The Last To Go

I’m possibly being overly sentiment (and sentimentality is never a good thing) but today is the day my grandparent’s house is laid to rest (killed is too strong a word).

The house clearance people – a local firm of auctioneers – are already at work, possibly even finished by the time you read this, clearing out the furniture, the cupboard junk, the knick-knacks, the physical manifestations of over 60 years and at least 4 generations of family life.

All of it – the dishes we used at Christmas, the old ice cream tubs full of pencils and their smell of graphite, the suitcases of old knitting magazines that my Nan used to collect – will be loaded up into a van and transported off to some side street depot where the wheat will be sorted from the chaff. The good stuff will be put up for auction, the non-saleable stuff... well, God knows. Do they bin it? Recycle it? EBay it? I’d hate to think of my Nan’s old pots and pans taking up space in some landfill somewhere – her Wednesday beef stews were amazing. Those pots and pans should be on a pedestal somewhere. Alas, I have neither the room for them nor the pedestal.

So it’s time to let them go. Let it all go. I have said my goodbyes. I have saved what I can. But the bulk of it – the collected sum of all that makes up my Nan’s home – cannot be kept.

I think what I shall miss most is the smell of the house. The smell of each room. My Nan was a great one for putting a bar of Palmolive soap in every drawer so that all her clothes would smell nice. Those bars were still in the drawers last time I looked. And when I stood over them, closed my eyes and inhaled, it was as if I could almost smell the lives of the people that once lived there – my own life intricately and intimately bound up with them.

The house is like a member of the family to me. It has a personality and a place in my memory as beloved and special as those that are inhabited by my Nan, my granddad (or Bampap as we called him) and my Auntie Linda (not that we’d ever dare call her “auntie”) who all lived within its walls. All are dead now. All are gone. The last 5 years took all three of them. Only the house remains. A sad old friend. Its memory failing, its ear straining desperately for the key in the lock that will announce that its former owner’s are returning but finding always only silence.

The front door will never be opened by anyone from my family now. My family's 60 year and my 40 year association with the house is over.

The last few times I have been there have been bittersweet. The comfort of the familiar undercut by the sharp sorrow of the small but quiet emptiness that has settled over the entire house. I have felt like a ghost, felt like I have been haunting the house because my grandparents are not. A troubled ghost walking old rooms and staring fondly at old aspects hoping that they will never change.

Those hopes were always going to be futile. Change has come. On Wednesday the contract with the new owners will undergo “completion”. My Nan’s house with its horde of treasures that so fascinated me as a child will be dead forever. The last of them to go.

But unlike them it will undergo some sort of instant reincarnation. A new family will move in. Will put down new carpets. Put up new curtains and wallpaper. Will bring their own sounds and smells of life.

My ghost will haunt there no longer.

It will return to life. A new day. A new tomorrow, holding much loved yesterdays to its heart.

Is sentimentality such a bad thing? I hope not.

Goodbye old friend.

Mad Max Beyond Blunderdome

Monday night I think it was, the 9.0 watershed had arrived and with it a complete dirth of anything worthy to watch on TV... so I did the only thing a sane man can do in such a situation. I spurned all thought of improving myself with a good book and channel hopped my way out of boredom.

This may say something about the state of my mind at the time but I settled for Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome showing on one of ITV's alternative cable channels. Admittedly I only watched about an hour of it before sleep overcame me but I have say, hand on heart, despite the awfully dated eighties soundtrack and production values I quite enjoyed what I saw. I'm sure most of my enjoyment came from a sense of nostalgia - I remember going to see this film at the cinema with my mate Tris sometime after we left Art College.

Looking back on it now I'm astonished at how camp the film is, how subliminally homo-erotic. Men everywhere oiled up and dressed in bizarre cut-away leather costumes that would have been far too provocative for Priscilla Queen Of The Desert. Dirt, grime and sweat beading every curved and rounded bicep. And through it all Mel Gibson staring out at the camera with that knowing look that says my eyes are bluer than anybody elses and that's why the ladies love me.

It's strange to reappraise Tina Turner's performance too now that the obstacle of her music career is all but removed. She's not bad. Not bad at all. She has real presence and charisma. I remember not really liking her in the film at the time. I think everytime she duck waddled on the screen I kept having flashbacks to Nutbush City Limits... and let's be honest, when a woman old enough to be your granny is on a huge screen before you wearing a skirt shorter than the BNP's MP list the last thing you want to be thinking about is Nutbush.

Anyway, the film seemed rather apt for these modern politically grey times. All is in disarray. Nobody knows what they want or how to get it. They just know what they don't want. They don't want another hero. They just want life beyond Thunderdome.

As I type I am having visions of Nick Clegg sitting astride David Cameron's shoulders in some bizarre homage to Master-Blaster. But does that make Gordon Brown Mad Max? And who the hell is going to be our Auntie? Is our little Barter Town going to be run forever on pig shit?

I don't know. All I know is today I am breaking out the leathers and walking around talking with an Australian accent. There's got to be a better world out there beyond the desert. There's just got to be.

Care to help me find it?

Power To The People

Like most towns and cities the world over Leamington Spa has its fair share of graffiti. 90% of it is Shaz proclaiming her undying love for Baz Daz Gaz or some New Yoik wannabe gang member deciding to spray his half-witted little tag on the backdoor of a pub or a park bench and inevitably stuffing it up so that it looks like someone has vomited up the innards of a black felt tip pen.

But a glorious 10% of Leamo’s graffiti is political and witty and sometimes even just downright entertaining (I’ve written about three past instances of Leamington graffiti here, here and here).

With the election coming up and the Tory’s poster campaign reaching overdrive (we seem to get a new range of posters here every few days – as quick as us locals can deface them in fact) there has been plenty of fodder for the graffiti artists to make hay with. All I can say is the local arts and crafts shop must have made an absolute killing on aerosols and thick black highlighter pens over the last fortnight or so.

Anyway, although it was not my intention to get all party political and partisan but to stay unbiased and righteously impartial it does seem that the posters of one party in particular have come in for the majority of the Banksy-esque drubbing:

Heaven forbid that this should influence you in any way in your deliberations at the polling stations tomorrow... but it is comforting to know that satire and derision are alive and well in this little backwater of Warwickshire.

*Sigh* It almost takes me back to the bad old days of Maggie Thatcher. Ahem. Ahem. ;-)

Behold The Great God, Bladder!

I’ve heard it told that the older you get the more you are at the mercy of your bladder. Your waterworks – either the need to pee or a distinct lack of pee action – start to rule your day, your thoughts and your, er, movements.

Now I am not at that stage yet myself. I’m all tickety-boo in the genitourinary stakes. I can withhold or blast forth ‘pon a whim and hit a gnat (should I be venting outside) at 50 paces. Unlike Severn Trent I am not plagued by burst water mains or seasons of drought that result in a full hosepipe ban.

But I am aware that for others, my seniors, taking a pee-pee is sometimes of a pressing nature.

Now this being said I still have a duty to lock up the toilets in the building where I work at 5pm. Even if the Library are open until 8. The reasons for this are twofold. 1) Once the café is shut (at 5pm) we no longer have a legal requirement to keep the toilets open to the public. We used to but 2) when the toilets were previously left open on our late night openings there were invariably trashed, smashed, vandalized, violated by horse-sized poos, spattered with blood / broken glass / toilet paper, used by druggies to smoke, shoot, imbibe, photosynthesize, osmose and partake of rum chemical cocktails or used by amorous couples with no sense of romance whatsoever to grind, spoon, get jiggy, have-it-off, bonk, shag, have-a-quickie, and otherwise fill their boots with each other’s wanton flesh in the ammonia stained cubicles that have made our building famous.

Our poor loos were, in short, being used in a manner that they were never intended to be used for. So we started closing them at 5pm. We’ve been doing this now for nearly 4 years. And there are signs everywhere informing people of the impending 5pm loo embargo. It’s not like we’re shutting the door on someone’s colostomy bag without prior warning.

So it was with distinct displeasure that while I was performing my duties last week I got a verbal mauling from some old geezer wanting to “point Percy at porcelain”. “I’m sorry,” I told him, keys jangling earnestly in my hand, “but the toilets are closed at 5.” I even pointed at the sign on the wall to prove that I was not making it up and nor was it anything personal.

The man growled at me. Growled. Well, I’m assuming it was a growl and not the sound of his bladder bursting. “God,” he said. “I wish I had a job where I could close up at 5.” And with that he stormed off before I could even attempt to apologize for his lack of convenience or point him in the direction of some other facilities not 2 minutes walk away.

I must admit my first thought was: you old cantankerous git. Finish at 5? Finish at 5? I finish at 5.15, ahem. But that’s not the point. I am on the emergency call-out list and frequently get called back to the building to deal with alarm problems in the evening, late at night and the small wee (ha!) hours of the morning. So in a sense I never finish at 5 because I’m never bloody well off duty. Hence I like to make my escape as quick as I can at close of business each day and get home to see my wife and kids while I can and not be hovering around the toilets until 5.30pm or later extending the toilet service to bladder stragglers.

