Mmm, she’s crazy hot, purred my sleazy drunken brain. Across the table, Friend’s droopy eyes looked over at me, disapproving, telling me not to be quite so obvious in my admiration. We were sitting down on the bar’s comfy seats, her bottom and legs were cutting and thrusting and swooping around at my eye-line. I couldn’t help admiring and didn’t care.
From there the evening became blurry, and remains so now. Virtually no words remain; only faint outlines. Trying to remember is like visiting a gallery where the paintings become gradually soiled and obscured to the point that all you see are the frames, the parts around the edges. Memory is like that of a silent film I half dozed through.
We’d had a good night up until then across a number of different central venues. Friend had done his usual painfully tortured ‘oh I really shouldn’t..’ – although we both knew what was on the cards when he unexpectedly called in on my flat at 6pm. It was Saturday night, his fiancée had gone out with a friend who was visiting. He was free and notoriously weak where alcohol was concerned. Opportunities to go out like this are rare for me now, chances to behave like a drunken idiot who’s perhaps a little younger than I am. I fed Friend a couple of tantalising beers at the flat before suggesting we go the pub. We hadn’t played any Xbox at all, which must have meant we were growing up.
After attending the birthday party of another friend’s friend in an upstairs function room – a place populated almost exclusively by well dressed, enviably good looking, shiny-faced homosexual men – we made our way back across town into the mainstream district. We stopped in two pubs before coming to our final destination: a highly swanky looking late-night bar.
We’ve intermittently enjoyed nights like this, here in this city for over ten years; impromptu, long, fuelled to the point of memory blackouts. While I knew they wouldn’t happen as often as in our early twenties, the chance of them, even if only now and again, incentivised my decision to move back here.
“Five quid entry,” a doorman said as we walked enquiringly towards him.
“Or is it four?” his female colleague asked.
“Three!” I interjected, charged by several large whiskies. “Two fifty, one pound ten?! Let’s barter!” Friend glared disgusted, what-the-fuck-are-you-doing? daggers at me.
But something incredible happened. They laughed, relented and simply waved us through. “Go on., before I change my mind,” she said. We walked in, giggling incredulously.
Memory holds reasonably firmly for an hour or so, before the dancing girl with the body. Then she’s sitting next to me and we’re chatting.
How did you do that, you genius?
Not a clue. And I have absolutely no recollection of our conversation. She’s German and has a German accent. That’s it. No memory of her face either. A loose recollection of her outline and basic, impressive dancing shape, dark wavy hair, but my memory stubbornly refuses to colour in a face of any kind. There’s only fuzziness around the edges.
Friend is around, maybe chatting to her friends, or sitting on his own in a drunken stupor. Both are plausible. She stands up to dance again and there's a time lapse before she prepares to leave. Her handful of friends (could have been three, could have been seven), male and female, look all set and mingle around the top of the stairs. I’m sad she’s leaving. She approaches me again to say goodbye and I stand, smile, possibly leer, disappointed. Words must be exchanged but I have no idea what they are. (I'd guess "nice to meet you"). I kiss one cheek and pause, then decide to go continental and kiss the other, and pause. Something must happen in this pause: a raise of her chin, a smile or a look in her eye. Or maybe it doesn’t. Maybe I’m just drunk and fearless. Either way, we’re suddenly kissing properly.
Me! Dowdy loner bloke! In a hip late night bar on a Saturday night, drunk, snogging a German female who I’m positive is really quite attractive! She’s kissing me back! Quick, someone take a picture to show to my Grandchil.. um, well: Great Niece or Nephew! (See, I wasn't always like this). This might never happen again!
We must break off and smile coyly, no numbers or details exchanged. Why the hell not? Did she say she had a boyfriend? Was she just visiting friends here? So what? What was her name?
ANYTHING, brain? Anything at all? One slender grain of detail?
Nada, zilch, a big long flatline bastard.
She follows her friends down the stairs and presumably out of the bar. I make no attempt to follow. (Again, WHY? Prick.) I sit back down with Friend, who’s talking to new people. My intoxication means I’m now riding the crest of legal chemicals and temporary confidence; I’m surprisingly not dumbstruck. I enter this new conversation with a cocksure gusto, like nothing just happened and I’d forgotten it already.
From here even the edges of memory start to blur.
*
Knowing that I don’t have a clue what she looks like annoys the hell out of me. I privately pride myself on being good at remembering faces, being able to quickly identify people even if I only see them for a second. Earlier that evening a Swashbuckled follower sat behind me in a pub and, not having too many followers, I felt curiously smug. Then strange and uncomfortable. I tried explaining this to Friend, who I don’t believe has ever visited a Twitter page. I couldn’t argue with his deduction, “..fucking weird mate.”
Point is I enjoy my ability to tell immediately who someone is with a half second glance at their mug. And I’m a decent listener, attentive, and will remember the key details of a conversation and usually more besides – especially if the interlocutor happens to be an attractive female. I don’t forget. And I imagine I came across as attentive and interested and not a complete moron, or she wouldn’t have come over to say goodbye.
But it’s academic. Despite plaintively scrolling through my phone numbers more than once (why are you doing this, you wanker) the upshot is that I have nothing at all. We must have spoken for a while and were attached at the face for several seconds. Yet she could plausibly pass me in the street and I wouldn’t have a clue.
This irks me.
Showing posts with label random guff. Show all posts
Showing posts with label random guff. Show all posts
Thursday, 20 January 2011
Saturday, 15 January 2011
unfinished books and a nice excerpt
I've been starting too many books lately with only a faint commitment to finishing, or even reading much of them. This has been born from completing but only enjoying two thirds of my book before last (Emma Donoghue's rightly acclaimed 'Room' – doesn't it essentially end two-thirds of the way through? Isn’t the rest filler?) And only around a third of my last book (Catherine O’Flynn’s ‘The News Where You Are’ – quite saggy, scant momentum). Both of these were Christmas gifts bought for me at my request, so there was an obligation to finish them. Another request, Paul Auster’s latest, ‘Sunset Park,’ is now waiting. I’m nervous after hearing mixed reviews.
Wanting a short break from feeling obliged to finish everything, I frivolously binged from the library – albeit not successfully. A Costa shortlisted book of poetry, a serious looking Emile Zola novel I’m unlikely to get too far into but felt like a worthy idea at the time, a Graham Swift novel I’d never heard of, and an Alan Sillitoe book of short stories entitled and containing “The Loneliness Of The Long Distance Runner” – partly selected after loving the film, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, which Sillitoe wrote.
Our excellent new library sits squarely on the quickest route from my flat into the city centre, so I often fail to resist a quick scan of their New Books or Quick Picks sections.
Today, neither needing nor wanting new material, yet knowing I wasn’t being grabbed by anything I had, my feet wandered in there again. My hand selected a book called “Travel Writing – A Story,” by Peter Ferry. My brain was attracted by the simplicity of the title and cover, and was won by a cover quote from Dave Eggers and a compelling inside sleeve.
I spent an hour or so with the book and a coffee, and a band called Pepper Rabbit playing in my headphones, occasionally glancing out onto a high street bulging with Saturday afternoon shoppers. I grew more committed to this book than I had to anything else I’d read in a while. I particularly enjoyed the following.
“…I became interested in what we do and where we go to give our lives meaning when we don’t or can’t find it at home, when life there becomes too staid and certain and we have to create challenges – even dilemmas – for ourselves because problems are interesting and important and life without them is neither. It is the reason that people join the circus, I think, drink too much, drive too fast, jump off things, jump into things, climb things, run away from home, and paddle into the wilderness. It is also the reason they tell stories.”
Peter Ferry – Travel Writing: Chatto & Winduss 2008
I thought this was quite neat. Of course, there’s no guarantee I’ll finish it.
Wanting a short break from feeling obliged to finish everything, I frivolously binged from the library – albeit not successfully. A Costa shortlisted book of poetry, a serious looking Emile Zola novel I’m unlikely to get too far into but felt like a worthy idea at the time, a Graham Swift novel I’d never heard of, and an Alan Sillitoe book of short stories entitled and containing “The Loneliness Of The Long Distance Runner” – partly selected after loving the film, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, which Sillitoe wrote.
Our excellent new library sits squarely on the quickest route from my flat into the city centre, so I often fail to resist a quick scan of their New Books or Quick Picks sections.
Today, neither needing nor wanting new material, yet knowing I wasn’t being grabbed by anything I had, my feet wandered in there again. My hand selected a book called “Travel Writing – A Story,” by Peter Ferry. My brain was attracted by the simplicity of the title and cover, and was won by a cover quote from Dave Eggers and a compelling inside sleeve.
I spent an hour or so with the book and a coffee, and a band called Pepper Rabbit playing in my headphones, occasionally glancing out onto a high street bulging with Saturday afternoon shoppers. I grew more committed to this book than I had to anything else I’d read in a while. I particularly enjoyed the following.
“…I became interested in what we do and where we go to give our lives meaning when we don’t or can’t find it at home, when life there becomes too staid and certain and we have to create challenges – even dilemmas – for ourselves because problems are interesting and important and life without them is neither. It is the reason that people join the circus, I think, drink too much, drive too fast, jump off things, jump into things, climb things, run away from home, and paddle into the wilderness. It is also the reason they tell stories.”
Peter Ferry – Travel Writing: Chatto & Winduss 2008
I thought this was quite neat. Of course, there’s no guarantee I’ll finish it.
Monday, 10 January 2011
Wisconsin Wander: Day 2
Grey mist and drizzle met me as I pulled apart the curtains the next morning, any remnant snow finally dribbled away. Having plotted a loose south-easterly diagonal return, I trailed the westerly edge of Lake Winnebago before pressing further south.
Around mid-morning I stopped at the town of West Bend. (It seemed to me from the map that the river bore East at this point, but who was I to quibble?) This place reminded me of an hour spent in Fort William, Scotland. It was based next to a river, there was a lingering grey mist, the size of the place was small and there was almost nobody else on the streets. However, there were no surrounding mountains here. The place was ghostly but part of what these trips are about: the missable in between places as well as the big, swaggering ones. I took a coffee and read my book in a small diner where I was served by a Hispanic waitress. She wrongfooted me with a “gracias” when I handed over the money. “Cheers” was my charmless reply.
Several wrong turns and U-turns alongside large fields finally put me on the freeway back south towards Milwaukee. Driving with only a loose sense of direction means you tend to make plenty of quick decisions. You beat yourself up for taking a wrong turn, before finding that you weren’t wrong in the first place and in trying to correct a perceived error you’d totally screwed yourself. Then you go momentarily mad and angry, which never helps anything. Darkness unavoidably invokes a greater sense of jeopardy, panic and uncertainty, as it did during my previous evening’s acquaintance with the suburbs of Oshkosh.
The freeways were simpler. I let myself be sucked into the heart of a misty downtown Milwaukee over the freeways, not a little smug that I was reading all the signs correctly here and everything was going smoothly. You just need to be cool and focused, I pompously applauded myself, entirely forgetting the numerous U-turns and frustrated wails while sitting stationary next to desolate fields the previous evening. The large freeways better signposted, more intuitive.
I parked at the lake-front art museum with little intention of going inside the museum. Has the internet killed museums? There’s a sense of stumble-upon discovery which perhaps isn’t as possible when browsing online, but it’s not like you can touch anything and the exhibits are often predictably samey. Narrow, inhospitable stone corridors led me up from the car park, offering a sense of the forbidden, and up towards the museum entrance. I walked past it, marvelling at an impressive white bridge structure which turned into a walkway above the road, and led into downtown.
With its clutch of tall tower buildings, Milwaukee had the sense of a scaled down Chicago, and was also bisected by a fat, Lake Michigan-fed river. Big but not that big. I paced round awhile, took pictures, took a coffee, then headed back to the car, wanting to give myself at least two hours to make it back to Chicago. And I needed to top up on gas in order to ensure I returned the vehicle with a full tank. Stress was simmering.
The ride back in was fraught, the density of the rush hour traffic immense. After avoiding the tolled routes by taking smaller roads, I headed back towards the freeway, laboriously programming the SatNav system with my final address. It delivered the route, but not before further stress and panic. The car was due for return at 5pm. At 4.40 I was still some way out of the city, and still needing to get gas.
I exited the slow, by now almost bumper-to-bumper freeway, which erased my route from the SatNav, found a gas station in a suburb and failed to figure out the prepay credit card system. I wanted to ask a customer on the other side of my pump but he seemed to be chatting, possibly flirting with the woman in the vehicle behind him. I finally secured his attention; he looked and shrugged. Ask inside. Thanks. I asked inside the kiosk and a guy swiped my card, before realising it wouldn’t work because the petrol nozzle wasn’t in its holster. I went to return the nozzle into the holster and the payment went through, allowing me to buy the ten bucks’ worth of gas. I felt stupid and panicked.
Having re-found the freeway, I painstakingly re-programmed my route: C-H-I-C-A – while weaving between traffic. Yes SatNav, it was the passenger at the controls, not the driver. As if. Once finally programmed (about four minutes which felt like an hour) I repetitively tapped its View button to reassure me I was heading in the right direction.
Gradually the city loomed up through the darkness around me, a gigantic, sparkling, throbbing, beautiful, terrifying urban monster. Its dazzling scale made me feel proud of humans, as if approaching a space station. Wow. Look what we’ve done!
Lulled by my reverie, I grew confident. SatNav lady seemed sure everything would work out, it’d all be ok. It was only 4.50. It might be ok. I hit downtown proper at about 4.57. As the crow flies it would’ve taken two minutes from there. As the traffic moved, jerked, honked and crept, it took about thirty.
“The tank full?” asked a young girl at the Hertz desk who I hadn’t encountered before. She didn’t mention I was half hour late. I said yes and she wished me a good night.
‘Stoked’ by my success, not dying or crashing or having too many people beep me, I paced off back down Michigan Avenue, ever-teeming with shoppers and tourists.
Pictures from the trip can be viewed by clicking these words.
Around mid-morning I stopped at the town of West Bend. (It seemed to me from the map that the river bore East at this point, but who was I to quibble?) This place reminded me of an hour spent in Fort William, Scotland. It was based next to a river, there was a lingering grey mist, the size of the place was small and there was almost nobody else on the streets. However, there were no surrounding mountains here. The place was ghostly but part of what these trips are about: the missable in between places as well as the big, swaggering ones. I took a coffee and read my book in a small diner where I was served by a Hispanic waitress. She wrongfooted me with a “gracias” when I handed over the money. “Cheers” was my charmless reply.
Several wrong turns and U-turns alongside large fields finally put me on the freeway back south towards Milwaukee. Driving with only a loose sense of direction means you tend to make plenty of quick decisions. You beat yourself up for taking a wrong turn, before finding that you weren’t wrong in the first place and in trying to correct a perceived error you’d totally screwed yourself. Then you go momentarily mad and angry, which never helps anything. Darkness unavoidably invokes a greater sense of jeopardy, panic and uncertainty, as it did during my previous evening’s acquaintance with the suburbs of Oshkosh.
The freeways were simpler. I let myself be sucked into the heart of a misty downtown Milwaukee over the freeways, not a little smug that I was reading all the signs correctly here and everything was going smoothly. You just need to be cool and focused, I pompously applauded myself, entirely forgetting the numerous U-turns and frustrated wails while sitting stationary next to desolate fields the previous evening. The large freeways better signposted, more intuitive.
I parked at the lake-front art museum with little intention of going inside the museum. Has the internet killed museums? There’s a sense of stumble-upon discovery which perhaps isn’t as possible when browsing online, but it’s not like you can touch anything and the exhibits are often predictably samey. Narrow, inhospitable stone corridors led me up from the car park, offering a sense of the forbidden, and up towards the museum entrance. I walked past it, marvelling at an impressive white bridge structure which turned into a walkway above the road, and led into downtown.
With its clutch of tall tower buildings, Milwaukee had the sense of a scaled down Chicago, and was also bisected by a fat, Lake Michigan-fed river. Big but not that big. I paced round awhile, took pictures, took a coffee, then headed back to the car, wanting to give myself at least two hours to make it back to Chicago. And I needed to top up on gas in order to ensure I returned the vehicle with a full tank. Stress was simmering.
The ride back in was fraught, the density of the rush hour traffic immense. After avoiding the tolled routes by taking smaller roads, I headed back towards the freeway, laboriously programming the SatNav system with my final address. It delivered the route, but not before further stress and panic. The car was due for return at 5pm. At 4.40 I was still some way out of the city, and still needing to get gas.
I exited the slow, by now almost bumper-to-bumper freeway, which erased my route from the SatNav, found a gas station in a suburb and failed to figure out the prepay credit card system. I wanted to ask a customer on the other side of my pump but he seemed to be chatting, possibly flirting with the woman in the vehicle behind him. I finally secured his attention; he looked and shrugged. Ask inside. Thanks. I asked inside the kiosk and a guy swiped my card, before realising it wouldn’t work because the petrol nozzle wasn’t in its holster. I went to return the nozzle into the holster and the payment went through, allowing me to buy the ten bucks’ worth of gas. I felt stupid and panicked.
