they fuck each other up, your Mum and Dad

Everyone thinks their parents are strange.  Or at the very least endearingly kooky in some way.  Mine are plainly odd, first and foremost, it appears to me, in their relationship itself.

You should never presume or make judgements about any relationship from the outside.  You don’t have all the information, the chances are that you’re wrong and you probably don’t really care all that much anyway.  Which is why it's fun and reckless to make the prejudgements.  But with your parents, if they’ve always been together and, just there, a constant part of your life for as long as you can remember, you feel this gives you a little more insight. Reasonable enough.

My folks rarely demonstrate any outward sign of affection towards each other.  Not necessarily remarkable because plenty of couples of a certain age don’t.  My Dad is fundamentally quite lazy and self-serving around the house.  By the same token Mum does do everything but gives the impression of enjoying her martyrdom.  It’s normal, natural.  She wouldn’t know what to do with herself if she didn’t feel aggrieved or wronged.  I’m constantly paranoid about not offering the correct level of gratitude.

It’s a bit like getting used to being miserable, playing sad music, watching melancholic films, absorbing yourself into that perpetuating cycle: easier than trying to wrench yourself out, force change.  I’m probably just as much a victim of that.

Yet they sit there in this probably dysfunctional empty shell marriage for years: passive, unmoving, equally lazy in their own ways, equally disinclined to change.

Before I left home for university, when Mum was first around the menopausal stage, I’d sometimes get back from college to find her in tears about being unappreciated, taken for granted.  It wasn’t comfortable.  What could I say?  Yes, you’re being a mug?  So, are you happy?  What’s keeping you here?

The most recent gnarly family trauma is Dad’s ignorance of his eldest Grandson, a three year old boy with plenty of vim and vigour, energy and bustle, prone to the occasional temper tantrum.  I've little experience with kids but he’s three years old, that’s what they do, right?  Dad doesn’t engage or play when he’s in his delightful good moods, to any degree, but freely dishes out advice when he misbehaves; stares daggers at him for disrupting meals.  This disappoints everyone.

Apparently he was the same with us when my brother and I were that age, and didn’t have a father-son relationship which was that healthy itself.  But that’s no excuse.  Play is part intuition, part emulation.  To me, at least.  Dad simply doesn’t try, which upsets my brother and his wife.

Today he was out of the house and Mum walked into Dad's office room, where I happened to be working.  She told me how she’d explained to him that he should try to get engaged more, that it does upset people and is an issue.  He was subsequently in a sulky mood but would be better after he’d done some exercise.  This was the catalyst for her to reel off a list of her biggest gripes with him and gradually descend into an emotional whine about their relationship.

“You know, I asked him if he still loved me recently,” she said.  My stomach tightened as she spoke, I didn’t like where this was going.  I'd been home for Christmas too long now.  I didn’t have any answers for her.  I glanced between her and a hole punch while a dated screensaver played.

“He paused," Mum continued.  "properly thought about it.  Then, after a second, do you know what he said?”

“No.”

“ ‘I’m very fond of you’."

I sighed, shook my head.  Thought about hugging her but selfishly discounted the idea in fear of making everything more emotional.

"You know!” she said, for something else to say.

I shook my head and sighed again.  I didn’t know.  Still don’t.  Probably never will.

Avatar ponderings

James Cameron’s latest blockbuster film, Avatar has got many tongues furiously wagging, and rightly so.  From the reviews I’ve read and head, most seem to be agreed that for all the flaws of character, plot, script and trying to do a bit too much, it is rollickingly good fun.

I’d agree too.  In fact, I’d likely forgive the accused flaws.  Show me a massive blockbuster film which sets out to cater to the lowest common denominator audience, and which has well rounded characters, an innovative and unique plot, and a script which doesn’t sound cartoony.  There probably are some, but I can’t call them to mind easily.

What I’ve been surprised about the reviews I’ve seen and read, is their neglect of “difficult” issues which the film appeared to more than touch on. 

These were namely terrorism and religion, or faith.  It appeared more that terrorism was more pronounced than in plot predecessors, your Bravehearts and Star Wars.  One major plot point revolves around a scene where vivid 9/11 imagery was unmistakeable.  The religious view meanwhile, of the native alien beings, the view that their god is in and of all living things, that energy is borrowed.  Is this not a principle tenet of the Islamic faith?  That the sacred is in and of everything that exists around us?  Forgive me if I am wildly wrong; I’m too lazy to look it up and qualify.

And the beliefs and the terrorist actions are deliberately exchanged, opposed.

“Nyerr,” some of the critics have sniffed, because it is their job to: “if it costs that much money, it SHOULD look that good.  It was ok, I didn’t hate it.”  Their desperation to appear unaffected, to immediately focus on the cash, was sickening.

This was an incredible film.  Too long, definitely.  Rather baggy, sure.  Plot, character, script points I’m willing to overlook them all.  But is there a fear, or basic reticence to try and read such a mainstream film on any other level which isn’t mainstream.  Viewpoints which challenge; the terrorism victims having the extremist religious beliefs – albeit green and arguably fey ones.  The opposing insensitive greedy battering ram of atheism.

Avatar has plenty to admire from any perspective; it’s a long, mostly gripping ride through a familiar storyline we’ve been told before and will be told again.  But most stories follow a basic structure.  The way this has done (and I’ve barely touched on staggering effects which made me wonder about David Attenborough’s appreciation); plus just a subtle sprinkle of mind fodder, for me makes it outstanding.

needing to be a bit of a cock

Yesterday I think I might’ve been lobbed another bone in the similar sort of way as a couple of Fridays ago.

Watching Frank Skinner’s interview with Russell Brand, they discussed the need to actually act like a bit of a cock in order to be promiscuous, get laid, have one night stands.

I’m not saying I can’t act like a bit of a cock, I’m sure I’m more than capable of that.  But it is this fronty salesy bravado I struggle with, the pure belief and directness.

A few industry colleagues and by now borderline real proper friends, a busy Chrismassy pubby pub bang in the centre of Soho, several ales.  We get chatting to a trio of Americans over visiting for a family wedding, the youngest at 24, eldest 34, one pretty much in the middle between.  Kooky and fun the youngest is particularly cute, not dumb, but very Americaayn: little sense of irony, acutely self aware, constantly self fluffing.

After several hours drinking, we fail in finding a decent Soho eatery and wind up in a place with a strange penchant for 24 hour breakfast dishes.  It's approaching midnight and they want burgers.  Their high maintenance faces shrivel in barely concealed disappointment.  But we go in anyway, for want of a better option, and they troop to the Ladies en masse.  A mate and I sit at a table, half wondering if they'll seek another exit and flee.  They don't, a makeup touchup later, they're back with us and begin inspecting an unimpressive menu.

Only on realising the time, and that I need to move sharply if I'm to make it back to Waterloo for the last train, do I realise I've possibly missed another opportunity.  The final setting was wrong, cramped around a table, eating.  I didn’t even say goodbye to them properly, squashing a note into my friend’s hand as I left, saying goodbye, lovely to meet you, and leaving.

Back in the pub, where we’d spent most of the evening, much time chatting one-to-one with the cute, highly made-up Americaayn, who I wouldn’t have cared THAT much about being an idiot in front of.  If I’d made my affection more obvious, firmly trodden that difficult line between sleaze, creep, being a bit of a cock, and appreciable directness; deliberate and transparent interest.  Maybe then...   Probably not, but maybe..

It’s all too common, shoved in an unpredictable, one-off fluid scenario.  You can’t plan or consider a strategy in the same way that you can if you work in an office with someone, or regularly see them as part of some group or social gathering.  It has to be a spontaneous and concerted calculation of the moment, ridded of those neuroses and crippling shackles.

I tell myself this now of course.  It never occurs to me at the time, or perhaps it does and I just bottle it, fearing the humiliation and looking like a bit of a cock.

"no, i have one back in Thailand"

"Is it your first?" I innocently asked the asian partner of a local at our brief festive gathering yesterday afternoon. 

They had arrived together with an older woman and I couldn't immediately detect which pair were the couple.  It appeared the older lady was the man's mother.  He was an entirely bald thirty-something, his mother apparently much older than she appeared.  At a stretch, or a quick glance at their backs, you could even take them for a couple.  They had apparently lived in the street for many years, as the twenty or thirty attendees of our street-only invited gathering had.  It being a London suburb, although reasonably affluent, few people seemed to know any others.  Perhaps excepting their closest neighbours. 

So the bald thirty-something man, it turned out, was the partner to this pregnant asian lady, probably in her early thirties.  We were introduced to her using her unlikely English name, and I phased out amidst the politeness of the scenario, wondering. 

Even if you couldn't have too much of a developed communication, it saddened me to sense that I was beginning to empathise with the not unattractive appeal.  It's so preposterously easy there, I remembered, on the southern Islands and further east into Vietnam they can almost literally throw themselves at you as you walk down the touristy streets.  That doesn't happen so much in London.  Not in my experience anyway.  But it becomes a pain over there, an irritant as you try to keep walking.  You just need to be white, Western.  They're not fussy. 

It's getting increasingly common too.  Last Christmas at home, in our comparatively isolated village there was a local with a young eastern girl who sat quietly in the corner, saying nothing to nobody and being roundly ignored by her presumably newish partner.

"Is it your first?" I asked yesterday, when we turned to her bump.
"No, she said," in perfectly good English, "I have one back in Thailand, but.." and she trailed off.
I felt bad for asking, insensitive.

It jabbed hard, the extreme displacement they must suffer, the sacrifices they make - as much as they are willing to endure it in the hope of a better life.  Acclimatising to a place and culture so far removed as to be practically impossible to call "home", must be utterly bewildering.  The promise and hope invested in such a move: are they really worth it in the long term?  Is the poverty that unbearable, or the allure of the west that great? 

And is it cruel to facilitate that transfer, to encourage it.  Or is it acceptable now?  Should we get over ourselves and be more liberal about it now?  Or is it fundamentally a bit wrong and uncomfortable?  Especially if there's a significant age discrepancy.

"Sounds complicated!" a neighbour chirped into the half second of silence.
It's certainly that.

a bump

Following another Saturday afternoon spanking, although my personal performance hadn’t been as abject as the week previous, we visited a local pub screening the Tottenham game.  Here we witnessed another limp, dismal performance not unlike our own, where our heady top four aspirations were dealt another blow by defeat from the league’s bottom side.

