At 6pm I was sitting on my sofa in my poky flat, hot and bothered, bored and glum. At 4am I was in a stranger’s basement flat assembling Spotify playlists for a horrendously handsome Californian and three French females.
I decided to take a chance on another of those social group meetings, thinking I could opt out and find somewhere else to view the USA match if I wasn’t feeling the company. I found the bar, ordered a beer, found the group, stood back, watched the first half over the shoulders of the group and made judgements about them.
Would it be hard work? Could I be bothered to be all genial, cheerful and open? Did they look odd?
Yes no and yes. A bit.
The half time whistle blew, Ghana a surprising 1-0 up, and I left. I didn’t know where for exactly, but I paced the vague direction of the tube-line back, eyes out for an open looking bar in one of those transient West London communities. They’re often easier places to fall into chat.
A squat, bald man sat on a stool next to me at the bar. I rested on a pillar, facing the large screen, before which sat an assortment of fans, many of them travellers. USA deservedly equalised and I exchanged comment with my neighbour. A discernible West Country accent opened the door for further chat.
It’s a disappointing fact that I tend to be more comfortable in the company of males than females. There’s no threat and no pretention, no ‘signals’ to be wary of; I’m seldom trying hard, if at all to curry favour. In a way I wish I found men physically attractive – perhaps everything would be easier then. Sadly I don’t.
This doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate a handsome man. Their effect on me, however, is at best a grudging respect, at worst an outright envy-led disgust at how on earth they had the fortune to be blessed like that. What gave them the right?
It was with a combination of the two that I turned to the guy along the bar, a handsome chap standing the other side of the older chap, to whom we’d both exchanged comments about the game. He didn’t look unlike USA player, Carlos Bocanegra, who is no Wayne Rooney in the looks department, but also wore a modest, mildly embarrassed look. A weathered, stubbled face and arrowing jawline made him appear to be in his mid-thirties, so I was equally appalled to later learn that he was a handful of years younger than me.
He looked American and every inch Los Angeles, not least in the vaguely confused way he watched the football match, as if tentatively trying to consume something people told him was good. He had only been in London a month, having been transferred on a short-term contract.
Ghana found a new gear and greater strength in extra time, scoring another and comfortably fending off a fatigued American threat. At its conclusion, my new older friend was disappointed to have lost a bet, and the American shrugged, essentially unfussed. I was quietly pleased Ghana had won.
We fell into further sporting and political discussions, offering and accepting further drinks, each growing drunk, our older member the most rapidly. He blamed his age on forgetfulness and losing track of his points, rather than the alcohol. He called it quits as closing time neared, hopped down from his stool and wobbled away.
Myself and Bocanegra eyed each other anew, or adrunk, still with thirst and nowhere else to go.
“You wanna see if we can get another round here, or..?” I broached.
“Sure, there’s a place I know down the block. Need the rest room first. Wait there.”
He took me to a nightclub, where we were rubberstamped like cattle before descending steps into a dark, low-ceilinged basement venue. Not my natural habitat, but I went with it. He’d mentioned a complicated relationship setup back home, an arrangement the other party had placed more stock in than him.
I wondered if this would now go like those now rare occasions with friends back home, one of whom is absurdly good looking, quite a buffoon, has no morals whatsoever but is enormously entertaining. We always used to lose him within minutes of being inside a nightclub.
We bought drinks, took a stroll and I felt that sporadic kinship to Emile Heskey kick back in. It’s not his fault.
We breezed past a lone female sitting at a table; I half paused, then bottled it. My smooth companion didn’t. She was French, upbeat and happy, pretty enough in an understated way; another national descent in there somewhere. Her friends soon returned from the bar. We all chatted and it was quickly detectable that they were nonplussed by me. I left my friend to dance and canoodle with his new femme while I went to the bar and wondered what would happen now, whether I should just leave.
No, roll with everything tonight. Why not? Let yourself be guided for once.
I didn’t leave and continued chatting with the other French girls in an entirely innocent, rather bland fashion. We each asked polite questions without caring about the answers. Laughs were few. I agreed to join them outside for cooler air and want of anything better to do. They smoked.
The club came to close and I chatted again to Bocanegra. Before entering the club he’d said that he lived really close and I was welcome to sleep on his couch. We all piled up and out of the club onto the warm street, the French gabbling amongst themselves in French, us mumbling uncertainly. We’d only walked a minute before he said, “my flat’s actually down this road, now I don’t know if..”
The French twittered in French again. One, not his femme, expressed her reservations in English, which I said I accepted and understood, partly to make us look regular and unthreatening. His femme swung them round and we found ourselves walking down his road, stopping at a large anonymous building with multiple buzzers. I could have forgiven a new sense of foreboding as he led us down the building and through a maze of glass-panelled corridors to his front door. A newly renovated basement apartment belied his length of time there: nothing on the walls or in the cupboards, which I raided. Water was literally all he had. I divided it up into a handful of never before-used glasses and cursed my lack of rohypnol.
We sat chatting and listening to music for a time, stretched out across two sofas and two on the floor, either end of a central coffee table. Discussions on music and hobbies were more interesting and we grew more relaxed. If anything untoward would have happened, it would have happened by then.
It grew later and lighter still at 4am, dawn approaching. The two French wanted to leave, one who lived nearby and another, incidentally the most attractive, who lived not far from me. She preferred to sleep at her friend’s rather than share a cab. I conceded and watched them leave first, so they wouldn’t think I was following them when I made my own exit.
Bocanegra again offered the couch, but I knew it would inevitably come with authentic audio of sex from the next room. With a frat boy parting clinch and a shared knowing smile about, in hindsight, quite pointlessly convincing our company that we were longer acquainted than a few hours, I left.
Wednesday 30 June 2010
Monday 28 June 2010
day after penalties (2006)
Woke early. Where..?
Oh yeah...
Oh no. Oh, shit. England were out.
I didn’t want to be there anymore but I didn’t know what to do. I’d slept quickly and well so hadn’t heard my hosts return. A snatched glance through the large clear window of their bedroom door revealed they were in, asleep, on a small futon. I left early, just for a trip into slow rising Sunday morning town, an internet session - flight searches, email, breakfast.
Never anticipated feeling quite so choked, deflated and empty by defeat. It had a greater impact on me than any other tournament exit because of my Semi Final ticket which would now never be. It was personal. Like anything you invest time and emotion in, anything which is deeply embroidered in your weekends and day-to-day life, football can powerfully dictate mood. It matters.
I digested this and an over-priced but good buffet breakfast outside a classy Bochum bar, trying to enforce perspective. My mobile bleeped and I knew it would be Esther, my host. Her message was all in block capitals, inviting me back for breakfast. Groaning at their hospitality and my own crapness, I replied that I had eaten and would go to an internet café before returning.
My emails home reflected my over dramatic misery and indecision. I learnt that another online host I was due to stay with in Munich had bailed on me. What to do? I would have been delighted to snap my fingers and be home but there were, predictably enough, no cheap flights available. Zero motivation for this whole trip now, I wanted somebody to take me by the collar and direct me.
After spending an hour with my kind Bochum hosts, this time accepting an orange juice and sympathy, I left for the final time. They had suggested places I could go to with my Deutsche Bahn rail pass and I settled on the 12.57 to Nuremberg. They also mentioned sailing a short distance away, but being isolated on a boat with them and the potential for ever heightened awkwardness didn’t appeal. I thanked them, apologised for myself, asked them to enjoy the English tea which I had brought for them, and left.
Feeling comfortable with and around them could have developed in time, but it was time I wasn’t motivated enough to dedicate.
On the train I pondered the small differences in the deliberateness of everything, hence its perfect efficiency, which flows through everywhere: the difference of humour, speech, a basic style of interacting. Everything from speech, conversation, penalties, good driving, popular slapstick comedy shows; it can appear almost unfeeling, robotic and charmless.
I was proud of our English fallacies: our nerves and awkwardness, our human weaknesses, our erratically channelled passion; that we find it hard to be so cold and clinical. You could push this argument down dangerous corridors to extreme, totalitarian limits, but I think there’s a grain of truth in it somewhere.
In a way it was more infuriatingly alien than the far-east, because they’re so close, but yet.. It led to fatigue and exhaustion when you wanted subtlety, irony, or dry sarcasm.
I wondered too at the still prevailing suggestions of war guilt. The inside of the Olympic Stadium is full of grey seats, apparently so as not to forget. Does this sober need to remember and not become colourful stunt imagination on a wider scale? Is this why they feel they must be so straight, so deliberate, why they mustn’t publicly, formally approach from leftfield? Do they feel a need for permission to think wider, to be dangerously opinionated?
And is to do so misunderstood or disagreed with? The fiercely contrasting 21st century look of the newly developed Potsdamer Platz area of Berlin with its dwarfing sky scrapers, I sensed was frowned upon by, or simply embarrassed many of the older generation.
The train journey south from Bochum to Nuremberg began to cheer me up and momentarily sieved my brain of football. A glorious day in Bavaria: pylons, windmills, chimneys, straight lines, wires, lush greenness, quilted fields, sloping hills, forests and blippy darkness as the train spurted in and out of hillsides. I selected rarely played classical music from my iPod – Beethoven and Bach – and gazed out of the window.
We stopped at small provincial stations once every half an hour. A pretty girl stood on the opposite platform, doey eyed at a carriage or two further down from mine, missing him already. I felt pretentious and cultured.
*
Eerie chills clashed with pounding heat as I overlooked Nuremberg’s Zeppelin field, Adolf’s podeum to my left. A mass of uncared for, weed ridden concrete and uneven steps leading up to the podium, which visitors were free to enter - although signs warned that they do so at their own risk. You can stand where he stood. Parts of the concrete stand had been demolished at either end due to their unsafety, according to an information board: one of a couple of token embarrassed boards, which briefly outlined the significance of the monument. The famed field it overlooked was even more anonymous, a large field apparently still used for concerts.
Seeing this monument, standing there 60-65 years afterwards - no great amount of time - was chilling, especially given its lack of attention or dress, its shameful unkempt nakedness. It wasn’t demolished for the same reason that the seats in Berlin’s stadium were grey. A short distance across the field, the brand new stadium which hosted World Cup games poked out: a naive child to a worn, bitter, convict grandfather.
Several hundred yards away was a large, serene lake. I took to it on a pedal bound. It ground itself in, the gravity of that concrete monument, that road behind it, those few large trees and everything they had witnessed. Where else have so many been so thoroughly brainwashed by so few, into believing, into being willing to die for such principles?
I splashed out on a hotel room in Nuremberg. Why should I always go for the cheapest hostel option? - I went for a perfectly functional hotel room instead, the cheapest Expedia could find me in the station’s internet café. An overhead television played the England team’s press conference from their Baden-Baden base, a teary David Beckham. The words were all in German translation. I still loved him.
I wandered round Nuremberg’s extremely pretty old town on my first evening, up the steep slopes and towards the castle on its cliffs: lofty vantage point views across the whole city, and further. Dinner, increasingly ubiquitous local wurst with potatoes and sauerkraut, was taken outside a small bar. A blonde waitress admitted to struggling with my accent. None had in the north of the country and I couldn’t discern a difference in her accent to theirs.