Having re-found the freeway, I painstakingly re-programmed my route: C-H-I-C-A – while weaving between traffic. Yes SatNav, it was the passenger at the controls, not the driver. As if. Once finally programmed (about four minutes which felt like an hour) I repetitively tapped its View button to reassure me I was heading in the right direction.
Gradually the city loomed up through the darkness around me, a gigantic, sparkling, throbbing, beautiful, terrifying urban monster. Its dazzling scale made me feel proud of humans, as if approaching a space station. Wow. Look what we’ve done!
Lulled by my reverie, I grew confident. SatNav lady seemed sure everything would work out, it’d all be ok. It was only 4.50. It might be ok. I hit downtown proper at about 4.57. As the crow flies it would’ve taken two minutes from there. As the traffic moved, jerked, honked and crept, it took about thirty.
“The tank full?” asked a young girl at the Hertz desk who I hadn’t encountered before. She didn’t mention I was half hour late. I said yes and she wished me a good night.
‘Stoked’ by my success, not dying or crashing or having too many people beep me, I paced off back down Michigan Avenue, ever-teeming with shoppers and tourists.
Pictures from the trip can be viewed by clicking these words.
Sunday, 9 January 2011
Wisconsin Wander: Day 1
As on the previous day, when I’d visited the large hotel to check my reservation, the Hertz car rental desk was unmanned. A young black guy joined me to form a two person queue. He mentioned out loud, to himself but not really to himself that he really needed to move to a warmer climate when he graduated. I was happy enough to nibble at the conversation bait and he told me about his study in Chicago, a general degree which would allow him to teach. He ultimately wanted to build his own school for under-privileged kids in Central America and strongly believed in a hands-on method of teaching employing music and touch.
A harried Hertz man returned to the desk and with minimal fuss, printed out forms for me to sign and told me to go wait outside for the car. This was the quickest, least paperwork-intensive car hire I’d ever experienced. So much so that when the Hertz man’s colleague brought down a small red Toyota Yaris from the car park, I just got in. Then I realised I didn’t know what any of the main controls meant, never having driven an automatic vehicle before. I beckoned a parking attendant over for a quick overview. Drive, Reverse, Park – was apparently all I needed to know. Don’t worry about the rest. With that I pushed the stick into drive and took my foot off the brake, which itself seemed to roll the car forward, gently easing myself into downtown Chicago traffic.
It was fine, all fine, keep on the right, it was all going to be fine, just concentrate, keep on the right, head for the Lake, hug it and head up the one side, simple, easy, cool. I gripped the steering wheel tighter than necessary.
I slowly grew into to the Yaris and understood that driving it was easy; boring in fact. Automatics neuter the driving experience; they do everything for you and give you less control, like holidaying with a tour guide. Not once did I go to depress an imaginary clutch, although I did flap my left hand into the door from time to time, flailing for an imaginary gear stick. I also kept approaching the vehicle from the wrong side, expecting the driver’s door to be where the passenger door was, which didn’t make me look too clever. On a freeway I was momentarily alarmed to be overtaken by someone casually reading a newspaper, before realising it was a passenger.
With the assurance of an appropriate section of map spread haphazardly out across my lap, I covered minor roads skirting Lake Michigan, up through suburbs with Scottish names, Highland and Glencoe – where I stopped for a coffee and to applaud myself that I wasn’t dead. This Glencoe wasn’t much like the Western Highland mountain range where I’d driven a couple of years ago. Like much of the drive over the two days, it was a flat and unremarkable landscape. The later plains of Wisconsin mimicked this and chided me, as if I’d landed in London and decided to take a trip round East Anglia.
Still it was experience and the towns were interesting, many with a makeshift retail park feel to them, quirky stores like the dogs’ hairdresser ‘Canine Coiffeurs.’ The welcome signs also amused with their exact population figure: CITY OF NEENAH, Population 56,723. (That one isn’t accurate). They made me want to add a few tally marks to the sign or run to the Police station screaming I’VE FOUND ANOTHER ONE!!
Priority at open crossroads without traffic lights also foxed me. It often seemed that nobody moved at all, so I did.
Next stop was a small park on a tip of Lake Michigan near the city of Kenosha. Thick snow still lay on the ground and the closest edge of the water speckled with mini icebergs, as had been the case all the way down in the city. When the tide swept in, lapping sounds twined with the clinkling of ice, like rippling shattered glass or a wind chime.
From here I found the highway and ignored numerous junctions to drill on through Milwaukee, an impressive cityscape not on a par with Chicago but still not inconsiderable, before eventually stopping again at the small Wisconsin town of Sheboygan Falls. This was a very small town, replete with a Simpsons-esque Moe’s Liquor Store, where I bought a bottle of bourbon. Moe wasn’t very chatty when I complimented him on his strong range of liquor, or he didn’t understand my accent. A middle-aged lady assistant in a neighbouring gas station where I took a leak and got a cup of tea was much perkier.
It was hit or miss whether people understood my accent or not. Earlier in the trip I had to say ‘beer’ to an American air stewardess three times. She looked at me like I was retarded. I don’t have any strong regional English accent and don’t know how else to pronounce the word.
Now the light was beginning to fade beautifully. It had been a clear, cold, blue-skied day despite constant radio warnings that cloud was heading in. The radio stations had offered a strong sense of the locals, particularly a warm, mumsy DJ improbably named Robin Rock. She kept thanking her listeners for “working with” her and spoke a lot about her teenage daughters and how they’d do backflips if they won the station’s big competition prize of a trip to Disneyworld.
This reminded me of the chatty old lady sitting one seat along from me on the short connecting flight from Minneapolis to Chicago. She’d been excited to tell me and the girl sitting next to me how she was going back there soon, this time to see ‘the adult things’ which the kids don’t like. Interest piqued, I had bitten my lower lip slightly and enquired further about what exactly ‘the adult things’ at Disneyworld were. Apparently reading descriptions in the galleries and things like that.
The radio songs didn’t range too widely: old classics to Americana, with edgier stations going for tracks with indulgent, rapidly boring guitar solos.
Fearing darkness, and the distance I had to cover the next day, I impulsively decided not to go as far as the next big city, Green Bay. Instead I took an A-road to chase the dipping golden sun across a wide expanse of plains towards Appleton, on the other side of Lake Winnebago. Although I missed out Appleton itself and found a couple of small, hospitable seeming towns with a pleasant buzz of life about them: first Menasha and then Neenah, where I stopped. Disappointingly no motels or any places of accommodation other than a Holiday Inn could be found. So, after a brief stroll I headed on. Growing faintly edgy about a final destination with the draping darkness, I flicked on an internal light in the car and studied the map to see Oshkosh was the next large looking town. There was bound to be something there.
By this point I was tired and not thinking straight. I spent about ten minutes finding the correct direction out of Neenah, then at least twenty more getting lost in the suburbs of Oshkosh, eventually finding its downtown area and only hotel. It was more than I had wanted to pay for a room but my will to look further had evaporated.
Later in the trip it was explained to me that the place-names had connections with the native Indian past and weren’t, as I had suspected, made up by drunken infants. You often forget about the historical significance of the Indians to these parts. Or at least I did. There’s a theory that the word “Chicago” has native Indian origins, while the overtones in Milwaukee are even more obvious.
An evening stroll up an icy, sludgy Oshkosh Main Street suggested more life than I’d imagined from my route into the downtown area: plenty of samey dark bars with neon signs advertising the same drinks. One dumping of snow seemed to have lingered for days across a vast global latitude. I stopped in one and chatted to a welcoming barmaid who served me a small bottle of Newcastle Brown of the type they don’t serve at home. A symptom of the tipping culture is that it makes you think naturally friendly people are just playing for their tip, even when they might just be naturally friendly. Young guys sat round watching sport. I intermittently chatted to the barmaid, watched the American Football and Basketball playing on the screens, (however much I tried, I was unable to cultivate any genuine interest), and flicked through a Harry Hill jokebook app on my iPod.
Another bar further down the street had more people and a faux urban kind of buzz about it. I took a Guinness and again sat at the bar, this time with a music fanzine – it seemed the area had a vibrant scene. I spoke to nobody and shortly after headed back, nothing challenging my suspicion that I was one of about four guests in the large, deeply uninspiring hotel.
Pictures from the trip can be viewed by clicking these words.
A harried Hertz man returned to the desk and with minimal fuss, printed out forms for me to sign and told me to go wait outside for the car. This was the quickest, least paperwork-intensive car hire I’d ever experienced. So much so that when the Hertz man’s colleague brought down a small red Toyota Yaris from the car park, I just got in. Then I realised I didn’t know what any of the main controls meant, never having driven an automatic vehicle before. I beckoned a parking attendant over for a quick overview. Drive, Reverse, Park – was apparently all I needed to know. Don’t worry about the rest. With that I pushed the stick into drive and took my foot off the brake, which itself seemed to roll the car forward, gently easing myself into downtown Chicago traffic.
It was fine, all fine, keep on the right, it was all going to be fine, just concentrate, keep on the right, head for the Lake, hug it and head up the one side, simple, easy, cool. I gripped the steering wheel tighter than necessary.
I slowly grew into to the Yaris and understood that driving it was easy; boring in fact. Automatics neuter the driving experience; they do everything for you and give you less control, like holidaying with a tour guide. Not once did I go to depress an imaginary clutch, although I did flap my left hand into the door from time to time, flailing for an imaginary gear stick. I also kept approaching the vehicle from the wrong side, expecting the driver’s door to be where the passenger door was, which didn’t make me look too clever. On a freeway I was momentarily alarmed to be overtaken by someone casually reading a newspaper, before realising it was a passenger.
With the assurance of an appropriate section of map spread haphazardly out across my lap, I covered minor roads skirting Lake Michigan, up through suburbs with Scottish names, Highland and Glencoe – where I stopped for a coffee and to applaud myself that I wasn’t dead. This Glencoe wasn’t much like the Western Highland mountain range where I’d driven a couple of years ago. Like much of the drive over the two days, it was a flat and unremarkable landscape. The later plains of Wisconsin mimicked this and chided me, as if I’d landed in London and decided to take a trip round East Anglia.
Still it was experience and the towns were interesting, many with a makeshift retail park feel to them, quirky stores like the dogs’ hairdresser ‘Canine Coiffeurs.’ The welcome signs also amused with their exact population figure: CITY OF NEENAH, Population 56,723. (That one isn’t accurate). They made me want to add a few tally marks to the sign or run to the Police station screaming I’VE FOUND ANOTHER ONE!!
Priority at open crossroads without traffic lights also foxed me. It often seemed that nobody moved at all, so I did.
Next stop was a small park on a tip of Lake Michigan near the city of Kenosha. Thick snow still lay on the ground and the closest edge of the water speckled with mini icebergs, as had been the case all the way down in the city. When the tide swept in, lapping sounds twined with the clinkling of ice, like rippling shattered glass or a wind chime.
From here I found the highway and ignored numerous junctions to drill on through Milwaukee, an impressive cityscape not on a par with Chicago but still not inconsiderable, before eventually stopping again at the small Wisconsin town of Sheboygan Falls. This was a very small town, replete with a Simpsons-esque Moe’s Liquor Store, where I bought a bottle of bourbon. Moe wasn’t very chatty when I complimented him on his strong range of liquor, or he didn’t understand my accent. A middle-aged lady assistant in a neighbouring gas station where I took a leak and got a cup of tea was much perkier.
It was hit or miss whether people understood my accent or not. Earlier in the trip I had to say ‘beer’ to an American air stewardess three times. She looked at me like I was retarded. I don’t have any strong regional English accent and don’t know how else to pronounce the word.
Now the light was beginning to fade beautifully. It had been a clear, cold, blue-skied day despite constant radio warnings that cloud was heading in. The radio stations had offered a strong sense of the locals, particularly a warm, mumsy DJ improbably named Robin Rock. She kept thanking her listeners for “working with” her and spoke a lot about her teenage daughters and how they’d do backflips if they won the station’s big competition prize of a trip to Disneyworld.
This reminded me of the chatty old lady sitting one seat along from me on the short connecting flight from Minneapolis to Chicago. She’d been excited to tell me and the girl sitting next to me how she was going back there soon, this time to see ‘the adult things’ which the kids don’t like. Interest piqued, I had bitten my lower lip slightly and enquired further about what exactly ‘the adult things’ at Disneyworld were. Apparently reading descriptions in the galleries and things like that.
The radio songs didn’t range too widely: old classics to Americana, with edgier stations going for tracks with indulgent, rapidly boring guitar solos.
Fearing darkness, and the distance I had to cover the next day, I impulsively decided not to go as far as the next big city, Green Bay. Instead I took an A-road to chase the dipping golden sun across a wide expanse of plains towards Appleton, on the other side of Lake Winnebago. Although I missed out Appleton itself and found a couple of small, hospitable seeming towns with a pleasant buzz of life about them: first Menasha and then Neenah, where I stopped. Disappointingly no motels or any places of accommodation other than a Holiday Inn could be found. So, after a brief stroll I headed on. Growing faintly edgy about a final destination with the draping darkness, I flicked on an internal light in the car and studied the map to see Oshkosh was the next large looking town. There was bound to be something there.
By this point I was tired and not thinking straight. I spent about ten minutes finding the correct direction out of Neenah, then at least twenty more getting lost in the suburbs of Oshkosh, eventually finding its downtown area and only hotel. It was more than I had wanted to pay for a room but my will to look further had evaporated.
Later in the trip it was explained to me that the place-names had connections with the native Indian past and weren’t, as I had suspected, made up by drunken infants. You often forget about the historical significance of the Indians to these parts. Or at least I did. There’s a theory that the word “Chicago” has native Indian origins, while the overtones in Milwaukee are even more obvious.
An evening stroll up an icy, sludgy Oshkosh Main Street suggested more life than I’d imagined from my route into the downtown area: plenty of samey dark bars with neon signs advertising the same drinks. One dumping of snow seemed to have lingered for days across a vast global latitude. I stopped in one and chatted to a welcoming barmaid who served me a small bottle of Newcastle Brown of the type they don’t serve at home. A symptom of the tipping culture is that it makes you think naturally friendly people are just playing for their tip, even when they might just be naturally friendly. Young guys sat round watching sport. I intermittently chatted to the barmaid, watched the American Football and Basketball playing on the screens, (however much I tried, I was unable to cultivate any genuine interest), and flicked through a Harry Hill jokebook app on my iPod.
Another bar further down the street had more people and a faux urban kind of buzz about it. I took a Guinness and again sat at the bar, this time with a music fanzine – it seemed the area had a vibrant scene. I spoke to nobody and shortly after headed back, nothing challenging my suspicion that I was one of about four guests in the large, deeply uninspiring hotel.
Pictures from the trip can be viewed by clicking these words.
Wednesday, 5 January 2011
departures
Don found himself in the low-ceilinged check-in area, shuffling forwards towards a desk with other blank-faced people.
”Can I see your documents, Sir?”
Don puts some papers which were in his hand onto the desk in front of him,
“Do have any further emotional baggage to check-in, Sir? Or is it just the one bag?”
“Just this,” Don hears himself say.
“Did you pack it yourself, Sir? Do you know what’s in it? No sharp regrets or painful confessions to anyone?”
Don pauses for a moment before shaking his head unconvincingly.
“Very good, Sir.” She efficiently labels the package and places it on a conveyor belt. “Is it just that with you as hand luggage today?”
In his right hand Don sees a plastic yellow bath duck. He nods, dumbly. She smiles at him, endeared by the object.
“Well you take care now, won’t you? Enjoy your flight.”
Don mumbles his thanks before moving aside, following arrows to the security gateway.
“Everything on the trays here please,” a faceless person in a white all-in-one outfit says.
Don places his yellow bath duck on the tray, finds a tube of female lip gloss in his pocket and puts that on there too. He goes to take off his shoes before realising that he isn’t wearing any. The conveyor belt accepts the tray and pulls it through a scanning box. He walks through a narrow doorway. Two faceless men nod their assenting and he passes on to collect the duck out the other side.
A seemingly endless white corridor greets him, stores selling with mostly indistinct and non-utilitarian items lining the sides: memory sticks and adaptors are two items Don can make out, so he buys one of each. A faceless person’s eyes crinkle towards him as he takes them to the counter.
Don flushes with panic, fearing that he might have to give up the duck as payment. The faceless person holds out their arm and swishes the memory stick in front of Don’s left nipple. A bleeping sound echoes from the vicinity of the fingers and the person nods, then repeats the process with the adaptor. Don feels violated and confused and amused. It finishes by saying “Thank you Sir, enjoy your flight.”