With a weary feeling of all round Saturday defeat I embarked on the short cycle back. There’s a large, traffic light directed crossroads at one point, just before the river.  I needed a right turn, across traffic, as opposed to the easy left.  This evening, with my cycle lights flashing, the traffic lights changed and I cruised through without needing to stop.  Traffic queues left and right halted.  Opposite were three cars wanting to turn left into the same road.  One turned, I thought I could nip quickly before the next and up onto the cycle path.  Surely.  The following car would slow to let me, I only needed a small gap, I’d indicated my intent and was moving assertively across its path.  Surely, it had seen me, surely it would slow.  Crump, went the bumper against my bicycle frame, then my calf.  Was this it?  I thought, at that split second, judging the pace that the opposing vehicle’s bumper had been travelling.  Was this the moment I would be splayed across asphalt?  The time when I’d regret never wearing a helmet?  But I wasn’t going flying.  The car hadn’t been travelling that fast.  It had only just started.  My cycle had taken the impact and was toppling under me.  I let it go and hurdled the falling frame.  No tyres screeching, no horns.  Just that crump.  It was all peculiarly sedate.  I picked it up quickly and lifted it to the safety of the pavement.  The offending car hadn’t moved.  I’d given it a thumbs up and waved it on, over my shoulder, not looking at its occupants for fear of confrontation.  I didn’t want confrontation.  I was just grateful, relieved, slightly confused.  A kindly looking grey haired man leaned out the passenger window.  I unpopped an earphone from my blithely playing music.  “Are you alright?” he asked.  Yes, I’m fine, I replied.  “You’re sure?”  Yes, I replied, go.  Still no horns or impatience from the car behind him.  He went.  I felt the eyeballs of the waiting traffic in the adjacent queue, but never looked.  My left pedal was a little crooked, my right calf tingled bearably.  I cycled on, wondering if I should've been angry rather than quite so numb, yet not knowing how responsible or to blame I was.  I imagined my relief should be combined with a deep gratitude to something or someone.  Who knows what could’ve.. 

Under thirty seconds was all it had taken.

fraternal affluence

About 4pm yesterday I received an unmarked call.  This often means it’s my brother as he withholds his mobile number when calling, but it being in office hours I gave a formal answer anyway.  “Do you have any plans tonight?” he asked.  I told him no, not minding that I was clearly playing second fiddle to a better option.  “Well I’ve got two press tickets to go to the theatre in town if you fancy it?”  The line was crackly as he was in an early learning centre of some kind with his son, but we stumbled through it and arranged to meet an hour before the show for dinner.

My brother has grown into London and its affluence much easier than I, propelled by professional and domestic success through well defined focus, dedication and probably more hard work.  Seldom do I eat out, especially in midrange yet still classy West End restaurants, but my brother was almost at pains to stake his ease in such environments. 

More than simply at ease: he was languid and sprawling in his manner and communication to waitresses – wanting to appear in consummate control, needing to seem to his incidental brother that this was his natural habitat, his domain.  He often lunches long with high profile figures, expensing flamboyant meals and wine.  I didn’t understand the quickly reducing liquid level of his wine glass when he didn’t appear to ever sip.  It was surreptitious, neat and nipped; and I was behind.  He dictated our pace, his ever paranoid eyes clockwatching for fear of being late back to the theatre, but not to excess.

When we had met at the theatre, he had tried to collect his special tickets but been told that the relevant desk wasn’t open yet.  We had bumped into his colleague, a pretty small blonde televisual woman and her husband.  My brother’s frighteningly direct manner has often appeared excruciatingly over sincere to me, affected somehow, and when he trowels on charm it’s impossible not to interpret the distortion to smarm.  I wonder if this is to do with the longevity of my interpretation though.  And whether it’s not entirely accurate, because people do seem to react well to him and this manner - perhaps as it’s an accepted part of him and how he conducts himself.  Maybe the smarm effect on people isn’t as strong as it appears to me.

Dinner was fine and we trotted through amiably enough, speaking of our work – I think he’s surprised at how long I’ve managed to keep this going, how it isn’t yet an abject failure – and also briefly of family.  He’s always keen to impart our parents’ latest views of me and how they spoke to him last in a telephone call.  I never reciprocate this because it never seems apparent to me, my parents and I don’t speak so much of him.  However, it’s possible I’m considered much differently, the sensitive distant loner son who nobody knows that well.  Perhaps.  Each interpretation of my current state via a fifteen minute telephone conversation could be afforded more scrutiny than I presume.

At the end of the meal I forced my own debit card onto the little plate with his, despite his protestations that he'd pay, as he often does, knowing his obviously superior solvency.  Sometimes it's nice knowing that nobody knows how I'm doing, what I'm earning.  Other times it can lead to faint, possibly even unintended patronising.  We left the bright restaurant, bidding goodbye to the cute young maitre'd - who my brother had pegged as an out of work actress, then walked back down the street to the theatre, coincidentally collecting his colleague and her husband en route.

After the show, my brother bumped into several people he knows – more colleagues and old college friends.  Towards them he exudes smarm, to me, perhaps charm to others, and is well received.  I stood in the foyet waiting, while his voice rippled up the stairs below.  His dominating voice has always had the power to ripple penetratingly within buildings.  It’s not deep and booming, masterful or commanding.  Simply loud, posh, erudite and confident.  Wodehousian.  Much about him is.

a crap pub sandwich

A professionally challenging week ended last Friday with another personal challenge, as if designed by God to halt my tedious moaning. 

Sometimes this happens and it’s like somebody is actually saying, “there you go then, twat.  Cease your boring whining and make something of this.”  And then I predictably falter.  Today, having not eaten a proper meal for a couple of days and only skimped on rubbish food between times, I decided to treat myself to a late pub lunch.  My stomach has been doing that gripey, empty, complaining thing and I wanted to sate it with hearty gastro food. 

Studying the menu at the bar, I baulked at the prices and merely opted for a steak sandwich and chips.  It took a long time to arrive, and as the sheepish barman made a sharp exit, what was presented to me explained why.  The steak had been forgotten.  It lay on a bed of passable salad, on top of a pathetically thin slither of dry white bread.  Soggy brown chips underneath.  It wasn't a triumph.  You often don’t get best cuts when served alone.  Perhaps it’s widely known that sad single folk lack the will to complain, unbacked up like me.  In the main.  Particularly slightly defeated looking ones.  Well it worked again as I didn’t. 

I had sat myself directly facing another table, behind which was a front window.  When I’d sat down another solo eater had been sat there finishing soup, reading a newspaper.  After a time he’d left and his replacement was surprising.  An attractive young blonde girl who looked for all the world like she’d be waiting for someone, but wasn’t.  She’d also ordered soup and sat there unavoidably in my eyeline attached to her mobile phone. 

Shrill screaming toddlers pierced what would have been an otherwise pleasant Friday afternoon pub scenario.  They ran amok like it was a nursery, their guardians largely unconcerned.  I’d waited twenty minutes to be served my simple and not very nice meal, she waited ten for a hearty looking soup with thick crusty bread.

As the waiter left her, our glances finally crossed and we weakly exchanged smiles.  Mine sandwich was still dry and crap.  “Any good?” I bravely chanced after a few minutes.

“Mmm,” she replied, amiably enough, well spoken as you might expect from a pretty young blonde Putney-ite, “it is.”
“What is it?” I said, just wanting to prolong conversation of some sort. 
She described what it was.
“I’m jealous, mine was horrible.”
“What was it?” she politely returned, and I told her.
“Steak sandwich?  Well it’s your own fault, you shouldn’t have steak somewhere like this.” 
I wasn’t sure exactly why, it was a reasonable enough pub, notwithstanding the wailing children.
“No, I agreed,” as if understanding completely, “schoolboy error really.”
She slurped soup, I snapped a bit of stiff bread.
This was the point when I could have moved the subject off food, something more general.  But confidence in my ability to do this without appearing predatory, weird, intrusive or just creepy always fails me.
So instead we sat in silence, listening to the wailing infants.
I raised my eyebrows in her direction when one speeding sprog veered towards our corner, then away.
“Peaceful here isn’t it?”
“Oh, bliss,” she agreed.
Escalate, move on.  So what brings you here…?  What do you do?  Do you want a drink?  Can I join you?  No, no, no. 
We studied our mobile phones, then after a few minutes I finished my food, loaded my bag with book and my jacket pockets with devices.
“See you,” I said.
“Bye,” she said.

2009 arty consumption

A selfish attempted record of some pop lit books wot I've read this year, lest I forget. 

In no particular order

Tom Perrotta - Abstinence Teacher (4/5)
Tom Perrotta - Little Children (3/5)
Nick Hornby - Juliet, Naked (4/5)
JM Coetzee - Summertime (4/5)
Evie Wyld - After The Fire A Still Small Voice (4/5)
Douglas Kennedy - The Pursuit Of Happiness (4/5)
Douglas Kennedy - State Of The Union (3/5)
John Boyne - The House Of Special Purpose* (2/5)
Charles Eton - Mr Toppit (2/5)
Julian Barnes - Nothing To Be Frightened Of (5/5)
Sebastian Faulks - A Week In December (3/5)
Richard Milward - Ten Storey Love Song (4/5)
Irvine Welsh - Crime (3/5)
Irvine Welsh  Reheated Cabbage (3/5)
Zoe Heller - The Believers (3/5)
Zoe Heller - Notes On A Scandal (4/5)
Xialou Guo - UFO In Her Eyes (2/5)
Steven Hall - Raw Shark Texts (4/5)
Emile Zola - Germinal (4/5)
Peter Manseau - Songs For The Butcher's Daughter (4/5)
David Mitchell - One Day (3/5)
*still reading so should probably reserve judgement

Presuming one reader for a moment..   Frankly can't be bothered to find / post links to any of this stuff, but there's a thing called Google which can probably help out with further details.

And while I'm regurgitating media consumption, why not?  New musical discoveries I've rather loved this year:

Florence & The Machine - Lungs (sad that it'll rightly become very popular but become horribly overexposed)
Mumford & Sons - Cry No More
The XX - XX
Alberta Cross - Broken Side Of Time
Gaslight Anthem - The '59 Sound
Jamie T - Kings & Queens
Biffy Clyro - Only Revolutions
Jay-Z - The Blueprint 3

Way too many films to regale, but my last seen is the best for a long time and up there with anything I've seen all year.  Can't gush enough about Swedish film, the English title translation of which is, Let The Right One In.

open goal

We’d just about wrestled the game back in our favour at 3-2 having contrived to give away a two goal lead.  Rain raked across the park in waves, the pitch cut up, the game was stretched at both ends with the ball needing little encouragement to slip and slide on a greasy surface.  Five minutes to go, one of our youngsters broke down the right and I sprinted down my left flank to support.  He did well, beat a player and made it to the byline.  I screamed at the back post for him to square back it across the six yard box.  He passed strongly: it skidded and bobbed off the uneven surface, cutting out the goalkeeper at his near post and missing a striker and defender between us.  It was coming to me, the goal was open, I was five yards out.  I excitedly hurled myself towards the ball  Any contact and surely the game was over, that would be it.  Glory!  A goal.  A comfortable final few minutes to close the game out.  I hurled, slid, firm right boot contact, but wrong, too much.  I watched it balloon over the bar and I turned face down in the mud, hands on head, groaning at the aberration.

