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World of the CrowsVerbal Dysentery for the Blank Generation November 11 Agents of Destiny. Some mornings we are masters of our surroundings. Other days we wonder what's happened to the world. Every morning I wander down to the local small supermarket to buy the daily perishables for the shop and all the little bits and pieces which are easier or more convenient to get daily than to have delivered in bulk. It's the way I've been doing it for the last sixteen years and so I shall continue until I die or retire or sell up and get a job. Those are my options. The future is bleak.
So this morning I was putting my purchases on the black rubber conveyor belt and looking at the various and quite unattractive packs of chewing gum, when the woman assistant held up an iceberg lettuce. My iceberg lettuce. They are not my favourite lettuce, but they only sell those, or little gems which I think are too bitter, and soft lettuces. They also have those horrible bags of ready prepared salad leaves marinading in chemical preservatives and tasting of insulating tape, which I will not buy. They don't sell loose lettuces such as lollo rosso, lollo bianco, or lamb's tongue, which I would buy. They don't even sell loose watercress.
"You're buying this?" She asked, disgustedly.
"Unless you're giving it away, yes I am".
"Well I wouldn't. Look at it. It's disgusting." I looked. It was green. It was round. All in all it was pretty much what you'd expect an Iceberg lettuce to look like. I told her so.
"All I'm saying is, I wouldn't buy it." She said, and scanned it. What the fuck happened to annoyingly chirpy shop assistants who make inane yet harmless and instantly forgettable conversation? Where are they?
On the way back to the shop I ran into my friend Terry. "I'll have to pop round later, to borrow a tenner." He said.
"Will you?" I asked. I think he got some bad vibes from me because as it happened, he didn't come back round to see me later. November 03 Whistle I've told you before about one of my favourite regular customers, Fretful Mathew. He lives in a small village about three miles out of town, along by the river in a lovely rural location. His house was left to him as some sort of trust when his mother died, and he says it's like being in prison as she left him bound by so many conditions of tenancy. Prison though? I bet he doesn't have to share a cell and a toilet with a man called Reg who burgled the Rectory and had a shit on the vicar's kitchen floor. We know Reg. We don't like him though. His defence lawyer said he did it because he was nervous. Reg the Nervous Burglar. Very plausible. Ah, to be sixty five years old and still under the maternal thumb, even after mother's become extinct.
He was in the shop today, was Mathew, fretful and agitated. Reg wasn't. He was probably out taking a dump on some poor absent householder's bed linen somewhere. It's the nerves you know.
"Mathew, what troubles you? Pray tell?" I asked him but not necessarily in those very words. Perhaps I shouldn't have.
"I was typing a card for someone today, whose baby is unwell in an incubator and I got distracted by the sound of someone whistling outside." Which says a lot about Mathew, living as he does in a village where at this time of year pheasants are being blasted out of the sky in phenomenal numbers, quite unwillingly in most cases, and even the shouty man wears ear protectors. They do taste good though. Pheasants that is, not the shouty man's ear protectors. I fancy they'd have an overpowering bouquet of unwashed hair and fetid earwax. Most unappetising. "I had to stop typing and go outside to investigate. The sound of whistling is so distracting."
"Did you duck?" I asked. He looked at me as though I were the crazy man.
"Can you believe, it was someone who'd lost a dog!"
"Mad, man, mad. Tell me more, daddy!" I begged.
"Anyway, I was so incensed that when I got back indoors I tore up the card. My concentration had gone as well, and I felt that they probably wouldn't want a card from me anyway, they'd only feel obliged to reply if they received it and they'd most likely feel resentment at that. They're not even friends, I just read about them in an old newspaper which I found in my garden. And I keep getting pestering letters from a charity to whom I once donated £30 for a destitute Indian child with a harelip and now they want £3000, I take all the letters to the post office and I tell them that I don't want them but they tell me there's nothing they can do and I should just put the letters in the bin but I'd feel too much guilt. Do you have days like that Graham?"