There was a fine breed of people around there, as many latin looking tourists as locals, and I couldn’t help individually admiring most of them. Very few are out of shape. When you’re a child in the early summer months you might idly squat the odd fly or ant. Then, suddenly, a nest has hatched under the patio and they’re everywhere. Local, natural, immaculate blondes were equally everywhere, or so it seemed to me. Was it wrong to imagine them in a nazi uniform being strict and demanding? I wondered how mechanical and deliberate and German they’d be in bed. None offered as much as a passing glance, unless I looked too long, paralysed - then their look was usually one of disgust.
I hadn’t had a conversation worth the name since my hosts in Bochum - and grew sick of the words bouncing exclusively within my own head, and off the pages of a notepad. I wasn’t confident that anybody who was worth speaking to - ie. not English or American - would understand me, and nobody looked like wanting to speak to a lone man.
Oh yeah...
Oh no. Oh, shit. England were out.
I didn’t want to be there anymore but I didn’t know what to do. I’d slept quickly and well so hadn’t heard my hosts return. A snatched glance through the large clear window of their bedroom door revealed they were in, asleep, on a small futon. I left early, just for a trip into slow rising Sunday morning town, an internet session - flight searches, email, breakfast.
Never anticipated feeling quite so choked, deflated and empty by defeat. It had a greater impact on me than any other tournament exit because of my Semi Final ticket which would now never be. It was personal. Like anything you invest time and emotion in, anything which is deeply embroidered in your weekends and day-to-day life, football can powerfully dictate mood. It matters.
I digested this and an over-priced but good buffet breakfast outside a classy Bochum bar, trying to enforce perspective. My mobile bleeped and I knew it would be Esther, my host. Her message was all in block capitals, inviting me back for breakfast. Groaning at their hospitality and my own crapness, I replied that I had eaten and would go to an internet café before returning.
My emails home reflected my over dramatic misery and indecision. I learnt that another online host I was due to stay with in Munich had bailed on me. What to do? I would have been delighted to snap my fingers and be home but there were, predictably enough, no cheap flights available. Zero motivation for this whole trip now, I wanted somebody to take me by the collar and direct me.
After spending an hour with my kind Bochum hosts, this time accepting an orange juice and sympathy, I left for the final time. They had suggested places I could go to with my Deutsche Bahn rail pass and I settled on the 12.57 to Nuremberg. They also mentioned sailing a short distance away, but being isolated on a boat with them and the potential for ever heightened awkwardness didn’t appeal. I thanked them, apologised for myself, asked them to enjoy the English tea which I had brought for them, and left.
Feeling comfortable with and around them could have developed in time, but it was time I wasn’t motivated enough to dedicate.
On the train I pondered the small differences in the deliberateness of everything, hence its perfect efficiency, which flows through everywhere: the difference of humour, speech, a basic style of interacting. Everything from speech, conversation, penalties, good driving, popular slapstick comedy shows; it can appear almost unfeeling, robotic and charmless.
I was proud of our English fallacies: our nerves and awkwardness, our human weaknesses, our erratically channelled passion; that we find it hard to be so cold and clinical. You could push this argument down dangerous corridors to extreme, totalitarian limits, but I think there’s a grain of truth in it somewhere.
In a way it was more infuriatingly alien than the far-east, because they’re so close, but yet.. It led to fatigue and exhaustion when you wanted subtlety, irony, or dry sarcasm.
I wondered too at the still prevailing suggestions of war guilt. The inside of the Olympic Stadium is full of grey seats, apparently so as not to forget. Does this sober need to remember and not become colourful stunt imagination on a wider scale? Is this why they feel they must be so straight, so deliberate, why they mustn’t publicly, formally approach from leftfield? Do they feel a need for permission to think wider, to be dangerously opinionated?
And is to do so misunderstood or disagreed with? The fiercely contrasting 21st century look of the newly developed Potsdamer Platz area of Berlin with its dwarfing sky scrapers, I sensed was frowned upon by, or simply embarrassed many of the older generation.
The train journey south from Bochum to Nuremberg began to cheer me up and momentarily sieved my brain of football. A glorious day in Bavaria: pylons, windmills, chimneys, straight lines, wires, lush greenness, quilted fields, sloping hills, forests and blippy darkness as the train spurted in and out of hillsides. I selected rarely played classical music from my iPod – Beethoven and Bach – and gazed out of the window.
We stopped at small provincial stations once every half an hour. A pretty girl stood on the opposite platform, doey eyed at a carriage or two further down from mine, missing him already. I felt pretentious and cultured.
*
Eerie chills clashed with pounding heat as I overlooked Nuremberg’s Zeppelin field, Adolf’s podeum to my left. A mass of uncared for, weed ridden concrete and uneven steps leading up to the podium, which visitors were free to enter - although signs warned that they do so at their own risk. You can stand where he stood. Parts of the concrete stand had been demolished at either end due to their unsafety, according to an information board: one of a couple of token embarrassed boards, which briefly outlined the significance of the monument. The famed field it overlooked was even more anonymous, a large field apparently still used for concerts.
Seeing this monument, standing there 60-65 years afterwards - no great amount of time - was chilling, especially given its lack of attention or dress, its shameful unkempt nakedness. It wasn’t demolished for the same reason that the seats in Berlin’s stadium were grey. A short distance across the field, the brand new stadium which hosted World Cup games poked out: a naive child to a worn, bitter, convict grandfather.
Several hundred yards away was a large, serene lake. I took to it on a pedal bound. It ground itself in, the gravity of that concrete monument, that road behind it, those few large trees and everything they had witnessed. Where else have so many been so thoroughly brainwashed by so few, into believing, into being willing to die for such principles?
I splashed out on a hotel room in Nuremberg. Why should I always go for the cheapest hostel option? - I went for a perfectly functional hotel room instead, the cheapest Expedia could find me in the station’s internet café. An overhead television played the England team’s press conference from their Baden-Baden base, a teary David Beckham. The words were all in German translation. I still loved him.
I wandered round Nuremberg’s extremely pretty old town on my first evening, up the steep slopes and towards the castle on its cliffs: lofty vantage point views across the whole city, and further. Dinner, increasingly ubiquitous local wurst with potatoes and sauerkraut, was taken outside a small bar. A blonde waitress admitted to struggling with my accent. None had in the north of the country and I couldn’t discern a difference in her accent to theirs.
There was a fine breed of people around there, as many latin looking tourists as locals, and I couldn’t help individually admiring most of them. Very few are out of shape. When you’re a child in the early summer months you might idly squat the odd fly or ant. Then, suddenly, a nest has hatched under the patio and they’re everywhere. Local, natural, immaculate blondes were equally everywhere, or so it seemed to me. Was it wrong to imagine them in a nazi uniform being strict and demanding? I wondered how mechanical and deliberate and German they’d be in bed. None offered as much as a passing glance, unless I looked too long, paralysed - then their look was usually one of disgust.
I hadn’t had a conversation worth the name since my hosts in Bochum - and grew sick of the words bouncing exclusively within my own head, and off the pages of a notepad. I wasn’t confident that anybody who was worth speaking to - ie. not English or American - would understand me, and nobody looked like wanting to speak to a lone man.
Wednesday 16 June 2010
unsympathetic characters
I’m part way through the second novel by highly rated young American author, Joshua Ferris, The Unnamed. Up to now, although extremely well written, it's failed to grip me for exactly the same reason the new Ben Stiller film, Greenberg, failed to grip me.
Both protagonist characters have had mental issues and breakdowns of a kind, yet both have much which is ostensibly enviable: a cushy developed world status, enough material goods and, in the case of The Unnamed, a faithful wife and loving daughter. We readers and viewers are supposed to be interested and invest in characters that are selfish, slouchy and absorbed, for all their mental ills. They are shown to be selfish, slouchy and absorbed and we are obligated to hang with them.
It’s a tough ask and a bold gambit: actively producing a main character who isn’t very likeable, who is in fact a boring shmuck you want to shake. LOOK HOW MUCH YOU HAVE! What the hell’s wrong with you? You idiot.
This is the point; this is what we’re supposed to think. It’s supposed to test our patience, dare us to quit, and by doing so, dare us to stay and see what happens – if they get more sympathetic, if there’s an illuminating back story. Even if nothing does happen, they remain an idiot and there is no back story.
If they were a new acquaintance, that is exactly what they’d stay.
If there’s nothing which is redeemable about the character either, you end the tale thinking they’re a hopeless unlikable shmuck, is that a success? Has another human condition been painted enough for you to think Yes, that’s convincing: jolly well done you hip young author. Or has it simply depressed you, duped you, angered you, wasted your time and fed some stereotypes about Americans who can never analyse themselves enough?
Or maybe this post is the ultimate irony. Absorbed people absorb absorbed people.
Both protagonist characters have had mental issues and breakdowns of a kind, yet both have much which is ostensibly enviable: a cushy developed world status, enough material goods and, in the case of The Unnamed, a faithful wife and loving daughter. We readers and viewers are supposed to be interested and invest in characters that are selfish, slouchy and absorbed, for all their mental ills. They are shown to be selfish, slouchy and absorbed and we are obligated to hang with them.
It’s a tough ask and a bold gambit: actively producing a main character who isn’t very likeable, who is in fact a boring shmuck you want to shake. LOOK HOW MUCH YOU HAVE! What the hell’s wrong with you? You idiot.
This is the point; this is what we’re supposed to think. It’s supposed to test our patience, dare us to quit, and by doing so, dare us to stay and see what happens – if they get more sympathetic, if there’s an illuminating back story. Even if nothing does happen, they remain an idiot and there is no back story.
If they were a new acquaintance, that is exactly what they’d stay.
If there’s nothing which is redeemable about the character either, you end the tale thinking they’re a hopeless unlikable shmuck, is that a success? Has another human condition been painted enough for you to think Yes, that’s convincing: jolly well done you hip young author. Or has it simply depressed you, duped you, angered you, wasted your time and fed some stereotypes about Americans who can never analyse themselves enough?
Or maybe this post is the ultimate irony. Absorbed people absorb absorbed people.
Tuesday 15 June 2010
behind schedule
A couple of weeks ago I believed I was on the cusp of change. I may still be, but one man has stalled everything: my plans, my month, my summer and my life, potentially by up to a month.
I had to restrain my jaw from dropping as I walked around his beautiful waterfront apartment, the place he was leaving and needed to find a tenant for. A burly, rugby playing mountain of a Welshman, when he opened his front door, I puffed myself up to my full height and testosterone, pumped his hand and communicated in a manly, assertive way. I think it was convincing enough. I immediately made him an offer to rent the flat, which he deferred a decision on until others had viewed it.
Later that weekend he called and accepted and I paid him a hefty deposit online, which he then claimed not to receive. And is still claiming not to have received, well over a week later. That is, on the rare occasions when he responds, mainly by text message. I have emailed evidence of payment from my account. He says he is checking it with his bank. I have no idea if I’m being conned.
In this limbo period I’ve felt curiously more optimistic about London, perhaps due to feeling that my time here is limited. Outside of the professional obligations which I will maintain, there’s a lightness I hadn’t felt up until now, almost a new found demob happy fatalism, like when you leave a job. I’m out, off, away, nothing matters (I think).
Having a deadline, and end-point helps to eek you out of any rut, it gives you a target and makes you hopeful for change. Having that deadline uprooted and vaguely waved in the air, placing you in limbo: it’s unsettling, but strangely exciting. Anything could happen: I could still stay or go, leave or stay. For a person bereft of general direction, it feels like no great sea-change.
That faintly humiliating incident last week was punctuated by my usual mopey mourning for a while, because I realised I did genuinely like her: smart, sassy, funny, apparently engaged by me for a few hours. But also, it turned out, married: a major drawback.