24 hours of Cambodia – Killing fields hangover

The evening began with our guide taking us to a local restaurant a short walk down the Phnom-Penh street from our hotel.  Deep-fried honeyfish formed the centrepiece of an exquisite meal in a cosy traditional Cambodian restaurant, and then came the singing and dancing children at the front of the small, narrow room.  The restaurateur apparently orchestrates this performance weekly: about a dozen desperately poor streetchildren entertain a largely western audience with traditional singing, dancing, music and dress.  If you had described the scene to me beforehand, I would have scoffed at the suggestion I could have been moved by it.  As it was, I was stunned by its undeniable sensory beauty.  The music, instruments and singing blended together in a demanding yet measured way which didn’t take long to rhythmically penetrate.  Tastefully decorated dress and make-up for the girls; who ordered intricately choreographed dancing in a businesslike way over their tiringly unruly partners: the unfailingly amusing and hapless boys.  Beaming smiles at the close of each dance made the heart of this fickle tourist melt entirely. 
 
Donations to the children’s war-torn families were remarkable by dint of not being aggressively demanded: a meagre money box in the corner if you want to donate.  It’s not even passed round.  To anyone capable of human feeling, anyone wilted by what they’ve witnessed, to generously donate seems as obvious as breathing.
 
The dancing reflected, and perhaps exaggerated my sense of the Cambodian people.  Given the terrors of their extremely recent history - the Khmer Rouge, Pol Pot’s regime, the still perpetual danger of liberally scattered landmines - it would be entirely understandable for them to be defensive, cautious, cold, nervous: especially the children.  Or for them to carry weighty chips on their shoulders for all that they’ve been subjected to.  Yet by and large, they are enchantingly warm, disarmingly open and generous people whose characters suggest nothing of their history.  Instead, a brave, unacknowledged, just-get-on-with-it attitude which is forever cheerful.
 
Senses regathered, I was jubilant to find that the England-Austria World Cup qualifier was on the television of most bars along the street.  Aside from our party’s American pair - who seemed to be opting out a lot - we headed back from the restaurant in the direction of the hotel, to a Vespa themed bar.  There we witnessed a disappointing but functional 1-0 England win in which David Beckham was sent off again.  Duncan was cheered to see a framed Glasgow Rangers shirt adorning one of the walls.  By the time the England match reached its conclusion, everyone in our group except Shane and I had gone back to the hotel.  As the final whistle sounded in Old Trafford, I asked my relatively new Australian companion: “Another, compadre?  Somewhere else?”  Our eyes mutually twinkled at the prospect and desire for more liquor. 

But I lacked cash and the machines in a nearby traveller-targeted Australian branch wouldn’t give me anything.  Our hired tuk-tuk man took us down a quiet street to the distinctly unpromising looking door of what looked like a telephone booth.  Regular enough looking cashpoint coming out the wall, but I was still highly sceptical.  I nervously inserted a card, was heartened by English instructions, pressed buttons and, miraculously, it gave.  Shane and I were elated: we could drink!   

Our tuk-tuk man pulled us towards a busy looking bar in what must have been a central bar area, a short distance into town, and away from the river.  Taking stools at the bar, we began speaking to ex-pats either side of us.  Shane to an American “dude,” who had something to do with the running of the bar; me to a Scottish maths lecturer at the university here.  A friendly chap, good conversation, but I was equally enjoying our proximity to the decoratively manicured barmaids. 

At 2am the bar closed and we went to another, the local Walkabout bar.  I was amazed the chain was this wide-reaching, unless of course it wasn’t part of it chain and coincidentally shared its name with the Australian chain. 

If increasingly blurry memory serves correctly, Walkabout was a large, semi-circular, half empty 24-hour affair over two floors.  And it was quite dark.  I somehow managed to persuade an initially reluctant, vaguely sad looking local girl to come and sit with us at the bar.  Using schoolboy French so broken it could have been strewn across continents, I tried to focus on what I was saying and her face, rather than her quite incredible chest and curvaceous body.  Precisely what we spoke of I’m not sure.  Possibly too much of myself as she was less forthcoming, though I’m sure I learned something of her.  Her name, for example - which I struggled to pronounce so avoided using, before forgetting altogether. Somehow, through our numerous communication obstacles.. was that? ..did she?  I think we began flirting. 

Aware of Shane’s isolation, we headed upstairs to play pool, by then not in the greatest state of sobriety.  Despite this, we made an average attempt at doubles.  A startlingly beautiful local introduced herself to us, and more specifically Shane.  Retiring from the pool games to different ends of the untended upstairs bar, Shane and I grew more familiar with our respective ladies - who had given no indication of being prostitutes.  I was more certain of my companion because of her original reluctance to join us.  She kissed with a strange pecking fashion, and expertly massaged my back.  After a time she went to the toilet and I stretched my legs with a walk to the balcony area. 

It was light, morning, daytime, market stalls had begun to open below.  Shit.  How had that happened?  A glance at my watch confirmed it was little after 6am.  Headfucked by the revelation, I anxiously considered next moves and reported my finding of the globe’s over-hasty rotation to Shane.  He definitely wanted action with his friend but was going to book a room in a different hotel.  I was less sure.  I didn’t want to take her back to our room because I knew I was likely to get caught, busted, thrown off the tour, and off my next tour which was booked through the same company.  But I didn’t want the expense of another room.  Shane had always seemed quite frivolous with his money, including spending a ludicrous amount on that local guide in Saigon.  It wasn’t exactly the safest country in the world.  Would she have a terrifying father, or brothers?  Might they want to kill me if I..? 
 
Shane and I blundered drunkenly out of the bar with the girls clinging to our arms and squinted into the bright daylight.  A minute’s conference later we separated, taking tuk-tuks in different directions.  My driver was the same one who had had taken us into this area of town several hours ago.  He had waited.  He’d waited?!  Since when?  How much would he want?  Fuck, my head was beginning to fuzz and I was still reeling from the discovery of it being morning.  And there was the small issue of the girl sitting to my left, holding onto me for dear life as the tuk-tuk chugged onwards.  Could I..?  The risks were way too big, yet still I was burning for that amazing chest.  In all fairness, her face was passable, a squashed nose its obvious focus point.  Not on a par with Shane’s new friend.  But she did have that perfect unblemished skin, a wonderful body, and those breasts...  Idiot, I reprimanded myself.  I asked her several times if she wanted to come back with me, hoping she’d have changed her mind and solve my nasty dilemma for me, hoping she’d have thought about it, said “rationally speaking, no, I’ve come to my senses and now I think about it I don’t think...”  But of course she couldn’t form a sentence anything like that, so she just leeched onto me pathetically and whimpered “yes,” a hand high up my thigh.  She insisted that she did want to come back to the hotel.  She didn’t want to go home.  Fuck, I thought, as the tuk-tuk approached our hotel.  It was 6.30.  No, I couldn’t..  Less to do with morals than the potential of seriously screwing up the rest of my trip.  I paid the tuk-tuk man most of what I had left in my wallet for waiting, gave the remainder, probably not enough, to her, to get her home, and left.  She wasn’t happy with me and possibly also worried about any consequences of staying out all night.  A glance over my shoulder as I headed for the hotel door revealed that she had quickly clicked into sensible mode, rejecting the tuk-tuk we had travelled in (possibly an inflated touristy tuk-tuk - although they all look the same to us) in search of another.  Watching her and her wonderful body independently swing away from me, I stepped sideways back through the hotel door. 

Feeling like a fuckwit, confused and ashamed of myself, a small shard of something way back in my marshland head applauded me, was pleased and righteous at my decision.  I passed an unmanned  reception (unmanned! nobody would have seen us), silent but for the humming air conditioning unit, and pressed a button to summon the elevator.  Regrets that I hadn’t taken her up were potentially smaller than regrets I could have suffered if I had.  With that meagre consolation and a less coherent groan I flopped onto my bed.  
  
A knock at the door woke me not enough hours later at 11am.  I opened it to find a widely grinning Shane: that lucky ballsy Australian bastard.  He had considerately knocked in case I had company.  All had gone blissfully to plan for him.  As beautiful naked as she had been clothed.  And apparently a squealer.  I felt sharp jabbing jealousy as I slumped back into my bed and learned details.  He was disappointed in me, would have been so proud of me if I’d properly got my hands on those tits, muyte! - and he’s been pounding the regret into me since.  Still think I was right not to, but can’t help wondering what if..?  If, even in pissed, headswirling state, if I hadn’t been so painfully rational, sensible, boring, dull... then...
 
We’ve been flagging all day, much to the amusement of the rest of our party.  I felt horribly ill as we walked around the Khmer Rouge torture prison, S21 early this afternoon.  Like I could easily be sick at any moment.  I snuck glances in discreet, obscured corners where I could quickly spring through necessary contingency.   They were barren, cold blocky buildings we walked around, like the crappest, derelict department of your college: empty but for torture weapons, wasted beds, and galleries of images which didn’t serve to slow my somersaulting stomach.  I recovered a little with the aid of sleep on the minibus which is touring us around.  By the time we reached the surprisingly underwhelming killing fields - various small swampy ponds covering mass graves across a large field: a modest, tall stone monument at its centre - I was able to speak again without worrying it would agitate stomach acids.  The fields offered little indication of the recent atrocities it had witnessed.  Children played on a makeshift rope-swing over a muddy puddle, giggling in hysterical delight when one of them was brave enough to pick his feet up from the floor. 
 
As we left the fields for the minibus, I offered the remaining quarter of my stale bottle of water to a small gathering of children who were working a neighbouring rice-field.  They had been magnetically attracted to the fence by the passing western tourists, like ducks to someone dishing out bread.  I offered the bottle to a tiny little girl at the centre of the group and gestured that she should share it with her clamouring friends.  Contorting my empty hand back through the wire meshed fence, I was ashamed to sense my resemblance to a zoo visitor: a sometimes inescapable feeling here.  Trying to contain yet more powerfully gassy burps, I pondered this as we walked back to the vehicle: if there’s more virtue in staying and working, or volunteering. 
 
We’ve now returned to the hotel for much needed rest, Shane and I intermittently exchanging further details and blurry memories of last night while I write this.  Imagining our behaviour wouldn’t be looked on favourably, we’re telling the rest of the group that we returned to the hotel together at 5am.  I’ve been sworn to secrecy as he has a girlfriend back home, though the likelihood is we’ll never see each other again after this week.  He says he’s not very literate, doesn’t do computers at all and is doing this trip en route home after a year in London.  Our plans for this evening run as far as dinner - I haven’t eaten anything all day and my stomach gurgles are growing violent - followed by an early night.  Tomorrow we meet in the lobby at 5.30am for an early flight to Siem Reap, Cambodia’s second city.

_______

circa October 2005

could i steal a chip?

