The amazing Hunt Emmerson cartoon that announced Our radio series in The Radio Times – long ago, before Time was born.
I try to write pretty much every day: it is my thing, it is what I do, but I cannot deny that I have always found my greatest joy in writing with other(s) – especially when they laughed at my contributions. When they come up with a line that is better than your own, it simply spurs you on to come up with another yourself. The laughter associated with continually topping one another becomes infectious and addictive. I have reminisced on these pages before about the great joy of writing with my (almost) life-long buddy Chris (Crispin Underfelt) and laughing so much as we repeatedly ‘trumped’ one another’s jokes that we then had to take a few days apart to ‘get something down on paper’. We worked seamlessly because we both knew our strengths: Chris was the ideas man, whilst I just twatted about with the words. Together we came up with a thousand one-liners per hour. I jotted down as many as I could remember and ‘worked them up’. Sometimes Chris would fly off in another direction – anywhere from project B to Z – before project A was finished, other times he would doggedly stick to an idea long after I had given up hope. There were times, of course, when Chris would serve up a flat ‘No’ to lines that I thought were great and, as the person who generally did the typing, I would sneak them back into the script only to have them vetoed again at the next read-through. Similarly I would leave out lines I didn’t like, only to find that Chris’s own notes clearly showed that they were in. It always worked for the best and I don’t recall us ever falling out.
I have a boxful of scripts from that time that I flick through now and again and they always make me smile. Like all such things, it is impossible to revisit that time – we wrote a million sketches for the kind of shows that no longer exist – but that knowledge does not mar the joy of what we did then. Through the radio show – which we were absolutely certain would be our big break – TV sketches and a sadly ill-fated musical using the songs of ‘Hello Cheeky’, we operated as a single being: he was up when I was down, he was full of certainty when I was full of doubt. He always made me laugh and I always had a pen.
Chris is a natural performer and he began to drift in that direction as I plodded along writing a number of ‘close but no cigar’ sit-com pilots whilst continuing to contribute articles to any one of a number of humour magazines (all now gone – not my fault I swear) that would pay me for what I did. I am never happier than when sitting at the computer banging away without a care in the world (or, more often than not, an idea in my head) but I always miss the thrill of showing Chris the labours of my week (will he/won’t he laugh?) listening to his jokes, marvelling at the scope of his ideas, shouting at one another until we are hoarse and sharing the laughter…
Now, in case you are wondering why this piece seems out of place and out of time then, yes, I will admit that I have written it in the hope that Mr Underfelt might read it and be spurred on to give you one or two recollections of his own – of our time writing together, of his early attempts at stand-up, and of his own theatre productions of ‘Bouncers’ and ‘Little Shop of Horrors’ , anything. (There are, by way of explanation, links to numerous previous posts scattered throughout.) Maybe he’ll even tell you of our little trip to Hull to see a play called ‘Moose’ and an ill-advised stop to ask some young ladies on a street corner if they could tell us where to go. They did…
When you’re growing up and you’re small and you’re ginger, then you try to cope by being funny and you can always gauge the moment when you actually succeed for some, because someone else – normally much bigger than yourself – will be screaming in your face, tight and red and angry, “Yeh, you think you’re so fucking funny, don’t you?” and you have to try really hard to stop yourself from saying, “Well, now you come to mention it…” and that’s when you begin to associate laughter with pain. As you get older, it stops to be such a problem: you stop trying so hard because nobody ever finds you even remotely funny anyway – at least not fully clothed – and all in all, you are slightly less likely to find yourself grappling around in the mud with somebody twice your size whilst a crowd has gathered around you chanting’ “Scrap, scrap, scrap…” hoping to see blood, hoping to see snot and tears, hoping not to get collared by the dinnerlady. You may still, occasionally, seek to deliberately amuse, but mostly you just trip over your own feet…
Now, I thought about this whilst I was having a shower and I was adopting the pose that we must all assume, regardless of gender, while rinsing the soap from the undercarriage. In the shower, there is no other way of achieving this short of standing on your head, and as there is no worse feeling than that of soap lingering around the nethers as the day drags on, it has to be properly rinsed away in the morning. So, it occurred to me that we must all present this same twisted aspect to the falling water – the intended target being pretty well shaded from downward droplets by head, shoulder, belly and, for some (amongst whom I fear I must now include myself – muscled flesh having long-since morphed into pendulous manboob) – fleshy chest adornments. It’s a ridiculous, hip thrusty kind of stance, that ensures the descending rivulets have an appropriate route that allows them to wash over the necessary areas, whilst you endeavour not to put your back out and – should you have an un-steamed-up mirror within view – not find yourself laughing at your own reflection. It is an absurd stance in which, I envisage, we all find ourselves from time to time. A truly egalitarian posture. All life should be like it.
I don’t know what it is about a few minutes under the warming spray that brings this habit of maudlin reflection upon me: it’s like feeling sorry for myself, except that, of course, is something that only other people do. Today I have been reading the latest bestseller by A. Veryfamousperson, thinking to myself “I could write that” and in that moment of indignation I believed that I really could, failing to realise that even if I did, it would make not the slightest difference because, frankly, I am not A. Veryfamousperson and nobody gives a twopenny fig what I have to say. I could write the Bible and still not find a publisher…
So, this is the point – wherever I find myself in the day’s downward arc – whether still striking the pose in the shower, sitting on the loo, or attempting to explain to a 6-year old why a laptop keyboard and honey are not compatible, when I realise that it is probably time for me to get a grip and review the current situation:
What’s so wrong with a sticky keyboard? (Well, if you reaaaaaaaaaaally waaaaaaaaaaant to know, eaaaaaaaaaach time you press the letter AAAAAAAAAAA it just keeps on going on aaaaaaaaaaaaand the only thing you caaaaaaaaaaan do is to go through aaaaaaaaaaaaall you haaaaaaaaaave written aaaaaaaaaaaaat aaaaaaaaaaaa laaaaaaaaaaaater time aaaaaaaaaaaaaand baaaaaaaaackspaaaaaaaaaaaace it aaaaaaaaaaaall out. Aaaaaaaaaaaaargh!)