Now on occasion when someone is nice to me or is pregnant or is under the age of 5 and with a desperate parent in tow I will sometimes allow post-5pm peeing. But courtesy and politeness are an essential ingredient to this transaction. Rudeness gets you nowt. No please, no pees.

So take a lesson from this folks; should you ever come to Leamington Spa and visit the building wherein I work, the only p you’ll ever be required to part with when you want to spend a penny is a please. I don’t care how angry or swollen your bladder is. I don’t care what plagues it threatens to send forth from your nether regions – locusts, frogs or fiery ammonia – your bladder is not my god and I shall never ever worship it.

Just to make it even more clear: remember, I’m the one holding the keys to the toilets.

Hail to the King, baby.

Meme, Myself And I

A couple of memes to get May moving... one gifted and one stolen.

The first one I nicked from Being Me who also borrowed it from someone else, so do feel free to be light-fingered and make like a tea-leaf yourself if you like it:

Me In 3’s

Three names I go by:
Steve (for my friends)
Stephen Blake (for my bank manager)
Stephen Herrick-Blake (married name – to confuse officialdom everywhere)

Three jobs I've had:
British Telecom operator
Cleaner in a nursing home
Art gallery assistant

Three places I've lived:
Leamington Spa
Warwick
Alsager (for about 10 days when I made an abortive start on a University degree in my early 20’s)

Three favourite drinks:
Water (filtered or spring, always still never carbonated)
Tea (Earl Grey, strong, milk, two sugars please)
Hot chocolate (cream, marshmallows, chocolate flake, chocolate sprinkles, the works)

Three TV-shows I (WISHED I HAD TIME TO) watch:
Boston Legal
24
Battlestar Galactica

Three places I've been:
Egypt – Nile Cruise (would love to back)
Montreal, Canada (would love to go back)
Florence, Italy (would love to go back)
The Maldives (I know that’s 4, I’m showing off)

Three places I would like to visit:
Iceland
New Zealand
Japan

Three favourite dishes:
Chile con carne
Spaghetti Bolognese
Cottage Pie

Three things I'm looking forward to:
One day getting out of debt (once Tom is at school)
My next Lego set
Winning the lottery and never having to work again

The second meme came attached to a Kreativ Blogger award which was kindly passed onto me by Gappy at Single Parenthood. I have to list 7 things about myself that I have never before divulged on my blog. That is going to be difficult as (1) after nearly 600 posts very few subjects have been considered taboo in my insane quest to find something to write about each week and (2) I think I’ve already done a meme like this a couple of years ago. However, I’m never one to turn down a blogging challenge so here goes:

1) I have bunions. On both feet. My new doctor was shocked when he first saw them and asked “you do know you’re feet are not normal, don’t you?” However as they are not painful and do not impinge on my daily life nobody is in a rush to operate. And I’m not in a rush to be operated on. I’ve heard that foot operations are notoriously painful.

2) I've been a late starter in most things. I didn't learn to ride a bike until I was 23 and now aged 40 I still haven't learnt to drive though did take some lessons in my thirties (had to drop them due to poor finances). I can, however, ride a horse. Or at least stay on one without falling off. I may possibly join an Amish community and have done with newfangled technology altogether.

3) I have no known allergies but do have a phobia of moths. And butterflies. I can’t bear to have them near me. Or even in the same room. If one appears one of us has to leave. Usually the moth. My phobia extends to not being able to swat / kill them either. I did that once as a small boy and the moth literally exploded sending wispy bits of moth shrapnel everywhere. Urgh. Much better to trap them in a cup with a bit of card slid under it and turf them back outside. Makes me feel less guilty too.

4) I didn’t get my first girlfriend until I was 30. No excuses for this. Just lack of confidence and excess of earnestness. Not a great combination. Oh and I had hair down to my waist and a full beard. This hirsuteness may also have contributed to my lack of lady conquests... though I’m sure it’s never stopped Lemmy.

5) A mild case of measles as a baby meant I was never immunized against the disease and used to have the same nightmare twice a year until I was 7 and had full blown measles. At this point I had the nightmare 4 nights in a row, was delirious, sleepwalked and on the final night of my fever awoke to find myself talking to the mirror in my bedroom in a voice that was not my own and a language that I suspect was not of this earth. I kid you not. Over the years I’ve theorised about demonic possession, past life regression, etc, but I now believe (as the Arabs do) that some diseases have spirits or personalities and what happened that night was the measles virus literally coming out of me. Feel free to offer another explanation if you wish.

6) I get vertigo in deep water. I’m fine up ladders, flying or working at height but a session of snorkelling in The Maldives had me swimming over the edge of a reef and looking down into the blackest abyss I have ever seen. I freaked out and headed back to shore. I have now reconciled myself with the fact that I will never be a deep sea diver or work in a submarine. I can live with it. Honestly.

7) I used to believe quite strongly in God and Heaven but now, sadly, I’m really, really not sure anymore. I don’t want to not believe – I just don’t know what I believe. I have, to quote REM, lost my religion.

I’m not going to nominate others to carry on these memes but needless to say, if you’re ever stuck for something to write about feel free to give them a go... they’re oddly enjoyable!

Achtung! Don’t Mention Ze Election!

God knows I’ve done my best to make this blog an election free zone. I’ve resisted commenting on the televised debates (mainly because I’ve very easily resisted watching them). I’ve resisted making derogatory comments about the Tory poster campaign featuring David Cameron, tie off, sleeves rolled up, man of the people getting ready to “muck in” with the rest of us. I’ve even resisted posting a photograph on this blog of the papier-mâché butt I have fashioned out of all the political fliers that have been posted through my letterbox over the last two weeks – enough to account for a large denuded hillside in Scotland, I shouldn’t wonder.

I didn’t want to get political, you see. Not because you’re not interested (though possibly most of you aren’t) but because it has reached saturation point here in the UK and I’m sick of it. It’s being overdone and it’s being overdone badly. We don’t overdo things here in the UK as professionally as the Americans do. When we overdo things it just looks excessively shoddy instead of just shoddy.

But Monday night I accidentally caught a little bit of the televised Party Political Broadcast by the British National Party.

And it riled me. It offended me.

I felt affronted.

Not by anything that was said because when I saw it was the BNP I immediately switched off mentally.

But I was offended by the imagery.

It opened with air raid sirens wailing over a black and white archive footage shot of an anti aircraft searchlight.

Trying to tap into that war time spirit, you see. Trying to tap into the received stereotype of the good old honest-to-God white faced blue collar worker standing at arms with his neighbour in the face of adversity; in the face of overwhelming odds.

And then the icing on the cake: Nick Griffin squatting behind his desk like Jabba The Hut in a Burton’s suit talking reasonably and calmly about whatever it is the BNP would like us to believe that they believe. And in the background, deliberately in shot, the ultimate in product placement. A nice little framed portrait of Sir Winston Churchill.

Plainly the BNP do not do subtle.

And that is what annoyed me.

Do they really think people are that dumb? Do they really think that people who weren’t even around to experience the actual real war will buy into the BNP on the back of some pseudo contrived fake mishmash of Britain’s old war time 1940’s spirit?

Do they really think that people’s knees can be jerked so easily?

Plainly they do. Plainly they think that the British people really are that dumb (and dumberer).

Plainly the BNP think that their party embodies the spirit of Winston Churchill, Boudicca and The Ghost of Christmas Future all rolled into one fat red, white and blue stick of Blackpool rock.

Roy Chubby Brown is the fifth horseman of the Apocalypse: stupidity.

It is this assumption of the nation’s gullibility that makes me angry.

And it is the BNP’s willingness to manipulate the truly gullible among the population with this trite 6th form pub lounge campaign that makes me angry most of all.

Because there will be people, alas, who will fall for it. Who will buy into it. Who will give themselves over to it and think they are doing the patriotic thing. The right thing. The war time spirit and all that. Fighting the good fight.

For all I loathe the concept wars, the semantic duelling and the psychological fencing of both the Conservative’s and Labour’s political campaigns they do at least credit the nation with some intelligence with all their subliminal posturing. They at least assume that the average man on the street is in some way media savvy.

But Winston bloody Churchill and WWII?

Oh come on!

All it did for me is make me mentally replace the portrait of Churchill with one of Hitler and hang a swastika behind Nick Griffin’s head. I mean one stereotype is as good as another, right? If we’re going to deal in knee-jerk broad strokes and buy into old propaganda let’s do it properly.

*Sigh*

On the positive side, I at least know [if I didn’t already] who I’m not voting for.

How To Make Money And Influence People

There is a phenomenon in our house called The Wiggles Effect. It occurs certainly in young boys between the ages of 3 and 5 and may also occur in young girls though I’ve no direct empirical proof of this not having any daughters. The effect lasts approximately 18 – 24 months and then dies away rather quickly.

The first time we experienced it was with our eldest boy. We were pretty terrified at the time because, with no historical template to compare it to, we had no idea how long it was going to last. Would he always be a Wiggles fan? Would he never grow out of it? Was he going to start wanting to dress like them, sing like them, dance like them?

