hour, day after day, and the chimes that subdivide mortality into easily-digested portions: ask not for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for three…(I know, I know.) Clocks, it seems to me, are the anthropomorphic representation of human frailty: Disney does impermanence. Yet, despite the abiding reminder of mortal transience that is inherent in the spinning wheels, they are, in some ways, even more maudlin when they stop. The image of mortality is too close for comfort – especially if you have to climb a ladder to change the battery…
Clock
The clock speaks to me: it speaks of passing years.
It speaks of fading memories that echo in its wheels.
It speaks of future darkness as eternal slumber nears.
It speaks of frail mortality with each second that it steals.
It calls ghosts to me: each pulse of beating hands
That holds within asymmetry the pause that marks the last
And tumbles ceaseless, whispering as falls the hourglass sands:
Today the dark antithesis of promises now past.
A gentle recognition of the endlessness of time:
The inescapability of what must be will be –
The closeness of the curtain in this earthly pantomime –
That rings to sound elevenses, then once again for tea.
Getting On 