After giving myself a stern talking to, I felt freed and unshackled, momentarily buoyed by the fillip that comes from someone like that being willing to give you their attention, their evening.
Fuelled by that, I decided to attend one of the random social group meetings I’d seen online and had one online email account sporadically spammed by. I had spurned and mocked it before; it would be full of social rejects wouldn’t it? The transparently friendless; why else would you attend an event like that? Is it strange for me to try and make new friends when I’m planning to move away?
Screw it. I was vaguely bored and leaving town soon (probably). This meeting was only a short walk away, at a pub which would have live music and France-Uruguay and, being a pub, alcohol.
Yes there were dickheads and social rejects and weirdoes and crazy women and those who dripped emotional baggage. But there were a small handful who were actually all right and digits were swapped.
The following evening I went to a loud, massive bar to watch the England game with one new friend: a good looking personal trainer and former professional dancer. Early to mid thirties, a surfer dude look, definitely heterosexual.
How on earth did this man not have girls falling over themselves for him? His Facebook friendstream must be awash with stunning candidates. I asked him directly and he said sure, there had been loads, but not now. It was hard.
I didn’t know whether to draw hope from him or consider myself even more doomed, if someone like him was struggling, a dancer and personal trainer, then how... HOW?!
We got drunk together, glanced hopefully at girls together and swapped tales of the single life – his more successful than mine. But we were turned away from all decent establishments in the area because of our modest football colours, and parted at a respectable hour.
Freeness to Do and not sweat about consequences feels alien; a reflection of a unique timeframe which will be punctuated by football matches and getting or not getting scammed over a flat, before being embedded in memory at the passing of the season.
I had to restrain my jaw from dropping as I walked around his beautiful waterfront apartment, the place he was leaving and needed to find a tenant for. A burly, rugby playing mountain of a Welshman, when he opened his front door, I puffed myself up to my full height and testosterone, pumped his hand and communicated in a manly, assertive way. I think it was convincing enough. I immediately made him an offer to rent the flat, which he deferred a decision on until others had viewed it.
Later that weekend he called and accepted and I paid him a hefty deposit online, which he then claimed not to receive. And is still claiming not to have received, well over a week later. That is, on the rare occasions when he responds, mainly by text message. I have emailed evidence of payment from my account. He says he is checking it with his bank. I have no idea if I’m being conned.
In this limbo period I’ve felt curiously more optimistic about London, perhaps due to feeling that my time here is limited. Outside of the professional obligations which I will maintain, there’s a lightness I hadn’t felt up until now, almost a new found demob happy fatalism, like when you leave a job. I’m out, off, away, nothing matters (I think).
Having a deadline, and end-point helps to eek you out of any rut, it gives you a target and makes you hopeful for change. Having that deadline uprooted and vaguely waved in the air, placing you in limbo: it’s unsettling, but strangely exciting. Anything could happen: I could still stay or go, leave or stay. For a person bereft of general direction, it feels like no great sea-change.
That faintly humiliating incident last week was punctuated by my usual mopey mourning for a while, because I realised I did genuinely like her: smart, sassy, funny, apparently engaged by me for a few hours. But also, it turned out, married: a major drawback.
After giving myself a stern talking to, I felt freed and unshackled, momentarily buoyed by the fillip that comes from someone like that being willing to give you their attention, their evening.
Fuelled by that, I decided to attend one of the random social group meetings I’d seen online and had one online email account sporadically spammed by. I had spurned and mocked it before; it would be full of social rejects wouldn’t it? The transparently friendless; why else would you attend an event like that? Is it strange for me to try and make new friends when I’m planning to move away?
Screw it. I was vaguely bored and leaving town soon (probably). This meeting was only a short walk away, at a pub which would have live music and France-Uruguay and, being a pub, alcohol.
Yes there were dickheads and social rejects and weirdoes and crazy women and those who dripped emotional baggage. But there were a small handful who were actually all right and digits were swapped.
The following evening I went to a loud, massive bar to watch the England game with one new friend: a good looking personal trainer and former professional dancer. Early to mid thirties, a surfer dude look, definitely heterosexual.
How on earth did this man not have girls falling over themselves for him? His Facebook friendstream must be awash with stunning candidates. I asked him directly and he said sure, there had been loads, but not now. It was hard.
I didn’t know whether to draw hope from him or consider myself even more doomed, if someone like him was struggling, a dancer and personal trainer, then how... HOW?!
We got drunk together, glanced hopefully at girls together and swapped tales of the single life – his more successful than mine. But we were turned away from all decent establishments in the area because of our modest football colours, and parted at a respectable hour.
Freeness to Do and not sweat about consequences feels alien; a reflection of a unique timeframe which will be punctuated by football matches and getting or not getting scammed over a flat, before being embedded in memory at the passing of the season.
Friday 11 June 2010
penalties (2006)
The morning of quarter final match day was upbeat, a big game atmosphere burbled amongst fans travelling across the country from Berlin on the Deutsche Bahn, a light-hearted hope. We could beat a Portugal team depleted after the carnage of their match against Holland, couldn’t we? Childish, excited belief rippled throughout the carriages: this would be the performance that the Ecuador and Sweden games had promised but failed to deliver.
I knew fans who had attended more qualifying matches than me but not been allocated a single ticket to the finals, so it was with little hope that I had logged into the Englandfans site. I navigated my way to the right page, entered my personal fan number and password. A page loaded..
One voucher for the FIFA World Cup Semi Final, redeemable should England qualify.
It was like I’d been zapped from inside the screen, I was stunned. A hysterical whinnying noise emanated from my mouth, a ridiculous smile stretched itself across my face. Colleagues began looking over in my direction, intrigued. HOW good could that be? I envisaged my seat in the stadium, probably at Munich rather than Dortmund – presuming we’d top our group. Surely we could make a semi final this time round? We had the players. We ALWAYS had the players.
***
An opposing defender attempts a hard, time-wasting punt deep into the crowd with seconds of the game remaining. He’s playing for extra-time and fearing an England side on the front foot who sense they can end the game now. Not only do I coolly kill the ball stone dead with a twisting chest trap, unfazed by the force behind the clearance, I then deliver a neatly cushioned volley back into the arms of an urgently onrushing Gary Neville. He’s so stunned to receive the ball back so quickly, accurately and stylishly, that he needs me to shout him awake and alert him to the long throw for Wayne Rooney, who is bursting between two defenders on the edge of the box. Neville’s throw is textbook, as is Rooney’s finish. But in truth I’d already done the hard work and the opposition defence were wilting. The referee blows for full-time as the players celebrate. No need for extra time or penalties. England are in the World Cup Final. Rooney, Neville, and the rest of the team run over to me, ecstatic, and acclaim my assist. The fans cheer me too, I become a demi-legend and acquire a small five minutes of celebrity which wins me a ticket to the final.
***
Not that I’d thought about it too much.
I alighted the Deutsche Bahn at the small West German city of Bochum, on a normal day only 20 minutes from the city of Gelsenkirchen, where the England-Portugal quarter final was being played. I found my hosts’ flat and politely chatted to them for half an hour. We had been connected via a fans internet portal designed just for that purpose, complete strangers to each other: trust bred through emails. The situation couldn’t ever be without awkwardness but they seemed nice enough, if a little spaced out, possibly lightly stoned. They understood my desire to get going after half an hour chatting. I dropped my bag there and left for Bochum town, a brief wander, bar lunch, then onto Gelsenkirchen.
The tram filled with white and red clad fans, I spoke to a few: a man and his two young sons who only found two days ago that they had been allocated tickets. They had only travelled out today and would return home tomorrow.
A short walk from the tram stop was a blisteringly hot, unshaded Fan Fest park. Beautiful blonde young German girls in Portugal tops, the fickle bints, American boys in England tops, the berks. Easy to adopt a nationality for a day here, which I found difficult in Berlin. They all laughed and joked and drank, as if this wasn’t an extremely serious business. Perhaps they didn’t have a semi final ticket riding on it. I experimented with areas of the field less blazingly hot, but still with decent views of a large screen, glanced around me for possible people to chat with. None were forthcoming. Engagement with the match was more pressing.
Ricardo Carvalho exaggerated, Wayne Rooney saw red and the Fan Fest, four-fifths England, shuddered. Cristiano Ronaldo winked, the Fan Fest seethed and spat.Not JUST high balls up to Crouch, lads. Come on!
No, Becks. Off injured.
Still hope though, something, please?
Sven?!
My Semi Final Voucher..
Our ten men defended well and hope remained, however threadbare it grew over the course of 120 minutes, even when we kept missing, YES Owen Hargreaves, you beautiful girly-haired man!
N.. no, oh no, maybe..?
And still, right up until Ronaldo impudently smacked home that final penalty and a dagger plunged.
My earlier disappointment not to fall in with any fans – be they English, Portuguese, German or even American – turned to relief at 130 minutes. Relief that I could turn sharply away, leaving a small plume of dust, without goodbye or apology. One of the first to cut and weave back across the field to the main gate, I tried not to look up and register the swathes of human debris wearing white and red. George Cross flags wilting, bare beery bellies and bloodshot eyes: angry, sunburnt and drunk. They stood dumbstruck, despairingly glued the big screens: simmering, resentful, heartbroken. A minority handful, darker skinned – therefore not masquerading – and wearing dark green and claret bounced together in small circles, joyous: “Puertugal alles!” they shrieked. A few scattered neutral and nervous natives.
I exited the gate and turned in the direction I thought was town but didn’t much care if it wasn’t.
No.
That’s it then.
Out.
Penalties. Again.
No Semi Final. No ticket.
Idiot to even dream it could be different.
That day you’d been hoping for all year won’t happen. I swallowed hard, breathed deep, forced my eyes to open wider and absorb. Another disappointment like everything else in your shitty pathetic little life… And wider. Like it would matter if I cried or not. Still, I didn’t. I wanted to get back to Bochum as soon as possible so I could watch the other game and get drunk. Alone. Did I? Was that what I wanted? Didn’t know. I struggled to cope with it – sneering inside at England fans I saw laughing after the game. Laughing?! How could they?
English yobs on the tram back into Gelsenkirchen took exception to a pair of young Germans singing for Germany a short way down the carriage. It was slightly insensitive and rather stupid given the contingent of desperately disappointed England fans on the carriage. I badly needed to pee. It was getting painful. A wiry tatooed English lad sitting next to me asked the Germans to be quiet, “You shat the FACK up you bunch of German CANTS! Or we’ll facking batter ya!” He told me it would kick off in Cologne tonight, “we’ll smack some Portuguese cants about to make ourselves feel better or summink.” I pointed out a nervous looking pregnant lady near the vocal Germans, told him to be careful if it kicked off here, on the tram. She wore no colours but her and her partner were clearly local. As if to show he was a nice boy really, he went over to ask her if she was all right, chatted to her and her partner, asked when the baby was due. “Aw it’s appy days for you then, innit?” After a minute or two he sat back down next to me. One of the Germans had idiotically begun singing again. “Fucksake,” he shook his head at me. I tossed my eyebrows, really badly wanting to pee. “Will you shat the fack up, you fackin German cant!!…” What?! What you looking at?” He half stood and glared towards them. “You wont sam do ya?” They shut up. My bladder was on the point of caving so I got off at the next stop.