As it was he turned 5, got into Star Wars and dropped The Wiggles like a handful of hot potatoes.

So now with Tom showing similar appreciative tendencies we are panicking a good deal less.

The Wiggles, for those of you who don’t know, are an Australian... er, group-band-ensemble-thing that cater for the toddler end of the kid’s entertainment market. They’re like a cross between Geoffrey from Rainbow and a Take That karaoke tribute band. They dress like spares from Star Trek (i.e. the ones that are there purely to get photon torpedoed, lasered and lost during erroneous beam ups) and are the rummest looking bunch of men I have ever seen. I might be wrong but I imagine they grew up in a hard drinking mining town in the Outback that had very few women and at a very early age these 4 boys decided that (a) they weren’t gay and (b) they didn’t like the nasty taste of alcohol either.

There’s something unquenchably wholesome and “nice uncle” about them even as they dance around like every kid’s ultimate nightmare: a party throwing disco-dad.

They are in short plain embarrassing. It’s just too easy to take the P out of them.

And I shouldn’t because both my boys think they’re great (the eldest still has an affection for them – but, shh, let’s keep that quiet, it wouldn’t be cool if his school mates found out). And to be honest I can keep Tom occupied for hours by throwing on a Wiggles DVD.

Even as I’m shaking my head at their lame dancing and gurning singing faces I am secretly thanking them in my mind. Even as I cringe at their awful lyrics (fruit salad / yummy yummy / fruit salad / yummy yummy) I am grateful that they have afforded me a 5 minute daddy break.

And as I said I shouldn’t knock them – I have no right to knock them – because according to a recent poll they are officially Australia’s highest earning performers. They have topped even Kylie Minogue in the recently published Ozzy rich bitch charts.

Sheesh.

If I’d known kid’s television was such a lucrative business I would have made a sock puppet years ago and happy-clapped a whole lot more.

For those of you that dare, here is a link to one of their finest offerings: Fruit Salad.

Sauna Coats

I really should have more sympathy because when I was a geeky teenager I too did this: wore a long black coat even when the weather was warm. Even when the summer heat was beating down onto my angular shoulders like a scorching hammer onto an extremely bony anvil. I persevered. I stuck with the sweaty neck and the rivulets of moisture that ran down between my callow shoulder blades. Just so I could walk around with a swirly long black coat and imagine I was somehow cool and mysterious.

It had nothing to do with painful shyness and a need to obliterate my physical form with a large bail of machine processed wool that had been tailored for a man 5 sizes bigger than me.

No. It was about fashion. It was about coolness.

And if I suffered in the heat then I suffered for fashion.

And looked an absolute twat (sorry: wassock) in the process. Because I can see now that I did not look cool. I did not look like Keanu Reeves in The Matrix. I looked like a nerd who just didn’t have the confidence or maybe the intelligence to dress in a manner that was climate appropriate.

People were laughing at me behind my back but I couldn’t see them because the huge airplane wing collars of my ex-army de-mob coat were obscuring everything that existed behind my 18 year old ears.

But I can see it all now. Because every time Leamington Spa is blessed with warm weather – as we have been this week – there are inevitably at least 2 members of the local populace who (like me when I was a barely pubescent teen) persist in wearing a huge, ankle-dusting coat of leather so black it looks like it has been woven out of hairs from the devil’s own arsehole.

And instead of reaching out emotionally to these idiots with sympathy and understanding I instead feel an overriding urge to sing as loudly as I possibly can the opening bars of Rage Against The Machine’s “Wake Up” used in the closing credits of The Matrix.

When my family and I are cruising the windy streets of Leamington Spa in our trusty Peugeot, the moment they hear a “Na-na-na-na-na! Na-na-na-na-na!” burst from my lips all eyes will swivel to the pavements in search of the black caped sweat crusader who has crossed my field of vision.

And there he will be. Black coat lopping the top off sundry dog turds as he walks, legs struggling to lift the massive moonboots he is wearing on his feet and his head bowed and dripping inside the inevitable hoody that he is wearing beneath his absurd trench coat.

Na-na-na-na-na! Na-na-na-na-na!

I’m not sure why it angers me so much. Possibly because I am in some way angry at myself for not waking up to myself sooner. If I could go back in time I’d give myself a kick up the arse (if I could find it beneath all that voluminous material) and urge myself to put on a T-shirt. Get some sun on my arms. Not sweat so much. Let the air get to me and circulate.

Heaven forbid, let the world actually see me.

Who knows, if I’d done that I might actually have got myself a girlfriend before my 30th birthday.

After all, miracles have been worked with less.

In the meantime: Keanu Reeves, you’ve got a lot to answer for (and don’t even get me started on those stupid ruddy sunglasses)...

The Return Of The Der-Bains

When you’re at school certain insults do the rounds like a weird kind of grammatical virus. Two that stand out for me are “wassock” and “pranite”, both of which became very popular in the early eighties and were slung about my junior school playground like disyllabic Molotov cocktails.

But the one that caught on the most and had the biggest impact was “der-brain”. Anyone who did or said anything remotely idiotic (which when you are 10 or 11 is a regular occurrence) was declaimed in as loud a voice as possible as being a “der-brain”. Adopting a heavily spasticated tone of voice was also thought de rigeur when using this insult.

I’m sure this insult went national during the eighties and was heard in playgrounds (and building sites) all over the land. However, what I am sure was a purely local phenomenon was the transmutation that occurred one day when in my school playground at least “der-brain” suddenly morphed into “der-bain”. The meaning stayed the same but the loss of that single “r” somehow rendered the insult (a) funnier and (b) more effective. Being labelled a “der-bain” was a good degree worse than being labelled a “der-brain”.

Eventually, as these things do, these schoolyard insults died away to be replaced with boring, standardized, post puberty expletive combinations. Insulting someone became a cold and precise undertaking with no real room for imagination or the invention of new language forms. So “der-brain” – and indeed “der-bain” – died a natural death and dropped away from the general lexicon of childhood foulmouthedness.

Until last Sunday.

I must have dug “der-bain” out of my memory and uttered it at home or talked about it to Karen... who knows... but suddenly I heard it coming out of the mouth of Ben, my eldest boy. He was playing in the bath with some minifigures while I did some chores in the office and I could hear him re-enacting various scenes from Doctor Who. David Tennant’s last episode featuring the return of the Timelords (and a viciously spitting Timothy Dalton) had obviously made a big impression.

The improvised script when something like this:

Timelords: kneel before us petty humans! You are no match for us – we are far cleverer than you are and you are nothing!

Humans: no we’re not; we’re cleverer than you think and we will defeat you, you der-bains...!

I have to say I stumbled in my chores and had to stifle a giggle. It took me right back to the playground. I am now wondering if, with some clever auto-suggestion, I can resurrect “wassock” and “pranite” for a new generation.

In the meantime, if Steven Moffatt and the BBC would like to purchase a brand new Doctor Who script with cool playground lingo they can contact me via this blog.

Toodle-pip, der-bains.

Spare Change

Leamington Spa’s south end of town has traditionally been viewed as the “less well off” part of town. It has a dual reputation for both trouble and (paradoxically) community spirit. A lot if this reputation stems back 200 years or so when money was poured into developing the town north of the river during the boom time of the spas and everything south of the river – the original old town – was left, not so much to fester, but certainly to scrape the barrel for whatever it could find to keep itself going.

Leamington is still to this day filtered by this binary north-south divide. The town in its genetic make-up is bipolar.

The building where I work is on the very cusp of this divide (the river) and this possibly explains the huge proliferation of drunks and ne'er-do-wells who seem to gather in the vicinity. I cannot go out on a lunchbreak or head home without encountering weather-stained men and women, all with beards and ex army ponchos whose aura of alcohol and marijuana would be enough to make a vicar hallucinate Jimi Hendrix’s entire Woodstock playlist.

You have only to pass within 10 yards of them and a hand will come out asking for money while the other hand clutches the ubiquitous can of Special Brew even closer to their chest. “Got a spare 20p, mate, I need to make an urgent phone call?” seems to be the standard form of address.

I must be honest here and say I very rarely comply. I have so little change available and what I do have I’d rather retain for the use of my family. I feel guilty though. As I walk away ignoring them – for that is what I do – I feel I am doing wrong. The old Christian message of giving when somebody asks still burns brightly beneath the thin caul of my subconscious. On occasion my mind even throws up a quick image of me on the Day of Judgement, fluttering my hands with angst, trying to explain my habitual parsimony to St Peter. Look, I just wanted to buy some chocolate buttons for my two little boys...

But then reality kicks in – and I use it to back up my stance even more: they don’t want to make a phone call. They want to buy more beer. Or more weed. Or more [insert your poison of choice here].But really – do I have the right to attach a moral authority to any monies that I may or may not give to someone? Once it’s given surely it’s up to them how they spend it and what they spend it on? It’s no longer my business.

But such a dilemma is not the reason for this post.