I am alive and, to all intents and purposes, fit and well.
I actually quite like playing the clown.
Fame and money would only spoil me.
I have grown up relatively well-adjusted. I am blessed with a loving family and far more friends than I actually deserve.
Too many of my best friends have died over the years. I have lots now, but if I’m honest, few of my own age. I’m a little scared of making new ones in case I kill them, but I know that I should make the effort. The problem is, how? I don’t do many of the things that people of my age are apt to do: I rarely catch the bus; I don’t have an ancient terrier to walk around the block and I don’t even own a cap. I thought of taking up bowls, but I’m not to be trusted in white clothing. The problem with almost all suitable hobbies is that they are so much more age appropriate than I am. I would like to take up fishing, I think. I would like every single thing about it, except for the catching of fish. I would be perfectly happy sitting on a riverbank watching the world flow by: the birds, the bees, the fishermen – I often walk along the river banks and despite encountering fishermen all the time, I am not certain that I have ever seen a fisherwoman¹ – the bird-sized dragonflies, the occasional wary rodent, the ducks and the swans. I would be quite happy eating foil-wrapped sandwiches and drinking over-stewed tea from a flask. I can talk about the weather with the best of ‘em. I have a cloth bush-hat that makes me look like one of the Flowerpot Men (I have no idea which one. There is a link here – you must judge for yourselves). I am fully qualified in all respects except that of owning a fishing rod: except that of wanting to haul a hapless Piscean from its natural habitat on the end of a nylon line and metal hook…
I did go fishing quite a bit when I was small, but I never really took to it. I got bored too easily back then: partly by the inordinate amount of time I had to spend doing so little and partly by having to go home so often to tell my mum that I had fallen in the river again so that she never knew that I had been thrown in by somebody much bigger than me, who clearly didn’t think that I was at all funny. Fishing trips then, even those in which I managed to remain terrestrial, always seemed to end when the cold had seeped into my bones, and I went home to thaw myself in the few inches of lukewarm water I was allowed. No showers back then – I don’t ever remember going anywhere with a shower. Even the kind of hotels we visited on high days and holidays had only a single bath on each landing – so no fear of dislocating a hip whilst rinsing the soap off. Mind you, being a boy of that age, I didn’t have a particularly close relationship with the soap bar, truth be told. Infact, the more I think about it, the more I think that might be the real reason that people kept chucking me in the river…
I have developed a stupid habit of leaving things half finished and open on the laptop so that I can return to them when the mood takes me, and thus I have now managed to write and delete today’s post a total of three times. I have absolutely no idea how this current incarnation compares with its mistakenly expunged counterparts: I remember the first couple of sentences, but I have absolutely no recollection whatsoever of what I found to prattle on about thereafter. It was kind of the idea if I’m honest, but I could certainly have done without the repeats. If you feel unfulfilled by what you have read above, then I can only seek to assure you that my first three attempts were almost certainly much, much better…
I cricked my neck this morning. I’m not sure how. Could have been putting my boots on. These sort of things happen as I get older. Any muscle I have that is not already in an advanced state of atrophy, is ready to pop out from where it belongs at a moment’s notice. If it’s not weak or damaged, then it gets cramp. It’s just one of those things that you learn to live with. Like broccoli. Whatever their primary purpose in your youth, the primary purpose of muscles as you get older is to ache. They appear to have no other function. Nature’s way of telling you that the cork is well and truly out of the bottle.
Of course, a cricked neck is somehow quite unlike any other physical pain: it is the stealth bomber of bodily discomfort. You are blissfully unaware of its presence until, without thinking, you turn around and… too late, it’s got you… Like a well-directed rubber band in the darkness of a cinema, there is no way of even telling where it came from. Like the house guests who have lingered just a little too long, there is no way of telling when it might go. There can be no more exciting moment than that at which you realise that your crick has disappeared – just as suddenly as it appeared – but none quite so disappointing as when it returns the very next time you turn around.
I once suffered a whiplash injury. It was like a crick in the neck with knobs on. Big knobs. This was a crick that somehow belted down my back and into my legs without warning. A crick that meant that I felt absolutely fine until, quite suddenly, I wished that somebody could remove my head from my shoulders – very quickly. A flash of pain that was so intense it physically convulsed me, often provoking laughter from those around me who did not know what was happening. Laughter, I always find, is infectious, but boy does it rattle the whiplash. The doctor put me in a neck brace that made me laugh every time I caught sight of it. Laugh, wince, laugh, wince, it was torture. I can’t explain if you’ve never had it. If you have, you’ll be wincing now.
Anyway, this is not whiplash, this is a common-or-garden crick in the neck, and I have no real idea how I got it. The trick is to move slowly, never turn quickly and, for some reason I can never quite fathom, hold one arm across the chest. As I daren’t look down or around, I keep clipping my ankles on immovable objects. I flinch, the pain flashes down my neck, I wince, I catch sight of myself, I laugh, I wince… I’m getting a bit fed up with it all to be quite honest. Pretty soon I will take to my bed with a small nightcap and the firm resolve to wear shoes instead of boots in the morning…
Getting On 