Over the past several weeks I’ve become friendly with a dynamic, fast-talking young Scottish guy.  We originally met at a work event but, although our professional (sorry for the word) synergies weren’t quite aligned, or at least not yet, our personalities gelled quickly.  Over a couple of subsequent meetings a bantery rapport was developed and we riffed off each other at various networking events.  Being a general misanthrope, this doesn’t happen all too often.

His girlfriend joined us in town towards the end of yesterday evening.  I had met her briefly once before and she’d seemed fine and open after initially being guarded and wary.  In our subsequent meetings he was always wary of his duties to her: curfews, her checking up, calling, texts.  Even the one evening when she was away and we went out, she kept calling, checking back until fairly late into the evening.

Now I’ve never known an evening out to improve with the introduction of girlfriends half way through.  Whether it’s two or twelve guys, a dynamic is agreed, established and settled.  Throw in a handful of girlfriends and it becomes disturbed and upset with new obligation.  Particularly if there’s a number mismatch, as there always is in my presence - being terminally single.

She joined us grudgingly yesterday evening, that much was clear, yet she apparently couldn’t go home alone or let her boyfriend stay out.  She looked grouchy on arriving but slowly thawed.  On leaving the bar, the three of us were buoyed by the idea of food, so went to a nearby Burger restaurant in Soho.

Seated here, a couple of young girls sat down at the small table next to us.  One left for the toilet, leaving another on her own: American, confident, animated, full of beans.  Glances had been exchanged when they were originally seated, and enviously checked out our food. 

Her friend momentarily gone, she turned to us again and a bowl of half empty chips.  “God, that looks good,” she said.  “I am SO hungry, could I steal a chip?”  This was when my friend’s girlfriend sneered and emitted such ice I thought all our burgers would immediately go cold.  “Sure!” my friend said, I nodded and smiled, it was fine with me too.  But she was already recoiling at the unspoken venom fired in her direction.  “Er, no it’s totally fine.  I'm getting bad vibes now, I’ll.. sorry.”  Awkwardness swept the two tables.  Apart from the space around my friend’s girlfriend, who sat there nonplussed with her curling upper lip.

“Well put yourself in my position,” she urged.  “If the roles were reversed, and it was a guy who had come over like that.”  At the time, I couldn’t quite do that empathy.  Too much was going on in the conversation.  I just shrugged.  Ok, it was fine, you scary bitter young lady.  Her boyfriend chuckled, though possibly equally taken aback by his girlfriend. 

Walking back through town towards Waterloo half an hour later I considered it again: if the roles had been reversed.  Two girls, one guy.  Same situation.  Let’s presume that makes me part of the couple (a ludicrous concept).  The only reason I would have been so cold to an approaching male would have been if the relationship were new and / or I was still insecure in it.  Surely you just have to enjoy an established level of trust and comfort not to feel threatened like that?  Back the fuck off, dickhead-vibes would only have radiated from me if it was an early date and I was feeling insecure about how I was matching up.  Perhaps they seem more established and settled than they are.  Who can say?

Or maybe she’s just another surly ice madam.

Cenotaph Sunday

Cenotaph Sunday siphons
with shuffling scuse me bumps down pedestrianised Whitehall;
Red
Silence shaking cannon ball booms;
distant murmured prayers, hymns, anthems, pipes;
Green
Warm applause while big screens magnify
proud smiles, lost limbs, wheelchairs, sticks and age:
memory,
under relentless dank grey threat,
betwixt pointlessly changing traffic lights

consolation goal

“Do you want to risk aggravating the injury and knock yourself back for another two weeks, or chance it?  No, leave it for tomorrow then, we should be ok.”  This is what my football team boss told me over several ales on Friday evening.  The following morning I received a text message saying someone had dropped out.  Could I play?

The first half hour I felt tight and paranoid about seriously extending.  Up against a well put together striker: swift, slight and skilful, if mercifully not large or physical.  Those opening minutes of needing to press and chase saw me reluctantly obey still tight feeling, cold legs.  I’d stretched and warmed as much as possible beforehand, but they still warned against going flat out. 

We were three goals down inside half an hour.  Towards the end of the first half and into the second they slowly heated, became malleable.  Coaxing increased pace, I became confident the troublesome member wouldn’t buckle.  Occasional forages forward from centre back encouraged.  A dangerously lofted ball into the box caused panic, a speculative long distance effort had the power without the direction.

Although it was long over as a contest, towards the end of the game I ventured forward more frequently, feeling the attacking appetite and confidence return.  We were pushing, they were sitting deep, confident of suppressing any threat.

We sensed the opportunity to reduce the deficit, but little seemed to be reaching our strikers from the midfield.  Collecting a rapid return pass from our right back midway into the opponents half, I darted towards the penalty area and into space, still not closed down.  Another touch to settle, approaching the far right side of the penalty area, thirty yards out, I swung hard.  Distance meant power’s priority over accuracy.  The connection felt good but proved too strong as it faded and dipped a short distance over the crossbar and far post.

Then we attacked down the left, the gap of space in the middle ever apparent.  I jogged into it as our striker received the ball on the left hand side of the penalty area.  He niftily jigged between two defenders as I screamed at him to release the pass.  Cleverly committing a third to the challenge, he then squared it across into the space with a toe poke.  One touch to settle, twenty five yards out, right side of the penalty area: a few yards closer and more central than the opportunity before.  Part of my brain must have instinctively decided I could prioritise accuracy over power and chance a side foot.  It’s not a decision I remember making.  Contact was true and the power perfect.  I dodged a late onrushing defender to see the ball appear to first arc outside the rod of the post before curling back inside, little to no margin between post and ball.  The goalkeeper dived half heartedly, slipping to his knees on realising that he couldn’t get close. 

7-1!

Having never scored a goal as good as this in a competitive match and averaging one goal a season at best, I wanted to celebrate.  But I wasn't able.  Firstly down to shock.  It had actually gone in.  It was legal.  The goal, a very nice goal, was given.  I scored it.  I fucking scored it.  I myself me, was responsible for that sumptuous strike.  Discreetly jubilant fist to self in private celebration and a wry smile.  That was all. 

Then the realisation of its complete futility.  We’d been battered for most of the game, several early goals probably my fault.  Mine meant nothing.  It reduced that deficit by a single goal, making the score 7-1.  We trotted back to our half for the kick-off, chuckling between ourselves like I’d just revealed I was fluent in Chinese.

Even so, that rarest of sensations, seeing it curl inside the post and glide against the netting: a sweet and precious thing.

a birthday: child pirates to streetfights

A long birthday awash with people and places began at 10am, coffee with a once-made acquaintance in a café on Soho’s Golden Square.  A deep-thinking fellow freelancer who successfully divides his time between southern American states and London, he often provides engaging chat and food for thought.  I hadn’t expected it to be hugely constructive in any immediate business sense, and it wasn’t, but it still felt like an hour well-spent. 

Needing pirate fancy dress, I ducked into a likely looking arcade doorway on Leicester Square.  From the street it invited passers-by to an assortment of garish tourist shops, accessory stores, toy shops and an amusement arcade.  Escalators took me up a level and I quickly found myself circling a hellish labyrinth of arcade games with no Down escalators.  My frustration grew to a nightmareish backdrop of loud bleeping, tinny circus music, machine whirs, flashing lights and practically no people.  On finally finding a combination of frozen escalators and steps, I decided to give up on the costume mission and head over to Notting Hill for the coach out of town. 

A blissful few moments on the comfortable top deck offered me the chance to absently admire fluffy clouds, read and reply to birthday messages from seldom seen friends and listen to lulling new music.  Catching up on emails then exerted continued stress about work and my ongoing failure to secure much needed support. 

Lunch was being served as I arrived, my nephew glorying in the attention of his pirate-themed 3rd birthday.  We bid each other happy birthday and exchanged gifts before playing with his latest plastic.  Already there were both sets of confusingly named grandparents (I’m yet to completely memorise who’s Nan and who’s Grandma).  I opened my own gifts and cards before taking him around the suburban block on his new scooter.  When hoards of children aged from ten months to five years appeared in the house, I disappeared to take a work call.  Standing in a three year old’s bedroom as screams peeled from the floor below, I wore an ear-ring, false eye-patch, held a toy cutlass, but sounded consummately professional.  Back downstairs the children appeared to be multiplying.  I walked to the next room to see a previously unnoticed baby crawling along the floor, or a slightly older tot charging at precarious pace with a polystyrene sword.  There was a sprinkling if not directly proportionate number of mums now too.  It alarmed me how instantly the unknown children wanted to play with me, trust and distrust something not yet learned.  Frightening.  I almost wanted to teach them there and then.  I enjoyed a watery bland conversation with one of the mothers; she had friends near where I live, which was nice.  The kids ate their pirate party meal and the host parents spontaneously put on an elaborate pirate sketch where my brother played a scary evil pirate.  The children bought into it completely, terrified by his creepy leering as he suddenly appeared behind the patio window. 

Children and parents began to dissipate around half five and I was gone not long after.  A cumbersome cardboard box containing newly framed pictures offered a not inconsiderable challenge during my many-legged return trip: coach, walk, tube, tube, bus, walk.  By the end, it was on the point of disintegration, and my arm on the point of falling off.  Having returned to the flat, I immediately adorned my walls with the new, still intact pictures, opened the first beer of my birthday and admired their effect.  A half hour break from travel, then town summoned me again. 

A friend insisted on heading for the swanky bar of a client: it’d be cool, and good. It’ll probably be quite expensive but don’t worry, it’s your birthday so I’ll pay for the first round of drinks then we’ll go, he said.  We joined a short line outside the venue.  Twenny pand admission, a stony faced female doorwoman said once we’d advanced to the head of the queue.  Dyou wanna?  My friend asked.  Not much, my shaking head, flared nostrils and pursed lips told him.  Aw, c’mon! he persuaded.  It’ll be fun.  Hrm, if we must.  We entered and a cashier told him they didn’t take cards.  I gave her forty pounds.  Forty fucking pounds.  The bar was impossibly loud, ludicrously expensive and full of shiny young hipsters.  I realised I’d actually been there before for an equally ghastly work event and felt every single one of my years.  We chanced upon professional contacts and began impromptu networking.  A couple of drinks and many closely cupped ears later, the guys left us, I expressed my misgivings and we left. 

A cashpoint visit, payback and dithery squeltch around a rainy Soho later saw us settle on a marginally more sedate late license bar.  Here we chatted to a range of people, the first of whom were attracted by my eager friend’s fast-handed card tricks: attractive Australians, two female who we chatted with, two male who we didn’t; a pair of attractive but extremely cold young Norwegian girls - one looked permanently disgusted; and another pair of young, not so attractive locals.  By this time my energy levels were waining.  My friend was his regular supercharged, duracell bunny-style self, still rapidly talking in ebullient fashion to practically anyone.  When we’d met earlier in the evening he was closing a conversation with two elderly theatregoers on the street.  They’d considered him warmly on parting, although it was obvious their acquaintance hadn’t extended longer than ten minutes.  At 3am lights came on in the bar and we left, swaying up towards Oxford Street, coming dangerously close to the “I love you mate” cliché before parting with a manly clinch at my nightbus stop. 