Between the stores are instructional screens with banks of numbers and destinations. Hell, Heaven and Limbo occur the most frequently. Don was told his destination was Heaven. The screen says the next departure is in 47 minutes from Gate F.
He walks aimlessly up and down the white corridor, past departure gates where faceless people crowd, clamour and squeal against an invisible screen. He sits down near Gate F to inspect his adaptor and memory card: small items which don’t look capable of much.
The 47 minutes tick down and a small flurry of faceless people join Don. He shyly nods and smiles in their direction, wondering if he too is faceless. They don’t return his gesture and sit down. Two faceless people stand behind a desk, waiting, the doorway behind them sealed shut.
”Can I see your documents, Sir?”
Don puts some papers which were in his hand onto the desk in front of him,
“Do have any further emotional baggage to check-in, Sir? Or is it just the one bag?”
“Just this,” Don hears himself say.
“Did you pack it yourself, Sir? Do you know what’s in it? No sharp regrets or painful confessions to anyone?”
Don pauses for a moment before shaking his head unconvincingly.
“Very good, Sir.” She efficiently labels the package and places it on a conveyor belt. “Is it just that with you as hand luggage today?”
In his right hand Don sees a plastic yellow bath duck. He nods, dumbly. She smiles at him, endeared by the object.
“Well you take care now, won’t you? Enjoy your flight.”
Don mumbles his thanks before moving aside, following arrows to the security gateway.
“Everything on the trays here please,” a faceless person in a white all-in-one outfit says.
Don places his yellow bath duck on the tray, finds a tube of female lip gloss in his pocket and puts that on there too. He goes to take off his shoes before realising that he isn’t wearing any. The conveyor belt accepts the tray and pulls it through a scanning box. He walks through a narrow doorway. Two faceless men nod their assenting and he passes on to collect the duck out the other side.
A seemingly endless white corridor greets him, stores selling with mostly indistinct and non-utilitarian items lining the sides: memory sticks and adaptors are two items Don can make out, so he buys one of each. A faceless person’s eyes crinkle towards him as he takes them to the counter.
Don flushes with panic, fearing that he might have to give up the duck as payment. The faceless person holds out their arm and swishes the memory stick in front of Don’s left nipple. A bleeping sound echoes from the vicinity of the fingers and the person nods, then repeats the process with the adaptor. Don feels violated and confused and amused. It finishes by saying “Thank you Sir, enjoy your flight.”
Between the stores are instructional screens with banks of numbers and destinations. Hell, Heaven and Limbo occur the most frequently. Don was told his destination was Heaven. The screen says the next departure is in 47 minutes from Gate F.
He walks aimlessly up and down the white corridor, past departure gates where faceless people crowd, clamour and squeal against an invisible screen. He sits down near Gate F to inspect his adaptor and memory card: small items which don’t look capable of much.
The 47 minutes tick down and a small flurry of faceless people join Don. He shyly nods and smiles in their direction, wondering if he too is faceless. They don’t return his gesture and sit down. Two faceless people stand behind a desk, waiting, the doorway behind them sealed shut.
Friday, 24 December 2010
Christmas Eve at the local pub
When I walked past my parents’ bedroom and saw my father donning his purple waistcoat, accompanying his purple pink and blue pinstriped shirts, I knew he was Up For It. My Dad gets a strange nervous energy in bustly social situations not involving children, ie. in the pub. It makes his voice go high and shrill at any given moment because he thinks his effeminate camp shtick is reliably hilarious whatever he’s saying (although I’ve no doubt some do find it amusing).
He willingly watched and subjected me to "My Family" before we went out, doubtless thinking me odd when I expressed how unbelievably shit I thought it was. I remain unsure how I was produced from his loins. The feeling is probably mutual.
We were heading up the local village pub for Christmas Eve: my Dad, Mum and I, as is traditional. It’s usually not so bad. Busy in the tight space of the main front room where we all normally congregate, younger people back for Christmas mixing with the older stalwarts of the establishment. Our trio trudged the five minute walk up the moonlit snowy road. It wouldn’t be terrible, I told myself. There were a few regulars who weren’t too bad.
Tonight it was the Landlord’s smart idea to try out Christmas Carols in the larger, less well frequented rear function room, using the aid of a synth-strong keyboard and a single trumpet player.
My parents led me into the main room, which was busy and tightly packed. Dad decided to quickly turn around and head for the function room, sold by the Landlady’s sales pitch which mainly consisted of “CAROLS, COME ON!” and wanton enthusiasm. We wandered dumbly down the short corridor, lambs to the slaughter, took a right and opened the door: one old grey bloke propping up the bar, a daft drunk smile smeared on his suspect face, watching the spectacled Landlord on the keyboard and a middle-aged bleach blonde lady parping painfully on a trumpet. Dad bought the first round, as is customary (me second), and we took a seat by the radiator.
I hadn’t watched many episodes of Peter Kay’s “Phoenix Nights,” but it immediately struck me as a reasonable comparison. We stayed the only willing spectators in the room, but for the old grey bloke at the bar. It wasn’t surprising. Dad started singing along, as did Mum, I imagined out of pity.
Then Dad saw the microphone.
MICROPHONE! he appeared to scream in his head, magnetically attracted like a dog to a stick.
The flittering Landlady re-entered the room, offering support to her husband, and joined Dad at the microphone. The opening auto demo chords led into “O Come All Ye Faithful.” I chewed on my scarf some more, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. Dad, dressed in his idiotic waistcoat and shirt, and the Landlady sang heartily
The speccy Landlord at the keyboard was NOT amused. Furious, in fact.
11/12ths of the pub’s custom was still camped out in the small front room, steadfastly not wanting to sing, not caring that there was barely any more room to stand.
The Landlord returned to the room with a new lead for the amplifier. The tests worked, a synthy intro kicked in and they resumed. Dad and the Landlady rejoined on vocals.
After three more carols it stopped being funny and started being quite depressing. Still no more people entered the room. I'd returned the round of drinks and drunk my second quickly. I'd been there about an hour: most of the minutes excruciatingly backed by that trumpet parping woman.
I asked Mum if she had a key for the house because I needed to go home and stab myself repeatedly in the eyes. She looked at me and, understanding but disappointed, handed it over.
He willingly watched and subjected me to "My Family" before we went out, doubtless thinking me odd when I expressed how unbelievably shit I thought it was. I remain unsure how I was produced from his loins. The feeling is probably mutual.
We were heading up the local village pub for Christmas Eve: my Dad, Mum and I, as is traditional. It’s usually not so bad. Busy in the tight space of the main front room where we all normally congregate, younger people back for Christmas mixing with the older stalwarts of the establishment. Our trio trudged the five minute walk up the moonlit snowy road. It wouldn’t be terrible, I told myself. There were a few regulars who weren’t too bad.
Tonight it was the Landlord’s smart idea to try out Christmas Carols in the larger, less well frequented rear function room, using the aid of a synth-strong keyboard and a single trumpet player.
My parents led me into the main room, which was busy and tightly packed. Dad decided to quickly turn around and head for the function room, sold by the Landlady’s sales pitch which mainly consisted of “CAROLS, COME ON!” and wanton enthusiasm. We wandered dumbly down the short corridor, lambs to the slaughter, took a right and opened the door: one old grey bloke propping up the bar, a daft drunk smile smeared on his suspect face, watching the spectacled Landlord on the keyboard and a middle-aged bleach blonde lady parping painfully on a trumpet. Dad bought the first round, as is customary (me second), and we took a seat by the radiator.
I hadn’t watched many episodes of Peter Kay’s “Phoenix Nights,” but it immediately struck me as a reasonable comparison. We stayed the only willing spectators in the room, but for the old grey bloke at the bar. It wasn’t surprising. Dad started singing along, as did Mum, I imagined out of pity.
Then Dad saw the microphone.
MICROPHONE! he appeared to scream in his head, magnetically attracted like a dog to a stick.
The flittering Landlady re-entered the room, offering support to her husband, and joined Dad at the microphone. The opening auto demo chords led into “O Come All Ye Faithful.” I chewed on my scarf some more, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. Dad, dressed in his idiotic waistcoat and shirt, and the Landlady sang heartily
The speccy Landlord at the keyboard was NOT amused. Furious, in fact.
11/12ths of the pub’s custom was still camped out in the small front room, steadfastly not wanting to sing, not caring that there was barely any more room to stand.
The Landlord returned to the room with a new lead for the amplifier. The tests worked, a synthy intro kicked in and they resumed. Dad and the Landlady rejoined on vocals.
After three more carols it stopped being funny and started being quite depressing. Still no more people entered the room. I'd returned the round of drinks and drunk my second quickly. I'd been there about an hour: most of the minutes excruciatingly backed by that trumpet parping woman.
I asked Mum if she had a key for the house because I needed to go home and stab myself repeatedly in the eyes. She looked at me and, understanding but disappointed, handed it over.
Wednesday, 22 December 2010
wag
Sniff sniff sniff pant. Thing about this cold white stuff is it kills all the smells, hides the scat and the shit so you have to work harder to – what’s that? A person! By the gate. C’mooon! He’s coming in. Look at you, tall bloke, I can jump up just as high as your head. Look! You coming in or what? Yes! Hello to you too! I can’t say it out loud because I’m a dog. Hurry up and lock it after you then, come on come on. Good, right then, you want to play? Here, look, here’s a stick. Come on. Stop trying to look at my collar, will you? Ahh, that’s it! Tug of war with the stick. Nice growling too, for a human. Oh, go on then, have a quick look at the collar if you want. And that thing too. Hmm, shiny isn’t it? Yes, that’s my name. How did you know that? Now stick again! Yeh yeh. Ok I’ll chase, nyeowww.. WOah. This white stuff’s slippery innit? Again again. What you doing with that thing by your ear? Who you talking to? Throw it again! Rrra, ok this is fun tug of war but.. woah! Think you’re clever swinging me round and round, don’t you? I’m not letting go! Ha! Told you. This bit of the car park’s boring now; there’s not much left of the stick now too. It was rubbish to start with now I keep losing it in the white stuff. Who are you talking to? I’m off for a sniff sniff sniff. Ha, following me? Mug. What? Whatcha got then? Is that cat, I smell? I’m not gonna come just because you’re clapping and slapping your thighs, numpty. Hang on, why you running away now? CHASE! Ok, I’ll win. I’m a small young dog, sniff sniff. See? I overtook you EASY. Who’s..? Oh hello mistress. Uh oh, that’s a lead. Pfft. Fun while it lasted, sniff sniff pant.
Saturday, 11 December 2010
washed out (dangerous tides 2)
Keith opened the backseat passenger door and poked a thermometer in Barry’s ear. Although he was swaddled in three blankets and clasping a fourth mug of tea, the cold blast of air combined with the peculiar ear sensation to set Barry’s core juddering again. His temperature was rising but not all that quickly, according to Keith. He wanted to take him in to get checked out, just as a precaution. Barry had wanted to leave the scene immediately before realising he couldn’t. All the services were on their way. But he was recovering fine and definitely didn’t want to stay overnight anywhere. A quick check-up sounded sensible enough.
Twenty minutes earlier the Paramedic had first appeared in front of him, a dark green-uniformed bald bloke in his early-forties of just below average height with a dark goatie. Like everyone in a uniform, he’d spoken clearly about the situation and EXACTLY what was happening, like Barry was still under water. Keith had been the latest in a reel of quick-changing people that started with the three figures who’d steered him away from the sea. One was a dog-walker who hadn’t been either of the men directly propping him up as he staggered inland. He had relieved Barry of his sodden camera, still slung round his neck, and carried it for several yards – perhaps so it felt as if he contributed in some way. Then he gave it back to Barry and left the scene.
Another, a hard-faced middle-aged man, had stayed awhile and led him to a quiet corner behind the pub, away from the crowd of onlookers. He’d seemed unsympathetically dutiful, as if he thought Barry another idiot but would serve him well. He helped Barry out of his wet clothes, draped him with one of those foil capes marathon runners wear at the end of the race, told him to keep moving and ordered a mediterranean looking barman to make tea. What was he doing in Wales?
The third man immediately on the scene, he couldn’t remember who the third man was at all. Nothing about him came to mind.
A siren had grown louder outside before stopping altogether. A siren for me, Barry thought, that in itself was deeply unsettling. They’d moved into the pub’s empty conservatory extension, a dining room, and sat down, Barry still trembling, disgusted and humiliated at all of this. Another uniformed man entered with Keith, a boxy machine, and blankets. Barry was swaddled further and hooked up to the bleeping machine via several antennas suckered to his body. The line-graph looked regular enough and the medics appeared content. The ungraceful man who thought Barry an idiot excused himself at this point and Barry thanked him profusely for everything.
Barry kept thanking everyone around him profusely for everything, and apologising, keen not to miss anybody, not even the mediterranean looking barman for his excellent neverending supply of tea.
Unsuckered from the machine, Barry went to a toilet to take off his jeans and swaddle himself in more blankets. Keith had shouted in after him to check he hadn’t collapsed. Barry was trying not to think too hard about the secondary drowning thing Keith explained where swallowed sea water retrospectively swamps the lungs. He hadn’t swallowed any, had he? Another mug of tea was forced into his hands as he exited the gents and was shepherded to the car park and into the van of the Sea Rescue people.
There were three, or four of them? Did they need that many? One had an aggressive style of care: you do NOT worry about wasting all our time! This is what we’re here for.
He was seated down in the heat-blasted van behind Miriam, another of the sea rescue team. Hi, I’m Miriam, said Miriam, a kind-faced, early middle-aged lady. Hi Miriam, said Barry. Lovely sunset isn’t it? And it was, still blazing down over the sea, firing embers into the last whispy clouds. Her sympathy was more traditional and they spoke amiably of London, having lived in similar areas.
Barry glanced at himself in the rear view mirror above Miriam’s head. Pale, washed-out, stupid prick.
That was when Keith opened the door and shoved a thermometer in Barry’s ear. Warming slowly, Barry agreed to climb into Keith’s Paramedic van and be taken to a local hospital for a once over. They spoke of Keith’s career and his football-playing aspirations, his new hobby of Squash, which he’d become good at too.
After an initial check requiring more suckers and machines, the main two-minute check, courtesy of a young affable Doctor, took about three hours to arrive. Wear armbands next time, was his reassuring advice. By this time Barry was tired and hungry and really wanting to be home. He vaguely wondered if he was being missed at all, it being unusual for him to be unreachable for such a long period of time.
Keith returned to ferry Barry back to his car on the pitch-black, ice-cold seafront. The sky was densely starlit but the sea, mere yards away, skulked silent, black and invisible.
His car was frozen over by the subzero temperatures and seawater had killed the remote locking of his key, meaning the vehicle was only accessible through the passenger door. Having shuffled over the handbrake and experienced a freezing blast under the hospital dress chilling to his undercarriage, he sat in the driver’s seat.
He really hoped the engine would start.
He turned the key in the ignition and, except lights on the dashboard, nothing happened. He slowly headbutted the steering wheel.
It wasn’t the best of days. But obviously it could have been much worse. That could be used as a caveat for every bad stroke of luck forever now, he supposed. At least he didn’t die that one Sunday afternoon… How long would that last?
Barry plucked the breakdown rescue card from the windscreen holder and, still swaddled in two blankets and a loose hospital garment of the kind women give birth in, he gingerly padded back over to Keith’s warm van. After summoning the rescue service using the Paramedic’s mobile phone, Keith asked if he’d told anyone, if anyone should know. It made Barry consider his parents, the one phone number he did know off the top of his head. If they had tried calling, it was possible his Mum could be nervous.
Hello Mum, sorry to call so late.
Oh hello – she said cheerily – how are you?
Oh, fine – he bunched the blankets around his shoulders and wriggled his chilly bare feet – you?
Yes, all well here.
Good good. Um, just a really quick one, Mum, I’m browsing online looking for Christmas presents for Amy. Any ideas?
No, it’s hard buying for a one-year-old isn’t it? Well I’m going up to see them all next week and I was planning on talking to them about it then because we’ll…
Barry’s attention drifted off at this point but a sixth sense enabled him to inject interested sounds which suggested he was listening, before clicking back in when his mother eventually paused.
- Oh, ok, that’s fine. I just wondered, Barry said, importing finality and closure into his tone. Sure I’ll think of something.
He ended the call with a cheery promise to speak soon and placed the mobile on the driver’s arm-rest. Thanks Keith.
Wouldn’t wanna play you at poker, said Keith.
The rescue van only took twenty minutes to arrive. A burly thick-set man named Darren. Barry told him they suspected a flat battery, but after hearing the long story Darren figured that the key’s waterlogged electronics were responsible. After surgery involving dismantling, air-conditioning powered drying, scraping, tweaking – all of which Barry thought took considerable dexterity for someone who looked like a bull, like Peter Crouch having a good touch for a tall man – the engine woke.
