Mutton Jeff

When I was a kid me and my mates would often pose to each other the question “if you had to lose one of your senses which one would it be?”

This is the kind of question that is fine coming from a friend but would be deeply worrying if it was spat into your face by a complete stranger on the street who happened to holding a kitchen knife at the time.

Of course, being regular little Oscar Wildes we’d reply “common” before giving the matter some proper, deeper thought and coming up with taste or smell. You couldn’t lose touch because that would just be stupid and, being largely ignorant, total paralysis didn’t occur to our youthful little minds. The two senses deemed most important to keep was sight and hearing. And of these, if it came down to a final choice, sight was deemed the most supreme.

It was agreed that, at a push, we could do without our hearing. Not hearing any new music would be a pain but better that than not being able to look at Big & Bouncy anymore.

I completed a Sign Language course a year ago as some of you know so I am now more astutely aware of what a huge disability it is to lose one’s hearing.

And to enrich the experience I am today completely deaf in one ear.

This is a recurrent problem. My ears either produce too much wax, wax that is too hard or wax that resists natural dispersal.

Years ago you’d get the old syringe treatment. Wince inducing but effective and your restored hearing was like a miracle.

Nowadays they (doctors) don’t syringe unless they have too. They prefer to prescribe ear drops. Olive oil and bicarbonate of soda. The miracle takes longer and is a real fag to bring about.

In the meantime I am walking around like I have been deafened on one side by a spent grenade. It is damn weird. My ear actually feels numb even though I know it isn’t. I’m having trouble filtering simultaneous sounds. And I’m having difficulty judging their distance and direction. I also feel very irritable but my wife tells me this state of play is “situation normal”.

My wife also told me (rather uncharitably) that she never has ear blocking problems because she always keeps her ears nice and clean. The implication being that I don’t.

This is not true. I pick my ears with an assiduousness usually only reserved for my nose.

Possibly even too much.

And with my fingernails too which I’m sure is not recommended (which is daft when Nature herself has supplied the tools for the job). Sometimes I scratch too hard and the skin bleeds and scabs over. This, alas, does not help the removal of waxy deposits.

So it’s a bit of a catch-22 situation really.

I know there are such things as cottonwool buds but I am wary of inserting foreign objects into my ears. I had an uncle when I was younger who, I’m guessing, had a similar problem with his ears and was more vigorous in his attempts to dislodge the offending blockage. It was well known that he had perforated both eardrums by shoving a match into his lugholes and wiggling it about so hard he skewered the membrane.

In truth he was damned lucky the match never ignited.

So, for the next week or so while I wait for the ear drops to work you all need to stand on my left-hand-side if you wish to speak to me and enunciate loudly and clearly.

I may still ignore you but you can now kid yourself that it is down to a medical complaint and not just because I think you’re not worth listening to...

Being Crap

The thing about being crap is that you know, I mean really know, that you’re doing it.

But this knowledge doesn’t help you.

It’s not like other epiphanies. It’s not like when you think to yourself I’m being an arsehole and then you manage to rein in your arseholeness a modicum so that you are less areshole-like. It’s not like when you are stapling a work colleague’s tongue to the notice board and you get to the end of the staples and think OK, I’ve made my position perfectly clear now and you finally stop.

When you realize you are being crap the being crap continues.

I have two novels to proofread. One for publishing on Kindle the other for sending out to an agent. I need to be writing synopses and "Dear Agent" bum-licky letters. I have other people’s work to read and review. I have shop-bought books to read just because I bought them to read them for pleasure. I need to chase college who, bizarrely, have not yet confirmed that I have passed Sign Language Level 1 even though Level 2 is now so far underway it is pointless me trying to enrol and catch up. I have chores around the house – not particularly big chores – that need my attention. I have vague ideas for new writing projects that need solidifying, sharpening. I need to be thinking about Christmas presents. I have bills to pay. I have stuff that needs... stuffing.

But I’m doing none of these things.

I am being crap.

I feel like a severed tongue. I’m just lying here without any discernible means to move myself and I probably have poor taste to boot.

It could be post-novel writing blues. It could be pre-winter SAD. It could be sheer laziness or just inspiration famine.

But I am being crap.

And I am being crap very well indeed.

Result.

See. I knew I wasn’t a complete loser.

Nothing Left To Write...

Well, technically.

Because after just over 12 months of quite intense writing I have now completed the first draft of my second novel, The Great Escapes Of Danny Houdini and - you've guessed it - I am now putting out the call for volunteer guinea pigs to read it, pick up on the typos I have missed and offer an opinion on which bin I should fling it into: general household waste or recycling?

Want to know more about it? Want the vital statitics?

366 pages in Word. 310,067 words.