Leaning sleepily against a shuttered shop front window behind the bus stop, two men approached at pace, cutting strangely skittish, bedraggled shapes.  Their short fight broke out under my nose in frittering flapping style, like birds competing over a breadcrumb.  None of those movie fist-to-face noises.  No shpucks, more like a large flag flapping in a strong wind.  People stepped back and away, nervous of the sudden violence.  I stayed leaning against the shop, rather too close, feeling tired, drunk and oddly removed.  The stockier, more confident man took the upper hand as his wiry rival fell, floored, taking more blows as he went and delivering few counters.  It was over, the winner was clear and he took a step back.  The loser managed to quickly rise and flee as his assailant accepted a fallen mobile from one of the three score of onlookers.  However, the device appeared not to have been his.  He held it high then smashed it down hard onto Oxford Street, yelling more threatening abuse as his vanishing competitor disappeared beyond Tottenham Court Road tube station.  Brief entertainment in what turned out to be a long wait, and even longer night bus ride back.  A couple of old school 80s punks with appropriately flamboyant hair had a falling out around Kensington.  The female became vocal and hit the window hard in frustration, stirring a number of passed out passengers from drunken slumber.  Her mohicaned partner looked away, head in hands, crestfallen.

one day of Scotland

I wound myself up, growing increasingly pissed off, stressed, driving faster and more aggressively.  Darkness had now fallen, completely cloaking a mountainside which ambivalently transmitted its bleak chill.  I clicked off the thought-cluttering stereo, finally found the full beam headlights and continued twisting the vehicle upwards through the Highland range.  My hands were becoming faintly numb, knuckles iced into a rigid grip of the steering wheel.  I didn’t really know where I was going.  This was to be expected if you set off on a loosely planned roadtrip without booking any accommodation beforehand.

AA signs on hotels are meant to signify quality, but to me only signified expense.  Growling out loud, sick of myself, cold, tired and stressed, I found a straight area of round in which to safely execute a three-point turn, turned the car around and headed back to the hotel, ready to take the hit. 

What ate at me was knowing I’d made a bad call: to turn away from that crusty hostelly place earlier, with its charming, colourfully dressed local receptionist, a full house and immediate locality that seemed populated and would be screening the Champions’ League football I’d been anticipating all day.  I could have had enough drams to blur out any lumpy discomfort of my surroundings, slept, then left early in the morning without any major wallet dent.  Instead I’m here: half way up a mountain in the middle of the Highlands with no other buildings for miles and everything ball-achingly expensive because it’s designed for affluent geriatric hikers from Surrey. 

I’ve opted out of dinner even though I didn’t really have lunch; intermittent snacking on supplies fended off any proper hunger.  Although it is extremely comfortable here - nice furniture, shiny en-suite, thick carpets – unfortunately they have no telly signal.  So no football.

These gnarky issues amassed to momentarily make me forget what a good day I’d had until around 4/5pm, when I first began tentatively knocking at B&B doors on the Isle of Skye.

Which had been another growing irritation: constant knocking on doors like a pauper, seeing if they had any room at the inn.  Nervous caution in the faces of ladies of a certain age, who’d clearly rather not thanks, no matter how much I beam at them like a simpleton, desperately trying to seem normal.  My gaul at simply being a young single male is unavoidable; at not being a couple.  It seems to be unusual and almost an offence.  “Ooh, we only do doubles sorry.”  Or when they advertise vacancies then blank you, saying there’s none because they’re not sure about you.  I’m fairly ordinary looking and middle class, what more d’you want?!  What d’you think I’ll do?!  Irreparably stain and tear bed linen by excessively violent wanking?  Shit all over the walls?  Steal the wardrobe?  What? 

There was no such uncertainty in this posh mountainside AA place.  Its unpredictable young Indian host was too busy to be bothered as he hurriedly checked me in.  Curious host for a place which clearly prides itself on its traditional Scottish character. 

                                                                        *

Until 4 or 5pm, today had been good.  Better than good, it had amazed.  Early this morning a passable cooked breakfast at my Elgin B&B fuelled me for the careful drive through a light sprinkling of frozen snow  and on towards Inverness.  A few righted wrong turns eventually spat me over a sequence of bridges in a loop around the city.  Ahead lay the Western Highlands with its proper, mansized landscapes. I stopped briefly in North Kessoch, a bridge and large loch to one side of a panaroma which swept round to present the first handsome mountains.  It was tranquil and pretty, but would pale in comparison with the grandiose new panoramas I was about to see.

These following landscapes caused photographic lunacy.  A  rare, gloriously sunshiney day saw me snapping ravenously at apparently infinite jawdropping scenery: from staggeringly beautiful snow clad mountain tops, to scenic roads lined with dense fir trees and backed by those knowing, wise ranges.  Driving at moderately high speeds, I thrust my right hand out the window to blindly capture and hope, nervous of slipstream wind prising the camera from my grasp, flying away and shattering into tiny pieces on the road behind.

[caption id="attachment_413" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="into the Highlands"][/caption]

Sunshine and pleasant warmth barely relented all day, even near the upper snowy areas of the mountains.  A spontaneous two hour hike to one peak, all alone, left me feeling like I owned the planet.  That was until I stumbled across two sets of peculiarly dispiriting recent bootprints in the snow.   I listened to fittingly epic Sigur Ros soundscapes as my feet crunched on, buzzing off the environment, grateful for being able to do this kind of thing.  Even if only once a year.  Even if my day-to-day life generally sucks, I can still use this experience and ones like it to haul myself through crappy tower block days.

[caption id="attachment_414" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="all mine"][/caption]

Driving on west, the next to move me was a shimmering giant loch which lay between jagged glens to the far west, in the direction of Skye.  Having dropped a gear to climb one short, steep incline, it presented itself.  It dug deep into the smoothed land, perfectly cultivated.   I wanted to stop, gape and walk but didn’t dare as the curling road was narrow and the sheer cliffs to one side wore landslide warnings.  It probably became quickly impassable when the snow arrived.  So I drove on, winding up and down as I skirted the Loch’s edge, stopping just once at a viewpoint which offered faraway views of seemingly minature, dispersed working farmhouses on the opposite side of the loch.  Whisps of smoke from the houses gamely fought to scale from the Loch’s valley, while the great canvas of water below sparkled, cradling tiny puttering fishing boats, knowing its allure and the mystery of its contents.  Its waters narrowed and led out further west, towards the ocean.  A clean, new bridge structure connected my endless ribbon of road to the luminous Isle Of Skye.  I wanted to explore it further, but time was ticking and I needed to start thinking about where to sleep, and if I could find somewhere showing the football.  

Back on the mainland I stopped again at a beach, enticed by an irresistible sunset over the water.  There I sat and pondered whether people naturally gravitate to one of three things in their 20s:

[caption id="attachment_415" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="sunset reflection"][/caption]

experience – travel, sport, clubs, doing as much stuff as possible;
things – getting life sorted: career, property, cars;
other people – love, relationships, domesticity, experience through others. 

Obviously combinations are possible, but don’t most lean more towards one than the others?  Could be a nonsense, but sometimes it seems cleanly classifiable like that.

Just returned from the warm, cosy expensive bar here.  I had one excruciatingly priced pint, blanched at the menu and read my book.  The cheapest meal on the menu was pie and chips – which I’d had last night in a soulless chain pub in a damp Elgin.  I'm sure it would be of a better standard here, but there the food had looked forlorn, like it could’ve been splutted onto the plate from a considerable height.  I almost felt sorry for eating it.

__________
original circa March 08

culpability strain

It was hard not to feel culpable yesterday, disappointing in a new way.  We’d been solid and organised for over an hour, my central defensive partner was a robust player I trusted, we’d both had decent games in an evenly contested match which remained goalless.  Then I extended my legs to chase an opposition striker.  Quad muscles stretched and moaned, snagged painfully.  It was the same weakness and set of muscles which forced me off several weeks ago, and which I believed I’d recovered from.  Shortly after I went to ground in a tackle, again overstretching the same set.  And so it incrementally became more painful to run flat out, rather than in one smash.  I could trot about with tolerable pain, but snapping into a sprint to keep with a nippy striker soon became a no-no. 

A cross was whipped in, my man dodged and left me, I physically couldn’t turn and run to get near him - whereas in the first half his small frame posed little threat.  He got on the end of the cross and scored.  A few minutes later a gangly athletic striker collected the ball on the left and went on a run, beat our full back, who I’d tried to arc in behind and cover, failed then found myself swearing in frustration and pain.  The striker outstripped me with ease and popped the ball in the near post.  Two nil.  Having only eleven players, I agreed to move myself to centre forward, where I loped around ineffectively.  For over an hour we’d been a far cry from the team who were so comprehensively demolished last week: compact, organised and able, we moved the ball around ok in the midfield, despite similar impotence up front.  It may sound arrogant to think I was that influential on the goals and the whole game’s outcome.  In this instance though, it seemed the obvious turning point.  The damage was done.

I left straightaway after the game, not even bothering to shower: grouchy and disappointed at the recurring injury and its impact, unlike the flat-out depression which immediately followed the week previous - but which soon turned to a nonchalant, Guinness-fuelled ambivalence.  Yesterday was different.  To be so solid and come quite close, and to feel so responsible after having a strong hour my best of the season.  Not to mention the new fitness doubts.  Could this be the beginning of an ongoing struggle?  Arse.

on attention and affection

Diving head-first back into the bracingly choppy ocean of self-absorption…

Two separate occurences this week struck home how pathetically grateful I am for attention.

A good part of yesterday was spent with my nephew, the best quality time we’ve had together for some time, possibly ever.  Next Friday we share a birthday, he’ll be three, I’ll be a bit older.  We’re having a joint party.  It will doubtless be wild.

With his Dad, my brother, we walked in the nearby woods, chased each other, climbed trees, pretended to be bears, hid, then later at home played with toys, read stories and watched Finding Nemo.  When we curled up on the sofa and watched the cartoon film together, his two-week old sister was gently given to him and I cradled them both on my lap feeling a bizarrely alien sense of multigenerational domesticity and close family.

That the child seemed to return this feeling, demanding play and cuddles before bed, seemingly unaided or persuaded by his parents, made me feel ridiculously warm and fuzzy – another sensation I’m not well acquainted with.

Earlier on this week I attended a trade show and its post-event themed party at a nearby bar.  It was dark, loud and packed tight; drinks flowed freely and plentiful finger food was distributed by waitresses who barely spoke English.  I was comfortable enough in not knowing anybody at this show, or even the sector it represented that well; used to unhinging, breaking and entering conversations from cold without appearing too much like a twat.