From the backseat of the Paramedic van, Barry saw the lights of his car ignite and the silhouetted chunky outline of Darren raise two jubilant arms aloft like he’d scored a winning goal. Keith made a small, impressed whooping sound, Barry nearly cried with relief.
He could go home.
Twenty minutes earlier the Paramedic had first appeared in front of him, a dark green-uniformed bald bloke in his early-forties of just below average height with a dark goatie. Like everyone in a uniform, he’d spoken clearly about the situation and EXACTLY what was happening, like Barry was still under water. Keith had been the latest in a reel of quick-changing people that started with the three figures who’d steered him away from the sea. One was a dog-walker who hadn’t been either of the men directly propping him up as he staggered inland. He had relieved Barry of his sodden camera, still slung round his neck, and carried it for several yards – perhaps so it felt as if he contributed in some way. Then he gave it back to Barry and left the scene.
Another, a hard-faced middle-aged man, had stayed awhile and led him to a quiet corner behind the pub, away from the crowd of onlookers. He’d seemed unsympathetically dutiful, as if he thought Barry another idiot but would serve him well. He helped Barry out of his wet clothes, draped him with one of those foil capes marathon runners wear at the end of the race, told him to keep moving and ordered a mediterranean looking barman to make tea. What was he doing in Wales?
The third man immediately on the scene, he couldn’t remember who the third man was at all. Nothing about him came to mind.
A siren had grown louder outside before stopping altogether. A siren for me, Barry thought, that in itself was deeply unsettling. They’d moved into the pub’s empty conservatory extension, a dining room, and sat down, Barry still trembling, disgusted and humiliated at all of this. Another uniformed man entered with Keith, a boxy machine, and blankets. Barry was swaddled further and hooked up to the bleeping machine via several antennas suckered to his body. The line-graph looked regular enough and the medics appeared content. The ungraceful man who thought Barry an idiot excused himself at this point and Barry thanked him profusely for everything.
Barry kept thanking everyone around him profusely for everything, and apologising, keen not to miss anybody, not even the mediterranean looking barman for his excellent neverending supply of tea.
Unsuckered from the machine, Barry went to a toilet to take off his jeans and swaddle himself in more blankets. Keith had shouted in after him to check he hadn’t collapsed. Barry was trying not to think too hard about the secondary drowning thing Keith explained where swallowed sea water retrospectively swamps the lungs. He hadn’t swallowed any, had he? Another mug of tea was forced into his hands as he exited the gents and was shepherded to the car park and into the van of the Sea Rescue people.
There were three, or four of them? Did they need that many? One had an aggressive style of care: you do NOT worry about wasting all our time! This is what we’re here for.
He was seated down in the heat-blasted van behind Miriam, another of the sea rescue team. Hi, I’m Miriam, said Miriam, a kind-faced, early middle-aged lady. Hi Miriam, said Barry. Lovely sunset isn’t it? And it was, still blazing down over the sea, firing embers into the last whispy clouds. Her sympathy was more traditional and they spoke amiably of London, having lived in similar areas.
Barry glanced at himself in the rear view mirror above Miriam’s head. Pale, washed-out, stupid prick.
That was when Keith opened the door and shoved a thermometer in Barry’s ear. Warming slowly, Barry agreed to climb into Keith’s Paramedic van and be taken to a local hospital for a once over. They spoke of Keith’s career and his football-playing aspirations, his new hobby of Squash, which he’d become good at too.
After an initial check requiring more suckers and machines, the main two-minute check, courtesy of a young affable Doctor, took about three hours to arrive. Wear armbands next time, was his reassuring advice. By this time Barry was tired and hungry and really wanting to be home. He vaguely wondered if he was being missed at all, it being unusual for him to be unreachable for such a long period of time.
Keith returned to ferry Barry back to his car on the pitch-black, ice-cold seafront. The sky was densely starlit but the sea, mere yards away, skulked silent, black and invisible.
His car was frozen over by the subzero temperatures and seawater had killed the remote locking of his key, meaning the vehicle was only accessible through the passenger door. Having shuffled over the handbrake and experienced a freezing blast under the hospital dress chilling to his undercarriage, he sat in the driver’s seat.
He really hoped the engine would start.
He turned the key in the ignition and, except lights on the dashboard, nothing happened. He slowly headbutted the steering wheel.
It wasn’t the best of days. But obviously it could have been much worse. That could be used as a caveat for every bad stroke of luck forever now, he supposed. At least he didn’t die that one Sunday afternoon… How long would that last?
Barry plucked the breakdown rescue card from the windscreen holder and, still swaddled in two blankets and a loose hospital garment of the kind women give birth in, he gingerly padded back over to Keith’s warm van. After summoning the rescue service using the Paramedic’s mobile phone, Keith asked if he’d told anyone, if anyone should know. It made Barry consider his parents, the one phone number he did know off the top of his head. If they had tried calling, it was possible his Mum could be nervous.
Hello Mum, sorry to call so late.
Oh hello – she said cheerily – how are you?
Oh, fine – he bunched the blankets around his shoulders and wriggled his chilly bare feet – you?
Yes, all well here.
Good good. Um, just a really quick one, Mum, I’m browsing online looking for Christmas presents for Amy. Any ideas?
No, it’s hard buying for a one-year-old isn’t it? Well I’m going up to see them all next week and I was planning on talking to them about it then because we’ll…
Barry’s attention drifted off at this point but a sixth sense enabled him to inject interested sounds which suggested he was listening, before clicking back in when his mother eventually paused.
- Oh, ok, that’s fine. I just wondered, Barry said, importing finality and closure into his tone. Sure I’ll think of something.
He ended the call with a cheery promise to speak soon and placed the mobile on the driver’s arm-rest. Thanks Keith.
Wouldn’t wanna play you at poker, said Keith.
The rescue van only took twenty minutes to arrive. A burly thick-set man named Darren. Barry told him they suspected a flat battery, but after hearing the long story Darren figured that the key’s waterlogged electronics were responsible. After surgery involving dismantling, air-conditioning powered drying, scraping, tweaking – all of which Barry thought took considerable dexterity for someone who looked like a bull, like Peter Crouch having a good touch for a tall man – the engine woke.
From the backseat of the Paramedic van, Barry saw the lights of his car ignite and the silhouetted chunky outline of Darren raise two jubilant arms aloft like he’d scored a winning goal. Keith made a small, impressed whooping sound, Barry nearly cried with relief.
He could go home.
Wednesday, 8 December 2010
affair ground
A long five months ago our Hammersmith pub conversation opened up with “How do you KNOW?” or “can you ever know, that somebody is The One?” Doesn’t it always degenerate, get tired and dull, don’t you always end up boring one another?
After which he’d crumbled. He told me how he was having an affair with a girl in the office, who he was crazy about. He explained how he was cheating on his wife of a year, which was horrible and hateful but he couldn’t help it, and how the other girl herself was also married.
Now, a long five months later he told how he’d allowed the affair to turn his life upside down. A divorce was proceeding, although he said he wasn’t really reading the letters, and he’d not only moved in with the new woman, they also were moving back to her native America after a month travelling in Thailand over Christmas.
His ex-wife was heartbroken and had wanted reconciliation even after everything became known. Her father had visited him at his workplace and tried to persuade him to try again, even speaking of sex and how such things can dwindle but men have ways of coping, other outlets.
My friend rejected this. He liked the other girl. He loved her in fact, and no longer loved the woman he’d married. This was difficult for them to accept and he received hate email, both from her and from her sisters.
In a separate, dark twist his new partner’s husband died suddenly, overnight. A verdict is still pending.
The original concealment of the affair from his wife was less forgivable, but the manner with which he followed his heart (I can find no less trite way of saying it), grasped a very painful nettle and dared to change his life; I found it peculiarly admirable.
We spoke briefly in the South Kensington pub, before his new partner arrived to join us, about fear and self-doubt, our shared concern of boring people eventually.
If you’re seeing someone younger with plenty of those exciting 20-something years ahead of them – years when they’ll do exciting new things, go to novel or exotic places and meet interesting cool people – how can you not worry that you won’t stand up? You will appear jaded, lazy and uninteresting, old. You will eventually bore. It’s a risk, like everything is. Like “How Do You Know?” You don’t, you can’t.
She arrived in the South Kensington pub after about half an hour: pretty, blonde and slightly nervous of me (as he’d admitted to me beforehand that she was – not having met any of his friends before). He’d been attracted by her quirky creative bent, her desire to make her own clothes and her practicality, the fact she wasn’t a girly girl. None of that came across.
We spoke of the Interpol concert they were heading to from here, how I’d heard good reports and there was a favourable review in the newspaper. From the half hour spent, my impression was positive. She appeared like someone who’d over-lived for 25, had many things happen including the possibly premature first marriage.
I left the couple to head south of the river to my work function, pleased for them and their convictions – more his than hers? – perversely envious of their dramatic, romantic year, sad I might never see them again.
After which he’d crumbled. He told me how he was having an affair with a girl in the office, who he was crazy about. He explained how he was cheating on his wife of a year, which was horrible and hateful but he couldn’t help it, and how the other girl herself was also married.
Now, a long five months later he told how he’d allowed the affair to turn his life upside down. A divorce was proceeding, although he said he wasn’t really reading the letters, and he’d not only moved in with the new woman, they also were moving back to her native America after a month travelling in Thailand over Christmas.
His ex-wife was heartbroken and had wanted reconciliation even after everything became known. Her father had visited him at his workplace and tried to persuade him to try again, even speaking of sex and how such things can dwindle but men have ways of coping, other outlets.
My friend rejected this. He liked the other girl. He loved her in fact, and no longer loved the woman he’d married. This was difficult for them to accept and he received hate email, both from her and from her sisters.
In a separate, dark twist his new partner’s husband died suddenly, overnight. A verdict is still pending.
The original concealment of the affair from his wife was less forgivable, but the manner with which he followed his heart (I can find no less trite way of saying it), grasped a very painful nettle and dared to change his life; I found it peculiarly admirable.
We spoke briefly in the South Kensington pub, before his new partner arrived to join us, about fear and self-doubt, our shared concern of boring people eventually.
If you’re seeing someone younger with plenty of those exciting 20-something years ahead of them – years when they’ll do exciting new things, go to novel or exotic places and meet interesting cool people – how can you not worry that you won’t stand up? You will appear jaded, lazy and uninteresting, old. You will eventually bore. It’s a risk, like everything is. Like “How Do You Know?” You don’t, you can’t.
She arrived in the South Kensington pub after about half an hour: pretty, blonde and slightly nervous of me (as he’d admitted to me beforehand that she was – not having met any of his friends before). He’d been attracted by her quirky creative bent, her desire to make her own clothes and her practicality, the fact she wasn’t a girly girl. None of that came across.
We spoke of the Interpol concert they were heading to from here, how I’d heard good reports and there was a favourable review in the newspaper. From the half hour spent, my impression was positive. She appeared like someone who’d over-lived for 25, had many things happen including the possibly premature first marriage.
I left the couple to head south of the river to my work function, pleased for them and their convictions – more his than hers? – perversely envious of their dramatic, romantic year, sad I might never see them again.
Sunday, 5 December 2010
dangerous tides
Barry was stung with new waves of emotion as he carefully negotiated the car back into its space outside his flat. Stunned relief, mainly; as well as gratitude and a lingering incomprehension. He sat in the newly silent car for several seconds, air freezing around him. He contemplated the past few hours and called himself lucky stupid, lucky fucking idiot, out loud. And he breathed.
He’d had plenty of time to ponder alone in the single ward, waiting three hours for a two minute chat with the Doctor. Yes he was fine now, yes he wanted to go home. He had enough time to almost forget the afternoon completely, pawing through niche interest magazines and old newspaper supplements, hearing the raucous applause from the television in the waiting room next door as game show followed game show. He had time to grow bored and tetchy at the long wait. It’s best, for your own peace of mind as much as anything else, the Paramedic had told him. His mind was tetchy when it should have been immensely grateful – which it was, but it still became tetchy again.
*
I could really die here, Barry had thought to himself as he thrashed around in the freezing sea, fully clothed, a large coat on and his camera still around his neck. This could be it. Time up.
His head went under for a moment as he prepared a heaving diagonal stroke towards land. He recalled that handsome lead actor from the film he watched the evening before. He’d played a wayward character whose life was belatedly showing signs of coming together when it was snuffed out. Life does that, Barry supposed. It’s uncaring about human self-regard or interruption. It can end whenever.
Drowning though? he argued, pushing more water behind him and gasping for air, feeling with his toes for rock, land, anything beneath his feet. Nothing. Drowning: really? That was a horrible way to go, traumatic and slow.
Barry stopped paddling for a moment and treaded water, took a deep breath and yelled for help as loudly as he could. Hearing his own foghorn blare out tightened the terrifying grip of reality and he began swimming again.
Seconds passed, or minutes. Who knew?
Faintly aware of a podcast still chirruping in his right ear, he heard a shout returned from land: “..on its way!” That should give some cause for hope. He unpopped the earplug and instantly came to terms with the probable death of his new iPod, BlackBerry and camera: beloved gadgets. He'd trade them.
Was it payback for the disproportionate glee he took from that part of Rich Hall's comedy set a few days earlier? He had satirised Irish news coverage, and particularly the headline "Cork Man Drowns". Barry hadn't considered the plight of the man (apparently named Bob), or even wondered if it was comic fiction or not. It hadn't mattered.
Barry switched from his favoured front crawl to a breast-stroke. Parting the waves seemed more effective that way. Should he take his coat off? No time. The current still swept across him, demanding.
So he worked.
Was he making any ground?
He must have been.
Anything beneath his feet?
Nothing.
He spat out cold salty water and wished he’d wake up. This could NOT be happening. Not to him. Wake up, wake the fuck up. It was all too real.
At no point had Barry considered turning around and going back, or even waiting on the island and calling a rescue boat for help. It simply never occurred to him as an option. He had imagined that he might have to wade a short distance across the rocky causeway which connected to the mainland, but the water would be no higher than his waist at most - and it wasn't THAT long a stretch to land, then he’d make the ten minute drive home in wet pants. No massive deal. He had been impelled forward by his nervous misguided momentum, blind panic and the lunatic strength of his conviction.
Until he was swimming against a reverse current. Holy fucking cow, he was swimming, in all his clothes, a large coat, a camera round his neck, his iPod still playing. How the hell had this happened?
This could really be how he was to die.
The light had been sharp and bright all afternoon, the sun dazzling off the ocean to give a not inconsiderable glowing warmth for the time of year. A peculiar zen-like state had blanketed him as he sat on a rock an hour before on a different stretch of the bay, a gentle hangover from the night before slowly subsiding. It had been an enjoyable evening with football team-mates he didn't know that well. The echoing din of a nightclub often left him with an unusual acoustic clarity the next day.
Now in the sea, beating against waves, that blissful calm and peace appeared foreboding, a punctuation mark.
Was he making any ground? Perhaps, and people, distant dots were racing down the rocky beach towards him now. One with something, a leash of some kind. But, hang on… there, there it was. Like a high-rise suicide in reverse, he found rock beneath his toes. Beautiful rock, and a more of it, toes to feet, more of it still. The surface dipped suddenly and a rock thudded into his knee but he felt nothing, numbed to the pain. He might not die! Back to wading, wading. The men were upon him, the leash thing now unnecessary. Barry staggered bambi-like, up and out of the water. Ocean slopped off the shoulders of his thick coat, his knees buckling under the weight. He fell back down and wanted to stay lying, spent on the rock like a beached whale but a voice told him to get up, keep moving, he wasn’t safe yet. The voice was right. He rose again, accepting the props of two men either side of him, one of them the owner of the voice, and carried walking up and away, freezing and soaking head to toe.
A small crowd of thirty or so had gathered in the main pub for the nearby caravan park. Mostly young, pale faces gawked at him and he half covered his own, humiliated by the attention, trembling and exhausted. But breathing out, breathing out. A siren grew louder.
He’d had plenty of time to ponder alone in the single ward, waiting three hours for a two minute chat with the Doctor. Yes he was fine now, yes he wanted to go home. He had enough time to almost forget the afternoon completely, pawing through niche interest magazines and old newspaper supplements, hearing the raucous applause from the television in the waiting room next door as game show followed game show. He had time to grow bored and tetchy at the long wait. It’s best, for your own peace of mind as much as anything else, the Paramedic had told him. His mind was tetchy when it should have been immensely grateful – which it was, but it still became tetchy again.
*
I could really die here, Barry had thought to himself as he thrashed around in the freezing sea, fully clothed, a large coat on and his camera still around his neck. This could be it. Time up.
His head went under for a moment as he prepared a heaving diagonal stroke towards land. He recalled that handsome lead actor from the film he watched the evening before. He’d played a wayward character whose life was belatedly showing signs of coming together when it was snuffed out. Life does that, Barry supposed. It’s uncaring about human self-regard or interruption. It can end whenever.