The other day one of the drunken bearded men again accosted me for small change. This time however he was neither drunk nor stoned. He was sober. He was compos mentis. He was bright eyed if not bushy tailed. We had a conversation. I saw humour and kindness and a shy but charming personality behind his eyes. I gave him some money.

Why now and not other times? Why now and not when he is drunk or falling over his own inebriated feet? Am I making a judgement call about intemperance? Does dipsomania render him ineligible for charity?

I’ve thought about it a lot since that day. I think when he approached me I saw him for the first time as a person. The mask of drunkenness that so disfigures a human being had fallen away and I saw an individual. I’m not saying I could read his whole life story in every line of his face but for that one unguarded moment I could see all the hurt that had ever been done to him – and that had put him on the street in the first place – there in his eyes. We connected. One man to another. It was a shock. It was emotional. I felt sad for him.

Since then I have wondered whose mask is the more deplorable to wear. Whose mask is the bigger social evil?

Drunkenness; the desire for unending personal oblivion?

Or the hard eye of respectability that sees enough to judge but not to understand?

Feeling The Strain

It’s a little known fact about our youngest son, Tom, that he has – without fail – been ill for every Christmas and Easter holiday since he was born. Everything from a bad reaction to the MMR jab to horrible gastro-bugs. If it’s out there he’ll do an X Files and find it.

This Easter we thought we’d got off lightly. Just a nasty cold.

But the nasty cold for some reason mutated into constipation.

And not the “nice” constipation either; the sort where you merely feel no compulsion at all to go. No, Tom got the nasty constipation where you feel bloated, fatigued and are plagued 7 or 8 times a day by stomach cramps and spasms that leave you in pain, upset and (if you’re 2 and a half) a bit frightened. Most of the time these spasms would be unproductive. They’d rack his little body, leave him discomforted and miserable and put him off eating (as eating the slightest little morsel seemed to bring them on in the first place). Finally, at the end of the day, after a titanic battle with his bowel, there’d be a weighty little pebble of poo in his nappy. The kind of thing that would have taken off the top of Goliath’s head if propelled from a well aimed sling.

It’s been harrowing and heartbreaking to watch. Tom (like his father, it has to be said) needs space and privacy when having a motion. Hence he’d shut himself away in the hall or the kitchen and groan and strain away in solitude and fend off any kind of outside interest or interference. Until he got so fed up with it that a “tuddle” (cuddle to the layman) was finally called for.

Karen and I turned to the chemist and got him some lactulose. As per the back of the box instructions he’s had 5ml twice a day since Friday. It’s had a barely discernible effect. In the end we decided we could stand it no longer and Karen took him to the doctor this morning.

Thankfully there is nothing seriously wrong – which is a huge relief. As a parent you automatically fear the worst and I’ve lived with the fear that he has had a blockage of some kind for days and days – a ridiculous fear given that he has been producing poos of boulder-like quality but who said parents were rational?

The doctor (as we suspected) issued suppositories and has told us to up the lactulose intake to 15ml twice a day – to be reduced slowly once he starts producing soft poos.

A two-pronged attack. A pincer movement so to speak.

Tom as you can imagine was not enamoured by the first suppository but as I headed back to work this lunchtime leaving him in the care of my good lady wife, there were sounds and smells that maybe that first efficient dart had found it’s mark and things had begun to move freely once again in the nether-world of nappies. Tom certainly looked a good deal happier.

I too certainly feel a darn sight more relieved than I have done for days (it’s so nice that I can empathise with my son).

I have asked my wife to keep me updated on the poo front and possibly to text me a picture of his first post-medication product. It sounds gross I know but those of you who are already parents will understand where I am coming from.

Those of you who are not parents may now have been put off procreation for life.

I can only apologize.

If it’s any consolation it’s something your own children will not thank me for either.

Powerpointless

We all have friends I am sure - good friends - who send us funny emails.

Like an unending electronic game of pass the parcel they receive funny emails from their friends, pass them onto some other friends who don't know the original friends and these people will in turn then pass the email onto even more friends who didn't know they had these friends in the first place. On and on it goes and no-one really gets the present.

I bet such activity accounts for 90% of the world's email traffic.

And by and large I don't have a problem with it. Some of the funny emails are actually funny. Some - Heaven forbid - are even informative though this is a rare occurrence. It's a lazy way of keeping in touch with people, I guess. I've received an email from so-and-so therefore I can deduce that they are not yet dead and still have some sort of sense of humour and a working email account.

The emails I do have problems with are the Powerpoint presentations.

You know the ones. The chain letter ones. The mildly threatening ones. The ones that wheeze through 80 frames at one frame every 90 seconds containing a ridiculous sob story sourced from an origin that must be buried deep in the biggest pile of bullshit in the universe.

And then at the end - the thing that really gets my goat - is the "threat". The threat that is bollocks. The threat that you and I both know is utter tosh (because we're sane, well adjusted and media savvy) but that someone (the sender of the email) thinks... ooh, there might be a chance this is real and if I don't forward it I'll have the voodoo put on me... and so they send it. The threat that uses people's own absurd and ungrounded superstitions against them.

You must forward this email to at least 10 other people within the next 15 seconds or bad luck will befall you. But if you do send it you will receive a telephone call within the next hour with some wonderful news!

Gaah!

I want to scream every time I receive one of these. Instead I just delete them immediately but this is in no way cathartic enough. I need a program that will somehow mangle the offending file like a werewolf snacking on a rabbit. I want to hear it scream and gargle in its own electronic blood as it is rendered subroutine from subroutine.

These emails are pathetic. I can't believe that there are people out there who actually spend their time making the damned things in the first place. Who the hell are they? Does anybody know who they are?

Of course not. Because they can't possibly have any friends.

But then again... how do they start the chain in the first place if they have no-one to send it to?

No matter. I just want these people identified and their Adobe Photoshop / Microsoft Office licenses revoked. And then I want them publically lynched and force-fed their own kahunas. And I want it filmed and put on YouTube so I know that it has been done to my highly esteemed satisfaction.

Wonderful. I can then email you all the link.

Please would you all be kind enough pass it on?

Overkill

Identity theft is a real problem.

I don't think anybody would argue with that. While the papers might not thrum daily to the groan of "he stole my house, bank balance, Facebook account and Peugot 106" horror stories it is accepted that having one's identity stolen (or at the very least borrowed for nefarious purposes) is a very real risk in the modern age.

We all take steps against it, I am sure. Shredding personal documents before putting them in the rubbish. Not storing our passwords and account names on our computers. Not writing down our credit card pin numbers (yeah right - who doesn't do that?), etc.

And talking of credit cards, we cut them up, don't we? When they expire or the bank issues us a new one because they've been taken over / taken over someone else and have changed their name we snap those horrid bits of plastic in half and maliciously quarter them with a sharp pair of scissors. Maybe even cut them in half again just to be sure.

But the question is: how small do you cut them up?

I only ask because I suspect I go over the top. It is a curious foible of mine to reduce old credit cards down to something akin to the molecular level. I recognize there is no logic to this endeavour because any letters or documents that I receive from the bank I merely rip in half and bin without a second thought. If someone wanted to rifle through my rubbish (avoiding the dirty nappies - good luck) and piece them back together and ascertain my account numbers, it wouldn't be too difficult.

But credit cards trigger a primitive sense of paranoia in me.

Not only do I reduce them to confetti but I also have to distribute them over as wide an area as possible. The splintered components cannot all go into the same bin just in case there is a madman out there (and he would have to be mad - and very good at jigsaws) who will spend months locating all the pieces and then somehow gluing them back together again to gain access to my bank account information.

To neutralize this risk I put approximately half into the bin at home and then very cannily distribute the other half into the many street bins that line my morning walk to work. It would be a labour of Hercules to recover all the pieces and put them back together again. Sometimes I even mix the pieces of different cards just to confuse the would be identity thief even more. I like messing with their heads, you see. I like to think that the UK's asylums are all full of would-be identity crims who have all been driven mad by their attempts to reconfigure my old credit cards.

You can laugh if you want to. Call me nutty and neurotic if you have a mind. But nobody - and I mean nobody - is ever going to steal my identity by nicking one of my old credit cards.

I can guarantee it.

Touch My Body

At least once during the average working day I will heed the call of the chocolate. Usually around the mid afternoon point I will get the urge to consume a quantity of cocoa based confectionary. My hit usually takes the shape of either a Yorkie or a Dairy Milk bar. My supplier is just around the corner, barely 50 yards away, and exists in the shape of a little downtown newsagent. His proximity means I can sneak out, score some choc and be back at my office desk before anyone even knows I am gone.

I have the procedure down pat.

And by and large it works well. Except when the normal shop assistant has the afternoon off and is replaced by Jabba The Hut. I don’t know what Mr Hut’s problem is (apart from a low metabolic rate, an underactive thyroid gland and man-boobs that could envelope Katie Price) but he plainly doesn’t have the energy or the enthusiasm to “customer face” effectively.

He refuses to move out from behind the till.