"Funnily enough Mathew, until quite recently I hadn't, but I can feel one coming on now. Now, first things first. It was an old newspaper? Your card may well have come too late. Next, ignore any and all charity requests. I do. Because I couldn't bear the responsibility for encouraging a small disabled third world infant to become dependent upon me. I just haven't got it in me Mathew. I'm just not the caring type. I know it's hard to believe, but there we are, appearances can be deceptive. And just remember, nobody wants to be thought of as a parasite. And don't bin your letters Mathew, burn them. And burn them gladly knowing you are serving a higher purpose. The world needs carbon dioxide, it's a valuable plant food, and remember, it's CO2, there's lots of oxygen in that there gas. Twice as many oxygen atoms as there are carbon. And before you ask, the answer is yes. I would say that existence, along with resistance, is futile. Yours is anyway. There. Are you feeling better now? Do you want another cup of tea?"
October 29 Marianne. "What do you like best about it then Graham?" asked Marianne. "Because I really hate flying". She would. She was born without feathers.
"Well, I find the not crashing part is rather appealing, and then being able to refuse the food gives me a bit of a kick, too." I told her, quite honestly.
"It's the crashing that worries me," she said.
"The way I see it Marianne, if you're involved in an aircraft crash, you either die instantly or you have a miraculous escape. There can be no half measures. Whereas if you're involved in a car accident you can quite easily survive, modern medicine being what it is, but with some quite horrendous and disfiguring injuries. You can get incredibly badly mangled and still live, however unattractive you may be to the opposite sex and what is worse, in the average traffic accident there are rarely more than half a dozen or so people involved. So there's always that old problem of pointing fingers and wagging tongues. Especially if you survive and others don't. You know how people hate a survivor."
There was a brief silence on the other end of the telephone line. Then, "so you're saying that if I survive a car crash, people will say it was all my fault?"
"Without a doubt, Marianne," I told her. "So if you're going to be in a crash, it's by far the best bet to be in a plane crash. Instant death, and no rumours that you were the cause of it. And it's one in the eye for misguided eco-fascists like Hilary Benn, the mad bastard."
"I see," she said. "Anyway, it's been lovely chatting to you again, if a little worrying. Can I speak to Anita now please?"
"Certainly Marianne", I said. "And enjoy your holiday next week, won't you?"
October 28 Mist The clocks have reverted to GMT, the Scottish farmers are probably quite oblivious to that fact and my inner clock is in turmoil. Looking out of the window here, I see two faint lights glimmering through the heavy mist which has fallen up from the river. It has been a very busy week in the shop and my mind feels fragile. A customer asked me the other day what I'd thought of New York.
"Why do you ask these things?" I enquired of her.
"Oh, somebody told me you were there recently and I wondered what you thought of it." You know Derek and Clive's timeless classic of conversational badminton, "This Bloke Came up to Me"? Well I'm glad to tell you that the conversation didn't develop along those lines at all, though it so easily could have. And if you don't know it, you should.
"What I thought of it?" I asked her. "I thought it was a city. A big city, it must be said, with lots of places to go, and things to do, but at heart it's a city, yes. That's what I thought. Have you ever considered Buddhism? Buddhism provides an answer to most questions by taking the questor after truth to a place where nothingness reigns supreme. There are no divine revelations to be had and no strict prescriptions to follow in order to lead a moral life, but the perfect vacuum of blissful ignorance leads to a stillness of the spirit which is otherwise only obtainable by death. But New York was great."
"Oh," she said. "We're going there next week, and I'd wondered if you could have told me anything in particular we could do there."
"Buy a guide book before you go?", I suggested. That's what I did, and it helped. "I'm not you and you're not me, and we probably enjoy totally different things. I could say that the greatest thing I found to do there was to sit for three hours watching eighteen bed-bugs invent the game of hopscotch on the wall of a crack-den using food colourings and a grain of arborio risotto rice, only to break their hearts by telling them that humans had got there first. But I'd be lying. Bed bugs aren't big enough, strong enough or motivated enough to lift a grain of arborio risotto rice. Even if it's part of the process of inventing a children's playground game."
A short while later Cyril the Stalker Troll poked his head around the door.
"Have you got any quiche?" he asked me. You may not have heard him say that, even if you'd been there, because Cyril has a manner of speaking which would suggest that his tongue and soft palate have recently come off worst in a vicious tussle with a food processor blade rotating at 1800rpm. But believe me, he asked if I had any quiche.
"Yes Cyril, I've got quiche," I replied.
"Oh good," he said and he walked off up the road towards the newsagent, bypassing the intervening travel agents on the grounds of well deserved poverty and ignoring the funeral directors, probably because he was unfortunately still alive.