After a couple of such unfruitful businessy chats I turned to a table of food and a recently deserted sparkly young blonde who had been filming interviews throughout the day.  Clearly happy bathing in attention in front of the camera, a very girly girl, possibly a precious princess, she was ostensibly absolutely nothing which attracted me.  And yet, she was attractive and, I had to grudgingly admit, rather entertaining in her animated passion for her subject.  Fun.  Not the norm, but in a good way.  We chatted awhile, I kept expecting her to leave me and mingle, for her hyperactive neediness to want more - she was used to fraternising with flash successful model types, attending fashion shows.

I wasn’t that bothered anyway, I told myself, yet all the while being infected and brainwashed.  I realised I was reflecting her mannerisms and we were probably, yes, definitely, maybe, flirting.  Frequent touch, suggestive comments, playful banter, excessively deliberate sucking chocolate from her fingers, maintaining eye contact.  Crap, she was hot, and was she really interes-..?  No.  Impossible.  Likely just a dicktease used to ruffling sad saps like me.

Her cameraman left and she said she had to go soon, though she didn’t sound hugely committed about her next destination and it was still early.  We left the bar together and walked down the street a short distance.  I pointed her to the large, unmissable tube entrance she needed.  At the time I didn’t even consider feigning need of a tube journey.  “Will you be ok from here, dyou think?” I asked.  “Ooh, you might need to hold my hand,” she replied.  I smiled as she rose to offer her cheek, I kissed it, missing the proffered other, causing momentary awkwardness.  Two cheek kisses make me feel like a pretentious twat.  We chimed a couple of nice to meet yous, then I crossed the busy road towards the bus station.  Should I have tried harder?

She’ll fade as these temporary fixations always eventually do, but most of this week she’s been irritatingly difficult to rid from my brain.

And that’s largely to do with how ridiculously flattered I am by attention.  I don’t go out and seek it, have always shirked it or been made uncomfortable by it.  So when it suddenly finds me, I’m paralysed. A three year-old can sit on my lap, display apparently spontaneous affection and reduce me to soppy goo.  An attractive young lady can playfully bat her eyelashes, flirt, then take off, reducing me to the tragedy of teenage fluster.

It’s symptomatic of being serially alone and being acclimatised to that state.  You forget about attention and affection; what it is and how it feels; those popularly held and enjoyed notions of family and relationships which you haven’t necessarily shunned, but which just haven’t worked out.  You almost try to distance yourself from it in an attempt to feel less inadequate.  All that's not for me.  I'll just get a dog one day.

So attention is subsequently magnified and exaggerated, you’re pathetically grateful for sustained consideration, however much it clashes with the self image of a restless, wandering, invisible ghost.

Micro stories - update

As mentioned in an earlier post, I submitted a couple of micro short stories via the popular microblogging network, Twitter.

This week those lovely Liars' League chaps listed one of mine in their top ten.  Through this link you can read the full list, on the topic of Blood and Thunder, and download audio from the event where they were read. 

Obviously I'm indebted to the reader, but the audio reception from the event was especially gratifying.

amsterman

I’d only just flopped open my book when they arrived.  They could have been father and son, but didn’t appear to have that level of familiarity.  Nor did they look particularly similar.  The younger was in his early thirties and seemed to have decided it was his job to do the talking; the elder was knocking a well worn looking sixty.

“Tell me I haven’t forgotten my fags,” the young one said.  I groaned a bit inside.  Great.  They were going to disturb me from my book by talking, and they were going to poison my oxygen as well.  I hoped he had forgotten his fags.  “Nope, here they are.”  Bugger.  “Aah, that’s better,” he said, slumping onto his garden chair, belying an exhaustion at the end of a hard day’s toil.  It was half past two on a weekday afternoon though, so I cruelly judged that he and his companion had just come from the jobcentre, or possibly an alcoholics anonymous meeting.  They sat close by at the next table.  I sat with my back to them, annoyed that I couldn’t fail to hear them when I wanted to read.  “I think a holiday’s in order,” the younger continued, encouraged on in his monologue by no more than the faintest of acquiescent murmurs from his companion.  I’d read the same short paragraph in my book around four times.  “Yeah, Amsterdam I think.  Been there loads of times, of course.  You ever been?  No, lived there for a time.  Was still drawing my giro and getting it sent over.  Had a girlfriend out there, you see.”
“Ah, did ya..”
Yeah, did you?  Really?  Your Amsterdam girlfriend?
“Yeah, we lived together for a while in her Dad’s flat, so there was no rent to bother about, nothing like that.  She never asked me for no rent anyway.  Would’ve given her some if she’d asked, like.  But she never.  All ended quite abruptly though.”
“Ohh, why’s that then?” the older man softly drawled, exhaling tobacco smoke and capuccino breath with his words.
“We argued all the time.  She never liked me going out on the piss.  I weren’t playing around or nothing.  Just going to the bars and getting stoned, you know.  Think she got fed up and just kicked me out in the end.  Lovely girl, she was.”  A brief silence as they both reflected.  “Ah, hello Rosa.”

Their food came, served by the beautiful but distant eastern european waitress.  I put some music in my ears.

concessions

Today I spent an unpleasant afternoon at the centre of a football team defence which was comprehensively taken apart.  We lost heavily, with the main protagonist a graceful young black guy who, as well as being outrageously skillful for the level we were playing at, was also sporting and without an ounce of malice or ego.  Everything this guy touched turned to goals.  He sliced an attempted switch pass across the penalty area in the first half, me again a yard off his gazelle-like stride.  It looped over our goalkeeper’s head and into the goal.

It was a horrendous, ghastly, car crash of a performance to cap a crappy week.

In the clubhouse afterwards, watching the England match by virtue of our dodgy access to an Albanian sports channel, I chatted with a team-mate. 

He works at an airport loading and unloading aircraft.  Apropos of nothing, he regaled a story from this morning.  He has colleagues: superiors who aggravate him by being excessively stressed and picky about aspects of the job he feels aren’t worth getting that stressed about.  Yet he stil enjoys good working relationships with them, tolerates them, is professional. 

This morning, however, waiting to clock off with his immediate colleagues, he felt he was in relative safe company, and so he vented.  He said they were jobsworth wankers, only too late alerted to the fact that the obvious subject of his allegation was sitting just a few feet away.  And had heard.  This probably wouldn’t threaten his position, but it was deeply uncomfortable.

I listened, nodded, growing more aware of the parallels to my own week.  Precisely the same thing had happened, just within the nerdy Twitter domain which he probably wouldn’t empathise with, and which would make me appear a geeky prick.

Jobsworth wankers versus gonad crushingly annoying.  Which was worse?  But people do this.  It’s a natural symptom of having colleagues.  Over a career you’ll have some colleagues which will be harder to work with than others, but you will still work with them.  How well you handle it, and if you can restrain yourself from venting or ensure your annoyances aren’t transparent: that makes a difference in your progression. 

Keep your defence tight, make no concessions, go far?

Bastard / not bastard

Esteem is a fickle thing.  Last week, on two consecutive evenings I enjoyed that rare feeling of genuine connection with people.  The platform of little shared experience, industry knowledge, football fandom segued into banter, drinks exchanged, a sense of being on the same wavelength and reciprocal free mockery.  I left both feeling that maybe not all people are crap.  And hell, maybe I’m not either.  I’m actually ok.  I can relate with my fellow man well, providing they’re not idiots.  I can make them like me by just being myself, easily enough.  Engaging with them, showing basic interest, being human.  It’s not difficult.

Aweek later I’m wondering if I’m actually a cunt.

I highlighted an industry contact early on in my freelance life as being potentially useful.  Well connected, smartish if guarded, good reputation, something weirdly impenetrable, but still worth aligning with.  So I did.  My reservations fluctuated at each time of meeting.  Though nice and genuine enough, she never asked a single question about me which wasn’t to do with work.  Where are you from, what are your interests, where are you going on holiday.. ? – I consider that kind of fluff important in initially forging relationships, so I asked those questions, received willing-sounding answers, but the questions were never returned.  We spoke of work things.  She also reveals excessive detail through prodigious, largely dull tweeting and Facebook updates, and carries this air of confidence and a consumingly smug verisimilitude.  She extols the virtues of having an opinion, whatever that opinion is, so people remember you.  Even if it’s dubious-to-bollocks, which hers often are.  I frequently found myself tongue-biting, not inclined to argue with her.  She adopts a veneer of smiley fluffyness which is actually quite hollow and difficult to get to know.  Mid 40s, single, advertising her availability to all via Twitter: a sign of rigid self belief and don’t-give-a-shit confidence, or deep insecurity?

I wear that ambiguity too though.  Well, maybe a bit.  Look around.  That’s why I have this account, and did have another which I tweeted anonymously through and brought on this whole sorry palaver.  I believed not many people read it, as this one.  After much of yesterday being annoyed by her, I tweeted through it that I’d spent the day in a city office with quite posh people, who’s first names I critically and stupidly named.  They were very posh names, but not outlandish, unique names.

I shan’t copy verbatim, or even close as I’m nervous that the words may be Googled and lead to this site, forcing another deletion.

The second message was the more indicting, but led to by those first names – which was how the lady somehow found the account.  I said that I wondered why I chose to work with them, because they were annoying, and I used a silly adverb before annoying.  I mentioned no names.  In doing this I slit my throat. 

(Although me saying that something's annoying isn't uncommon.  Most things and people annoy me in some way: I'm a sad, sorry, miserable misanthropic twat.  In fact, it'd probably be more unnerving if Iwasn't annoyed in any way.  But that's all quite tricky to convey).

Earlyish this morning my mobile buzzed with the name of the posh lady.  I answered brightly, wondering what she wanted.  I had no problem at all with the poshness thing really; it just amused me and I liked the lady.  And there was the potential of some freelance work through her agency, as well as the work I’d been doing at her premises with the other annoying one.  She told me that the other one had sent her a message, flagging my tweets, and she said it was best if we don’t work together or pursue our professional relationship. 

This struck me hard, winded me.  What?!  Why?  How?  What the fuck had I done?  Did send it in the wrong account..?  No.  It was made stranger by the fact that my sleep had been interrupted by a persistently nagging dream that I’d dropped such a Twitter clanger.  Was I actually still asleep?  Nope, definitely not.  Damn.  Just coincidence or did I subconsciously do something, notice something the day before?  A freaky cosmic premonition?  I hadn’t posted to the wrong account or linked it.  It was still on that silly anonymous account.  How had she then found it?  The names?  A search?  It was quite creepy that she had, however she had.  Did I even want to know?  Why didn’t she come directly to me rather than report it through a message to the posh lady, like a telltale schoolgirl snitch?  I flushed hot and cold, panicked, in shock, apologised profusely, expressed my embarrassment, said “I understand” too much.  What more could I do?  I’d been hung out to dry.  Plus, two potential contracts snuffed out.