Drowning though? he argued, pushing more water behind him and gasping for air, feeling with his toes for rock, land, anything beneath his feet. Nothing. Drowning: really? That was a horrible way to go, traumatic and slow.
Barry stopped paddling for a moment and treaded water, took a deep breath and yelled for help as loudly as he could. Hearing his own foghorn blare out tightened the terrifying grip of reality and he began swimming again.
Seconds passed, or minutes. Who knew?
Faintly aware of a podcast still chirruping in his right ear, he heard a shout returned from land: “..on its way!” That should give some cause for hope. He unpopped the earplug and instantly came to terms with the probable death of his new iPod, BlackBerry and camera: beloved gadgets. He'd trade them.
Was it payback for the disproportionate glee he took from that part of Rich Hall's comedy set a few days earlier? He had satirised Irish news coverage, and particularly the headline "Cork Man Drowns". Barry hadn't considered the plight of the man (apparently named Bob), or even wondered if it was comic fiction or not. It hadn't mattered.
Barry switched from his favoured front crawl to a breast-stroke. Parting the waves seemed more effective that way. Should he take his coat off? No time. The current still swept across him, demanding.
So he worked.
Was he making any ground?
He must have been.
Anything beneath his feet?
Nothing.
He spat out cold salty water and wished he’d wake up. This could NOT be happening. Not to him. Wake up, wake the fuck up. It was all too real.
At no point had Barry considered turning around and going back, or even waiting on the island and calling a rescue boat for help. It simply never occurred to him as an option. He had imagined that he might have to wade a short distance across the rocky causeway which connected to the mainland, but the water would be no higher than his waist at most - and it wasn't THAT long a stretch to land, then he’d make the ten minute drive home in wet pants. No massive deal. He had been impelled forward by his nervous misguided momentum, blind panic and the lunatic strength of his conviction.
Until he was swimming against a reverse current. Holy fucking cow, he was swimming, in all his clothes, a large coat, a camera round his neck, his iPod still playing. How the hell had this happened?
This could really be how he was to die.
The light had been sharp and bright all afternoon, the sun dazzling off the ocean to give a not inconsiderable glowing warmth for the time of year. A peculiar zen-like state had blanketed him as he sat on a rock an hour before on a different stretch of the bay, a gentle hangover from the night before slowly subsiding. It had been an enjoyable evening with football team-mates he didn't know that well. The echoing din of a nightclub often left him with an unusual acoustic clarity the next day.
Now in the sea, beating against waves, that blissful calm and peace appeared foreboding, a punctuation mark.
Was he making any ground? Perhaps, and people, distant dots were racing down the rocky beach towards him now. One with something, a leash of some kind. But, hang on… there, there it was. Like a high-rise suicide in reverse, he found rock beneath his toes. Beautiful rock, and a more of it, toes to feet, more of it still. The surface dipped suddenly and a rock thudded into his knee but he felt nothing, numbed to the pain. He might not die! Back to wading, wading. The men were upon him, the leash thing now unnecessary. Barry staggered bambi-like, up and out of the water. Ocean slopped off the shoulders of his thick coat, his knees buckling under the weight. He fell back down and wanted to stay lying, spent on the rock like a beached whale but a voice told him to get up, keep moving, he wasn’t safe yet. The voice was right. He rose again, accepting the props of two men either side of him, one of them the owner of the voice, and carried walking up and away, freezing and soaking head to toe.
A small crowd of thirty or so had gathered in the main pub for the nearby caravan park. Mostly young, pale faces gawked at him and he half covered his own, humiliated by the attention, trembling and exhausted. But breathing out, breathing out. A siren grew louder.
Wednesday, 3 November 2010
an ice-cube tray
Ah, I thought, just before heading to the checkout, I wonder if they have any ice-cube trays? Surely they must have, this supermarket is huge and has its own separate kitchen accessory department. But maybe it’s not in there.
Here, I’ll just ask this..
“Excuse me?”
..young, really hairy and quite peculiar looking man. He looked up from stacking a low shelf.
“Do you sell ice-cube trays? You know, for.. making ice-cubes.”
“Oh yeah probably do you want me to come and show you where?”
“No no, just point me in the right direction.”
He pointed.
“Over that way?”
“Yes about aisle 38 are you sure you don’t want me to come and show you?” his teeth seemed to reverberate when he spoke.
“No no, I’m sure I’ll be fine thanks.”
He scared me a bit.
I pushed my trolley down to aisle 38, which wouldn’t be it. Perhaps 40. Yes, this looked more like it.. But where. I trailed up and down an aisle of Tupperware. I couldn’t see it. There was another green uniformed man…
“Excuse me?”
This young man looked urgent and fraught and busy and redfaced. He stopped all the same.
“Do you sell ice-cube trays here? You know, for making ice-cubes in.”
“I don’t work in this bit. They keep moving stuff everywhere.”
He went and walked off down an aisle which homed crockery and cutlery, rather than the one we were standing in, which seemed appeared most likely. But what did I know?
“No,” he mumbled. “They keep moving stuff around. I don’t work in this section.”
“Dyou think you could find me someone who does work in this section?”
“Wait there.”
He scuttled away. I wasn’t hopeful of ever seeing him again. I hung out at the top of the Tupperware aisle with my trolley. It was a crap aisle. He didn’t come back.
I drifted downheartedly towards the adjacent clothes section. Last try. A middle-aged woman stood around but not at a checkout, looking spare. She wore a darker T-shirt which signified that she belonged to the clothes section.
“Excuse me,” I asked, hope flailing. “I don’t suppose you know where the ice-cube trays are kept?”
“Now,” she said. “Are they a band?”
I took a breath. Something inside me simmered, boiled, bloomed, ticked over. I breathed out.
“No. Doesn’t matter actually, thanks.”
I went to the checkout.
Here, I’ll just ask this..
“Excuse me?”
..young, really hairy and quite peculiar looking man. He looked up from stacking a low shelf.
“Do you sell ice-cube trays? You know, for.. making ice-cubes.”
“Oh yeah probably do you want me to come and show you where?”
“No no, just point me in the right direction.”
He pointed.
“Over that way?”
“Yes about aisle 38 are you sure you don’t want me to come and show you?” his teeth seemed to reverberate when he spoke.
“No no, I’m sure I’ll be fine thanks.”
He scared me a bit.
I pushed my trolley down to aisle 38, which wouldn’t be it. Perhaps 40. Yes, this looked more like it.. But where. I trailed up and down an aisle of Tupperware. I couldn’t see it. There was another green uniformed man…
“Excuse me?”
This young man looked urgent and fraught and busy and redfaced. He stopped all the same.
“Do you sell ice-cube trays here? You know, for making ice-cubes in.”
“I don’t work in this bit. They keep moving stuff everywhere.”
He went and walked off down an aisle which homed crockery and cutlery, rather than the one we were standing in, which seemed appeared most likely. But what did I know?
“No,” he mumbled. “They keep moving stuff around. I don’t work in this section.”
“Dyou think you could find me someone who does work in this section?”
“Wait there.”
He scuttled away. I wasn’t hopeful of ever seeing him again. I hung out at the top of the Tupperware aisle with my trolley. It was a crap aisle. He didn’t come back.
I drifted downheartedly towards the adjacent clothes section. Last try. A middle-aged woman stood around but not at a checkout, looking spare. She wore a darker T-shirt which signified that she belonged to the clothes section.
“Excuse me,” I asked, hope flailing. “I don’t suppose you know where the ice-cube trays are kept?”
“Now,” she said. “Are they a band?”
I took a breath. Something inside me simmered, boiled, bloomed, ticked over. I breathed out.
“No. Doesn’t matter actually, thanks.”
I went to the checkout.
Thursday, 28 October 2010
six people behind
There she was again. About half a dozen people behind him in the passport queue, snaked back around the partition. Had she noticed him? Should he try and catch her eye? He turned his eyes back to his book and shuffled forwards again, smiling at the old lady in front. They had exchanged a few words when her husband was allowed out of the longer queue to pass through the empty gateway reserved for those with new electronic passports. “Just make sure he doesn’t get on the wrong flight now,” he'd told the lady. “It’s ok, I have his tickets. He can't go anywhere,” she said.
Now he glanced back over his shoulder at her again, she was looking away.
“Maybe see you on the flight back,” she had said when the taxi dropped him off a week ago. They’d shared a cab because no buses were forthcoming. Her friend was going to take an earlier return flight, she’d said, so now she was travelling alone. He didn’t find her attractive but she’d appeared clever and chatty a week ago, she was around his age, and he’d barely conversed with anyone for a week, not properly.
He shuffled forwards again, the old lady in front was beckoned to have her passport checked, before passing through to the gate. He resigned the pretence of reading the heavy book, and waited.
For fifteen minutes he sat under a small television screen with his laptop, half watching football highlights, half checking his emails, surprised there was a free connection in the lounge next to the runway.
Realising he was still quite alone and the seats around him hadn't filled with other waiting passengers, he checked over his shoulder. Fellow passengers were already queuing for the door, staff were tearing ticket stubs and people were slowly trickling out onto exposed concrete, towards the metal vessel. Still the queue back into the lounge was bottle-necked, a mess of fifty or so people straggled back out. Seats near the line were occupied by those apparently unfussed about the choice positions aboard the aircraft. He had wanted a window seat for the return flight but this now seemed unlikely. He slumped down onto a seat and waited for the clot of people to thin out.
She was sitting on a seat backing onto his. “Oh, hello,” he said, genuinely surprised because he hadn't noticed her when he'd decided to sit. “Hi!” she smiled, though she couldn’t have escaped if she’d wanted to. She wore wooden jewellery – earrings and a necklace. He didn’t know what he thought of it. Ikea?
They exchanged the story of their week, fast-paced and generally positive. He grew giddy with freely speaking to another person, aware of speaking unnecessarily fast, blurting. He slowed and let her speak. He noticed she was reading a chunky serious book he’d also read and would comment on, if time and circumstance allowed.
They kept chatting: the holiday, areas of the island, walking, the day when it rained, tourism, travel, vehicles, motorbikes, driving. This took them through the door and out onto the runway where the plane waited. They took the rear staircase into the aircraft, had their ticket stubs checked a final time and looked for seats in the mostly full plane. There weren’t two together anywhere, even across an aisle. She took an aisle seat; he found a window seat further down with extra leg room, sandwiched between an emergency exit and an old couple.
*
The aircraft came to a halt at its destination terminal and the aisle seated passengers lumbered out first, unlatching the overhead compartments to withdraw their hand luggage. They stood waiting while the window-seated sat waiting, and the middle-seated hovered half up, half down, waiting.
He saw her standing waiting further back. They exchanged brave, tired smiles.
During the flight he’d considered giving her a business card. Her line of work wasn’t far removed from his. He had clients like her employers. He had no other ulterior motives, although if she did, would he be averse..? She was bright and interesting. He often wondered if he could convince himself to do that, compromise on physical attraction, block it out and pretend it wasn’t an issue if there wasn't any, as long as someone, one reasonable enough person liked him. If he could go through the motions because it was better than continued, protracted, maddening solitariness. Perhaps he could do it, for a while.
Finally at the aisle, he turned to collect his bulky hand luggage from the overhead locker. Just out of grasp, it was slid in his direction by a fellow passenger: the nervous looking young man who he’d almost dropped the bag on when hoisting it into the locker before take-off. He’d put an apologetic hand on his shoulder and said that he thought he’d distract him from any fear of flying. People around them had laughed. There was a warm buzz. He felt briefly liked.
Now standing in the aisle with his bag, he realised that he was about half a dozen people in front of her again. Would he stop somewhere and give her his card, mention business, 'if your employer needs..?' He paced down the aircraft, down the steps, across the new exposed concrete, into a door and on down the long connecting corridors. He felt free and fast, unshackled by too much trailing hand luggage, children, babies or companions to keep pace with. Finally he was halted by the final passport control.
It wasn’t long before she joined the same queue, snaked about half a dozen people behind. Another exchange of tossed eyebrows; this whole passport nonsense eh?
He was summoned, boredly checked and waved through.
Having no other luggage to arrive on the carousels, there was nothing stopping him from walking out and away. But he paused, waited to see if she’d enter the baggage area soon. She wasn’t that far behind, after all, only six people or so. He waited for ten more seconds, gave up and passed under the Nothing To Declare sign.
Now he glanced back over his shoulder at her again, she was looking away.
“Maybe see you on the flight back,” she had said when the taxi dropped him off a week ago. They’d shared a cab because no buses were forthcoming. Her friend was going to take an earlier return flight, she’d said, so now she was travelling alone. He didn’t find her attractive but she’d appeared clever and chatty a week ago, she was around his age, and he’d barely conversed with anyone for a week, not properly.
He shuffled forwards again, the old lady in front was beckoned to have her passport checked, before passing through to the gate. He resigned the pretence of reading the heavy book, and waited.
For fifteen minutes he sat under a small television screen with his laptop, half watching football highlights, half checking his emails, surprised there was a free connection in the lounge next to the runway.
Realising he was still quite alone and the seats around him hadn't filled with other waiting passengers, he checked over his shoulder. Fellow passengers were already queuing for the door, staff were tearing ticket stubs and people were slowly trickling out onto exposed concrete, towards the metal vessel. Still the queue back into the lounge was bottle-necked, a mess of fifty or so people straggled back out. Seats near the line were occupied by those apparently unfussed about the choice positions aboard the aircraft. He had wanted a window seat for the return flight but this now seemed unlikely. He slumped down onto a seat and waited for the clot of people to thin out.
She was sitting on a seat backing onto his. “Oh, hello,” he said, genuinely surprised because he hadn't noticed her when he'd decided to sit. “Hi!” she smiled, though she couldn’t have escaped if she’d wanted to. She wore wooden jewellery – earrings and a necklace. He didn’t know what he thought of it. Ikea?
They exchanged the story of their week, fast-paced and generally positive. He grew giddy with freely speaking to another person, aware of speaking unnecessarily fast, blurting. He slowed and let her speak. He noticed she was reading a chunky serious book he’d also read and would comment on, if time and circumstance allowed.
They kept chatting: the holiday, areas of the island, walking, the day when it rained, tourism, travel, vehicles, motorbikes, driving. This took them through the door and out onto the runway where the plane waited. They took the rear staircase into the aircraft, had their ticket stubs checked a final time and looked for seats in the mostly full plane. There weren’t two together anywhere, even across an aisle. She took an aisle seat; he found a window seat further down with extra leg room, sandwiched between an emergency exit and an old couple.
*
The aircraft came to a halt at its destination terminal and the aisle seated passengers lumbered out first, unlatching the overhead compartments to withdraw their hand luggage. They stood waiting while the window-seated sat waiting, and the middle-seated hovered half up, half down, waiting.
He saw her standing waiting further back. They exchanged brave, tired smiles.
During the flight he’d considered giving her a business card. Her line of work wasn’t far removed from his. He had clients like her employers. He had no other ulterior motives, although if she did, would he be averse..? She was bright and interesting. He often wondered if he could convince himself to do that, compromise on physical attraction, block it out and pretend it wasn’t an issue if there wasn't any, as long as someone, one reasonable enough person liked him. If he could go through the motions because it was better than continued, protracted, maddening solitariness. Perhaps he could do it, for a while.
Finally at the aisle, he turned to collect his bulky hand luggage from the overhead locker. Just out of grasp, it was slid in his direction by a fellow passenger: the nervous looking young man who he’d almost dropped the bag on when hoisting it into the locker before take-off. He’d put an apologetic hand on his shoulder and said that he thought he’d distract him from any fear of flying. People around them had laughed. There was a warm buzz. He felt briefly liked.
Now standing in the aisle with his bag, he realised that he was about half a dozen people in front of her again. Would he stop somewhere and give her his card, mention business, 'if your employer needs..?' He paced down the aircraft, down the steps, across the new exposed concrete, into a door and on down the long connecting corridors. He felt free and fast, unshackled by too much trailing hand luggage, children, babies or companions to keep pace with. Finally he was halted by the final passport control.
It wasn’t long before she joined the same queue, snaked about half a dozen people behind. Another exchange of tossed eyebrows; this whole passport nonsense eh?
He was summoned, boredly checked and waved through.
Having no other luggage to arrive on the carousels, there was nothing stopping him from walking out and away. But he paused, waited to see if she’d enter the baggage area soon. She wasn’t that far behind, after all, only six people or so. He waited for ten more seconds, gave up and passed under the Nothing To Declare sign.
Tuesday, 14 September 2010
Steamed open
He pushed the door open and the conversation inside ceased, he became an interruption. He pulled the door closed behind him and sat down, his swimming shorts squeltching against the marble. Opposite him was a large, smoothly bronzed man, and along the stone bench was the middle-aged woman, her legs stretched out in front of her.
After several seconds’ silence, she resumed.
“So I only come here on Tuesdays and Thursdays usually because it’s much quieter,” she told her original company. “At the weekend there are so many children.”