A lot of them expletives. Most of them not. There's quite a bit of rudeness too. But not too much. There's comedy. There's romance. There's drugs and dirtiness.

This is the story of Danny Walker, a young man who is crippled with an appalling stutter but finds some steel in himself when he meets and falls in love with a Deaf girl called Thalia. However, there are a few flies in the ointment: his gross parents who seem to be stuck in the 1950's and his older brother, Matthew, who is intent on messing up his own marriage and the relationships of all those around him by his attempts at living a hedonistic lifestyle. But worst of all is Matthew's mate, the sneering Barry Wyton, who is intent on becoming the local drug baron and wants to pull Matthew and Danny into his sordid little world where they risk being buried forever.

There are laughs and TV references a-plenty as Danny constantly seeks to escape his grim reality by imagining he is on the telly. But this crutch cannot last forever and sooner or later Danny must abandon his imagination and face up to real life.

So, are you sold? Are you interested?

If you'd like to give the first draft a read I'd be eternally grateful. I'm not expecting an essay or anything back in return - even a simple "I liked it" or "I didn't like it" would be useful but obviously any specific feedback would be wonderful.

Thank you in advance to the few!

P.S. I sadly cannot supply hardcopies but I can email the word doc to your Kindle account (if you have one) if that makes it easier to read.

Is This Man Taking Over The World?

Those of you who do not have kids or are, perhaps, indisposed to watching copious amounts of kid’s telly off your own bat will probably be unaware of the clear and present danger that is currently facing our nation.

You will perhaps be lying blissfully idle in your Rugby World Cup bliss; sniggering smugly as you watch Mock The Week or some other adult satire game-show or just sniggering stupidly at the silly people in Big Brother who behave exactly like what you do only wiv-out all the grace and charm you usually exhibit when you give Tel a bit of earache in Lidl for going for the cheap brand cigarettes.

You will be unaware. You will be asleep.

And whether you are a sleeping dragon or a sleeping dog remains to be seen.

One man is trying to take over the world.

He is everywhere. He is omnipresent. Both in body and in voice.

You cannot move anywhere on the CBeebie’s channel without bumping into the golf-ball nose of Justin Fletcher. It’s like he has turned the entire channel into his own personal star vehicle (complete with Pope-like glass viewing dome and furry dice). It started innocuously enough. The Tweenies. Higgledy-House. Something Special. Fine, we thought. He’s just working hard. Paying the bills. But then his voice started appearing on its own in other shows too. Just like Obi Wan Kenobi’s in fact. “Use the spotty bag, Mr Tumble! Use the spotty bag!” Timmy Time, Chuggington, Sean The Sheep – to name but three.

But that wasn’t enough for Citizen Fletcher, oh no. Then came Gigglebiz. An entire show featuring nothing but Justin playing a host of different vaudeville-esque characters. Endless, wall-to-wall Justin. Justin as a disco dancing king. Justin as a female TV naturalist called Anna Conda. Justin as a pantomime dame complete with massive honking breasts.

I felt uneasy. I felt uncomfortable.

This was getting a bit much.

Even in his heyday Noel Edmonds never got everywhere like this.

But the kids were lapping it up. The kids were being sucked in. There was nothing we could do to stem the tide.

And now it is too late. Now we have Justin’s House. Justin’s brand new show. Set in Justinland.

I am not joking.

Am I the only person who can see that this is proof of an ego grown out of all control? An id that has gone global? His catchphrase song on Justin’s House is, “Let’s wibble, let’s wobble.” It makes me shudder because I know there is a secret message hidden in there somewhere, some dire threat like the alien countdown thing in Independence Day. But despite the best minds at Bletchley Park working on it night and day we haven’t yet been able to break the code.

I know. I know. You’re all laughing. You’re all dismissing this as the by-product of a fevered but genius mind. I’m reading too much into it. I’ve lost the plot. I need a quick fix of BBC Four. Even a Channel Five documentary. But you’ll be sorry. You’ll all be sorry when Justin starts popping up in your life too (and squeezing his man-boobs so that they make a sound like a car horn). When Justin appears in Doctor Who as the Doctor’s new assistant you’ll remember my words. When Justin appears in Eastenders as Milkshake Jake and starts flinging whipped cream over that Mitchell fellow you will all quail and remember.

When Justin and his magic spotty bag appears outside number 10 with the new Budget wrapped up in cellophane inside it you will know the end has finally come.

And you’ll all be sorry then.

So just remember: if you see the man in the photo above please approach him with severe caution – he will teach you to say “I am special” in Sign Language and you will not be able to resist.

Go with care, my friends. And don’t say I didn’t warn you!

It’s You Isn’t It?