I got lost or missed a tram or took a wrong one. Either way, it was a ridiculous three hours before I reached Bochum. I spoke to a couple more sober English lads on another tram back, and to a sweet old German lady who hadn’t known what the score was. “England go home then, yes?” she asked, sounding quite pleased.
Going back to my hosts meant I’d miss most of the second half of Brazil-France, so instead I went straight to a bar for a drink and some food. A large soulless chain pub in a shopping development in the centre of Bochum, a cheap beer and average burger, a big screen showing the majestic Zinedine Zidane weaving patterns, leading Brazilian defenders a merry dance.At full-time I wanted only to sleep quickly and deeply. I was so tired and craved that numb oblivion, emotionally drained.
But still heartbroken whenever it seared back. Don’t just lump it up to Crouch, play football. C’mon Sven! Do something! Walcott? Why not? Why did you bring him then? For me and my ticket! I felt it a personal slight, symbolic of my innate lucklessness, a reflection of cruelty I'm always dealt: to have built something up, being offered something potentially fantastic, having it snatched away.
Mug.
On returning to my host’s modest flat I found Esther had made up a small bed in the main room and left me a long, elegantly handwritten letter. It commiserated me and said they had gone out to watch the Brazil-France match, asked me to join them, leaving directions to the bar and the appropriate tram numbers. Sweet of her, but it was the last thing I wanted to do. I showered, washed off the dust and grime of a horrible day, and crumpled into the thin, coarse-sheeted bed.
Wish I’d never been allocated the damn ticket, never have come over here and spent so much money just to 'enjoy the atmosphere.'
I knew fans who had attended more qualifying matches than me but not been allocated a single ticket to the finals, so it was with little hope that I had logged into the Englandfans site. I navigated my way to the right page, entered my personal fan number and password. A page loaded..
One voucher for the FIFA World Cup Semi Final, redeemable should England qualify.
It was like I’d been zapped from inside the screen, I was stunned. A hysterical whinnying noise emanated from my mouth, a ridiculous smile stretched itself across my face. Colleagues began looking over in my direction, intrigued. HOW good could that be? I envisaged my seat in the stadium, probably at Munich rather than Dortmund – presuming we’d top our group. Surely we could make a semi final this time round? We had the players. We ALWAYS had the players.
***
An opposing defender attempts a hard, time-wasting punt deep into the crowd with seconds of the game remaining. He’s playing for extra-time and fearing an England side on the front foot who sense they can end the game now. Not only do I coolly kill the ball stone dead with a twisting chest trap, unfazed by the force behind the clearance, I then deliver a neatly cushioned volley back into the arms of an urgently onrushing Gary Neville. He’s so stunned to receive the ball back so quickly, accurately and stylishly, that he needs me to shout him awake and alert him to the long throw for Wayne Rooney, who is bursting between two defenders on the edge of the box. Neville’s throw is textbook, as is Rooney’s finish. But in truth I’d already done the hard work and the opposition defence were wilting. The referee blows for full-time as the players celebrate. No need for extra time or penalties. England are in the World Cup Final. Rooney, Neville, and the rest of the team run over to me, ecstatic, and acclaim my assist. The fans cheer me too, I become a demi-legend and acquire a small five minutes of celebrity which wins me a ticket to the final.
***
Not that I’d thought about it too much.
I alighted the Deutsche Bahn at the small West German city of Bochum, on a normal day only 20 minutes from the city of Gelsenkirchen, where the England-Portugal quarter final was being played. I found my hosts’ flat and politely chatted to them for half an hour. We had been connected via a fans internet portal designed just for that purpose, complete strangers to each other: trust bred through emails. The situation couldn’t ever be without awkwardness but they seemed nice enough, if a little spaced out, possibly lightly stoned. They understood my desire to get going after half an hour chatting. I dropped my bag there and left for Bochum town, a brief wander, bar lunch, then onto Gelsenkirchen.
The tram filled with white and red clad fans, I spoke to a few: a man and his two young sons who only found two days ago that they had been allocated tickets. They had only travelled out today and would return home tomorrow.
A short walk from the tram stop was a blisteringly hot, unshaded Fan Fest park. Beautiful blonde young German girls in Portugal tops, the fickle bints, American boys in England tops, the berks. Easy to adopt a nationality for a day here, which I found difficult in Berlin. They all laughed and joked and drank, as if this wasn’t an extremely serious business. Perhaps they didn’t have a semi final ticket riding on it. I experimented with areas of the field less blazingly hot, but still with decent views of a large screen, glanced around me for possible people to chat with. None were forthcoming. Engagement with the match was more pressing.
Ricardo Carvalho exaggerated, Wayne Rooney saw red and the Fan Fest, four-fifths England, shuddered. Cristiano Ronaldo winked, the Fan Fest seethed and spat.Not JUST high balls up to Crouch, lads. Come on!
No, Becks. Off injured.
Still hope though, something, please?
Sven?!
My Semi Final Voucher..
Our ten men defended well and hope remained, however threadbare it grew over the course of 120 minutes, even when we kept missing, YES Owen Hargreaves, you beautiful girly-haired man!
N.. no, oh no, maybe..?
And still, right up until Ronaldo impudently smacked home that final penalty and a dagger plunged.
My earlier disappointment not to fall in with any fans – be they English, Portuguese, German or even American – turned to relief at 130 minutes. Relief that I could turn sharply away, leaving a small plume of dust, without goodbye or apology. One of the first to cut and weave back across the field to the main gate, I tried not to look up and register the swathes of human debris wearing white and red. George Cross flags wilting, bare beery bellies and bloodshot eyes: angry, sunburnt and drunk. They stood dumbstruck, despairingly glued the big screens: simmering, resentful, heartbroken. A minority handful, darker skinned – therefore not masquerading – and wearing dark green and claret bounced together in small circles, joyous: “Puertugal alles!” they shrieked. A few scattered neutral and nervous natives.
I exited the gate and turned in the direction I thought was town but didn’t much care if it wasn’t.
No.
That’s it then.
Out.
Penalties. Again.
No Semi Final. No ticket.
Idiot to even dream it could be different.
That day you’d been hoping for all year won’t happen. I swallowed hard, breathed deep, forced my eyes to open wider and absorb. Another disappointment like everything else in your shitty pathetic little life… And wider. Like it would matter if I cried or not. Still, I didn’t. I wanted to get back to Bochum as soon as possible so I could watch the other game and get drunk. Alone. Did I? Was that what I wanted? Didn’t know. I struggled to cope with it – sneering inside at England fans I saw laughing after the game. Laughing?! How could they?
English yobs on the tram back into Gelsenkirchen took exception to a pair of young Germans singing for Germany a short way down the carriage. It was slightly insensitive and rather stupid given the contingent of desperately disappointed England fans on the carriage. I badly needed to pee. It was getting painful. A wiry tatooed English lad sitting next to me asked the Germans to be quiet, “You shat the FACK up you bunch of German CANTS! Or we’ll facking batter ya!” He told me it would kick off in Cologne tonight, “we’ll smack some Portuguese cants about to make ourselves feel better or summink.” I pointed out a nervous looking pregnant lady near the vocal Germans, told him to be careful if it kicked off here, on the tram. She wore no colours but her and her partner were clearly local. As if to show he was a nice boy really, he went over to ask her if she was all right, chatted to her and her partner, asked when the baby was due. “Aw it’s appy days for you then, innit?” After a minute or two he sat back down next to me. One of the Germans had idiotically begun singing again. “Fucksake,” he shook his head at me. I tossed my eyebrows, really badly wanting to pee. “Will you shat the fack up, you fackin German cant!!…” What?! What you looking at?” He half stood and glared towards them. “You wont sam do ya?” They shut up. My bladder was on the point of caving so I got off at the next stop.
I got lost or missed a tram or took a wrong one. Either way, it was a ridiculous three hours before I reached Bochum. I spoke to a couple more sober English lads on another tram back, and to a sweet old German lady who hadn’t known what the score was. “England go home then, yes?” she asked, sounding quite pleased.
Going back to my hosts meant I’d miss most of the second half of Brazil-France, so instead I went straight to a bar for a drink and some food. A large soulless chain pub in a shopping development in the centre of Bochum, a cheap beer and average burger, a big screen showing the majestic Zinedine Zidane weaving patterns, leading Brazilian defenders a merry dance.At full-time I wanted only to sleep quickly and deeply. I was so tired and craved that numb oblivion, emotionally drained.
But still heartbroken whenever it seared back. Don’t just lump it up to Crouch, play football. C’mon Sven! Do something! Walcott? Why not? Why did you bring him then? For me and my ticket! I felt it a personal slight, symbolic of my innate lucklessness, a reflection of cruelty I'm always dealt: to have built something up, being offered something potentially fantastic, having it snatched away.
Mug.
On returning to my host’s modest flat I found Esther had made up a small bed in the main room and left me a long, elegantly handwritten letter. It commiserated me and said they had gone out to watch the Brazil-France match, asked me to join them, leaving directions to the bar and the appropriate tram numbers. Sweet of her, but it was the last thing I wanted to do. I showered, washed off the dust and grime of a horrible day, and crumpled into the thin, coarse-sheeted bed.
Wish I’d never been allocated the damn ticket, never have come over here and spent so much money just to 'enjoy the atmosphere.'
Thursday 10 June 2010
did she say she had a husband?
Barry was standing at the back of the crowded, dark basement bar room, near the rear door, watching the speaker at the other end. Poor lighting meant he could only make out the dazzle of the speaker’s bald pate, and his silhouette. The words were good though, he could certainly talk.
Behind Barry the rear door swished and he half turned around, smiling instinctively as he squeezed himself against the wall to allow her past, down the steps and into the mesh of people. Cute, short, a frizzy dark bob, trim shape. I may have to introduce myself during the networking afterwards, Barry thought. But Barry thought that about practically every attractive female in the room. There were several.
The silhouette spoke on, took questions and eventually finished. Barry left the basement to go outside and make a call. He returned to find that she hadn’t progressed far into the room and was chatting to a tall, thick-set young guy. Barry introduced himself to them, noting that the young man imparticular was keen and fully charged to network.
They said what they did and swapped cards. She was attractive, Canadian, smart, dryly funny and had a similar line of work to Barry.
During his brief trip outside, Barry had unwittingly collected pollen: his eyes stung and his nose twitched. In the dark, full basement room of loud blaring chatter, the reverb of Barry’s voice inside his head resulted in a tickling sensation within nose cavities. This led to onslaughts of sneezing, nose running and eye weeping.
It wasn’t pretty.
It also blotted out his hearing. She spoke at length and he nodded, mimicking her expressions, as is done when one isn't hearing everything clearly but doesn’t wish to stall the conversational flow every few seconds. He continued to paw at his left eye, more weepy than his right, surreptitiously graze his nose to check that it wasn't dripping in an unsightly fashion. A couple of times Barry broke off to sneeze and visited the gents to splash his face, leaving them to chat together.
He returned, freshened, everything sucked in or blown out.
It’s often the case that publicity, advertising, marketing people have artistic aspirations, sidelines, extracurricular projects or hobbies. Hers appeared to be more than aspirations, she was firmly on the road to realising a few and they discussed that, slowly marginalising their other company. She mentioned '..-husband,' her husband(?)
Did she?
Was that what she said?
Bollocks.
Barry nodded, still not quite following as she spoke quickly, interestingly and in depth, swinging from subject to subject. He didn’t want to lose her.
Barry’s symptoms gradually passed, his hearing cleared, helped by the slow trickle of people out of the bar. He felt able to speak for longer than ten seconds without the tickling reverb in his head. So they carried on chatting: arts, books and films, stories found in sport. There was a distinct lack of networking. He bought her a drink.