After leaving a message on her voicemail in the morning, she returned my call at lunchtime, no doubt keen to get it over with.  Disgusted and disappointed were words she used a lot.  Disgusted?!  Really?  I’d tweeted that I found some colleagues quite annoying.  A betrayal of trust, perhaps.  But was that really disgusting?  Sling me onto death row with all the paedos immedately.  She beat me to the punch in verbally severing our business ties.  I said I wanted to be civil and amicable in public, should we come across each other at events.  This was rejected.

So, from a decent, likeable chap to disgusting bastard in one week.  I should do makeunders for the nice and sell them to ITV2.

Musical dares

This one's true, happened about a month ago. Names changed for no particular reason.
____________

Jamie and Margaret had gone on ahead, leaving me to chase up the rear, along dusty tracks of the remote valley towards the last of its four dispersed residences.  A short distance past our hosts considerably sized territory, complete with numerous outhouses, huts and barns, the mountain’s incline began and the African wildlife entirely reigned.  I arrived to find dinner still comfortably some time away, a Braee burning, steak cooking and beer being served.  

I greeted our hosts warmly, nodded to my brief companions, settled, then the  lumberingly youthful Jamie and I took a quick browse around the vegetable garden.  We dished out generous compliments to the wafer thin Angela about its healthy looking contents.  Starry-eyed, always beaming, the wrinkly but trim fifty-something German ate them up gladly. 

She then exhibited her own artwork to us: abstract, faintly Picasso like oil paintings of animals which adorned several walls of their small, purpose-built house. She led us through a tight kitchen and living area, both of which wore an array of miscellaneous hippy objects dangling from the ceiling, and into a back room study with more paintings and an unlikely grand piano.  How had they got that in here?  We admired and nodded as she explained that the paintings could be interpreted however we wanted.  

The meal was good and the conversation bland as we drank and became gradually better acquainted through tame jokes and token exchanges.  The couple’s dogs brushed all table sitters, lapping up the attention, but no food.  Their master and our host was a Lothar, a volatile looking German.  The long haired ex rocker betrayed occasionally appropriate glimpses of spontaneous wild eyed abandon during swift quaffing at a cheap boxed Chardonnay. 

Once dinner was done and clutter cleared, further drinks were drunk, cigarettes smoked by our hosts, and conversation turned to music.  Lothar repetitively baited Margaret to play the guitar, despite her constant rejection and counter that she would if others did.  They duly did.  Bongo drums were duly produced, the 1960s frozen Angela tapped away, as did Jamie.  I was encouraged and had a half arsed attempt, quickly finding that I still hadn’t miraculously developed any rhythm, then passed it back to Al.  The guitar was strummed, drums were tapped and a growing atmosphere of cyclical musical rhythm was developed in the full moonlit darkness.  Angela began nodding intensely with the sounds, eyes shut, lost in her reverie, occasionally tapping the large bongo wedged tightly between Jamie’s thighs.  She’d shown him how to hold the instrument.  I found it all slightly eerie, especially given my knowledge of their monastic chanting inclinations.  How far was this going?  Could it stop now please?  Let’s have a boring conversation about where we’re from or our family instead.  I was cold and musically inept, therefore peripheral.  As well as not quite “feeling” or appreciating the music.  And quite uncomfortable anyway. 

Lothar took the guitar and drooped his lank long hair  over it, spiderishly riffing with the bongos, making a show of being deeply in synch with the developing layer of beats and rhythms.  I sat looking at the full moon, feeling cold, mildly spooked, and wanting to go back to our basic house.  Our own fiftysomething music schoolteacher was Margaret, a ferret-like and relentlessly annoying woman, peculiarly reminiscent of a non specific Matt Lucas Little Britain character.  She took the guitar and played reasonably, but sang horrendously.  I squirmed and shivered when she massacred Let It Be, and had to go to the toilet. 

The fire provided brief warmth and comfort on my return, but I’d resolved to try and politely make my leave.  I grasped for my small backpack, inferring my imminent departure.  Margaret, still suffering with potential bronchitus and an undeniably terrible sounding cough, said she would come too.  Apparently ingrained and steadily supping alcohol, Jamie was uncaringly unmoved, apparently enjoying the instruments and the company of Angela and Lothar, who was now plying him with large whiskies.  When I eventually summoned the braveness to declare I was going at around nine thirty, Angela looked at me in disbelief.  “You’re not really going?” she said, like nobody had ever left them at such an early hour, or maybe ever.  Perhaps they buried their visitors here.  Or left them out for the Leopards to feed on.  I thanked them but yes, I wanted to go.  The increasingly animated Lothar made his power play.  He would not allow us to leave until he had played something else on the guitar.  We had to sit down.  First I stayed standing, hoping he’d just play while we stood, waiting.  Or say he was kidding, it was a joke, bye bye  Or hoping he’d become aware that I was tired and cold and not game for this at all.  Angela lightly tried pushing me towards a seat.  I didn’t move.  Lothar laughed at me wanting to go home and being cold in my “skinny body”.  It felt like one of those awkwardly tense Tarantino skits, where the next actions of either character are brilliantly paused: on edge, unknowable, potentially violent and dramatic.  Only I knew my own actions wouldn’t be any of those, because they were pricked with growing nervousness about his.  That madness which flashed through his eyes, his stocky bulk, the likely proximity of dangerous weapons. 

It became clear that he really wanted us to sit down and wouldn’t play on until we did.  We couldn’t turn our backs and leave by being rude, for Angela’s sake at least. Lothar made a theatrical show of lighting a cigarette, taking his time while cradling the guitar, methodically preparing to play.  He paused numerous times, fingers grazing strings.  About to start, then stopping.  About to start, then stopping.  About to.. 

Eventually, he looked up from his strings and through his dangling fringe, troubled.  He brushed his hair from his eyes, flicked a cigarette butt to one side and said that he had made a mistake, sorry, and that we could go.  I didn’t know if the joke was on me at that point.  If we, or I had been made a fool of, or if he would have objectively and internationally appeared a nutcase.  Thanks, I said, still confused by my compassionate release from their warping musical captivity.  I affected a strongly controlled politeness, all the whie thinking: you are both totally fucking mental, yet remaining aware that this lunatic could still easily just explode and suddenly kill all of us.  Bring his chainsaw out from somewhere, a rifle, some hippy nunchucks. 

I shook his hand, and forgivingly slapped his shoulder with my other, just in case his apology was genuine.  Then I hugged Angela once more and said a cheery goodbye to everyone, hoping to appear like this was all fine. 

Margaret and I left, our feet crunching quickly into the moonlit sandy tracks, hers struggling to keep pace with mine.

Twitter micro stories

Some folk are doing competitions for under 140 character length stories, through the Twitter hashtags,  #bandt,with the theme of blood and thunder, and #tctc.

I've boldly entered these .

~~ Watching lightning from the office kitchen window I overhear another person asking another person how their weekend was. I stab them  

~~ A toddler toddles unseen from a busy shop across a busy street towards a busy road. Someone else see! Someone else sees. I walk on

~~ He flung himself full length through the rain, committed to the header. Lightning and his head cracked the goalpost at once

S T E W A R D

Stuart signed and printed his name on the list where all the stewards registered themselves, hoping administrator lady wouldn’t snigger at his name’s near match of the column heading.  She didn’t.  He’d been told to come wearing a white shirt and black trousers, which he had.  Now the lady gave him a clip-on tie and a reversible puffer jacket - blue one side, florescent green the other, ‘SAFETY STYLE’ tapered across the back.  STYLE? Stuart smiled at the new irony.   
 
He stepped down from the makeshift office and joined a throng of idly waiting others.   A few were older than you might imagine, a couple decidedly out of shape and some were women.  Some even looked vaguely feminine.  Of course you had your typical ones too: hard looking blokes who stood together in a corner grunting at each other, disappointed at the low prospect of fighting at this event.  This cluster were distinctly clone-like: white, just under six foot, shaved heads, mean eyes, goatie beards and muscles.  Lots of them.  

Their attention was gathered by the wiry character who had given Stuart his application form (no space for education but a full page in which to detail previous convictions).  Magic, as the man had introduced himself to Stuart -  stood in his different coloured T-Shirt (purple, for proper authority), then led his team out onto the field to be divided up.  Stuart was pointed in the direction of a corner near the entrance, where he was supposed to look menacing.  He stood there trying to push his eyebrows out as far as they could go: this would surely make him look hard and protect his eyes from a dipping but still powerful sun. 
 
As well as not looking at all intimidating, Stuart had never been in a fight in his life and was moderately concerned at the possibility of any trouble.  If the worst came to the worst, he had young legs and could run a bit.

The gates opened. 
 
Holding his hands round his back and practicing stern eyebrows, Stuart noticed a man working the field who he’d worked with the previous summer at a call centre.  Bob was working for the merchandising people.  It was his job to hold glossy over-priced programmes above his head shouting - PROGRAMMES! - To which people would ask how much, Bob would tell them, and he’d be laughed at and walked past.  At least he was used to being maltreated by the general public.

The sun blazed down and the well behaved people squirmed in.

Rod Stewart arrived onstage: the crowd rose, clapped, whooped then politely sat back down.  The mild, good-feeling buzz passed through Stuart which he tried to dismiss.  The last few people spurted through the gate. 
 
Stuart’s team leader, a slightly older clone - the close shaved head wasn’t so much chosen as forced - approached him, looking hard.  Once the clone saw that Stuart had noticed him, he beckoned him with an aggressive come-here finger.  Stuart followed the clone between the blocks of condensed people.  The clone stopped suddenly, put his hands firmly on Stuart’s shoulders and turned him so he was facing away from the stage, looking into a sea of faces. 
 
“You stay there and make sure they don’t stand in the aisles, right?”
 
Stuart was standing at a Y-shaped junction between blocks.  He was relieved he wasn’t on the front line, in the pit between the stage and first block.  Several middle-aged women in the row directly in front of him smirked in his direction as the clone disappeared.  Stuart ignored them, listened to the pleasantly inoffensive pop music and watched a full moon rise over the heads of several thousand people. 

His attention was soon jerked back by a colleague pointing at something in Stuart’s zone.
 
People dancing in the aisles.  He approached two ladies, early thirties, without seats but crammed into the sides of the aisles.
 
“Can you dance by your seats please?”
“We can’t find them and we’re not moving.  So no,” said the blonde, big nostrilled one.
“Please, look, you can dance over there?  They look like they’re having a good time,” he said pointing to a flank of the field where dancing was unrestricted.
“We’re not moving.”  Her gawky looking brunette friend said nothing.
“Look, I get in trouble if you don’t.”
“I don’t care.”
“Can you just... I-”
“-Look, maybe we should...”  The brunette interjected.
“No!  We’re not moving.”
“Just stay to the side of the aisle then, yeah?”  The blonde looked dreamily at Rod Stewart, ignoring Stuart entirely; the brunette smiled meekly. 