Now I’m not trying to say that I’m Mr Unforgettable; that I’m one of those people who, when met once, emblazons himself onto everybody’s consciousness for all perpetuity with a light that never goes out. But I like to think I impinge just a little bit on those around me. That I leave a slight impression on the memory. Even if it is only to recognize my face as opposed to my name.

Years ago I did an evening class at the local college – French beginner’s level. It only lasted a year but was pretty intensive and a good deal of fun. Our tutor was a strange Francophile whose name I forget (yes, I know, people in glass houses and all that) and who rode a bicycle around town like a Victorian lady wrestling with the idea that she ought to be riding side saddle for the sake of propriety.

She still rides that same bicycle in the same manner and I still see her every few weeks as she pushes those pedals round and round like a Gerry Anderson puppet attempting to walk realistically.

We’ve always caught each other’s eyes and smiled and nodded at each other in mutual acknowledgement.

You taught me French, I think to myself.

And I imagine that in her head she’s thinking, I taught that young ruffian French.

Well, on Monday she drew up on her bike at a junction and as I was close enough to speak I thought I’d say hello – or even bon jour – and swap pleasantries.

All seemed to go well at first.

“Are you still at the college?” she asked.

“Why, yes,” I replied, “I’m just completing a course in Level 1 Sign Language as it happens.”

She looked a bit askance. Like what I’d said wasn’t quite right.

“Are you still teaching as well, then?” She asked.

Eh? Teaching? “Er. No.” I replied. “You taught me French?” I said rather plaintively.

A look of recognition passed over her face. Not recognition of me; recognition that she’d made a mistake. “Oh sorry.” She apologized. “I thought you were David the woodwork teacher.”

David? Woodwork?

“No.” I said rather stiffly. “You taught me French.” I believe I may have growled that last bit.

I could see her thinking zut alors and praying for the lights to turn to green. Things had got suddenly uncomfortable so I said a quick goodbye and stomped off up the street wishing I’d learnt a few more German swear words when I was at school.

So there you go. Not only do I not speak French well enough to stand out in her mind as a star pupil but I also look like a ‘Dave’ and look like I might be able to make myself useful with a dowelling rod.

Honestly. My ego has hit le fond du baril.

And yes. I had to Google that.

British Sign Language

The loss of our eyesight or our hearing is something most of us only give a cursory thought towards. How would I cope if I was deaf? What would it be like never being able to listen to music? Horrible, we think to ourselves and then we quickly move on, possibly hitting the shuffle function on our iPods with a slightly more piquant sense of gratitude.

Bizarre that the first thing we think about is the loss of music from our lives rather than the question of how the hell we would communicate with other people and the outside world. Maybe because we take our ability to talk so much for granted?

I’m almost ashamed to say that it has taken a writing project to make me bend my thoughts more seriously towards these issues. I’m 25,000 words into my second novel and one of the supporting characters is deaf. The main character has a disabling stutter and hence hates speaking. Through learning sign language though he is able to finally express himself and embark on a more fulfilling lifestyle. Yes, it is something of a rom/com for those of you that are interested but also, hopefully, a gritty piece of social commentary. Anyway, I’m not here to big up the novel. I’ll save that for when it’s finished.

The point is I quickly realized that to write effectively and realistically about Deaf Culture I needed to embark on some serious research. I bought books. I contacted someone at the Deaf Arts Network who very kindly spent weeks answering all of my (no doubt very crass) questions and supplying me with real life anecdotes – Lisa, if you are reading, a big thank you once again. Eventually I realized that to make the deaf character real and believable – not to mention her dialogues with the main character – I would need to learn sign language myself.

Because it is a complete language in itself with its own sense of dialogue and its own idiosyncratic mechanics. It can’t be replicated by guesswork; you have to know it.

Thankfully the local FE College here in Leamington offers the Level 1 course. Depressingly it is very expensive. £450. Level 2 is over £600 and then there is Level 3 and 4. But that’s jumping the gun. I nearly abandoned the idea there and then as there was no way I could afford the best part of £500 on an evening course. But help comes from surprising sources sometimes and my employer stepped up to the plate and is funding Level 1 for me; the idea being that it will be useful for the local authority here to have an employee who can communicate [albeit at a very basic level] with any deaf customers.

I started the course about 6 weeks ago. Without fail I am exhausted before I even get there – I’m not a night person – but every Tuesday I drag myself up to the college and try to make myself as receptive as my lazy brain will allow. And without fail I leave 2 hours later buoyant and buzzing and bouncing with the sheer exhilaration of it all.