After an hour or so they realised they should make an effort with other people in the room and broke off to join a group of male suits who their original, motivated company was now speaking to.
Hands were shaken and so what do you do?s swapped. They were largely uninteresting. Barry split away to another group he partly already knew, always mindful of her behind him.
A short time later he joined her again, sitting at a table with another pair, this time more interesting. He wondered how they, he and her, appeared to their new company. They were both borderline drunk now and reasonably familiar - apart from the minor detail of him not being sure whether or not she was married. “You work together or..?” one of their new company asked. She fiddled with a roll-up cigarette, which surprised Barry because she didn’t look like a smoker.
“You want to smoke?” Barry asked her, having qualified the nature of their relationship, breaking away from the wider conversation for a moment.
“Yeah, you?”
“No, I don’t, but I’ll come, get some fresh air.”
Don’t want anyone else pouncing on you.
“You’ll come up and watch me smoke?”
I’d watch you clean toilets, you’re very attractive..
“I have my book,” Barry said, lamely, referring to a glossy book of photography which their interesting company had just donated. His attraction to her was probably transparent now, his lack of will to leave her. How much did he care? Best not to think about it.
Outside they discussed health, smoking and drinking. She said she’d taken up smoking aged 29 after her divorce from a childhood sweetheart she’d been with since she was 17. It had been a rebellion of sorts. She didn’t look too much older than 29 to Barry as it was; mid thirties tops. Superb condition.
But.. hang on, a divorce? Barry’s brain recoiled. Had she been referring to an ex husband earlier, or a current one? Had his hayfevery hearing blotted out the all important word ‘ex’? She barely looked old enough to have gone through two marriages. So was she married now, or not?
Just ask her?
No, can’t do that.
She proposed leaving there and then, although she had a drink waiting for her downstairs from our original company. Barry said his jacket was back downstairs too, so they returned. She said she couldn’t drink all of her new Rum and Coke and asked if they could share. Barry accepted.
The room was thin with people. Under a dozen remained and their modest appetite for networking had fully evaporated. She mentioned an artistic feminism side project she was working on but uncomfortable talking about. Barry sensitively probed for detail, offered liberal male input.
Lights came on and the basement bar looked like closing. She went to the ladies, Barry went to the gents. Shit. She was amazing. But she had a husband, did she? What was the score? he silently asked his reflection. It didn't know either. They had implicitly agreed to leave together, if only to step out of the door of the bar. Why?
Was there more to this? What was going on?
Barry hated this shit, would he ever get less rubbish at it?
They emerged onto the upper, ground floor bar at roughly the same time and from separate ends of the room. They stepped out onto the street.
“Gotta get back then,” she said, looking slightly drunk now, but still beautiful, Barry thought, newly unsure of herself perhaps. If you just mention your husband again I’ll know where we are. Go on, mention your husband and I’ll walk away.
“Where you heading?” she asked.
“Um, I’ll probably just walk back through to Waterloo,” I said.
“You’ll walk to Waterloo? From here?”
“Yeah, it’s not so far.”
Why did you say that, why don't you just walk with her to the tube? Idiot.
They did nice to meet yous, Barry kissed her on both cheeks, noting that she smelled brilliant. Was there anything else? Was he being a fuckwit or just a dickhead? Would a stronger, more confident, more assertive alpha male just Do Something at this point – regardless of whether or not she had a husband? Risk the embarrassment and probable rejection. She hadn’t spoken about him much; hardly at all, if she had one. That one fleeting mention.
‘Did you say you had a husband?’ he could ask.
He didn’t. He turned round and walked south. She walked north to the tube, a five minute walk. Barry paused after several steps, looked round. She was dawdling, idling slowly, holding a phone and another roll up cigarette. You could’ve at least seen her to the tube, Barry chided himself. Used the tube yourself, instead of walking. Dickhead.
Why do you always do this? he continued to slay himself. Do absolutely nothing. You know why: zero confidence when it really matters, zilch belief combined with a deadly risk aversion to potential embarrassment, meaning you always do nothing.
Still time though, here and now, if you wanted to sacrifice your dignity. She’s still there, you could.
Befuddled by booze and the raging voices, Barry did it. He turned on his heel and walked back up the road, feeling nervous and scared and like a stalker. Still she was still dawdling, walking slowly without purpose, playing with her phone.
Barry got within fifteen yards, could almost smell her scent again, sensed that she was about to turn around. He was close, this was terrifying. She paused again to glance at her phone. Barry leapt into a doorway.
What the FUCK was he doing? Barry rested his head against cool marble. You UTTER schoolboy.
He glanced around the corner to see her lazily walk into the tube station. Barry slapped his forehead with the glossy book of photography he was somehow still clasping, lost, in no-man’s land. She’d gone in, descended to the platforms.
You are pretty much stalking her now, aren't you, you freak? Barry told himself as he passed through the barriers. This was mindless punishment. No, not mindless. His mind was working overtime, it just wasn’t producing much that was helpful, chundering out bilge and idiotic decisions at will. Barry heard a tube arrive beneath him as he descended the steps and jumped down the last few to see the tube, its doors dead ahead, the window next to them and the back of her lovely frizzy bobbed head. She was there, still; no more than five smart footsteps away.
The doors stayed open for several moments, teasing Barry as he stood at the bottom of the steps, paralysed. Come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough, chicken shit.
But was she married? Did it matter?
She’s just there! Last chance, idiot! ACT!
Or don’t act, like usual. Do nothing, except chase her up the street, into the tube station and almost into the tube, like a creepy weird schoolboy psycho.
Quick chirruping beeps saw the doors close and the tube hum away. Barry remained standing, frozen still, excepting a slow headbutt of the shiny stone wall to his left. Hard enough to hurt a bit - not hard enough to really hurt, draw blood or bruise or anything like that. You're just a fuckup, aren't you?
Barry forlornly made his way to the other platform, hating himself, his immortal haplessness in this hideously complicated line of things. Was he guilty of overplaying this one in his head too? Maybe. In femaleworld she’d likely had an amusing evening, albeit mostly with one bloke who she’d told early on she had a husband – so that was fine. Although she mentioned him little thereafter.
On his own tube, Barry retrieved her card from his back pocket. Was a text message a bad idea? It could confirm whether or not she had a husband, effectively exonerate him from fuckwittage and return him back into familiar dickhead environment.
Hope you got back safe, Barry typed, it was good meeting, I considered acting but it was probably best I didn’t.
Ack. That was a bit… too much? Barry paused over the send button, but not for too long as the signal was sporadic. Took a breath, fuck it, clicked send.
Who is this? came back the reply two minutes later. Barry smiled initially, thinking it a genuine reflection of how long he had stayed in her memory. Not long at all. What was he worrying about? Nobody remembers you even if you’ve spent three solid hours in their company. You’re eminently forgettable, Barry, however compelling you might hope you are at the time. His chest lightened, he flicked through the photobook.
A second message a minute later claimed it was a joke from an overly sarcastic (and married) Canadian X.
So she WAS married! Brilliant! Great news, Barry thought. He had no reason to be proud of his peculiar behaviour, but at least he was now free, spared from further humiliation. The dunce cuffs were off.
Or were they?
In that moment outside the bar – for everything is comprised of moments of action or inaction – when he ridiculously didn’t even walk her to the tube and prolong their parting until there; in that moment her status barely mattered. Unease or uncertainty sat in alcohol washed eyes, untrusting, perhaps of herself more than him. If Barry had been stronger and more direct, like friends of his whose behaviour he didn’t necessarily always admire but...
Ethically unsound if she was married, sure. But was HE really obliged to care that much? Should he have just been bold and selfish and fatalistic. Although bold and selfish and fatalistic wasn’t Barry’s forté. Dithering in the key moments was where he excelled; in that domain he was virtually untouchable. Like England and penalties. Guaranteed to bottle it, lose and feel sorry for himself after the event.
Behind Barry the rear door swished and he half turned around, smiling instinctively as he squeezed himself against the wall to allow her past, down the steps and into the mesh of people. Cute, short, a frizzy dark bob, trim shape. I may have to introduce myself during the networking afterwards, Barry thought. But Barry thought that about practically every attractive female in the room. There were several.
The silhouette spoke on, took questions and eventually finished. Barry left the basement to go outside and make a call. He returned to find that she hadn’t progressed far into the room and was chatting to a tall, thick-set young guy. Barry introduced himself to them, noting that the young man imparticular was keen and fully charged to network.
They said what they did and swapped cards. She was attractive, Canadian, smart, dryly funny and had a similar line of work to Barry.
During his brief trip outside, Barry had unwittingly collected pollen: his eyes stung and his nose twitched. In the dark, full basement room of loud blaring chatter, the reverb of Barry’s voice inside his head resulted in a tickling sensation within nose cavities. This led to onslaughts of sneezing, nose running and eye weeping.
It wasn’t pretty.
It also blotted out his hearing. She spoke at length and he nodded, mimicking her expressions, as is done when one isn't hearing everything clearly but doesn’t wish to stall the conversational flow every few seconds. He continued to paw at his left eye, more weepy than his right, surreptitiously graze his nose to check that it wasn't dripping in an unsightly fashion. A couple of times Barry broke off to sneeze and visited the gents to splash his face, leaving them to chat together.
He returned, freshened, everything sucked in or blown out.
It’s often the case that publicity, advertising, marketing people have artistic aspirations, sidelines, extracurricular projects or hobbies. Hers appeared to be more than aspirations, she was firmly on the road to realising a few and they discussed that, slowly marginalising their other company. She mentioned '..-husband,' her husband(?)
Did she?
Was that what she said?
Bollocks.
Barry nodded, still not quite following as she spoke quickly, interestingly and in depth, swinging from subject to subject. He didn’t want to lose her.
Barry’s symptoms gradually passed, his hearing cleared, helped by the slow trickle of people out of the bar. He felt able to speak for longer than ten seconds without the tickling reverb in his head. So they carried on chatting: arts, books and films, stories found in sport. There was a distinct lack of networking. He bought her a drink.
After an hour or so they realised they should make an effort with other people in the room and broke off to join a group of male suits who their original, motivated company was now speaking to.
Hands were shaken and so what do you do?s swapped. They were largely uninteresting. Barry split away to another group he partly already knew, always mindful of her behind him.
A short time later he joined her again, sitting at a table with another pair, this time more interesting. He wondered how they, he and her, appeared to their new company. They were both borderline drunk now and reasonably familiar - apart from the minor detail of him not being sure whether or not she was married. “You work together or..?” one of their new company asked. She fiddled with a roll-up cigarette, which surprised Barry because she didn’t look like a smoker.
“You want to smoke?” Barry asked her, having qualified the nature of their relationship, breaking away from the wider conversation for a moment.
“Yeah, you?”
“No, I don’t, but I’ll come, get some fresh air.”
Don’t want anyone else pouncing on you.
“You’ll come up and watch me smoke?”
I’d watch you clean toilets, you’re very attractive..
“I have my book,” Barry said, lamely, referring to a glossy book of photography which their interesting company had just donated. His attraction to her was probably transparent now, his lack of will to leave her. How much did he care? Best not to think about it.
Outside they discussed health, smoking and drinking. She said she’d taken up smoking aged 29 after her divorce from a childhood sweetheart she’d been with since she was 17. It had been a rebellion of sorts. She didn’t look too much older than 29 to Barry as it was; mid thirties tops. Superb condition.