And when I say “behind the till” I really mean behind the till. He wedges himself in there so tightly that the cash drawer must create an S-bend in his colon every time he rings up a sale and his back must bear the imprint of shelf after shelf of Benson & Hedges.

Worst of all is when it comes time to pay for a purchase. I select my bar of choice. I drop it onto the counter to indicate that, yes, this is the bar that I want to get orally intimate with and I hold out my loose change (being mathematically astute enough to work out in advance how much money I must hand over to him to avoid accusations of theft). At this point the normal shop assistant – if she were present – would stretch out her hand also. We would bridge the counter with our arms and meet half way above it whereupon I would place the money easily into her hand.

Not so, Mr Hut.

His hand stays more or less adhered to his gut but as a small concession forms a small palmy plateau into which I am expected to drop my hard earned wonga. I have to practically bend myself double over the counter to achieve this. Anybody passing by would think I was making a pass at the big moody brute. He then compounds this act of rudeness – for that is what it is – by scooping my change out of the till and again offering it to me in the same agoraphobic manner. I have to reach over, one leg out like a snooker player playing a bridge shot and try and retrieve my rightful change at full stretch. As I do so my hand grasps unwholesomely close to his cardiganned moobs.

It’s infuriating.

I have been tempted to throw my money at him or even to drop it onto my side of the counter... but I suspect it and he will merely sit there glowering at me until I rescind and push it closer to him.

I could go elsewhere for my chocolate treat, I suppose, but nowhere else is as close or as convenient. My afternoon sneak-outs would be in danger of being rumbled (if I haven’t already rumbled them myself with this blog of course).

And I daresay some of you might suggest I just give up the afternoon chocolate scam altogether – much the easiest solution... and better for my health and my wallet.

But really! Give up chocolate?

Are you effing crazy?

Come on, people. Serious, workable suggestions only, please.

Who Needs Easter Eggs When You Have Eye Candy...?

Apologies to my international readers (oh how I love saying that) who don't have access to UK terrestrial television but it's been a bumper weekend for both TV and the BBC. Friday saw the return of Ashes To Ashes - the third and final series - and yesterday saw the return of Doctor Who.

Suddenly weekend television is great again.

Given the media stir that both these programmes create surely TV executives everywhere must be able to interpret this as a clear vote for more quality drama on our televisions and less of the (comparatively cheaper to make which is why so much of it is made) reality TV tosh that infects UK programming schedules like slugs around a lettuce bed?

Hmm.

But back to the plot: the first instalment of Ashes To Ashes was shockingly dark. The actual crime story of the episode almost took second place to the black undercurrents of trouble occurring within the police team that Alex Drake finds herself trapped within. The apparently unassailable Gene Hunt suddenly finds himself confronted with a sly nemesis in the shape of Discipline and Complaints officer, DCI Jim Keats - a strange mix of East End wide boy and geeky university post-grad. A cocktail that is never going to appeal to the Gene Genie. And there is nothing poetic about Keats. He is wheedling, he is smarmy, he is two-faced. He is courting Alex Drake - albeit only professionally at the moment - but has already voiced his hatred of Hunt to the great man's face. There was a lovely TV moment when, caught within the glass of Hunt's closing office door, Keats's reflections passed across the image of Hunt like a glowering cloud. Matter and antimatter. Dark and light.

There are uncomfortable secrets about to be revealed. Keats promises to reveal the truth about Hunt... and by extension, the truth about Drake's predicament in this 1980's world. And I suspect it's going to be nasty.

I have to be honest and say that Keeley Hawes could be dressed as a tramp and I'd still watch her but Alex Drake is a fabulous creation and is actually a better foil for Hunt's blustering machismo than Sam Tyler ever could have been. In the end, Sam became one of the boys. This is something Alex Drake can never be. Certainly not with those amazing legs anyway...

...and talking of legs, Karen Gillan made a rather long legged splash onto our TV screens as Doctor Who's new companion. Dressed as a policewoman kissogram with legs longer than the double doors of the Tardis (but, I suspect, leading to a box far more exciting - sorry, couldn't resist; am high on chocolate this Easter morning) Amy Pond established herself within the Doctor Who world with serious redheaded aplomb. In a single episode Steven Moffat has again proved himself to me to be one of this country's finest screenwriters. This first episode crackled with tension, humour, in-jokes, Whovian references and technological cleverness. Unlike R.T. Davies who, God bless him, knows drama from a soapy / emotional standpoint, Moffat understands science and technology. He understands time as well as people. Without blowing too much of the plot for those of you who are still to see it, he establishes a truly emotive link between Amy Pond and the new doctor with ease and without it feeling too clunky or contrived. This is what I like most about Moffat's writing. Nothing is wasted. Nothing is throw-away. Everything is well used.

And what of the new Doctor?

*Nods* Yeah.

I give him - Matt Smith - a thumbs up. I'd seen a couple of interviews with him and found him curiously "not quite likeable" but having watched last night's episode I can't knock his acting skills. Tennant is a hard act to follow but Smith has done it. He has the energy of Tennant's old doctor but also brings something more to it. An Englishness. An eccentricity that appears to be genuine and is, I suspect, as much a part of Smith's true real-life make-up as that of the character he plays. By the end of the episode I had accepted him fully as the Doctor. He had stamped his Gallifreyan DNA indelibly all over the role.

So. A victory for Moffat, Smith and Gillan.

A victory in fact for the BBC.

A proud morning to be British. Happy Easter everyone.

Pent Up

That hollow slapping sound you can hear in the distance is me striking the back of my head with my open palm. If you ever wondered what the sound of one hand clapping sounded like, well, this is it.

A while ago, driven by chagrin and self-recrimination, I posted here about the possible theft of my pen drive. The pen drive that contained the most up-to-date version of my novel (not my only copy thankfully). Even in the depth of my howling despair I knew I couldn’t class it as a proper theft because I and I alone had gone and stupidly lost it. I kept my pen drive loose and cavalier in my coat pocket along with my house keys and, despite it falling out on several occasions, I didn’t see fit to heed the warning signs and store it somewhere more secure.

Eventually the inevitable happened. It simply wasn’t there one day. I searched high and low for it, far and wide, in places probable and improbable.

But it just could not be found.

On this very blog I voiced my greatest fear. That some unscrupulous plagiarizing little toe-rag would not only spend days of their life reading my novel but then would achieve the near impossible and publish it as their own. In my mind’s eye I could see royalty rights disappearing down the toilet. Interviews on Jonathan Ross being given to the faux author whilst I hung about outside BBC Television Centre, a one man picket line, waving my beautifully crafted placard in the air to nobody in particular.

Some of you mocked this. Some of you mocked me. Like anyone would bother to read it, you said. They’ll just wipe it and re-use the pen drive for their own uses, you laughed.

But still my fears plagued me. The possibility was there, you see. It could not be denied.

But in the end – at the final denouement – we were both wrong.

Because I found my pen drive the other morning in the pocket of my “other” trousers. I suspect it had been there quite a while and has been through the washing machine at least once. Certainly all the logos have been thoroughly washed off.

Amazingly the data is all intact. Persil might get your whites whiter than white but it can’t do a damned thing about all the expletives in my novel.

It’s safe. The security breach[es] have been plugged. I have learnt my lesson. I have a new pen drive now that I can hang around my neck.

Along with my shame and embarrassment. Sorry folks, panic over.

Alice In One Eye Land

I put my modelling wages to good use on Saturday and took my lovely wife to the local cinema to see Alice In Wonderland (3D).We’re both Tim Burton / Johnny Depp fans so it was a foregone conclusion that we’d both enjoy the film and it didn’t disappoint. Sumptuous, rich, absurd, kooky. Exactly what is says on the tin. Burton was smart enough not to retell the original story but to craft an addendum to it that threw in the Jabberwocky for good measure. Helena Bonham-Carter was excellent as the Red Queen – I found myself thirsting to see her far more than Depp’s Mad Hatter (superb though his performance was).

Mia Wasikowska won me over as Alice. At first I just wasn’t sure. She wasn’t quite right but then – mirroring the film’s narrative (could be deliberate I suppose – doh!) she suddenly became Alice utterly and completely and I was convinced.

She also looked rather stunning in a suit of armour. Very, very arresting in fact. Yum. Eye candy that clanks. I think I could get into metal in a big way. In fact I’ve just bought myself a blowtorch and some goggles on eBay... but enough about my nefarious metalworking...

...what was special about the evening was that this was my first experience of 3D cinema (as we’d missed the boat with Avatar). With proper 3D glasses and everything.

I have to say it brought out the big kid in me. I was more juvenile than usual (which is saying something). I couldn’t resist putting them on before the film had started and looking around in wonder, muttering loudly, “Wow! They really work!”

What really gave Karen and I the giggles though was a fellow cinema patron who squeezed past us with his partner to get to their seats before the film started. As he shuffled by we heard him bemoan the fact that he probably wouldn’t be able to see the film properly as he could only see out of one eye...