I deal with these people every day. Do you wonder that I'm bitter? October 24 Starshine I was having a chat with the girl from the furniture place. Actually I wasn't. I was having a chat with Ian about the book my daughter gave me for my birthday, which I'd read, and the book which Ian lent me about four weeks before my birthday, which I hadn't. Sarah gave me the River Cottage Meat Book, and Ian lent me the Australian edition of Kitty Kelly's The Royals, which I wouldn't have sought out but now I have it I'll probably try and flick through it one day. One major problem I have is that there are currently eleven or twelve so far unread books in my pending pile, and it's growing all the time. So many books, so little free time.
Anyway, Sally heard me mention my recent birthday and decided to ask me when it was, my birthday. As she is very easy on the eye, is pleasant company and she likes my shop and what it provides, I told her. I am shallow and easily swayed, but that's not something I'd criticise in others so it causes me no guilt.
"Twenty first of last month", I told her. "Ah", she replied. "That's my ex-husband's birthday. But he was born in 1959, so you'd be a few years younger than him", she flattered. I told her that was the year that I came into being as well.
"Are you a typical Virgo?" she asked. "Nobody else ever puts things away properly? You always know exactly where you left things and can tell if somebody else has moved them? Nobody can ever change your mind? About anything? And are you a stubborn, nit-picking self absorbed-"
"You and your ex-husband didn't part on the best of terms then Sal?" I wondered. "And yes, you're a very good judge of character."
"The only thing he ever did right was to give me a good foot massage now and again" she said. "I'll always remember your birthday, anyway. And I'm a Libra. You can call me slovenly." I wouldn't dream of it. She's got cheekbones like Gina Lollobrigida's.
"My dog gives me a good foot massage" said Ian, who I'd forgotten was sitting there. He has slightly scaley skin, although there is nothing reptilian about him. He doesn't catch passing insects with a rolled up tongue, for a start. Sally, on one hand and the other, has lovely skin. That's one reason I'd forgotten about Ian.
"What?" asked Sally. I had a horrible feeling that I knew what might be coming.
"Oh yes" said Ian. "I cover my feet with peanut butter and the dog licks it off. It's very good for the feet, and I enjoy it. Molly loves peanut butter so she gets something out of the experience too." Yes, I thought. Athlete's tongue, probably.
"Is that one reason why you and Mrs Ian are no longer a married couple?" asked Sally.
"Yes" I answered for him. "She objected to the peanut butter. She preferred lime marmalade but it irritated Ian's skin and encouraged the scaleyness. Didn't it Ian? It was the citric acid that did it."
We are granted eternity, and this is how we spend it.
October 15 Fish Yesterday I craved fish. The town where I live no longer has a butchers, a greengrocers, a hardware store or a roast chestnut stall manned by a wizened old rustic telling tales about life as it was lived before they paved the roads locally. However, there is a dog grooming parlour, along with four hairdressers, two funeral directors, one of whom promises rather sinisterly to arrange funerals in the privacy of your own home, a balloon shop and two estate agents. And there's a man who smells of drains and sleeps in the municipal car park. And there's my shop. We also have a wonderful fish market down at the harbour, which runs a couple of three or four man local boats, so that was where I went. Because they're good. And we swap discounts.
It's like stepping into stomach heaven; there laid out on the iced slabs are fresh fish and seafoods in a variety and quantity to make your eyes crossed, your knees weaken and your lips to drool. I eventually decided on some fresh gurnard brought in that morning, and my usual dressed crab. The girl Kerry filleted the fish and promised to save some red mullet and smoked haddock for me on Saturday. I could just about give up eating meat as long as there was fish in the sea, but I could never go vegetarian. Life would have no glow. Last night for dinner I drizzled the fillets with lemon juice, sprinkled them with sea salt and oregano, laid them in a dish of olive oil and gave them fifteen minutes at 200 degrees. Perfect with half a dozen steamed charlotte potatoes and a melting pool of butter.