It is a wonderful course and a beautiful language to learn. It is as fluid, rich, dynamic, intriguing, and expressive as any spoken voiced language. I’d even venture to say it is more expressive. It has its own set of pictorial semantics which are often as funny as they are clever. There is something organic and interconnected about the language too. The sign for ‘milk’ for example is redolent of milking a cow. Every sign is pregnant with meaning and has an ingenious grace to it that makes you want to master every word and phrase.

And it’s easy to learn. Amazingly easy. The entire class had mastered the finger-spelling alphabet within the first hour. There is something instinctive about it. And now armed with those few rude basics you can at last communicate and make your point known.

So it amazes me that the basics of sign language aren’t taught at all schools. Just the alphabet and a few signs would hardly over burden the current curriculum. The benefits would be enormous both to the Deaf Community and to the hearing community, both in terms of increased accessibility for the former and inclusiveness for both. Because it was not until I embarked on this research that I realized what a closed culture Deafness is. It is very enclosed and self contained. Not because Deaf people want to be separate but because if no-one else speaks your language you have no choice but to be separate and a world apart.

And given that we all share the world and are all human, that seems a very great shame.

Not being able to hear music is actually the smallest loss that Deafness bestows upon you. Not having the ability or the opportunity to make yourself ‘heard’ is far, far worse and deeply, hurtfully isolating. And yet the remedy is so simple.

Come on, Education Minister; put sign language onto our school curriculum! Or for those of you that understandably can’t wait for that great day or are past school attendance age... I know a great way for you to put £450 to very good use. I guarantee you won’t regret it.

Manners Maketh

None of you will be aware of this because I haven’t seen fit to tell you (don’t be offended, we all have our little secrets) but I started a British Sign Language course four weeks ago. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long time and, to cut a long story short, I’m doing it now because (by a weird confluence of events) my current novel features a Deaf character and my employers thought it would be jolly useful to have a member of staff trained in sign language and are thus paying for me to do it.

None of this is important (well, it is and I may blog about it all separately later). What is important is that the class runs from 7 – 9pm on a Tuesday. I simply don’t have time to eat a meal before the class so I’m usually famished when I come out.

And this is why, on the long walk home, I find myself frequenting the type of fast food establishment that normally in the cold light of day I wouldn’t touch with an 8ft baguette.

We’re talking greasy joes, truck driver cafes and kebaberies whose window lit meat racks seem to house the carcasses of household pets and the odd horse nicked from a Home County show ground.

I am ill at ease in these places. I’m used to fine wining and dining. Or at least a free plastic toy with my meal.

Take last Tuesday. It was a cold night and I felt like a short sharp unhealthy hit of cholesterol. So I nipped into one of Leamington’s more infamous chip-joints. The Sakarya (pronounced by the hoodies as Zachariah).

I ordered something suitable “street” and “down with the kids”. Cheesy chips.

Yes, I know. Not exactly overflowing with Nigella-esque nutrition or red blooded Gordon Ramsay protein. But, you know, it’s fuel for the fire. A naughty treat.

I order and I wait. The Turkish looking guy behind the counter is monosyllabic and seems to singularize absolutely everything. Cheesy chips becomes cheesy chip. This amuses me greatly but I don’t let this show on my face as his Turkish colleague, shaving great strips of flesh off the kebab spit, is giving me the evil eye. Actually, I say Turkish looking merely because of the kebab. In actual fact I could have easily said Greek looking, Portuguese looking or Eastern bloc looking. The typical unthinking Englishman’s casual racism. I haven’t a clue where they were from.

Could have been Peckham for all I know.

The guy who got served before me has his burger carton open on the counter in front of him and is troughing down his food with one hand and waving the other around as he demands more mayonnaise. Demands, mind, not asks. He makes to hold the mayonnaise bottle himself but the burly Turk / Greek / Yorkshire man behind the counter refuses to relinquish it. He squeezes the mayonnaise out until the chomping pig tells him to stop. “That’s enough, mate.” And off he trots into the cold night air.

When it’s my turn to get served I get offered all the usual relishes – salt, vinegar, ketchup and the ubiquitous mayonnaise. I answer to each “yes, please” or “no, thanks” as I see fit. Stavros hands my food over. I take it and offer one last thank you to the grease filled air.

Both Mr Turk and henchman Turk give me long evil stares.

I leave the building and continue walking home wondering what the hell I’ve done to offend them.

And then it hits me. I was polite. I was quite possibly too polite. In an industry where these guys must see the worst scum of the earth pass through their doors at all hours of the night in various states of advanced inebriation, to have someone – out of the blue and with no apparent reason – say please and thank you must seem like the biggest piss-take the world has ever seen.

They thought I was being sarcastic. They thought I was being patronizing. They thought I was taking the Michael.

Good grief. Is this what the world is coming too?

Well it was either that or the fact I told them that their fathers like to do goats up the arse in sign language... but I doubt it.