But.. hang on, a divorce? Barry’s brain recoiled. Had she been referring to an ex husband earlier, or a current one? Had his hayfevery hearing blotted out the all important word ‘ex’? She barely looked old enough to have gone through two marriages. So was she married now, or not?
Just ask her?
No, can’t do that.
She proposed leaving there and then, although she had a drink waiting for her downstairs from our original company. Barry said his jacket was back downstairs too, so they returned. She said she couldn’t drink all of her new Rum and Coke and asked if they could share. Barry accepted.
The room was thin with people. Under a dozen remained and their modest appetite for networking had fully evaporated. She mentioned an artistic feminism side project she was working on but uncomfortable talking about. Barry sensitively probed for detail, offered liberal male input.
Lights came on and the basement bar looked like closing. She went to the ladies, Barry went to the gents. Shit. She was amazing. But she had a husband, did she? What was the score? he silently asked his reflection. It didn't know either. They had implicitly agreed to leave together, if only to step out of the door of the bar. Why?
Was there more to this? What was going on?
Barry hated this shit, would he ever get less rubbish at it?
They emerged onto the upper, ground floor bar at roughly the same time and from separate ends of the room. They stepped out onto the street.
“Gotta get back then,” she said, looking slightly drunk now, but still beautiful, Barry thought, newly unsure of herself perhaps. If you just mention your husband again I’ll know where we are. Go on, mention your husband and I’ll walk away.
“Where you heading?” she asked.
“Um, I’ll probably just walk back through to Waterloo,” I said.
“You’ll walk to Waterloo? From here?”
“Yeah, it’s not so far.”
Why did you say that, why don't you just walk with her to the tube? Idiot.
They did nice to meet yous, Barry kissed her on both cheeks, noting that she smelled brilliant. Was there anything else? Was he being a fuckwit or just a dickhead? Would a stronger, more confident, more assertive alpha male just Do Something at this point – regardless of whether or not she had a husband? Risk the embarrassment and probable rejection. She hadn’t spoken about him much; hardly at all, if she had one. That one fleeting mention.
‘Did you say you had a husband?’ he could ask.
He didn’t. He turned round and walked south. She walked north to the tube, a five minute walk. Barry paused after several steps, looked round. She was dawdling, idling slowly, holding a phone and another roll up cigarette. You could’ve at least seen her to the tube, Barry chided himself. Used the tube yourself, instead of walking. Dickhead.
Why do you always do this? he continued to slay himself. Do absolutely nothing. You know why: zero confidence when it really matters, zilch belief combined with a deadly risk aversion to potential embarrassment, meaning you always do nothing.
Still time though, here and now, if you wanted to sacrifice your dignity. She’s still there, you could.
Befuddled by booze and the raging voices, Barry did it. He turned on his heel and walked back up the road, feeling nervous and scared and like a stalker. Still she was still dawdling, walking slowly without purpose, playing with her phone.
Barry got within fifteen yards, could almost smell her scent again, sensed that she was about to turn around. He was close, this was terrifying. She paused again to glance at her phone. Barry leapt into a doorway.
What the FUCK was he doing? Barry rested his head against cool marble. You UTTER schoolboy.
He glanced around the corner to see her lazily walk into the tube station. Barry slapped his forehead with the glossy book of photography he was somehow still clasping, lost, in no-man’s land. She’d gone in, descended to the platforms.
You are pretty much stalking her now, aren't you, you freak? Barry told himself as he passed through the barriers. This was mindless punishment. No, not mindless. His mind was working overtime, it just wasn’t producing much that was helpful, chundering out bilge and idiotic decisions at will. Barry heard a tube arrive beneath him as he descended the steps and jumped down the last few to see the tube, its doors dead ahead, the window next to them and the back of her lovely frizzy bobbed head. She was there, still; no more than five smart footsteps away.
The doors stayed open for several moments, teasing Barry as he stood at the bottom of the steps, paralysed. Come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough, chicken shit.
But was she married? Did it matter?
She’s just there! Last chance, idiot! ACT!
Or don’t act, like usual. Do nothing, except chase her up the street, into the tube station and almost into the tube, like a creepy weird schoolboy psycho.
Quick chirruping beeps saw the doors close and the tube hum away. Barry remained standing, frozen still, excepting a slow headbutt of the shiny stone wall to his left. Hard enough to hurt a bit - not hard enough to really hurt, draw blood or bruise or anything like that. You're just a fuckup, aren't you?
Barry forlornly made his way to the other platform, hating himself, his immortal haplessness in this hideously complicated line of things. Was he guilty of overplaying this one in his head too? Maybe. In femaleworld she’d likely had an amusing evening, albeit mostly with one bloke who she’d told early on she had a husband – so that was fine. Although she mentioned him little thereafter.
On his own tube, Barry retrieved her card from his back pocket. Was a text message a bad idea? It could confirm whether or not she had a husband, effectively exonerate him from fuckwittage and return him back into familiar dickhead environment.
Hope you got back safe, Barry typed, it was good meeting, I considered acting but it was probably best I didn’t.
Ack. That was a bit… too much? Barry paused over the send button, but not for too long as the signal was sporadic. Took a breath, fuck it, clicked send.
Who is this? came back the reply two minutes later. Barry smiled initially, thinking it a genuine reflection of how long he had stayed in her memory. Not long at all. What was he worrying about? Nobody remembers you even if you’ve spent three solid hours in their company. You’re eminently forgettable, Barry, however compelling you might hope you are at the time. His chest lightened, he flicked through the photobook.
A second message a minute later claimed it was a joke from an overly sarcastic (and married) Canadian X.
So she WAS married! Brilliant! Great news, Barry thought. He had no reason to be proud of his peculiar behaviour, but at least he was now free, spared from further humiliation. The dunce cuffs were off.
Or were they?
In that moment outside the bar – for everything is comprised of moments of action or inaction – when he ridiculously didn’t even walk her to the tube and prolong their parting until there; in that moment her status barely mattered. Unease or uncertainty sat in alcohol washed eyes, untrusting, perhaps of herself more than him. If Barry had been stronger and more direct, like friends of his whose behaviour he didn’t necessarily always admire but...
Ethically unsound if she was married, sure. But was HE really obliged to care that much? Should he have just been bold and selfish and fatalistic. Although bold and selfish and fatalistic wasn’t Barry’s forté. Dithering in the key moments was where he excelled; in that domain he was virtually untouchable. Like England and penalties. Guaranteed to bottle it, lose and feel sorry for himself after the event.
Monday 7 June 2010
so long, Mrs P (Die bitch, die)
Mrs P was always old to us. She died yesterday, aged 97, leaving a daughter in her sixties who has spent most of the last 25 years looking after her.
Mrs P’s husband died about 25 years ago, her daughter’s husband about 10 years ago. They lived half a dozen houses apart on the small crescent road. Mrs P was her daughter, Val’s reason for living and the bain of her life. Old forever, she suffered dementia, delusions and confusion. Although she retained reasonable mobility, she needed help and depended on her daughter for everything. There was never any talk of a Residential Home. In return her daughter had little semblance of a life after her own husband died, emotion invested in alcohol and small yapping, spoiled dogs, until the hurt suffered in losing that was too great to get another.
A trip to the nearest small town would cause dizzying confusion and worry. A drive to the nearest large city had to be plotted and planned and timed. It would still paralyse with worry. She shut herself in, was intimidated by invitations as far afield as next door on Christmas Day, went to bed at 7 o clock after a bottle of wine. She went nowhere and did nothing, except tend to her mother for 25 years.
The time before last that I returned home, I opened their garden gates. Val returned from ferrying her mother somewhere. I smiled as the car rolled past me and down the driveway. Mrs P smiled back, glazed, who knows where, and her daughter waved her gratitude. Did Mrs P know who I was when she smiled? One of the boys from next door to her Val, one of those small boys, a man, a young man, a middle-aged man now? Who knew? Ageless. It all blurred.
She had a stroke a week ago but clung on with the same belligerence she lived her life.
Is she still not dead? we whispered whenever we returned. She must be, what, two hundred and thirty six now?
And if we were this amazed at her longevity, us who saw her only a handful of times in passing from year to year – long had passed the days when, passing with the dog, you would be obliged to stop and chat – then what of her poor shackled daughter?
Die bitch, die! Give me back at least some life!
“The doctors told us they expected her to die a week ago,” Val had told us over the garden fence, red eyed, red faced, those burst and battle-weary blood vessels in her rosy cheeks splitting some more. “But she stuck it out right to the end.”
Mrs P’s husband died about 25 years ago, her daughter’s husband about 10 years ago. They lived half a dozen houses apart on the small crescent road. Mrs P was her daughter, Val’s reason for living and the bain of her life. Old forever, she suffered dementia, delusions and confusion. Although she retained reasonable mobility, she needed help and depended on her daughter for everything. There was never any talk of a Residential Home. In return her daughter had little semblance of a life after her own husband died, emotion invested in alcohol and small yapping, spoiled dogs, until the hurt suffered in losing that was too great to get another.
A trip to the nearest small town would cause dizzying confusion and worry. A drive to the nearest large city had to be plotted and planned and timed. It would still paralyse with worry. She shut herself in, was intimidated by invitations as far afield as next door on Christmas Day, went to bed at 7 o clock after a bottle of wine. She went nowhere and did nothing, except tend to her mother for 25 years.
The time before last that I returned home, I opened their garden gates. Val returned from ferrying her mother somewhere. I smiled as the car rolled past me and down the driveway. Mrs P smiled back, glazed, who knows where, and her daughter waved her gratitude. Did Mrs P know who I was when she smiled? One of the boys from next door to her Val, one of those small boys, a man, a young man, a middle-aged man now? Who knew? Ageless. It all blurred.
She had a stroke a week ago but clung on with the same belligerence she lived her life.
Is she still not dead? we whispered whenever we returned. She must be, what, two hundred and thirty six now?
And if we were this amazed at her longevity, us who saw her only a handful of times in passing from year to year – long had passed the days when, passing with the dog, you would be obliged to stop and chat – then what of her poor shackled daughter?
Die bitch, die! Give me back at least some life!
“The doctors told us they expected her to die a week ago,” Val had told us over the garden fence, red eyed, red faced, those burst and battle-weary blood vessels in her rosy cheeks splitting some more. “But she stuck it out right to the end.”
Saturday 5 June 2010
into Africa
Another from the occasional travel archives. Ditty about my journey into Africa around ten months ago…
----------------------------
Approaching my seat on the full-to-capacity first flight from Heathrow to Dubai, I was presented with shrivelled up ancient old lady who appeared the living embodiment of Meerha Syal’s pastiche ‘Mummy’ character in the comedy chat show, the Kumars. Collapsed in on herself and wheezing in a serious sounding way, I instantly feared for her health. My designated seat was between her and her companion steward: one boy of no more than thirteen or fourteen. I didn’t want her dying on my shoulder during the flight. I said they could sit together and I’d take the aisle seat. On one toilet excursion I had to help the old lady find her way back to her grandson, maybe even great grandson, after she lost her bearings. She looked peculiar wearing the new fangled headphones which connected her to a confusing entertainment console. Her young steward had hushed her at one point for speaking loudly while she wore them.
The affiliation of Emirates airline with Arsenal football club nauseated me throughout, featuring highly in both the printed magazines and the entertainment console. On the latter, a customised BBC Sport website gave menu options of Football, Rugby, Cricket, Athletics and Arsenal.