When I got back to my shop from the fish market a woman was telling the world about her son's weekend. He'd been to a party where he'd apparently drunk three quarters of a bottle of Jack Daniels. But Jack Daniels isn't what I call drinking, she said. Someone asked him to hold their glass of vodka, she said, and that's where his problems started, she said. Because if you're at a party and you see a glass in your hand, she said, you drink it, don't you? And she said that her son's got all this anger inside him. I'd have thought that the pint of whisky inside him was a tad more influential than a few behaviour management problems. But no, vodka's what she calls drinking, she said, and vodka brings out his anger, she said. So he punched a wardobe, she said. Then he punched a wall, she said. He broke two knuckles and a couple of fingers, she said.
I reflected that being a part of this woman's life must be something like death. You'd be dreading the next phase, wishing you were somewhere else but at the same time anticipating the cold sweet brutal kiss of oblivion with all your heart. I was just glad that I had a nice bit of civilised fish to look forward to for my supper.
This is what I do when there's nothing interesting to write about. October 06 I Went Away - a Trip Around Manhattan. I'm useless at lying. That doesn't mean to say that I can't tell fibs, because I can. The problem arises if I get challenged by an authority figure; the problem being that I begin to drool, twitch and exhibit a bizarre range of facial tics which betray my craven duplicity to my interrogator. Which is one reason why I found myself being verbally hauled out of the queue at Kennedy airport by a quite jovial and pleasant CBP officer.
"So, tell me, why do you have a Visa?" he asked me. I told him the circumstances.
"So, you didn't run fast enough not to get caught then? So, now your past catches up with you." I briefly considered telling him that it would be nice to hear him begin a sentence with a word that wasn't 'so', but discretion, practicality and cowardice forbade it. He questioned me for a while longer, and then placed all of my travel documents in a red folder and led me to a side room.
"So, you'll wait here and see these guys, they'll want to grill you. Sit there." He said, pointing me in the direction of an uncomfortable plastic chair and passing my papers to one of his three colleagues who sat on a raised platform. I sat quietly reflecting on what my friend Mo had said. She'd advised me to simply lie, not to apply for a Visa and just go for the Visa waiver option. Like her man Tasty Dave does. But Tasty Dave can uproot lamp posts with his teeth and he intimidates Pit Bulls with a whispered word. Like I said, I'm crap at lying, and I can't do any of that stuff. So here I was being scrutinised, along with my passport, my visa and my history. After what seemed an age, the largest and tastiest looking of the three called me up. He kept me standing there while he did stuff with his computer and flicked through some papers. I felt fragile and vulnerable.
He took my passport and opened it to the Visa page, he inspected it carefully and he eventually stamped it. "Admitted" said the stamp.
"You can go," was all he said, so out the door I went. To be intercepted by another Customs and Border Protection officer. Who did a very good job of making a very ostentatious show of almost searching through mine and Anita's luggage before saying that he was sorry but he had to do this it was his job and he thought he'd better ask his supervisor what should happen next. So far everybody I'd met in America had been so nice. Apart from the bearded Frenchman sat behind me on the plane whose in-flight nervousness had manifested itself as an uncontrollable desire to ram his knees into the small of my back almost continuously throughout the seven and a half hour flight from Gatwick. And that had mostly happened in international airspace, not in America, so I don't hold it against anyone except Charles Aznavour.
The Customs man spoke to his supervisor, who asked him how far he wanted to take it, 'it' being me presumably, or at least the operational challenge which I posed, and he said that 'it' seemed alright, and there didn't really seem any point in taking 'it' any further. So he turned back to me and needlessly apologising again, told me to enjoy my stay in New York City. As far as I'm concerned it all adds to the adventure which started last November when I spent a slightly uncomfortable day at the US Embassy pleading for my non-immigrant tourist Visa.
Once out in the airport concourse, we phoned for the shuttle bus which I'd pre-booked in England, and eventually an African man came up to me and gradually we mutually decided that the thing he was saying was the reference number on my booking ticket. I wish it hadn't been. The shuttle bus had probably once been safe. But now it had a leak in the fuel line, there was certainly some problem involving blockage and rerouting of exhaust fumes into the interior of the vehicle and the air conditioning didn't work. There was an overheating and probably vital component of the vehicle rattling itself loose behind the inner wall just where Anita's leg was, and she was radiating even more heat into her close environment, which was largely me. The windows wouldn't open and the traffic into Manhattan was bad and slow.