You think? I realize that 3D glasses have come a long way from the red and green lensed cardboard contraptions of the eighties but I’m pretty sure the modern ones still need the viewer to have binocular vision in order for the 3D effect to work properly. Otherwise all you’re going to see is very fuzzy moving images which induce nausea rather than wonder.

And then very bizarrely there were numerous instances in the film where various characters had eyes plucked out... Call me cruel, call me callous, but it had me giggling even more. Old Mr One-eye must have thought that Mr Burton was having a real go at him. A personal attack of visionary proportions (if only he could have seen it properly).

Poor man.

But really, what kind of idiot goes to see a 3D film with only one working eyeball?

No, Don’t Talk To Me, I Haven’t Landed Yet

We all have our foibles. Our little likes and dislikes. Our pet hates. The things that trigger uranium enriched internal atomic explosions.

Mine is not being allowed to get to my desk when I first arrive at work in the morning.

I don’t ask for much. Just that I be allowed to come in – I’ll say “good morning” if I have to – get to my desk, sit down, turn on my PC and check my emails.

That’s it.

I want to be left alone until all that is done.

I don’t want to come in and find things – other people’s post, mysterious objects that have broken off bits of machinery or the building itself, old newspapers, miscellaneous keys and a smorgasbord of post-it notes all containing complaints – scattered all over my desk and keyboard like the dead at Ypres. I hate that.

More than anything though I don’t want a protracted conversation. Once I’ve checked my emails – fine. I’ll talk the day away quite happily. But first thing in the morning, no... I need to land. Connect with the work place. Commune with my PC. Be forewarned if there is any electronic maliciousness infecting the internet airwaves.

The worst thing is when people talk – relentlessly and regardlessly – at me. Regale me with tales of their adventures the night before. And out of the corner of my eye I can see my email client loading on my PC. And – it’s terribly antisocial of me, I know (I ought to be damned grateful that anybody wants to talk to me at all, ever) – I can feel my body, my mind, my very soul yearning to turn my face away from the speaker so I can scan my In-box. And I nod and I hmm and I give non-committal replies... searching, straining to find the very first break in the conversation that presents itself so I can switch my attention back to my PC monitor.

Talk to the hand. I got mail.

I’m rude. I know I am. Rude and ungrateful. But... *shrugs* It’s just the way I am. I need that time to lower my landing gear, taxi up the runway, disembark a few troublesome passengers and perform my after flight checks. After that my inner hostess can come out, all big teeth and smiles, and I’m all set for work.

The emergency exits are here, here and here.

Sorted.

Good. We’re all clear. Now sit down, shut up and enjoy the flight.

Thank you for flying Steve Airways.

I’m A Model And I’m Looking Good

Sometimes, when money is short, you find yourself willing to undertake things – paid work – that you would not normally have ever entertained. You find a sudden flexibility in your pride and your prudishness. A willingness to consider options that normally you would have laughed at. Even scoffed at.

Today, at lunchtime, I became a male model.

In exchange for £10 I allowed a local artist to do whatever she wanted with me for a whole hour. I allowed her to pore over my blushing form, to caress my trembling curves with graphite, to render me intimately in tone and texture upon the naked page.

I wore my leopard-skin Y-fronts especially.

And I am glad to say they were not needed. No people, scrub those unwholesome visions of my rude deflowerment from your eyes. There was nothing at all seedy about the transaction.

I was not required to present my male virility nude, naked or otherwise disrobed. It was merely portrait modelling. Head and shoulders. My clavicles upwards. Not even as far down as my man-boobs (very tight and pert thank you for asking).

And to be honest it was a very pleasant hour indeed.

I shan’t name the artist as that would be unfair but she’s a local Asian lady, well into her eighties, with a passion for painting and drawing. A number of my friends model for her and for £10 an hour and a sandwich it’s the easiest work you’re ever likely to get. To be honest the homemade lunch would have been payment enough. The £10 per session is a lovely bonus and means I can buy myself the odd treat. It’s almost like getting pocket money. Add into that mix fascinating conversation, genuine kindness and a wonderful sense of humour and it’s a damn good way to spend a lunch time.

I shall be going back next week and for as many weeks as the benevolent Mrs X is willing to entertain my visage beneath her immaculately décored roof.

I’d be an idiot not to.

After all, only fools and horses...

Pay Day

Many, many years ago, back through the mists of time, pay day used to be a happy, joyous occasion. One received one’s payslip from one’s employer with a sense of joy and excited satisfaction. Sure there’d be bills to pay but the balance left over was yours and yours alone.

A liquid asset. Money left over. Spare cash.

Spare cash?

Such a term now seems utterly absurd. As fantastic a concept as immortality or power over every living thing on the planet (both items on my birthday present list if anybody is interested).

With the advent of online banking I now have the ability to move my cash around electronically the minute it wafts insignificantly into my bank account. Enter a couple of passwords, click a few links and my e-money is shunted around, divided up and attributed to various standing orders and holding accounts to cover all the household bills for the month ahead.

Click click. Slice slice. The cake gets divided up.

And approximately 10 minutes into the pay day experience it soon becomes apparent that I have no spare cash available at all. No money left over. No cake. No cake at all. Because the cake in fact has all gone.

My “liquid” assets are as dry as a rattlesnake’s arse in the Gobi desert.

I quite literally do not ever see a single penny of my hard earned wages. They pass through my e-fingers without ever making an impression.

And so it makes me wonder why the Bank of England doesn’t just save itself some money (ha!) and stop printing it altogether; just have records of money electronically on a database somewhere (to be left on a train for someone to nick – now that would be a great heist). And instead of my employer paying me directly it can just send my wages – pro rata – straight to my various creditors via the internet. Just cut me out of the loop altogether. I am merely the middle man after all. I am no longer working for me; I am working for Tesco, for my mortgage lender, for Severn Trent, for Eon, for the local authority and for the Asian guy down the road in whose corner shop I buy chocolate buttons every Saturday afternoon as a treat for my family (may have to make do with dry biscuits this week, kids).

Pay day?

Ha! For whom exactly?

Certainly not for me.

Ello Darlin’, Fancy A Portion?

I used to have a quick scout around town in my lunchbreak. Check out a few shops. See what was new on the book / DVD scene. It was an unwise pastime that inevitably led to me spending money that I didn’t have. So I knocked it on the head and started going home instead. Half an hour on my own, in the comfort of my own home, watching a bit of telly and drinking tea made from quality teabags instead of the weak, blue stripe shite that gets served up at work.

It’s great. A little island of sanity in the middle of the working day.

My journey home each day takes me past a chippy. I won’t name it except to say it’s on Clemens Street (for those of you that know Leamington) and each time I go by I can guarantee that the guy behind the counter will inevitably be hunched over it, resting on his elbows, straining his neck to watch all the local ladies walking by outside. The place is always empty which is just as well really as he leans so far over the counter his gonads must surely be dipping themselves into the deep fat fryer – so I can only assume that it isn’t actually on.

Should he spy a scantily clad woman of the opposite sex sashaying by he will whistle. Loudly and constantly from inside the shop. An endless, tuneless fluting irritant of sound that neither functions as a catcall or a wolf whistle. And given the reflections on the glass, nobody can really pinpoint where exactly the whistle is coming from (unless, like me, you’re checking the price of cod and chips on the menu pinned to the window and actually see his overly fleshy lips moving). It is a disembodied sound that is plainly laddish and sexist and a bit “porkpie and whippet” trad but the ladies targeted by it can’t see the little berk to give him the inevitable finger.

I’ve worked out – and this shows how frequently he does this – that he favours blondes in tight fitting tops that accentuate “pokie action”, short skirts accompanied by knee-length boots and overly made-up girls the wrong side of the jail-bait divide. He’s plainly gagging for any action he can get and wants to sew his wild roe upstream of as many rivers as he can speedily navigate.

I’ve given him a few “I can’t believe you’ve done that” stares as I’ve walked by but he’s merely blanked me in favour of the goth brunette jiggling on the other side of the road. Plainly the man has no shame.

And plainly no girlfriend (or at least one would hope).

And definitely, definitely no customers.

And that isn’t going to change because, I don’t know about you, but I for one would not want to eat any chips that have been fried in gonad flavoured oil.

I want my fish to taste of the sea... not, you know, semen.

Sorry. But given the nature of this post there was only one way it could have reached its climax.

Anyone else for a portion? ;-)

The Mansion House Of My Childhood

It’s a little known fact that as a child I unknowingly and in all ignorance hobnobbed with the nobility of Leamington Spa.

The lady fourth from left in the photo (click to enlarge) is someone I had always known simply as my Auntie Mary. Her mother is the austere looking lady on the far right. The photo was taken on 14th May 1948, at the opening of a piece of land that had been reopened for the benefit of the public after the war, a piece of land known as The Dell - a public garden that is still there for those of you who have a mind to visit Leamington Spa. Apparently my Auntie Mary’s father had died a couple of days before this photo was taken hence all the black apparel.

My connection with Mary Moore (wife of one of Leamington’s Mayors and owner of Moore’s Sweet Shop famed for its Spa water toffee) is via my grandfather’s sister, Maud Olorenshaw. Maud started off as a maidservant of Mary Moore at her residence, Comber House (apologies for not having any photos of the house).