It was disgusting.
Also distasteful was the seating décor on both aircraft. It put me in mind of a particularly bad party at a scary aunt’s: faded pink and flowery, not replaced since the early 80s.
With little more than half an hour between landing in Dubai and boarding again for Johannesburg, I was struck only by the airport’s shineyness. Its architecture gleamed with twisty points, spires and sparkly newness. The order of the region was reflected as we soared skywards. Lights illuminated the city’s organisation more than simply the grids embedded in most American cities. Here there were numerous tall sharp points and a flourish to the planning. Not endless banks of noughts and crosses, but pentagons and circles of light, conjoined by sweeping florescent beams of motorway arteries, tiny plinking cells of vehicles.
I drew glib parallels with my outbound journey of 2005 when I headed to Saigon, similarly floundering. Without a job then, having suffered serial interview rejection, I returned ultimately after a Northern European jaunt to work filing documents in the basement of a financial services company. Now my independent venture wasn’t yet dead on its feet, although that wasn’t an inconceivable prospect.
During the evermore tedious flight, I drew glib comparisons between air travel and my day-to-day life: watching films, reading books, eating rubbish instant food, tolerating sporadic company, enjoying none, only a vague sense of direction and purpose. Being ‘up in the air’. Ho ho.
Eventually we touched down in a bright, sunny but blustery-as-warned Johannesburg. I walked down the long connecting hallways towards the terminal, enjoying three songs from the soundtrack of the African film, Tsotsi, which I played on my iPod.
Phat, arresting, possessing beats.
Despite the heavy shoulder bag skewering my shoulder, I felt the lightness of being somewhere entirely new and different, sucking it in, although there was little to suck in a standard airport. The music ended I joined queues, shuffled forwards and walked through booths, collected my luggage, found a luggage trolley and located the open bus station. I retraced my steps to sit in an empty car rental hall and wait there, rather than risk attracting unwanted attention in the bus station.
*
I sat there for an hour, writing everything up until this sentence, before wheeling my bag through to the bus depot again. Soon I spotted my fellow compatriot and fellow volunteer / tourist.
Margaret was a feisty International School Teacher who lived and worked a comparatively short distance away in Botswana. Mid 50s, diminutive, spiky haired, bright and eager; we swapped basic details – where are you from? What do you do? Have you done much like this before now? Then she purposefully hunted out our minibus.
As a sullen driver helped us pack our bags into the minibus trailer, a confident young local boy joined us. Having met and greeted each other, we climbed inside the vehicle for the 300km ride north east of Johannesburg. We quickly passed through Pretoria, then nondescript, flat farmland for a considerable distance.
In the back of the minibus we chatted openly, Helen, the local boy and I. He was on the opening leg of an unplanned stint travelling, looking to do the sort of animal conservation work Helen and I were about to, but less willing to pay. We spoke of Helen and teaching and education and football and The World Cup and Africa and Africans and slowly, slowly, our chatter petered out.
After a couple of hours the topography around us changed. Road signs for northern England placenames: Balmoral, Kendall, were matched by sweeping hillsides of escalating scale; peaks and valleys not unlike parts of the Scottish Highlands. A field ablaze, either side of the road, four foot high flames and dark grey smoke. Our vehicle nonchalantly rumbled through, sending waves of searing heat and strong fumes of smoke through the vehicle interior; like passing through hell, the ungodly reverse of a sudden icy shiver.
One ten minute service station pitstop half way through our journey led to confusion with coffee, cash and change, and my appearance of being a clueless tourist. I slunk back to the vehicle, defeated and tired.
The next leg saw lethargy fully kick in, my head soon lolloping, impossible to keep upright as the vehicle droned forward and a podcast played in my ears.
The podcast spoke of books, new media and culture.
From the involuntary fixation with humans: 21st Century news, technology, current affairs, popular consumer culture and art through television, books and music; I had chosen to immerse myself in a wild, faraway, remote habitat and a rich diversity of new species which make you feel altogether ignorant. It was a transition.
At dusk we alighted in the car park of a modest shopping centre in a small flat town which was overlooked by high peaks. Here we were met by the project’s mastermind and his young researcher of the season, a 21-year old rugby playing Welshman. Beer and wine were purchased in the partitioned section of a sizeable Spar supermarket, before the final stage – a truck ride through the town and up, into the darkness of the mountain range, off the beaten track, away from all civilisation. We lurched and swayed in the back of the Land Rover, its headlights illuminating the violently bumpy dirt tracks ahead.
Forty minutes later we climbed out at a modest looking bungalow on the mountainside, set back fifty yards from the main orange gravel track – not that it was possible to tell it was orange. I rubbed my eyes and looked up. Vividly clustered stars mesmerised, sharply studding the blackest of skies. Stillness and quiet felt like someone had pulled the cork out.
Or put it in. Maybe.
I wasn’t sure. I was extremely tired.
The amiable Welshman was staying in this basic house, together with the irrepressible Margaret and I. We made ourselves at home, grew better acquainted with the gas heated water system, basic bedrooms – mine had two single beds, each with a thin mattress, and a wardrobe. Nothing else. I discovered that there were no towels of any kind. Showering could wait a little longer.
Several decades our senior, surrogate mother Margaret set about making chicken and salad while we all chatted in the kitchen. I ate, helped wash up, but passed on the drinks and further chatting in the open fire-warmed living room, opting instead for my new sleeping bag, bed and sleep.
----------------------------
Approaching my seat on the full-to-capacity first flight from Heathrow to Dubai, I was presented with shrivelled up ancient old lady who appeared the living embodiment of Meerha Syal’s pastiche ‘Mummy’ character in the comedy chat show, the Kumars. Collapsed in on herself and wheezing in a serious sounding way, I instantly feared for her health. My designated seat was between her and her companion steward: one boy of no more than thirteen or fourteen. I didn’t want her dying on my shoulder during the flight. I said they could sit together and I’d take the aisle seat. On one toilet excursion I had to help the old lady find her way back to her grandson, maybe even great grandson, after she lost her bearings. She looked peculiar wearing the new fangled headphones which connected her to a confusing entertainment console. Her young steward had hushed her at one point for speaking loudly while she wore them.
The affiliation of Emirates airline with Arsenal football club nauseated me throughout, featuring highly in both the printed magazines and the entertainment console. On the latter, a customised BBC Sport website gave menu options of Football, Rugby, Cricket, Athletics and Arsenal.
It was disgusting.
Also distasteful was the seating décor on both aircraft. It put me in mind of a particularly bad party at a scary aunt’s: faded pink and flowery, not replaced since the early 80s.
With little more than half an hour between landing in Dubai and boarding again for Johannesburg, I was struck only by the airport’s shineyness. Its architecture gleamed with twisty points, spires and sparkly newness. The order of the region was reflected as we soared skywards. Lights illuminated the city’s organisation more than simply the grids embedded in most American cities. Here there were numerous tall sharp points and a flourish to the planning. Not endless banks of noughts and crosses, but pentagons and circles of light, conjoined by sweeping florescent beams of motorway arteries, tiny plinking cells of vehicles.
I drew glib parallels with my outbound journey of 2005 when I headed to Saigon, similarly floundering. Without a job then, having suffered serial interview rejection, I returned ultimately after a Northern European jaunt to work filing documents in the basement of a financial services company. Now my independent venture wasn’t yet dead on its feet, although that wasn’t an inconceivable prospect.
During the evermore tedious flight, I drew glib comparisons between air travel and my day-to-day life: watching films, reading books, eating rubbish instant food, tolerating sporadic company, enjoying none, only a vague sense of direction and purpose. Being ‘up in the air’. Ho ho.
Eventually we touched down in a bright, sunny but blustery-as-warned Johannesburg. I walked down the long connecting hallways towards the terminal, enjoying three songs from the soundtrack of the African film, Tsotsi, which I played on my iPod.
Phat, arresting, possessing beats.
Despite the heavy shoulder bag skewering my shoulder, I felt the lightness of being somewhere entirely new and different, sucking it in, although there was little to suck in a standard airport. The music ended I joined queues, shuffled forwards and walked through booths, collected my luggage, found a luggage trolley and located the open bus station. I retraced my steps to sit in an empty car rental hall and wait there, rather than risk attracting unwanted attention in the bus station.
*
I sat there for an hour, writing everything up until this sentence, before wheeling my bag through to the bus depot again. Soon I spotted my fellow compatriot and fellow volunteer / tourist.
Margaret was a feisty International School Teacher who lived and worked a comparatively short distance away in Botswana. Mid 50s, diminutive, spiky haired, bright and eager; we swapped basic details – where are you from? What do you do? Have you done much like this before now? Then she purposefully hunted out our minibus.
As a sullen driver helped us pack our bags into the minibus trailer, a confident young local boy joined us. Having met and greeted each other, we climbed inside the vehicle for the 300km ride north east of Johannesburg. We quickly passed through Pretoria, then nondescript, flat farmland for a considerable distance.
In the back of the minibus we chatted openly, Helen, the local boy and I. He was on the opening leg of an unplanned stint travelling, looking to do the sort of animal conservation work Helen and I were about to, but less willing to pay. We spoke of Helen and teaching and education and football and The World Cup and Africa and Africans and slowly, slowly, our chatter petered out.
After a couple of hours the topography around us changed. Road signs for northern England placenames: Balmoral, Kendall, were matched by sweeping hillsides of escalating scale; peaks and valleys not unlike parts of the Scottish Highlands. A field ablaze, either side of the road, four foot high flames and dark grey smoke. Our vehicle nonchalantly rumbled through, sending waves of searing heat and strong fumes of smoke through the vehicle interior; like passing through hell, the ungodly reverse of a sudden icy shiver.
One ten minute service station pitstop half way through our journey led to confusion with coffee, cash and change, and my appearance of being a clueless tourist. I slunk back to the vehicle, defeated and tired.
The next leg saw lethargy fully kick in, my head soon lolloping, impossible to keep upright as the vehicle droned forward and a podcast played in my ears.
The podcast spoke of books, new media and culture.
From the involuntary fixation with humans: 21st Century news, technology, current affairs, popular consumer culture and art through television, books and music; I had chosen to immerse myself in a wild, faraway, remote habitat and a rich diversity of new species which make you feel altogether ignorant. It was a transition.
At dusk we alighted in the car park of a modest shopping centre in a small flat town which was overlooked by high peaks. Here we were met by the project’s mastermind and his young researcher of the season, a 21-year old rugby playing Welshman. Beer and wine were purchased in the partitioned section of a sizeable Spar supermarket, before the final stage – a truck ride through the town and up, into the darkness of the mountain range, off the beaten track, away from all civilisation. We lurched and swayed in the back of the Land Rover, its headlights illuminating the violently bumpy dirt tracks ahead.
Forty minutes later we climbed out at a modest looking bungalow on the mountainside, set back fifty yards from the main orange gravel track – not that it was possible to tell it was orange. I rubbed my eyes and looked up. Vividly clustered stars mesmerised, sharply studding the blackest of skies. Stillness and quiet felt like someone had pulled the cork out.
Or put it in. Maybe.
I wasn’t sure. I was extremely tired.
The amiable Welshman was staying in this basic house, together with the irrepressible Margaret and I. We made ourselves at home, grew better acquainted with the gas heated water system, basic bedrooms – mine had two single beds, each with a thin mattress, and a wardrobe. Nothing else. I discovered that there were no towels of any kind. Showering could wait a little longer.