She spoke in clipped, Slavic tones. The man nodded his agreement, not caring one way or the other, not appearing hugely keen on having the conversation at all.
“So many children,” she confirmed, her distaste of children clear enough. “But now it is nice and quiet.”
The man nodded.
It wasn’t THAT quiet, the younger man thought. He’d been on weekend evenings when it had been quieter than this.
“Do you work every day?” she asked the man
“No, I don’t work,” he said in softly spoken Welsh tones, wanting to leave it at that. But he soon realised that she wouldn’t. She would pepper him with questions for as long as he sat there, or twitter away to anyone who’d listen.
“Oh.”
“Took early retirement last year at 50,” he conceded. The man did not look 50 years of age. Bronzed, smooth - was it possible to reach fifty and still be so hairless? the younger man wondered. He must wax. Muscular too, the peak of physical fitness, early retirement at 50, financially secure. The younger man opposite him steamed enviously.
“The army?” she guessed, almost childishly, “or a builder? Down in the mines?” She was enjoying herself, flattering him with macho professions.
“Steelworks,” he said. “They were laying lots of people off you know, youngsters coming through. I volunteered because I had a private pension.
“Oh, perhaps one day some easy job will come up?”
“No, I don’t want to work. Moving abroad soon.”
“Oh yes? To where? To Spain?” she guessed at random, wanting to get something right.
“Bulgaria.”
“Bulgaria?”
The unexpected country halted the flow of her questions.
“I am from Russia originally and so we don’t trust the former.. you know,” she trailed off. “We think they will look to cheat us or..”
Both men smiled at her loyalty and old-fashioned caution. The younger man thought of breaking his silence by saying something comparable about being an Englishman in Wales, but didn’t.
“You are going to buy a house there?” she asked, apparently recovered.
“Bought one.”
“Oh, so you and your wife will settle there now, yes?”
He smiled and mumbled about a new life, never qualifying who the ‘we’ was supposed to refer to. The younger man wondered at this clean-cut man’s sexuality for a second, the rough and tumble of steel worker life. For all his size and obvious strength, there was a coy softness about him. Men who looked like this usually had booming voices that travelled effortlessly, natural mannerisms which could fill a stage.
“That's enough in here for me, I think,” he said. He stood up and, looking mildly harassed, left the steam room.
After several seconds’ silence, she resumed.
“So I only come here on Tuesdays and Thursdays usually because it’s much quieter,” she told her original company. “At the weekend there are so many children.”
She spoke in clipped, Slavic tones. The man nodded his agreement, not caring one way or the other, not appearing hugely keen on having the conversation at all.
“So many children,” she confirmed, her distaste of children clear enough. “But now it is nice and quiet.”
The man nodded.
It wasn’t THAT quiet, the younger man thought. He’d been on weekend evenings when it had been quieter than this.
“Do you work every day?” she asked the man
“No, I don’t work,” he said in softly spoken Welsh tones, wanting to leave it at that. But he soon realised that she wouldn’t. She would pepper him with questions for as long as he sat there, or twitter away to anyone who’d listen.
“Oh.”
“Took early retirement last year at 50,” he conceded. The man did not look 50 years of age. Bronzed, smooth - was it possible to reach fifty and still be so hairless? the younger man wondered. He must wax. Muscular too, the peak of physical fitness, early retirement at 50, financially secure. The younger man opposite him steamed enviously.
“The army?” she guessed, almost childishly, “or a builder? Down in the mines?” She was enjoying herself, flattering him with macho professions.
“Steelworks,” he said. “They were laying lots of people off you know, youngsters coming through. I volunteered because I had a private pension.
“Oh, perhaps one day some easy job will come up?”
“No, I don’t want to work. Moving abroad soon.”
“Oh yes? To where? To Spain?” she guessed at random, wanting to get something right.
“Bulgaria.”
“Bulgaria?”
The unexpected country halted the flow of her questions.
“I am from Russia originally and so we don’t trust the former.. you know,” she trailed off. “We think they will look to cheat us or..”
Both men smiled at her loyalty and old-fashioned caution. The younger man thought of breaking his silence by saying something comparable about being an Englishman in Wales, but didn’t.
“You are going to buy a house there?” she asked, apparently recovered.
“Bought one.”
“Oh, so you and your wife will settle there now, yes?”
He smiled and mumbled about a new life, never qualifying who the ‘we’ was supposed to refer to. The younger man wondered at this clean-cut man’s sexuality for a second, the rough and tumble of steel worker life. For all his size and obvious strength, there was a coy softness about him. Men who looked like this usually had booming voices that travelled effortlessly, natural mannerisms which could fill a stage.
“That's enough in here for me, I think,” he said. He stood up and, looking mildly harassed, left the steam room.
Monday, 13 September 2010
Minor grievances / Galgutted
Scanning the library shelves I kept repeating the names of the three authors in my head: Dunmore, Galgut, Chalkas (?) – if that’s how you say / spell it. I held little hope for any of them, given their contemporariness and likely popularity. However, as I reversed through the Gs, then spun around to face the GAs, I saw the Galgut.
The day before I’d taken a long, scenic, glorious walk through rolling countryside and listened to many podcasts along the way, mostly cultural reviews of film, music and books. One had passingly discussed this booker shortlisted title, In A Strange Room, by Damon Galgut. I had heard it discussed in podcasts before. It appealed: a dreamy sounding semi-autobiographical tale of three separate but interconnected journeys, a slim book of the kind I might stupidly aspire to write.
There it was. I took a sharp intake of breath and pulled it from the shelf – brand new but with that uncomfortable protective seal which all library books wear, like a disagreeable plastic sheet on an infant’s bed. As if conscious that the book could easily be spotted in my grasp and confiscated from me, I held it low to my thigh and made for one of the large windows across the large open space, then flopped down on a comfortable armchair, already sated by my smug glory.
Shit, I thought, not quite as eloquently as the book. This was good. I suddenly felt compelled to devour the whole book in one sitting, however long it took, then I quickly realised I couldn’t. Guilt, inboxes and paying duties would call.
I read 33 pages, saw another book en route to the automated machine – DBC Pierre’s latest – then tried to take them out. The machine rejected the books and ordered me to take them to a manned desk. My gut squirmed with irrationally strong fear that the book would be wrenched from me. “No, can’t let you have this one," the bald, blank man told me, indicating the Galgut. "It’s been reserved by someone else.”
It shouldn’t have been on the bloody shelf in the first place then, SHOULD IT? – I didn’t say. Because what was the point? Just take it. Accept another slap.
These things have been snowballing of late: minor grievances which in and of themselves are just that: small irritations. Some are marginally larger than others irritations, but all are essentially inconsequential. The second DVD rental in a short space of time which was faulty, ruining an long-anticipated pleasure; a bicycle too broken to justify the expense of fixing; a temperamental iPod; confusingly unclear directions during the walk; a weak handbrake which made hill parking unwise; slow drying laundry; the biting misery of the lonely which must be concealed for the sake of coolness and self-pride, but which never gets easier.
You have to be realistic and rational in the face of these things, however minor, significant or stupidly allegorical they can appear: this route doesn’t make any bloody sense! Woah, deep man. Fuck off, brain. And there are no direct correlations here. Finding the freezer door open can invoke preposterous anger. Be strong, keep going, take on the next week, see if anything different happens.
I sulked out of the library and walked a short distance up the road to purchase the book from the nearest Waterstones book shop. I wanted to read all of it now I’d bitten a decent chunk off. I hadn’t wanted to buy or own it, but now I’d started, I would. Fuck the library bastards.
Taking it from the new shelf I found my deeply programmed frugality offended at paying full price for such a thin book, the small thrill of its newness and the lack of a protective plastic cover almost non-existent. (Another thing). I paid a smiley young shop assistant with a grudging smile, instantly regretting paying by card as soon as I'd entered it in the machine. I had enough cash on me. (Another thing).
Why was I being such a miserable bitter dick? I was my father again. Like the day before when I was mentally composing the letter of complaint to the author of those terrible directions. I hated it when that happened.
I left the bookshop and walked past a church, a lone woman crying under its arch. She could’ve lost a loved one or received bad news about her health. What were my problems compared to these grown up ones; serious ones which could form plot-lines in hospital dramas and Eastenders? Nothing at all. Comedic ones which might make Adrian Mole or The Inbetweeners.
Queuing in Starbucks I made a silly face at an infant who was staring at me from a nearby table, then I made that pu-pu sound which tots in their teen months seem to be engaged by. A toddler equivalent of the kissing noise which alerts cats. This one smiled even more widely at the noise and his two female guardians laughed along. Three seconds was enough of that. I smiled weakly at the adults, didn’t remove my headphones and faced ahead again, remembering I was supposed to be annoyed and embattled and a dick. I shuffled forwards, looked gravely at a smug plump banana muffin, all full of itself, and waited.
The day before I’d taken a long, scenic, glorious walk through rolling countryside and listened to many podcasts along the way, mostly cultural reviews of film, music and books. One had passingly discussed this booker shortlisted title, In A Strange Room, by Damon Galgut. I had heard it discussed in podcasts before. It appealed: a dreamy sounding semi-autobiographical tale of three separate but interconnected journeys, a slim book of the kind I might stupidly aspire to write.
There it was. I took a sharp intake of breath and pulled it from the shelf – brand new but with that uncomfortable protective seal which all library books wear, like a disagreeable plastic sheet on an infant’s bed. As if conscious that the book could easily be spotted in my grasp and confiscated from me, I held it low to my thigh and made for one of the large windows across the large open space, then flopped down on a comfortable armchair, already sated by my smug glory.
“Memories come back of other places he has waited in, departure halls of airports, bus-stations, lonely kerbsides in the heat, and in all of them there is an identical strain of melancholy summed up in a few transitory details… From this particular place he will retain the vision of a cracked brick wall growing hotter and hotter in the sun.”
“…a sort of primal nervousness descends. But this is also one of the most compelling elements in travel, the feeling of dread underneath everything, it makes sensations heightened and acute, the world is charged with a power it doesn’t have in ordinary life.”
Damon Galgut, In A Strange Room
Shit, I thought, not quite as eloquently as the book. This was good. I suddenly felt compelled to devour the whole book in one sitting, however long it took, then I quickly realised I couldn’t. Guilt, inboxes and paying duties would call.
I read 33 pages, saw another book en route to the automated machine – DBC Pierre’s latest – then tried to take them out. The machine rejected the books and ordered me to take them to a manned desk. My gut squirmed with irrationally strong fear that the book would be wrenched from me. “No, can’t let you have this one," the bald, blank man told me, indicating the Galgut. "It’s been reserved by someone else.”
It shouldn’t have been on the bloody shelf in the first place then, SHOULD IT? – I didn’t say. Because what was the point? Just take it. Accept another slap.
These things have been snowballing of late: minor grievances which in and of themselves are just that: small irritations. Some are marginally larger than others irritations, but all are essentially inconsequential. The second DVD rental in a short space of time which was faulty, ruining an long-anticipated pleasure; a bicycle too broken to justify the expense of fixing; a temperamental iPod; confusingly unclear directions during the walk; a weak handbrake which made hill parking unwise; slow drying laundry; the biting misery of the lonely which must be concealed for the sake of coolness and self-pride, but which never gets easier.
You have to be realistic and rational in the face of these things, however minor, significant or stupidly allegorical they can appear: this route doesn’t make any bloody sense! Woah, deep man. Fuck off, brain. And there are no direct correlations here. Finding the freezer door open can invoke preposterous anger. Be strong, keep going, take on the next week, see if anything different happens.
I sulked out of the library and walked a short distance up the road to purchase the book from the nearest Waterstones book shop. I wanted to read all of it now I’d bitten a decent chunk off. I hadn’t wanted to buy or own it, but now I’d started, I would. Fuck the library bastards.
Taking it from the new shelf I found my deeply programmed frugality offended at paying full price for such a thin book, the small thrill of its newness and the lack of a protective plastic cover almost non-existent. (Another thing). I paid a smiley young shop assistant with a grudging smile, instantly regretting paying by card as soon as I'd entered it in the machine. I had enough cash on me. (Another thing).
Why was I being such a miserable bitter dick? I was my father again. Like the day before when I was mentally composing the letter of complaint to the author of those terrible directions. I hated it when that happened.
I left the bookshop and walked past a church, a lone woman crying under its arch. She could’ve lost a loved one or received bad news about her health. What were my problems compared to these grown up ones; serious ones which could form plot-lines in hospital dramas and Eastenders? Nothing at all. Comedic ones which might make Adrian Mole or The Inbetweeners.
Queuing in Starbucks I made a silly face at an infant who was staring at me from a nearby table, then I made that pu-pu sound which tots in their teen months seem to be engaged by. A toddler equivalent of the kissing noise which alerts cats. This one smiled even more widely at the noise and his two female guardians laughed along. Three seconds was enough of that. I smiled weakly at the adults, didn’t remove my headphones and faced ahead again, remembering I was supposed to be annoyed and embattled and a dick. I shuffled forwards, looked gravely at a smug plump banana muffin, all full of itself, and waited.
end of days
In an extraordinary move intended to ease recessionary burden and tackle binge drinking, the coalition government is set to abolish the traditional sequence of days of the week.
Less ability to organise meetings and generally plan our lives, as well as an uncertainty about being able to tackle the professional effects of getting drunk, will alleviate numerous recessionary tensions, according to the proposal document.
“Everyone knows Britain would be better if we all just chilled out a bit” said David Cameron, through a plume of dense, sickly smoke. “This move, while we appreciate its radical nature, will be welcomed by people. Nobody really LIKES planning things after all. Making lists, yes. Planning, no. Knowing that Monday will follow Sunday, and Tuesday will follow that, those balling Sunday night butterflies: all gone. The knowledge of predictable Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday-Thursday – poof! Vanished.
“Finely scheduled meetings and events are a bore. If we wake up without the certainty of knowing what day of the week it is, then we must simply all just roll with it. If we find the midnight draw has revealed it’s a Sunday, stay in bed. If it’s Thursday the 14th – then get out and move because you’d orchestrated a seminar for this date, although you didn’t know when it would be. There’s the new excitement there, the unpredictability. Consider this a reinjection and reinvigoration of edgy British life through simply not knowing.”
Nick Clegg managed to stifle his previously uncontrollable giggles to echo the sentiments, before going on to add: “We all know routine is dull. Days of the week are outdated now and have been for a long time. We need rather more spontaneity in our otherwise tepid lives today and these plans will deliver that. Sure, it’ll take a short time to adjust and the markets might go a little wobbly for a few days. But hey: it’ll be fun, guys, you know? Just go with us on this one.”
Less ability to organise meetings and generally plan our lives, as well as an uncertainty about being able to tackle the professional effects of getting drunk, will alleviate numerous recessionary tensions, according to the proposal document.
“Everyone knows Britain would be better if we all just chilled out a bit” said David Cameron, through a plume of dense, sickly smoke. “This move, while we appreciate its radical nature, will be welcomed by people. Nobody really LIKES planning things after all. Making lists, yes. Planning, no. Knowing that Monday will follow Sunday, and Tuesday will follow that, those balling Sunday night butterflies: all gone. The knowledge of predictable Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday-Thursday – poof! Vanished.
“Finely scheduled meetings and events are a bore. If we wake up without the certainty of knowing what day of the week it is, then we must simply all just roll with it. If we find the midnight draw has revealed it’s a Sunday, stay in bed. If it’s Thursday the 14th – then get out and move because you’d orchestrated a seminar for this date, although you didn’t know when it would be. There’s the new excitement there, the unpredictability. Consider this a reinjection and reinvigoration of edgy British life through simply not knowing.”
Nick Clegg managed to stifle his previously uncontrollable giggles to echo the sentiments, before going on to add: “We all know routine is dull. Days of the week are outdated now and have been for a long time. We need rather more spontaneity in our otherwise tepid lives today and these plans will deliver that. Sure, it’ll take a short time to adjust and the markets might go a little wobbly for a few days. But hey: it’ll be fun, guys, you know? Just go with us on this one.”
Tuesday, 24 August 2010
Fallible Friends
My oldest friends and the ones I’d like to consider my best friends have always reliably disappointed me. I get burned so frequently it’s bewildering and, at risk of sounding unnecessarily soppy, upsetting.
One of my earliest memories of this was aged fourteen or fifteen, being dropped by a parent at the cinema of a small town where we’d agreed to meet, only to discover that plans had changed but I wasn’t informed. They weren’t there. There were no mobile phones.
I went to see the film anyway, the first of many cinema screenings I would see alone. At the end of Congo, a largely unmemorable film about a mountain Gorilla, I cried buckets.
There was the time not long after when I was dropped outside the house of a friend. A big party was on, these parties had developed cult status, the host had a freer leash than most of us. He was allowed to smoke at home. I had finally been invited to one of these parties. I had ARRIVED. I found the house completely empty. I was suddenly alone in a small countryside hamlet I didn’t know. I walked for miles to find a phonebox.