Stuart scuttled back to his standing  place and congratulated himself for being crap.  The moon still looked pretty. 
 
An attractive girl asked Stuart where the toilet was; he told her and stared a little to obviously at her bum as she walked away.  Two housewife sorts at the front of block twenty two, all glammed up for the evening, smiled knowingly at Stuart.  He met their glance then quickly looked over their heads into the knitted expanse.
 
A song later a squat, drunken man in a cowboy hat started to dance next to one of the women at the front of block twenty two.  His seat was over the aisle in the next block, twenty three, and Stuart was slow on the scene again.  The man was grinding himself against the older looking lady.  It was painful to watch.  A small boy in the seat next to the one vacated by the drunken cowboy studied the floor.  Stuart’s felt a sharp surge of pity, then got a grip of himself.
 
“Sir, can you dance where you’re sitting please?!”  Stuart yelled into the cowboy’s ear, battling over a rockier Stewart song.
“Yeah, go on, go back.”  The arse-grinding victim told the cowboy; he said nothing, grinned at nobody in particular and went on grinding.
 
“Sir,”  Stuart said with a firm hand on his shoulder and what he hoped was a gruffer tone, “get back to your own seat now!”
“Yeah, c’mon now, off you go.”  Probably more under the advice of his victim, the cowboy tottered off across the aisle and into his row next to the boy, a matter of yards away.  The victim’s slightly younger friend smiled at Stuart, “Never mind.  What’s your name?”
He had hoped nobody would ask that, then pounce on the obvious Stuart-Steward hilarity.
“Erm, Stuart.”  Stuart hastily retreated back to his spot.  She hadn’t laughed.
 
Everyone stood for the next track.  Stuart saw the girl with the bottom who’d asked where the toilet was being swayed in her boyfriend’s arms.  The bloke was thoroughly enjoying himself, singing and smiling, unaware that his beautiful girlfriend looked so bored.  Stuart caught the girl’s eye and looked away again. 
 
It’s impossible not to catch eyes when you’re stood facing a few thousand pairs, he reasoned, before dreaming up a scenario whereby he prised the girl from her boyfriend’s grasp, whisked her away...  -Stuart’s reverie was broken when he was hit on the back of the head by a football and six sweaty, hairy drunken men piled on top of him.
 
Clones were quickly there and ordered the men back to their seats; one of them, the proud new owner of a football signed by Rod Stewart and his band.  Stuart emerged shocked but unharmed, which was fortunate as he wasn’t asked if he was okay and certainly wasn’t given the option to take a break.  His row of friends were still laughing as he resumed his standing position. 
 
Stuart didn’t feel like he was commanding respect very well.

A hippy looking middle-aged woman approached down the middle aisle - which Stuart had long since tried to keep clear.  She wore a thick cap and mischievous grin, and stopped short of the two person barrier Stuart had become half of.  He could see what was coming but couldn’t do anything.  She put her cap on Stuart’s head.  He immediately took it off and offered it back to her.
 
“You look like one of them people who stand outside Buckingham Palace.” 
She didn’t accept it back.
“Oh,” he raised his eyebrows, held her cap, looked over her head and tried not to feel stupid.
“Smile!  Does it urt?” 
“Yeah.  I’m a miserable bastard.”  She smiled and took her cap back.
“No offence like, but d’you feel like a birruva twat?”   She’d said it softly, without malice, it deserved an honest answer. 

Stuart took longer to answer than normal and thought properly about it, reassessing everything he’d done since he’d clocked in: denying that warm buzz of humanity, being a general nuisance to people by obstructing their views and not allowing people to dance in certain places; wearing a ridiculous flourescent green puffer jacket and clip-on tie, obeying the clones, having a boss called Magic.

“Completely,” he said.    
 
Rod Stewart’s final track.  A popular song, The Popular Song.  The crowd rose, hands in the air, “We are sailing… WE ARE SAILING!!” some screeching like they’d never need their voices again.  Rippling, intense swells of good feeling like none before.  Thousands of people united.  Stuart remained apparently untouchable. 

Rod Stewart said his goodbyes and left the stage.  The lighting on the stage changed and a recorded song by a different artist started playing at lower volume.  Disappointed groans joined the applause, which slowly faded into the hubbub of chatter.

Author Idol (1)

As far as we knew, it was only ever advertised on lamp-posts in and around town.  No proper advertisements or even trailers on the radio station which it was due to be broadcast on.  The notices went something like:

KNOW YOU HAVE WHAT IT TAKES TO BECOME A WRITER?DON'T WANT TO SACRIFICE THE PRIDE, DIGNITY AND EFFORT TO GET A CONTRACT? 

CALL THIS NUMBER...

That number had a pre-recorded message with no option to leave one of your own.  A stern female voice ordered you to take a short example of your best work to an office (which turned out to be a portakabin in the park and ride car park) the following Thursday evening.
 
I arrived to see a queue of about a dozen people filtering out the door.  Arty types with unnecessary scarves, frumpy dresses, floppy hair and sniffs.  I joined onto the end, a cursory nod to a young chap in front of me, smoking violently.  There was a small notice on the door saying the project was part of a new local reality radio show: Author-Idol.  I assumed the best, or worst, or both would be subjected to some airplay.  The small print said the format was similar to other reality talent show.  Small talk kept to a minimum, paper plonked on desk, an extract read and a verdict given.  Ten minutes passed and nobody had joined the queue behind me.  There probably wouldn't be too many rounds.

I leant against the railings and listened to my personal stereo, clutching loose pages of what I hoped might be passable attempts at fiction.  My intense looking companions stopped amusing me and I became bored, looking at the bleak car park, a smattering of ordinary cars and the busy A-road just off it.  It was only when the chap in front of me shuffled forward that I realised they'd started taking people in.  Me and the chain-smoking chap were left when my battery died and he finished his seventh cigarette.  "NEXT!" A haughty voice, similar to that of the answer phone message beckoned.  We exchanged raised eyebrows, he entered and I stuffed tangled leads into my inside pocket. 
 
Then I became aware that I hadn't seen any of the previous people come back past us.  Were they hoarding them in a room in there?  Were they showing them out the back?  Was there a back?  Were they brutally maiming and killing these poor, hapless people for their futile shows of ambition?  Should I cut my losses and run?  Should I just take a quick peep round the back?  The portakabin wasn't that big - we'd had bigger temporary classrooms in school.
 
"NEXT!"  Wow, I thought, he must have been really good or really shit.  He didn't walk back past me.  I stepped over the threshold and obeyed a handwritten sign pointing right down a short, narrow corridor.  Five paces led me to a door, ajar, with the word PANEL taped on it.  I knocked.  "COME!"  It creaked as I pushed it and I felt my pupils dilate or contract or whichever it is when you're hit by sudden bright light.  I narrowed my eyes anyway.  Through them I made out a PANEL of three figures sat at one table at the end of a bare, but surprisingly large room.  There was a door marked OUT.  Phew, relief.  Or maybe a dungeon?  I looked at the central figure, a teacherly like lady, not unattractive but of the sort that looked like she'd probably eaten men.

"Hello,"  I said.  They all smiled weakly.  The other two members of the PANEL: an old man smoking a pipe - in the opposite fashion to the young chap in the queue - he looked like he could smoke it when dead: it just looked effortless and right.  He wore a cardigan too of course.  The other man flanking the lady was a younger man of around forty: big jumpered, sharp eyed, but not floppy haired.  Both of the men looked tired and worn, as if there'd been a queue of hundreds.  Not about ten.  She, however, was upright, professional, moody,
 
"Work!" - and apparently not into pleasantries.

I curled my bottom lip and widened my eyes in a -wooh! scary, sort of way, before extracting my work from the back pocked of my jeans, folded once lengthways.  I shunted the stapled paper into the air and it floated onto the table between us.  The woman sniffed disapprovingly at the delivery, then eyed me like I was a turd to be stepped around.  Then she looked down.  The old man adjusted his specs and leaned in, as did the other man.  The woman had that irritating habit of half whispering every word she read with her mouth with the resulting spspspspspspspspspsp sound.  It made me sniff that outward sniff I get when I'm shocked to find something amusing but it’s not worthy of a full laugh.  She ignored me.  The spspspspspspsp became intermittent - which I didn't know whether to read as a good sign or not.  It's normally one of the most paranoia inducing things, having people read your work in front of you and, you in turn, trying to read their reactions.  Are they trying not to sneer?  Are they just going to be polite and uncommitted?  Was that smile genuine or were they laughing AT me? 

After a minute they leaned apart and straightened up.  The old man fingered his pipe with more tobacco, nodded gently in no particular direction.  They glanced at each other but didn't speak, eyes widened and narrowed.  I felt something shimmer up my back before she looked at me.  She gave me a card with a phone number on it, followed by a pin number. 
"Thank you Mr. Milner," she said.
"You’re welcome," I said.  She pointed at the OUT door. 
"I, I, er, I left my car out the front," I said, lying, and walked back out the way I'd come. 
But you can't...!" the younger man trailed off.  But I did, glad I'd distinguished myself in some way, if only by not falling into some strangely devised trap. 

I walked home fast, annoyed that the battery in my stereo had died.

The next day I shaved across my face with the card she'd given me the next day at work.  It was blunt, being cardboard and everything.  The time was just gone half four and the half senile geriatric I shared my office with had gone home.  Should I carry on with this whole charade?  Could it be dangerous?  What if they were all lunatics?  As far as I knew none of us - assuming that the other contenders were all alive and well - had any proof that they were who they said they were, or at all affiliated with that radio station.  Pondering all this, I looked out of the office window and over the train platform.  A couple of depressed looking commuters in raincoats curled into themselves. 

I picked up my receiver and dialled the number, hesitating slightly before the final digit.  One and a half rings, then the message cut in.  The woman's recorded voice:

"You should have a pin, dial it." 
I dialled it.
"Congratulations Mr. Milner, you have been selected, along with four others to proceed to the next round.  Be at our offices again tonight at Seven o clock."  Bollocks, why should I?  I thought.  Signing away work to some group I know absolutely nothing about.  I mean, why?

I never managed to answer that question but dawdled towards the 'offices' at the designated time.  A small group of about half a dozen stood in the car park looking at their feet, most smoking, looking troubled.  Two women; one young studenty, another friendly looking, cuddly, housewifey.  Smiled meekly at them, the housewifey lady mirrored the expression, a couple looked up, raised eyebrows, sniffed, exhaled smoke, looked down.  I arrived around five minutes late.  The last one.  The door of the portakabin opened and the severe looking lady appeared.  We all looked up at her.