Several decades our senior, surrogate mother Margaret set about making chicken and salad while we all chatted in the kitchen. I ate, helped wash up, but passed on the drinks and further chatting in the open fire-warmed living room, opting instead for my new sleeping bag, bed and sleep.
Thursday 3 June 2010
seeking (Car)difference
Croeso i Gymru
My stomach sank with a bewildering sense of betrayal as I passed the signpost, crossed the bridge and queued to pay the toll. How could you do this to me? England seemed to ask my back. You total bastard.
I know, I'm not sure, sorry, I squeaked.
The bad things flashed back from my six years spent there at the beginning of the last decade; those vile Welshmen who literally sneered and spat at your gall to wear an England shirt on a big matchday; the less seriously intended but still grating anti-English ‘banter,’ the impossibility of finding live football screening if a rugby match is on, the painfully tenuous Welsh angles to news.
I’m English and love England, but I also love Wales and many of its people. Pressed to choose a preference, I’d have to choose England. Paradoxically, as it turns out. Because having pressed myself to choose, I’m choosing Wales.
I’m in a service station a short distance over the border, en route to Cardiff for a couple of days viewing properties and will stay with a friend there overnight. It’s not a decision taken lightly but it would seem that a better standard of living can be achieved for less money there. While I'm very fond of a couple of football clubs there, that's it: I don’t need London and it certainly doesn’t need me. This morning’s drive proved that Wales can be made by car from London in two hours at no great stretch, train routes are straighforward.
There’s the added potential of having more friends back in Cardiff too - older ones with more shared history and theoretically stronger bonds - but whether they’ll be accessible to me given their respective domestic trappings is up for debate. Even whether they’ll feel inclined to see much of me. It could easily be the case that I'd see them just as infrequently.
Either way I feel it’s worth the punt, the change, the difference – albeit a comfortably familiar difference. Six months on another rental agreement – despite all of the paperwork, bills and moving fuss that goes around it – is no great commitment.
If any new opportunities come along or my independent work proves unsustainable, I can sail off again. Although I’m not averse to the idea of a rudder, should one decide to present itself.
Diolch Cymru, we’ll see.
My stomach sank with a bewildering sense of betrayal as I passed the signpost, crossed the bridge and queued to pay the toll. How could you do this to me? England seemed to ask my back. You total bastard.
I know, I'm not sure, sorry, I squeaked.
The bad things flashed back from my six years spent there at the beginning of the last decade; those vile Welshmen who literally sneered and spat at your gall to wear an England shirt on a big matchday; the less seriously intended but still grating anti-English ‘banter,’ the impossibility of finding live football screening if a rugby match is on, the painfully tenuous Welsh angles to news.
I’m English and love England, but I also love Wales and many of its people. Pressed to choose a preference, I’d have to choose England. Paradoxically, as it turns out. Because having pressed myself to choose, I’m choosing Wales.
I’m in a service station a short distance over the border, en route to Cardiff for a couple of days viewing properties and will stay with a friend there overnight. It’s not a decision taken lightly but it would seem that a better standard of living can be achieved for less money there. While I'm very fond of a couple of football clubs there, that's it: I don’t need London and it certainly doesn’t need me. This morning’s drive proved that Wales can be made by car from London in two hours at no great stretch, train routes are straighforward.
There’s the added potential of having more friends back in Cardiff too - older ones with more shared history and theoretically stronger bonds - but whether they’ll be accessible to me given their respective domestic trappings is up for debate. Even whether they’ll feel inclined to see much of me. It could easily be the case that I'd see them just as infrequently.
Either way I feel it’s worth the punt, the change, the difference – albeit a comfortably familiar difference. Six months on another rental agreement – despite all of the paperwork, bills and moving fuss that goes around it – is no great commitment.
If any new opportunities come along or my independent work proves unsustainable, I can sail off again. Although I’m not averse to the idea of a rudder, should one decide to present itself.
Diolch Cymru, we’ll see.
Tuesday 1 June 2010
male fracture
Initially I never minded his relentless, mid-twenties, labrador-like enthuasiasm. I respected it, was entertained by it. At least it was character. He wanted to build an empire, an agency, but he was essentially a freelancer or a small businessman like me – except his speciality was design, he could operate photoshop and believed he had an eye for graphics, although he still needed a developer. Did that really amount to an empire..? His confidence was unwavering.
We’d only met around eight or nine months before and liked each other, although our professional interests didn’t align. I respected what he wanted to do, his bullishness and disrespect for the established industry clique. It irked me in only a small way that he couldn’t grasp what it was that I did, or that he didn’t want to, had faint interest. “He’s a writer, a reporter, he’s.. I don’t know.” I paid him interest and that was enough. I connected him to relevant people, he helped me with a website.
Despite the pokey Camden flat he worked from, he always spoke big games, frowned upon my contentedness with my scale and platform, my lack of desire to build. Perhaps he laughed.
Knowing the organiser, we attended an all-day event and joined them for drinks, as well as a meal afterwards. He thickly laid on his entrepreneurial zest to a successful CEO he thought it would impress. When I told him a member of the dinner table had (quite understandably) tired of his apparently endless gushing, he was obviously slighted and bitter, pretended not to care but did.
Over the dinner he had voiced ideas about line-up photographs like Sergeant Pepper or Sillicon Valley in the 1990s, charting us all now before we had built our own incredible dynasties. To me it seemed idiotic, laughable, embarrassingly ridden with ego. Nobody had a revolutionary game-changing idea or a specific technology (that they were public about), we were all ostensibly performing standard services at a medium to low level. Nevertheless, everyone made encouraging and agreeable ‘yes-let’s-do-it’ noises.
Having planned to go for drinks after the event and make an evening of it, we left the restaurant, but it was later into the evening than expected when arrived out our favoured Soho bar.
Once seated with beers he fluffed his own self proclaimed business nous, said he was good at identifying valuable stocks and shares. I quibbled, “you can speculate about the value of any brand and what they’ll do next; it’s all a punt. Does predicting that Innocent will make food or Bentley will make a champagne mean you're a visionary, or does it mean you’ve taken an informed guess?”
He disagreed with me that successful bankers needed to be numerate, that it at least helped. “Bollocks, you and I could be minted bankers if we wanted.” I disagreed, said I would be if I could be but I wasn’t. I’d struggled to get a C at GCSE. I could do what I do and be moderately successful but there was no way could I be a banker. This disgruntled him.
He was the epitome of a guy from small Scottish provinces who had come to London seeking fame and fortune. I was be the epitome of similar – but who had been dealt little fortune, perhaps had created none, and believed even less in my potential for major prosperity. I wasn’t entirely pessimistic about my future but had no pretensions of fame, ludicrous wealth or building a famed legacy.
“Get me another beer then,” I said into the sulky pause, as we both reached the bottom of our first bottles in the late bar, hoping we could shift conversation on.
Never having divorced from checking his phone for messages, he said “no, ahv gotta be gone in five minutes mate.”
A text message may have changed his course – from his girlfriend or another friend.
“Girlfriend curfew?”
He mumbled unintelligibly. I didn’t ask further, but it was strange given that he’d said we had a good hour and a half of drinking when we arrived. Something changed during our discussion, my scepticism was too much, I had depressed and tired him.
“Ok then,” I said, abruptly accepting. “We’ll call it quits,” an awkward atmosphere had been draped over us. I had too honestly chided his ambition and he shrugged, resented it. I had never meant to quash his enthusiasm, his passion or drive. Or had I? Neither of us would speak of it further.
Out into the street, we shook, clinched, spoke token words of next week – I invested little in them – and turned away.
I looked over my shoulder as I walked off, seeing him lingering, diagonally pacing back and forth across the road outside the bar, not walking away, waiting for another. I wondered if we’d see each other again, if this was it for us. I wondered who he was waiting for, his girlfriend, a mate, a new business partner who he could change the world with.
I imagined we were done.
We’d only met around eight or nine months before and liked each other, although our professional interests didn’t align. I respected what he wanted to do, his bullishness and disrespect for the established industry clique. It irked me in only a small way that he couldn’t grasp what it was that I did, or that he didn’t want to, had faint interest. “He’s a writer, a reporter, he’s.. I don’t know.” I paid him interest and that was enough. I connected him to relevant people, he helped me with a website.
Despite the pokey Camden flat he worked from, he always spoke big games, frowned upon my contentedness with my scale and platform, my lack of desire to build. Perhaps he laughed.
Knowing the organiser, we attended an all-day event and joined them for drinks, as well as a meal afterwards. He thickly laid on his entrepreneurial zest to a successful CEO he thought it would impress. When I told him a member of the dinner table had (quite understandably) tired of his apparently endless gushing, he was obviously slighted and bitter, pretended not to care but did.
Over the dinner he had voiced ideas about line-up photographs like Sergeant Pepper or Sillicon Valley in the 1990s, charting us all now before we had built our own incredible dynasties. To me it seemed idiotic, laughable, embarrassingly ridden with ego. Nobody had a revolutionary game-changing idea or a specific technology (that they were public about), we were all ostensibly performing standard services at a medium to low level. Nevertheless, everyone made encouraging and agreeable ‘yes-let’s-do-it’ noises.
Having planned to go for drinks after the event and make an evening of it, we left the restaurant, but it was later into the evening than expected when arrived out our favoured Soho bar.
Once seated with beers he fluffed his own self proclaimed business nous, said he was good at identifying valuable stocks and shares. I quibbled, “you can speculate about the value of any brand and what they’ll do next; it’s all a punt. Does predicting that Innocent will make food or Bentley will make a champagne mean you're a visionary, or does it mean you’ve taken an informed guess?”
He disagreed with me that successful bankers needed to be numerate, that it at least helped. “Bollocks, you and I could be minted bankers if we wanted.” I disagreed, said I would be if I could be but I wasn’t. I’d struggled to get a C at GCSE. I could do what I do and be moderately successful but there was no way could I be a banker. This disgruntled him.
He was the epitome of a guy from small Scottish provinces who had come to London seeking fame and fortune. I was be the epitome of similar – but who had been dealt little fortune, perhaps had created none, and believed even less in my potential for major prosperity. I wasn’t entirely pessimistic about my future but had no pretensions of fame, ludicrous wealth or building a famed legacy.
“Get me another beer then,” I said into the sulky pause, as we both reached the bottom of our first bottles in the late bar, hoping we could shift conversation on.
Never having divorced from checking his phone for messages, he said “no, ahv gotta be gone in five minutes mate.”
A text message may have changed his course – from his girlfriend or another friend.
“Girlfriend curfew?”
He mumbled unintelligibly. I didn’t ask further, but it was strange given that he’d said we had a good hour and a half of drinking when we arrived. Something changed during our discussion, my scepticism was too much, I had depressed and tired him.
“Ok then,” I said, abruptly accepting. “We’ll call it quits,” an awkward atmosphere had been draped over us. I had too honestly chided his ambition and he shrugged, resented it. I had never meant to quash his enthusiasm, his passion or drive. Or had I? Neither of us would speak of it further.
Out into the street, we shook, clinched, spoke token words of next week – I invested little in them – and turned away.
I looked over my shoulder as I walked off, seeing him lingering, diagonally pacing back and forth across the road outside the bar, not walking away, waiting for another. I wondered if we’d see each other again, if this was it for us. I wondered who he was waiting for, his girlfriend, a mate, a new business partner who he could change the world with.
I imagined we were done.
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