Comber House is still there and lies on the corner of Union Road and Warwick Place and is now, regrettably, a B&B. I daresay it has been gutted, renovated, rearranged, liposuctioned, nipped & tucked to the point where its original grandeur has been lost. Its original wood panelling ripped out in favour of en suite bathrooms and laundry lifts.

But back when I was a kid the whole house was pretty much as it had been in the 1930’s: a ballroom (which we used as the dining room), wine cellar, at least 6 bedrooms, servant’s quarters in the attic and an amazing stained glass atrium above the main staircase. We’d visit on a number of occasions throughout the year and as a boy I never guessed that my Auntie Maud had started out her life at Comber House as Mary’s maidservant.

At some point way before my birth they’d obviously become friends. Boon companions. They’d formed a crotchety partnership that I, as a child, never questioned or thought odd. They were rarely crotchety with us but would often snipe at each other. All vestiges of Mistress and servant had gone. Instead they had developed “a friendship of equals” where each considered herself the more equal of the two. Kind of like Hinge and Brackett but without the piano.

Maud, although a mere slip of a girl when she had started her working life had become rotund and wheezy by the time I was running around but Mary, despite being the older of the two, still resembled the young woman you see in the photo above. She had deportment in spades. She was always immaculately turned out, always regal and always distantly kind but would occasionally ruffle the calm of a room with a rather wicked joke – she had a very sharp sense of humour. She was a great lady and it is to my regret I didn’t learn more about her until after her death 20 or so years ago when, speed walking as usual (despite being in her eighties) she walked out into the path of a fast moving car.

The house – Comber – was a great feature of my childhood. On our days there my sisters and I would sit impatiently in the dining room, our legs swinging beneath the huge wooden table, waiting for the words that would release us from the boring adult chatter.

“Why don’t you children go and have a wander...?”

We’d be off like a shot. Huge old houses and children go together like lions, witches and wardrobes. Given the sheer amount of loot in every room I’m always amazed that we weren’t held more in check. Auntie Mary would normally stipulate that we had to be careful in her drawing room but other than that we had the freedom of the house. Amazingly a natural reverence kept our grubby little hands away from all the delicate treasures. We’d look but never touch. The house, being old and smelling of its age, was slightly creepy and part of our desire to roam so wide was that childhood need to confront and enjoy this slight feeling of fear. We’d confront it by daring ourselves to go up to the attic. This small box room was the scariest room in the house – just a weird atmosphere – but the cats seemed to like it and we’d always find Mary and Maud’s cats curled up on the windowsill regarding our hullabaloo with seething objection in their eyes.

The bedrooms formed the hub around a vast landing and we’d go into each room in turn and marvel at how untouched everything looked. Majestic beds and décor that looked like it had been time-capsuled from a pre-war age. And all so spotlessly clean. They must have employed a cleaner – there is no way my Auntie Maud could have (or would have) dusted and hoovered all those rooms.

The only room we wouldn’t go into would be the cellar. That was genuinely scary. In fact I only went into it once – with my grandfather – and shot straight out of it again as soon as I could. It smelt of damp and of earth. Not perfumes that appeal to a child’s sensitive nose.

The afternoons were spent in the huge garden, running off the vast Sunday lunch we’d just eaten and again keeping us out of the hair of the grown-ups. The focal point of the garden for us kids was a large stone bird bath in the shape of a frog holding a bowl. I think we christened it rather unimaginatively Kermit and we’d always go and say hello to it whenever we visited.

Happy days.

Sadly after Mary died (some years after the death of my Auntie Maud) the house passed to her son and he in turn sold off a huge chunk of the land to local developers (a large rudely modern townhouse now stands in place of the stone frog) and then eventually, some years later, sold off the house itself. It is now, as I said, a B&B and I doubt it resembles the house of my memories at all. I am occasionally tempted to hire a room for the night just to see inside it... just to see, if the light is right and the planets properly aligned, myself as a small boy creeping up to the attic with my sister’s in tow, or hovering at the top of the cellar steps, not quite daring myself to venture down into the darkness.

Unlike the other houses that I have loved and lost, I never dream about Comber House. But it is a house that, nevertheless, electrifies me with a lot of happy memories whenever I think of it.

Don’t Be A Hero, Just Put The Money In The Bag

I’m considering a bank heist.

No, seriously.

Nothing too big. Don’t want things going moody on me and being put away for a long stretch. Just something small and tasty. An easy job.

And technically it ain’t robbery at all ‘cos it’s my effing money.

Let me explain. I have an account with the NS&I. Nothing too big. Nothing that requires an off-shore tax haven. I’ve barely used the damn thing. In fact, there’s so little in there I’m quite happy to share the amount with you. £159.94p. Most of that has come from collecting 1p, 2p and 5p coins in a jar and occasionally paying them in. It’s kind of been a rainy day fund but there’s never been enough in there to mop up a puddle let alone a rainy day.

After Christmas, having dipped into my overdraft yet again I decided I needed to consolidate my modest estate instead of having bits of tin floating about all over the place. Why not just put all my gelt into one place, I thought to myself. Let’s close the NS&I account and pay the balance into my bank account. It’ll get me out of the red and do some use for once. Finally there was a puddle it could mop up.

Do you think I can get my measly £159.94p out of the NS&I?

Apparently, I can’t just withdraw it over the counter. It’s not that kind of account. I have to keep £100 in there at all times. If I want to withdraw it all I need to close the account.

Fine. I’ll close the account. Hence I was given a load of forms to fill in and send off.

I fill them in and send them off. I wait 2 weeks. The form is returned to me. A note has been pencilled on it. “No bank book enclosed”. They want my bank book sent with the form. Fine. Except I don’t have one. I’ve moved house a couple of times since I opened the account and the bank book could be anywhere though is most likely propping up a flyover by now if you get my meaning. Brown bread, right? I ring them up. Explain this. Fine, they say. Just write “bank book lost” on the form. I do so and send it off again.

I wait 2 weeks. I then have more forms sent back to me in the post complete with my original form. Apparently the bank account details I supplied don’t match the ones they have on record for me. Can I fill in another form detailing the (to them) new bank account details? I duly do so. I send NS&I the same bank details that were on the original form except now they are written on the “change of bank details” form. I send all the forms off again.

4 weeks later I am still waiting. I check my bank account online. £159.94 has not been paid in. By this time I have hauled myself out of the red under my own steam but that is not the point. I want my money. I check my NS&I account online. I have no account it says. Great, I think. They’ve closed my account but have lost my money.

I ring them up. I explain all of this to the nice man on the phone. He checks. Oh, he says. We didn’t receive the change of bank details form. I’ll send another one out to you in the post. There is a bloodstain on the wall from where I’ve been banging my head.

So you see, I’ve tried all the legal routes. All the kosher and the straight routes. And they ain’t working for me.

So there is no alternative. I need a shooter. Nothing fancy. No automatic gubbins – as the Krays will tell you, they tend to jam. A nice Webley will do fine. And I need a driver. Someone who can hold their nerve and wait for the signal. Someone who’ll wait for me to vault the counter John Dillinger style and grab what I’m owed. Wait for me to walk out sharpish and get in the back. And then pull away smooth and inconspicuous like. Job’s a good ‘un.

Anyone interested?

Applications to the usual address.

P.S. Thank you to Jake Arnott for all the lingo.

Bum Explosion

+++ WARNING +++ GRAPHIC PARENTING POST +++

Tom is usually very ambivalent about having his nappy changed. He is at that age where he assuming ownership rights over his nappy and its contents. His objections to a “bum change” (as it is termed) are usually expressed in the single assertion: “Mine!” A gentle tussle will then ensue as the old nappy is wrested away from his nether regions and a fresh one applied.

This morning, however, he marched into the bedroom at “getting up time” (can’t fault him on that) and insisted: “Poo. Poo.” This, for those of you who don’t speak Toddler, means “There is a horrible poo clinging to my buttocks like a limpet, please remove it forthwith.”

The horrible brown stain on his romper suit warned us that all was not right in the nappy universe and we had better go to “condition red” immediately. Envisioning a nappy leakage of Chernobyl proportions I headed for the nappy supplies – clean nappy, nappy sacks, baby wipes, etc – conveniently stored in the boy’s bedroom only to find the entire room was covered in a blanket of snow.

Well. Not snow exactly. But the contents of two packets of baby wipes. They were everywhere. Moist, soft and ready to use. All four hundred of them. We’re guessing that Tom, feeling distinctly uncomfortable in his southern hemisphere, had decided to try a bit of self help and had possibly tried to clean his own bum through his romper suit and his jim-jams. It was always going to be Mission Impossible, bless him.

So grabbing a few wipes from the drifts around me I set about peeling Tom out of his clothes. It wasn’t pretty. In fact I probably reacted like a battlefield doctor when faced with something extraordinarily horrific. The humble instruments I had to hand were just not going to do the job.