I’m the last informed, the one people forget or don’t bother to tell. Of course I can speculate (like you can), but I’ve never understood why.
They remain my oldest friends, but they’re inclined to do this even now I’m now back in the same city as several of them, a short walk away. And I knew they would be. Old friendships have been renewed. I’ve been for drinks with a couple since returning; one has visited my new place: everything done at my instigation. It was the latter guest’s birthday on Sunday and they all went for a pub dinner, another friend informed me by email.
“If you are offended at not being asked, dont be,” my friend’s email instructed. “He barely wanted to have that and didnt invite anyone else either cos he's not terribly fussed on his birthday.”
I did practically nothing at the weekend and had asked if one of the group fancied meeting up for a pint, only to receive a belated ‘too busy sorting for holiday’ reply.
You can do little more than accept it, raise an eyebrow, curl a lower lip, shrug. Given my hopelessness with females, I’m not unfamiliar with borderline excessive inward-looking, what-the-FUCK-is-wrong-with-me? analysis. But this sort of thing doesn’t exactly help to plump up the ego either. It gets really bloody cold out here.
One of my earliest memories of this was aged fourteen or fifteen, being dropped by a parent at the cinema of a small town where we’d agreed to meet, only to discover that plans had changed but I wasn’t informed. They weren’t there. There were no mobile phones.
I went to see the film anyway, the first of many cinema screenings I would see alone. At the end of Congo, a largely unmemorable film about a mountain Gorilla, I cried buckets.
There was the time not long after when I was dropped outside the house of a friend. A big party was on, these parties had developed cult status, the host had a freer leash than most of us. He was allowed to smoke at home. I had finally been invited to one of these parties. I had ARRIVED. I found the house completely empty. I was suddenly alone in a small countryside hamlet I didn’t know. I walked for miles to find a phonebox.
I’m the last informed, the one people forget or don’t bother to tell. Of course I can speculate (like you can), but I’ve never understood why.
They remain my oldest friends, but they’re inclined to do this even now I’m now back in the same city as several of them, a short walk away. And I knew they would be. Old friendships have been renewed. I’ve been for drinks with a couple since returning; one has visited my new place: everything done at my instigation. It was the latter guest’s birthday on Sunday and they all went for a pub dinner, another friend informed me by email.
“If you are offended at not being asked, dont be,” my friend’s email instructed. “He barely wanted to have that and didnt invite anyone else either cos he's not terribly fussed on his birthday.”
I did practically nothing at the weekend and had asked if one of the group fancied meeting up for a pint, only to receive a belated ‘too busy sorting for holiday’ reply.
You can do little more than accept it, raise an eyebrow, curl a lower lip, shrug. Given my hopelessness with females, I’m not unfamiliar with borderline excessive inward-looking, what-the-FUCK-is-wrong-with-me? analysis. But this sort of thing doesn’t exactly help to plump up the ego either. It gets really bloody cold out here.
Sunday, 22 August 2010
Dead Dog
Klinsmann had been going downhill for a while. He was getting slower on rare walks, which were shorter than ever, and limped gingerly when he rose after a sleep. Cocking his leg looked like it took too much effort and he’d recently taken to squatting. They knew there was a lump. It was just about how big, how fast. Now he’d begun yelping and whining when he moved up and down steps.
Graham knew it was probably curtains.
In the hallway he crouched down and looked Klinsmann in those big soppy eyes. Face-to-face with his reliable old friend, Graham held Klinsmann’s head, tugged at his sad drooping jowls before scratching behind both his ears. The Labrador closed his eyes, enjoying the soothing nails of his master like he’d enjoyed them hundreds of times before. Graham stopped scratching; the dog opened his eyes and looked at him. What?
Klinsmann slunk out onto the driveway and looked at the car. Leaping into the back of the car had long been out of the question. Do we have to? his face asked Graham. Afraid so pal, Graham leaned down and took the dog in his arms, lifted him up and onto an old rug which lay across the floor of the boot. He felt Klinsmann wince and tighten before whining as he touched down onto the rug.
Sssshhh. Easy now.
Graham had bought the young puppy when he was on the cusp of giving up. As much as he tried, other people still didn’t seem to work for him. Or he didn’t work for other people. Maybe both. Graham worked alone from a small converted office room of his house. Always of modest ambition, he didn’t mind his work itself. But he was growing sick and tired of feeling sick and tired, and bored and lonely, and not having conversations with anyone for days on end, sometimes weeks; of barely having any relationships at all. He pretended it was all fine to anyone he did speak to, of course, because that’s what you do. Saying anything else scared people and made him sound like a self-obsessed idiot. If ever he did say anything, they gave empty platitudes and he nodded and shrugged. It was all rather pointless, so he stopped doing it after a certain age.
Having been raised around them, Graham always liked dogs and often entertained the idea of keeping one. The idea wasn't one which could be realised while he rented properties, but after buying his first place – yet another new start in another part of town which would surely herald new things (what those ‘things’ were exactly, he wasn’t sure) – getting a dog was a realistic option. It was a greener part of town too, with easy access to other parts of the country. Walking would be good for both of them.
Conversely, he took up light smoking around the same time, despite never smoking before in his life. Once he got the hang of it, the breathing and taking it in properly, it was enjoyable, a sensation like no other. There would be no global disaster if it sped up his time to expiry.
Like the smoking, Klinsmann made him calmer, less anxious. That was, once the frenetic puppy years and misbehaviour were done with. He became a handsome, fit and noble looking young dog; people said they complimented each other well. They looked at them both, admiring the affable dog and pretending not to glance over Graham with that mixture of pity and sympathy. They thought that by now he would have found a.. Perhaps there was something wrong with him. But maybe the dog would help with.. you know? some had suggested.
Over their thirteen and a half years together, there were a couple of possibilities which withered and faded as quickly and predictably as a struck match, nothing which Graham invested much meaning in. His pessimism didn’t stop him from trying or hoping, but maybe it still shone through somehow, or he continued to exude whatever it was that consistently repelled. Klinsmann and tobacco became effective crutches.
The dog was good company too, a trusty dependable and dependent friend who could offer genuine affection of some kind, as well as a physical presence, from a buoyant puppy to a slow old dog. The blonde blot on the floor plodded from room to room towards the end, grumbling and groaning in search of sunbeams which never stayed in the same bloody place. He only became human.
*
Graham cut the car engine in the tight car part of the surgery and looked glumly ahead at the brick wall, concentrating on his breathing, not losing it too soon. A glance in the rear mirror showed no excitable golden crown of Klinsmann's head. He didn't care where they were, or he already knew. The dog recoiled when Graham first tried to scoop him out of the boot, his eyes large and doey, his ears low and defeated. Touching the cement, his rear legs bent and he expelled a small trickle of piss. He squatted and gained some command of the flow. They stood in the car park under an overcast, drizzling sky, watching the unusually luminous liquid running down the slope of the car park. Many minutes had been spent over the last thirteen and a half years waiting for Klinsmann to piss. Together they hobbled slowly into the surgery, Graham swallowing hard.
The Labrador’s hind legs buckled accommodatingly when Graham deposited him on the examination table. Klinsmann flinched and tightened as the Vet inspected regions where he wasn’t used to being touched. He was simply too exhausted to growl, although Graham could sense that he wanted to. Ssh now, Graham smoothed his velvety ears, the fur there not as coarse as it had grown elsewhere.
The tumour had indeed grown, the Vet confirmed. Can’t expect it to get better I’m afraid. In pain now, aren't you? Graham nodded too, his eyes filling in direct correlation with the horrid, inexorable direction of the conversation. His hand didn’t leave brave Klinsmann’s head.
The Vet delicately inserted a needle into Klinsmann’s rear left thigh, and pressed home the lethal fluid. Off you go boy. Thanks, Graham whispered, gently cradling the dog’s head in his hands. Klinsmann's chest stopped rising and falling, no air came from his nostrils, the Vet walked across to the other side of the room. Graham wept silently, bent over his dead dog. When he finally stood up straight, wiping his stinging eyes, the Vet looked at him from a table where he was feigning attendance to paperwork. Seeing this kind of thing became tiring. He looked at Graham, level and sober. I’m sorry. For the best. Do you want to take him or..? We can look after him here, if you..? Miriam at reception can sort out the details.
Graham hadn’t thought about that. He had nowhere to really. Not in his small, untended garden where nothing grew. He remembered digging graves for the dogs of his childhood: the mud sweat and tears. What then? Was it really worth..? It was just the body of a dead dog now, after all. Graham looked down at the perfectly still Labrador once more and kissed the top of his head. Then he stroked him one last time, from his spongy nose, over his skull, neck, bobbles of spine and down to the tip of his tail, which he gripped in the fist of his right hand. Bye lad.
Graham swallowed again, feeling his cheeks tearstained and grubby but not caring. He took a handful of tissues from a tactfully positioned box, wiped his cheeks and blew his nose. He turned around, thanked the Vet and accepted the forms he was proffering, before walking out of the room. The lady at reception accepted the forms and offered him those sympathetic, pitying looks he was used to receiving and she was used to giving out. Punchdrunk, he unthinkingly signed his name, gave a bank card and entered his pin number.
The house was empty when he stepped back inside the front door. No fond, doddery old boy welcome, no other movements, no presence, no groaning or sly blipping farts. Only stillness and ticking. A faint waft of him – perhaps not as faint for visitors, he was used to it; patches of moulted hair which needed hoovering, his empty basket, that picture of him on that Welsh mountainside looking all regal, pretending he was Lassie.
Graham knew it was probably curtains.
In the hallway he crouched down and looked Klinsmann in those big soppy eyes. Face-to-face with his reliable old friend, Graham held Klinsmann’s head, tugged at his sad drooping jowls before scratching behind both his ears. The Labrador closed his eyes, enjoying the soothing nails of his master like he’d enjoyed them hundreds of times before. Graham stopped scratching; the dog opened his eyes and looked at him. What?
Klinsmann slunk out onto the driveway and looked at the car. Leaping into the back of the car had long been out of the question. Do we have to? his face asked Graham. Afraid so pal, Graham leaned down and took the dog in his arms, lifted him up and onto an old rug which lay across the floor of the boot. He felt Klinsmann wince and tighten before whining as he touched down onto the rug.
Sssshhh. Easy now.
Graham had bought the young puppy when he was on the cusp of giving up. As much as he tried, other people still didn’t seem to work for him. Or he didn’t work for other people. Maybe both. Graham worked alone from a small converted office room of his house. Always of modest ambition, he didn’t mind his work itself. But he was growing sick and tired of feeling sick and tired, and bored and lonely, and not having conversations with anyone for days on end, sometimes weeks; of barely having any relationships at all. He pretended it was all fine to anyone he did speak to, of course, because that’s what you do. Saying anything else scared people and made him sound like a self-obsessed idiot. If ever he did say anything, they gave empty platitudes and he nodded and shrugged. It was all rather pointless, so he stopped doing it after a certain age.
Having been raised around them, Graham always liked dogs and often entertained the idea of keeping one. The idea wasn't one which could be realised while he rented properties, but after buying his first place – yet another new start in another part of town which would surely herald new things (what those ‘things’ were exactly, he wasn’t sure) – getting a dog was a realistic option. It was a greener part of town too, with easy access to other parts of the country. Walking would be good for both of them.
Conversely, he took up light smoking around the same time, despite never smoking before in his life. Once he got the hang of it, the breathing and taking it in properly, it was enjoyable, a sensation like no other. There would be no global disaster if it sped up his time to expiry.
Like the smoking, Klinsmann made him calmer, less anxious. That was, once the frenetic puppy years and misbehaviour were done with. He became a handsome, fit and noble looking young dog; people said they complimented each other well. They looked at them both, admiring the affable dog and pretending not to glance over Graham with that mixture of pity and sympathy. They thought that by now he would have found a.. Perhaps there was something wrong with him. But maybe the dog would help with.. you know? some had suggested.
Over their thirteen and a half years together, there were a couple of possibilities which withered and faded as quickly and predictably as a struck match, nothing which Graham invested much meaning in. His pessimism didn’t stop him from trying or hoping, but maybe it still shone through somehow, or he continued to exude whatever it was that consistently repelled. Klinsmann and tobacco became effective crutches.
The dog was good company too, a trusty dependable and dependent friend who could offer genuine affection of some kind, as well as a physical presence, from a buoyant puppy to a slow old dog. The blonde blot on the floor plodded from room to room towards the end, grumbling and groaning in search of sunbeams which never stayed in the same bloody place. He only became human.
*
Graham cut the car engine in the tight car part of the surgery and looked glumly ahead at the brick wall, concentrating on his breathing, not losing it too soon. A glance in the rear mirror showed no excitable golden crown of Klinsmann's head. He didn't care where they were, or he already knew. The dog recoiled when Graham first tried to scoop him out of the boot, his eyes large and doey, his ears low and defeated. Touching the cement, his rear legs bent and he expelled a small trickle of piss. He squatted and gained some command of the flow. They stood in the car park under an overcast, drizzling sky, watching the unusually luminous liquid running down the slope of the car park. Many minutes had been spent over the last thirteen and a half years waiting for Klinsmann to piss. Together they hobbled slowly into the surgery, Graham swallowing hard.
The Labrador’s hind legs buckled accommodatingly when Graham deposited him on the examination table. Klinsmann flinched and tightened as the Vet inspected regions where he wasn’t used to being touched. He was simply too exhausted to growl, although Graham could sense that he wanted to. Ssh now, Graham smoothed his velvety ears, the fur there not as coarse as it had grown elsewhere.
The tumour had indeed grown, the Vet confirmed. Can’t expect it to get better I’m afraid. In pain now, aren't you? Graham nodded too, his eyes filling in direct correlation with the horrid, inexorable direction of the conversation. His hand didn’t leave brave Klinsmann’s head.
The Vet delicately inserted a needle into Klinsmann’s rear left thigh, and pressed home the lethal fluid. Off you go boy. Thanks, Graham whispered, gently cradling the dog’s head in his hands. Klinsmann's chest stopped rising and falling, no air came from his nostrils, the Vet walked across to the other side of the room. Graham wept silently, bent over his dead dog. When he finally stood up straight, wiping his stinging eyes, the Vet looked at him from a table where he was feigning attendance to paperwork. Seeing this kind of thing became tiring. He looked at Graham, level and sober. I’m sorry. For the best. Do you want to take him or..? We can look after him here, if you..? Miriam at reception can sort out the details.
Graham hadn’t thought about that. He had nowhere to really. Not in his small, untended garden where nothing grew. He remembered digging graves for the dogs of his childhood: the mud sweat and tears. What then? Was it really worth..? It was just the body of a dead dog now, after all. Graham looked down at the perfectly still Labrador once more and kissed the top of his head. Then he stroked him one last time, from his spongy nose, over his skull, neck, bobbles of spine and down to the tip of his tail, which he gripped in the fist of his right hand. Bye lad.
Graham swallowed again, feeling his cheeks tearstained and grubby but not caring. He took a handful of tissues from a tactfully positioned box, wiped his cheeks and blew his nose. He turned around, thanked the Vet and accepted the forms he was proffering, before walking out of the room. The lady at reception accepted the forms and offered him those sympathetic, pitying looks he was used to receiving and she was used to giving out. Punchdrunk, he unthinkingly signed his name, gave a bank card and entered his pin number.
The house was empty when he stepped back inside the front door. No fond, doddery old boy welcome, no other movements, no presence, no groaning or sly blipping farts. Only stillness and ticking. A faint waft of him – perhaps not as faint for visitors, he was used to it; patches of moulted hair which needed hoovering, his empty basket, that picture of him on that Welsh mountainside looking all regal, pretending he was Lassie.
Tuesday, 10 August 2010
removal
Ambling down the main high street with open and sober eyes for the first time in a long time, I noted all the shop changes: the ubiquitous supermarket chains which had ceded banks in ornate corner buildings, the prime-located bar properties with boarded up windows, providing only an advertising platform for other entertainment, ongoing pedestrianisation construction work which was making an eyesore of one area. Not much of it was pretty.
It was that dead time shortly after most office workers’ home time and before any revellers hit the town; human traffic was sparse and fleeting. I turned right at the end of the road, past the castle and onto the main pedestrianised shopping street. I glanced into travel agents at managers’ specials, yearning for heat, a break before starting this whole thing properly.
But it had started properly already. I was all moved-in now and had finally completed my construction of Ikea furniture. Hours and hours of sweat and strain and swearing. It wasn’t all seamless but it stood up, didn’t buckle or collapse with its contents. Or hadn’t yet. Standing back to admire the books I’d placed on a newly assembled bookcase felt like a watershed adult moment: arrival of a kind. Thirty years old in a few months. Now I felt it, but suddenly it wasn't all that bad.
I had moved myself from one capital to another, single-handed in one day, which wasn’t easy. Much lifting and carrying led to the aching of muscles I was unaware I had and bleary after four separate three-hour drives.
The final journey from London to Cardiff was miserable. Having cleaned, cleared and packed up my small flat, I looked back at its dark emptiness, still not wanting to go, and slumped onto my old small sofa one last time. Much as I liked my new flat, its space and size and reasonable location, I liked London better than Cardiff. It had more; more everything. Things could have been different here if.. Too many ifs. Things weren’t different. I stood from the sofa and left the flat: 10.30pm on Saturday evening. Trundling my way through West London towards the motorway I saw people done-up for their Saturday nights, young bottle blonde girls exhibiting a little too much flesh, a swaggering hopeful teen. Traffic headlights blotched and blurred through watery eyes and mournful acoustic singer-songwriters whined: songs about endings, change, new starts.
*
I wandered on down the pedestrianised shopping street early yesterday evening, conscious of my headphones. Their lurid blue and different design felt more ostentatious here, somehow. I was paranoid and inaccurately exaggerating the parochialism of the place. They probably did sell them here too. They had chain shops and the internet; it was developed. It just wasn’t London. Less had changed on this street and the same stores had largely remained.
Did I want to sit down and have a pint? I had an enjoyable book, the weather was overcast but perfectly ok to sit outside for half an hour. Pints were cheaper here. I shunned a rough Wetherspoons for a classier looking bar I half remembered. For a second I considered the possibility of bumping into someone I knew from my time here before leaving five years ago. Come on, it’s not THAT small a city, I dismissed myself and the idea. The chance was slim.
The first section of the bar was practically dead, but for a table of young female office workers. I glanced around a pillar as I approached the bar and saw a table of two guys my own age. Our eyes connected and held. We’d worked across a desk from each other for four months about seven years ago and hadn’t kept in touch. Never matey, I always felt he didn’t like me but was never sure if he exuded that to most other guys; only a year older, there was a certain superior aloofness which was never quite aggressive enough to be arrogance. It’s possible that he was threatened somehow, despite, or even because we were similar, with similar interests and skillsets, perhaps characters too.
For a second I dithered after saying hello, explaining my newbie situation. He gave his own appraisal then said he had a similar pair of headphones to those which hung round my neck, except his were the next grade up.
Still a tosser then? No, he didn’t say it in that one-upmanship way. He was all right.
Was he all right? Or was he a tosser? I never had worked it out.
Did I want to impose anyway? Yeah, go on, he’s probably decent enough really, maybe matured a bit, smart enough guy. If he thinks I’m a tosser it doesn’t matter as I’ll probably never see him again anyway. Steady on. Smaller town, remember? You can’t apply that as readily here as you could in London.
Ah, bollocks.
“Dyou mind if I join you?” For a line which often requires a degree of boldness, it can also be difficult to say no to that: as if it contains its own inherently respectable power. They affably agreed, moved their bags to make space, declined the offer of a drink and I got a pint.
I only stayed half an hour, a weak pint of bitter’s length. We spoke of the university administration where he worked; public and private sector differences, careers, the directions our lives had taken over the last seven years.
He looked at his phone and said he should be going soon. Keen not to encroach any further on their time, I gulped the last mouthful of bitter down the wrong pipe, obstructing the smoothness of my departure and damaging the up until then credible social performance I'd given. Now momentarily reddened and spluttery, I shook hands and gave the business cards requested, donned my outdated headphones and found a new way home.
It was that dead time shortly after most office workers’ home time and before any revellers hit the town; human traffic was sparse and fleeting. I turned right at the end of the road, past the castle and onto the main pedestrianised shopping street. I glanced into travel agents at managers’ specials, yearning for heat, a break before starting this whole thing properly.
But it had started properly already. I was all moved-in now and had finally completed my construction of Ikea furniture. Hours and hours of sweat and strain and swearing. It wasn’t all seamless but it stood up, didn’t buckle or collapse with its contents. Or hadn’t yet. Standing back to admire the books I’d placed on a newly assembled bookcase felt like a watershed adult moment: arrival of a kind. Thirty years old in a few months. Now I felt it, but suddenly it wasn't all that bad.
I had moved myself from one capital to another, single-handed in one day, which wasn’t easy. Much lifting and carrying led to the aching of muscles I was unaware I had and bleary after four separate three-hour drives.
The final journey from London to Cardiff was miserable. Having cleaned, cleared and packed up my small flat, I looked back at its dark emptiness, still not wanting to go, and slumped onto my old small sofa one last time. Much as I liked my new flat, its space and size and reasonable location, I liked London better than Cardiff. It had more; more everything. Things could have been different here if.. Too many ifs. Things weren’t different. I stood from the sofa and left the flat: 10.30pm on Saturday evening. Trundling my way through West London towards the motorway I saw people done-up for their Saturday nights, young bottle blonde girls exhibiting a little too much flesh, a swaggering hopeful teen. Traffic headlights blotched and blurred through watery eyes and mournful acoustic singer-songwriters whined: songs about endings, change, new starts.
*
I wandered on down the pedestrianised shopping street early yesterday evening, conscious of my headphones. Their lurid blue and different design felt more ostentatious here, somehow. I was paranoid and inaccurately exaggerating the parochialism of the place. They probably did sell them here too. They had chain shops and the internet; it was developed. It just wasn’t London. Less had changed on this street and the same stores had largely remained.
Did I want to sit down and have a pint? I had an enjoyable book, the weather was overcast but perfectly ok to sit outside for half an hour. Pints were cheaper here. I shunned a rough Wetherspoons for a classier looking bar I half remembered. For a second I considered the possibility of bumping into someone I knew from my time here before leaving five years ago. Come on, it’s not THAT small a city, I dismissed myself and the idea. The chance was slim.
The first section of the bar was practically dead, but for a table of young female office workers. I glanced around a pillar as I approached the bar and saw a table of two guys my own age. Our eyes connected and held. We’d worked across a desk from each other for four months about seven years ago and hadn’t kept in touch. Never matey, I always felt he didn’t like me but was never sure if he exuded that to most other guys; only a year older, there was a certain superior aloofness which was never quite aggressive enough to be arrogance. It’s possible that he was threatened somehow, despite, or even because we were similar, with similar interests and skillsets, perhaps characters too.
For a second I dithered after saying hello, explaining my newbie situation. He gave his own appraisal then said he had a similar pair of headphones to those which hung round my neck, except his were the next grade up.
Still a tosser then? No, he didn’t say it in that one-upmanship way. He was all right.
Was he all right? Or was he a tosser? I never had worked it out.
Did I want to impose anyway? Yeah, go on, he’s probably decent enough really, maybe matured a bit, smart enough guy. If he thinks I’m a tosser it doesn’t matter as I’ll probably never see him again anyway. Steady on. Smaller town, remember? You can’t apply that as readily here as you could in London.
Ah, bollocks.
“Dyou mind if I join you?” For a line which often requires a degree of boldness, it can also be difficult to say no to that: as if it contains its own inherently respectable power. They affably agreed, moved their bags to make space, declined the offer of a drink and I got a pint.
I only stayed half an hour, a weak pint of bitter’s length. We spoke of the university administration where he worked; public and private sector differences, careers, the directions our lives had taken over the last seven years.
He looked at his phone and said he should be going soon. Keen not to encroach any further on their time, I gulped the last mouthful of bitter down the wrong pipe, obstructing the smoothness of my departure and damaging the up until then credible social performance I'd given. Now momentarily reddened and spluttery, I shook hands and gave the business cards requested, donned my outdated headphones and found a new way home.
Wednesday, 4 August 2010
Putting things in boxes
“Do you have a box, Patrick?” the Headmaster of our village primary school asked my friend at the beginning of assembly. Even aged 10, or somewhere around there, I was tickled by Sir's banal question (I strangely loved Sir's inanities at these cosy assemblies) and stifled a giggle.
The memory returned as I was retrieving cardboard boxes from the eaves of the building in preparation for my move: large sturdy boxes capable of transporting books and pictures, imprinted with the names of obscure independent grocers who can't possibly still exist.
I pulled the brown cardboard back through the small hatch and into the attic bedroom of my flat, increasingly populated with boxes, plastic bags, miscellaneous tins, probable junk, suitcases, smaller bags and strewn clothing. And I've continued to mull it as I've gone about counting down the last things - the last time I'll do this or go there, and regretting the things I've missed, forgotten or never got round to doing.
There’s a broader need for boxes. When certain real-life chapters end and begin it’s difficult to perceive them in a segregated, neatly ordered way, but more natural as one linear chain of indigestible noise – which is how we experience them at the time.
“Life is just one damned thing after another.”
Elbert Hubbard US author (1856 - 1915)
It’s hard to compartmentalise, box up experience and place it to one side, to neatly shelve times, places and people before taking a deep breath and taking another step forward, having another go. Although this is what we tell ourselves we must do, particularly if the recent history experience is unsavoury and not one we’d wish to replay – not that the brain gives us much of an option. It's possible that comes with greater age and even more retrospection. (I could read this in thirty years and think: oh yes, my blogging period, what a prick).
But amidst change, relatively young adulthood and eighteen-month hops of experience, memory doesn’t tend to have fixed borders. It segues to and fro, slopping dangerously over the sides, ignoring laughably empty pleas: we’ve changed, we’re different now, we’ve moved on, that’s all in the past.
Still, we try because it’s human instinct: self-preservation through self-image, to feel as if we’re developing, evolving, learning and growing through the experience of change. Not simply making one fuck-up after another.
This wasn’t really what our Headmaster was driving at. He just wanted to talk about boxes.
"Um, probably Sir," Patrick said.
The memory returned as I was retrieving cardboard boxes from the eaves of the building in preparation for my move: large sturdy boxes capable of transporting books and pictures, imprinted with the names of obscure independent grocers who can't possibly still exist.
I pulled the brown cardboard back through the small hatch and into the attic bedroom of my flat, increasingly populated with boxes, plastic bags, miscellaneous tins, probable junk, suitcases, smaller bags and strewn clothing. And I've continued to mull it as I've gone about counting down the last things - the last time I'll do this or go there, and regretting the things I've missed, forgotten or never got round to doing.
There’s a broader need for boxes. When certain real-life chapters end and begin it’s difficult to perceive them in a segregated, neatly ordered way, but more natural as one linear chain of indigestible noise – which is how we experience them at the time.
“Life is just one damned thing after another.”
Elbert Hubbard US author (1856 - 1915)
It’s hard to compartmentalise, box up experience and place it to one side, to neatly shelve times, places and people before taking a deep breath and taking another step forward, having another go. Although this is what we tell ourselves we must do, particularly if the recent history experience is unsavoury and not one we’d wish to replay – not that the brain gives us much of an option. It's possible that comes with greater age and even more retrospection. (I could read this in thirty years and think: oh yes, my blogging period, what a prick).
But amidst change, relatively young adulthood and eighteen-month hops of experience, memory doesn’t tend to have fixed borders. It segues to and fro, slopping dangerously over the sides, ignoring laughably empty pleas: we’ve changed, we’re different now, we’ve moved on, that’s all in the past.
Still, we try because it’s human instinct: self-preservation through self-image, to feel as if we’re developing, evolving, learning and growing through the experience of change. Not simply making one fuck-up after another.
This wasn’t really what our Headmaster was driving at. He just wanted to talk about boxes.
"Um, probably Sir," Patrick said.
Tuesday, 27 July 2010
Brixton
Noticing on a mobile maps application that the connecting A-road between Clapham Common and Brixton didn’t look all that long, I dismissed my fear of traffic in these parts, picked up my cycle (with its increasingly ineffective brakes), and aimed myself in the direction of where the A23.. no, the A32.. that big green road should be. I wish my brain stored A-road numbers more effectively. Middle-aged men pride themselves on such skills, but it’s not developing for me. Yet.
Brixton was a place I’d meant to check out for a long time, thinking a gig would summon me there at some point, but with two weeks remaining of my London stay, it still hadn’t. I popped in my earphones and began to weave between people sprawled out on the common and those loping through the sunshine towards the Ben & Jerry’s festival gate.
Then watchfully, I pedalled out into the snarling, give-no-inch traffic.
The connecting A-road was simple and not long; little more than a five or ten minutes spin between residential streets which slowly opened up and out. I freewheeled down an incline into what I figured must be the centre, a heavily made up bottle blonde with hoisted short skirt to my right: either seriously craving male attention or a prostitute. She stood out, not least because this didn’t appear like a place for such dress or try-hard glamorous style.
I dismounted at the base of the hill, looking over a surprisingly cultured looking, arty plaza; well- polished buildings neighboured less well polished buildings. Two bike locks felt appropriate all the same. The new sense of place was vivid, despite the proximity to the white middle-classness of Clapham and its own urbane pretentions. Brixton had fewer, didn’t need them.
The concentration of ethnic minorities was immediately striking but the place had a vibrancy and creativity about it which other strongly black places like the downtrodden feeling Seven Sisters Road in Tottenham didn’t. Here there were artistic hubs, even iconic places like the Academy, places of obvious congregation, wide open spaces next to narrow market streets which could quite easily fool you into thinking you weren’t in London, or even England.
I walked up the street with my earphones in. A young black man walking at a similar pace said something. Hello?
I unpopped my earphones: “Hello mate.”
What did he want?
“How’s it going?” he said.
“Um, good. You ok?”
“Yeah I’m good.”
“Good.”
Perturbed by the exchange, I stopped to look at my phone and he kept walking.
Young people were, by and large, pretty. Most looked like they were, or should be in a band. This was a south of the river Camden, possibly with an even richer mix of people and less contrivance. Most of these people weren’t essentially rebellious angsty middle class kids who studied other people slightly too hard.
In a narrow market street dense with butchers and meats and rivalling scents, a woman wheeled a trolley in front of her and out across the road. A second glance revealed her to be wheeling a sack, out of which poked the rear end of what appeared to be a serious looking snake. I couldn’t imagine this happening in Richmond.
It can be easy to feel like you stand out in your ethnicity when displaced from a native white middle class domain, especially if you’re naturally self-conscious, self-aware. But the truth is that there are many places where nobody cares. Places like Brixton. I could totally understand for young and zesty folk, for those who seek and embrace life in all its forms, Brixton could be a place to live unjudged and unhampered, and to feel a rugged texture of experience.
Brixton was a place I’d meant to check out for a long time, thinking a gig would summon me there at some point, but with two weeks remaining of my London stay, it still hadn’t. I popped in my earphones and began to weave between people sprawled out on the common and those loping through the sunshine towards the Ben & Jerry’s festival gate.
Then watchfully, I pedalled out into the snarling, give-no-inch traffic.
The connecting A-road was simple and not long; little more than a five or ten minutes spin between residential streets which slowly opened up and out. I freewheeled down an incline into what I figured must be the centre, a heavily made up bottle blonde with hoisted short skirt to my right: either seriously craving male attention or a prostitute. She stood out, not least because this didn’t appear like a place for such dress or try-hard glamorous style.
I dismounted at the base of the hill, looking over a surprisingly cultured looking, arty plaza; well- polished buildings neighboured less well polished buildings. Two bike locks felt appropriate all the same. The new sense of place was vivid, despite the proximity to the white middle-classness of Clapham and its own urbane pretentions. Brixton had fewer, didn’t need them.
The concentration of ethnic minorities was immediately striking but the place had a vibrancy and creativity about it which other strongly black places like the downtrodden feeling Seven Sisters Road in Tottenham didn’t. Here there were artistic hubs, even iconic places like the Academy, places of obvious congregation, wide open spaces next to narrow market streets which could quite easily fool you into thinking you weren’t in London, or even England.
I walked up the street with my earphones in. A young black man walking at a similar pace said something. Hello?
I unpopped my earphones: “Hello mate.”
What did he want?
“How’s it going?” he said.
“Um, good. You ok?”
“Yeah I’m good.”
“Good.”
Perturbed by the exchange, I stopped to look at my phone and he kept walking.
Young people were, by and large, pretty. Most looked like they were, or should be in a band. This was a south of the river Camden, possibly with an even richer mix of people and less contrivance. Most of these people weren’t essentially rebellious angsty middle class kids who studied other people slightly too hard.
In a narrow market street dense with butchers and meats and rivalling scents, a woman wheeled a trolley in front of her and out across the road. A second glance revealed her to be wheeling a sack, out of which poked the rear end of what appeared to be a serious looking snake. I couldn’t imagine this happening in Richmond.
It can be easy to feel like you stand out in your ethnicity when displaced from a native white middle class domain, especially if you’re naturally self-conscious, self-aware. But the truth is that there are many places where nobody cares. Places like Brixton. I could totally understand for young and zesty folk, for those who seek and embrace life in all its forms, Brixton could be a place to live unjudged and unhampered, and to feel a rugged texture of experience.
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