There was only one thing for it. An emergency splish-splash-splosh (or “bath” as it is known in common parlance).

The boy was summarily dunked and sluiced. The unclean bandages of his jim-jams flung into the washing machine. The gravy-filled nappy bagged up and dropped into the bin destined for the nearest landfill.

All this took merely ten minutes. A fact which, quite frankly, amazes me. When faced with bad situations, I guess the mind goes into overdrive. Time seems to slow down. The body exhibits a dexterity that has the exactness of clockwork. The wife and I work together like the parts of a well oiled AK-47. No jamming, even in hot conditions.

Before Tom knew it he was clean, presentable, dressed and having a long toke on a tumbler of milk. He looked slightly dazed. Shocked even.

I’m glad to say he had fully recovered within 15 minutes. The paras could stand down.

I, on the other hand, have gone into delayed shock. Battle fatigue. Post traumatic stress disorder.

It’s the only reason I can come up with to explain why I just can’t face eating chocolate this morning.

Who’s Got My Spider?

When I was 6 or 7 – no older as my youngest sister hadn’t yet been born – my grandparents took me and my other sister to Twycross Zoo. My memories of the day are like the recollection of a dream: both vivid and yet fragmented and incomplete.

I know that it was a blazingly hot summer’s day. The kind we don’t seem to get anymore when you can feel the heat bouncing up from the grass. I know my mother had dressed me in the ubiquitous seventies combination of open toed sandals and really short shorts. Both were brown and I daresay I’d been put into an orange t-shirt as well. Coupled with my National Health spectacles I must have looked like a street urchin from one of Gene Hunt’s nightmares.

I have vague recollections of watching the chimp’s tea party – this was back in the days when such things were accepted as normal and not at all cruel or detrimental to the mental health of the animals. I remember the chimpanzees as being very smelly, very noisy and very messy. My recollections of the day start to run dry from this point onwards. I don’t remember seeing any of the other animals, or the car journey there and back and though the faces of my grandparents are strongly imprinted in my mind I can’t quite picture them on this day though they were undoubtedly there. It’s like they’ve been blurred out, pixelated.

The one overriding memory of this day that I do have is of being allowed to buy something from the zoo gift shop. I went for a “huge” (probably only a foot long) rubber spider. It had long dangly legs that were covered with little rubber stipules giving it a hairy appearance. And it was on a piece of elastic which meant it could be bounced like a demonic yo-yo.

I loved that spider.

Inevitably, like all favourite toys, it was unwisely taken into school. It caused a great stir. I can remember causally getting it out of my satchel to show my best friend at the time (John McCrae – hello if you’re reading this) and hearing a glass shattering screech from somewhere to my left. Mrs Reeves, one of the hardest teachers in the school, was stood pole-axed, looking at me. Or rather looking at the spider. Thankfully she realized I wasn’t deliberately trying to give her a heart attack and laughed it off in that way that teachers have that is neither laughing nor quite forgiving you even though you haven’t exactly done anything wrong.

The spider accompanied me everywhere for weeks. Either in my satchel or stuffed up – a wriggly, brown rubber ball – in the pocket of my parker. It naturally found its way into break time games. The favourite of these was John and I using it as some kind of ball or bizarre projectile. Throwing it to each other or, even more stupid given its eventual fate, using the elastic to swirl it around at high velocity and then releasing it upwards into the air.

It was John who in the end misjudged the release. My last memory of my spider is seeing it sailing over the school yard wall into the back garden of one of the gloomy houses that backed onto the school perimeter. It fell through the air, legs fluttering behind its body like a black comet, and made an insignificant crater somewhere amongst the scary shrubbery of the forbidden garden.

I peered through the gate many times but could never see it. It was gone forever and the mindset of a child seems to skip over any possibility of asking a grown-up to help or even just knocking on the door of the house to see if the owner would hand it over. In all honesty it never crossed my mind. I feared we’d get into trouble for throwing it over the wall in the first place (the owners of the nearby houses were always moaning about footballs ending up on their property) and I couldn’t see Mrs Reeves being very sympathetic.

It took me a long while in kid’s terms to forgive John. At least a week.

The school is now long gone. It was converted years ago into some sort of horrible hi-tech media training centre and I daresay the surrounding houses have been renovated and new owners come and gone. But every time I walk by I always wonder what happened to my spider. Was it callously binned or did it find itself another appreciative owner? Sadly I don’t think they make toys like that anymore. Certainly I’ve never come across any and I do look occasionally.

I do think that if I’ve kept hold of that spider my subsequent education would have taken me on a completely different career path - botanical scientist or wildlife conservationist. Instead, thanks to one erroneous twang of the elastic, here I am: up to my spiderless arms in alarms, toilets and maintenance.

Oh what a tangled web we weave, eh?

Still Think I’m A Sex God?

Now I’m well aware of the high esteem in which most of you hold me. Well aware that sexually most of you have placed me on a pedestal so high I can look down and see where the Grecian 2000 has slightly dried out Brad Pitt’s scalp. And I’m flattered. I really am. It’s nice to be appreciated. Nice to be lauded. Nice to have to beat off all you devoted fans with a shitty stick each time I leave the house to go to work or carry out a simple errand.

But part of my charm is honesty. Hence I feel that I cannot lie to you any longer.

You see, I too have imperfections. Blemishes. Physical flaws that, whilst they don’t altogether mar my sex god-hood, they do at least render me as mortal as the rest of you ungodly people.

Take for instance my thumbs. They are as opposable as any minor deity could wish. Long and slender. I’m able to grip all manner of objects and implements (steady ladies). But the very tips of them are defaced with cuts and nicks. This condition seems to worsen when the weather turns colder. It’s like the skin splits and before I know it I have a tiny but deep cut that thrusts itself well under my nail. It hurts like hell and getting my hands wet (steady again ladies) only makes it worse. These cuts take an age to heal and the slightest pressure opens them up again. Whilst infected with these unwanted incisions I have to wear marigolds to do the washing up.

Yes, ladies, gentlemen. I do the washing up. Every day. Please try and swoon yourselves onto some soft furnishings.

And then there is... and it pains me to say this... my ugly toenail.

Just as Achilles had his weak ankles I have my beauty slightly lessened by a deformed toenail. It has got steadily worse over the last year. Discoloured. Rucked up. Folded under almost upon itself. Occasionally it seems to bleed. Regularly it plagues my walking hours with a quiet heat that by the end of the day has built up into noticeable pain. My doctor, you will recall, has already sent off a sample to the lab to be tested for fungal infection (after she had swooned into her NHS soft furnishings at the sight of my naked and lithely posable foot).The results, naturally, were negative. I mean, as if my body could produce something as commonly unwholesome as fungus!

How I laughed.

But the toenail is – and I know you will all gasp as one when I say this (and not for the first time, eh ladies?) – unsightly.

So there you have it. Even someone as perfect as myself has body issues. Little segments of me that I feel are less than perfect. That don’t quite match up with the quality and excellence of the rest of me.

I hope that in bearing my beauteous soul here today I have given some of you ordinary folk comfort. The sense that, for all you may be craning your necks to look up at me, I in turn am able to bend down and give you an understanding smile.

Because I do understand. Truly I do.

*Sigh* What burdens you all bear.

Er. We. What burdens we all bear.

Ahem.

Stalling

The novel is now in its third incarnation. It’s been tweaked, pummelled and teased. I’ve read it through so many times I can no longer hear the rhythm of the language. I can’t tell if it jars or if it flows. The first five chapters have been re-arranged. Vast tracts of text have been cut out like malignant tumours and dumped into metaphorical specimen jars. I’d like to take the analogy even further and say it’s been rebuilt like Steve Austin. The world’s first bionic novel. But to be honest I haven’t got 6 million dollars to throw at it.

The point is though it is now ready to be placed into a Moses basket (mixing my metaphors here like the crazy dude I am) and sent off downstream to prospective agents, one of whom may favour it and me by clasping it to his/her bosom and taking it on to the promised land.

All I need to do is write the covering letter, the synopsis and some sort of CV / About Me document. And I’ve written versions of all three of these. They just need finishing. Salient information adding. Tidying up. The work of a single afternoon.

All I need to do is put my mind to it.

And yet my mind insists on putting itself elsewhere; on finding a hundred and one other, less urgent things to do.

I wonder why?

Is it fear of (re)entering the rejection game? My natural loathing of all kinds of admin? Or just plain laziness?

I suspect it is all three. But it occurred to me today that if I am not careful I will spend the same amount of time just physically getting the novel sent off to an agent as it took to write the ruddy thing in the first place.

This blog post is meant to be a boot up the backside to myself – but do feel free to add your toes behind it.

Quit stalling, man! Get it sent off. Faint heart never won fair maiden and all that.

Besides which I have ordered a few reference books ready for my next novel. Various guides to sign language and deaf culture... which may possibly give you a small clue as to some of the subject matter.

It’s time to draw a line under the old and commence with the new.

What's the sign for "stop prevaricating and get on with it"?

Give me a week or two and I should be able to tell you.