And I had an elderly and irritable German couple sitting next to me. I feigned ignorance but they, or rather he, had somehow divined that I could indeed speak ein bisschen Deutsch. Nur ein kleiner bisschen, I protested, but he was having none of it. So in between gasping for oxygen, sweating at a rate of litres per minute and absorbing possibly lethal amounts of benzene fumes and the noxious waste products of internal combustion through my airways and my skin, I was also having to try to explain in schoolboy German that no, I didn't know where Meddison Sqvar Garten was, it was my first time here too, and yes I was an Englander and no, I didn't live in Colchester, did your older brother bomb Colchester in the war, no, I don't find racial stereotyping offensive at all, I live by the sea in Sussex and do you really live in Thuringen, how fascinating I need air yes those are petrol fumes and if I'm not very much mistaken yes we are slowly dying of carbon monoxide poisoning. Everywhere I go these people find me, pursue me and sit next to me on buses, trains and even on occasion public lavatories.
From the front of the van, through the mental haze caused by drifting dangerously close to unconsciousness, I heard the African driver chanting a native dirge, which gradually resolved itself into a funereal version of the word 'halleluia". Each time he stopped to let out a passenger we remaining voyagers lunged forward to take a replenishing gasp of the outside air before he slammed the door shut again. We were now deep into Manhattan and eventually we reached W35th Street, just off 5th Avenue. I felt the last remaining shreds of the inner surfaces of my lungs disintegrate and peel away as I indicated that this was us, the hotel next to the Korean BBQ restaurant. Handing the driver our prepayment voucher, I sucked in a gallon of air and tipped him $10, not so much in recognition of services rendered, more as a token of gratitude and relief that we had survived the three hour journey to our hotel intact, conscious and alive. It was supposed to have taken 45 minutes to an hour, but I'd already paid in England and the sullen fucker wasn't going to get another penny out of us, no matter what.
We booked into the hotel and found our room, helpfully directed by Pierre the concierge. Slightly poisoned and with our inner clocks confused by the sudden addition of five hours to our lives, we slept through until the next morning. For the last time that week, although we were not to know it at the time. This is turning into a thriller. We awoke, showered, sorted our clothes and stuff and went down for breakfast, which was good. We went back up to the room and I checked that the bulk of our cash was safely in the room safe along with our passports and other vital stuff. We'd decided that our first port of call would be Central Park, so we turned left out of the hotel door and eventually found a Subway entrance. Putting my hand in my pocket to get my wallet out to buy our Metro cards which would give us hassle free travel for the remainder of our stay, I found that it had vanished. My wallet that is, not my hand.
Thirty minutes on the streets of the city and I'd been robbed. Anita was chiding me for being so careless and I was totting up what I'd lost. A hundred and fifty dollars, some English money, about £75 or so, and our NYC pass cards which I'd bought via the internet early last month, which would have given us free entry to over fifty museums, attractions, tours and cruises along with numerous discounts here there and everywhere. They hadn't got my phone or camera, both of which meant more to me than my wallet, though Anita found it hard to see the difference. She was certainly in a chideful mood. It was all insured so we went back to the hotel room to get the phone numbers to call to sort everything out. And there was my wallet, sitting on top of my suitcase in the wardrobe. Where I had obviously left it. I then got chided again, but I was relieved so didn't really mind.
That day we went to Central Park, we saw animals at the zoo and we saw David Frost narrowly avoid getting run over by a yellow cab right outside the Plaza hotel. The man might have the ear of the rich and the powerful, but I think he's crap at crossing the road. Just because you're internationally famous, it doesn't mean you can walk out against a red light without checking for oncoming traffic.
We'd been asked to get some clothing at Abercrombie and Fitch, or the sixth inner circle of Hell as it should properly be known. It is pitch dark within, the music is painfully loud and at every turn you are accosted by a dancing, inanely grinning, beautiful and youthful assistant who bellows "Hi Guys!" at you but doesn't actually offer you any assistance. Unless you can ask for help in sign language, presumably. The bulk of the lighting comes from underfoot illuminated panels in the staircases, which span five stories of quite unattractive and shabby designer casual wear. You stumble a lot. I did, anyway. Anita kept asking me if my wallet was safe. So if you ever meet an incredibly shaggable thirty year old American with a fixed smile, appalling dress sense, bruised shins and almost total hearing loss you'll know where they worked after college.
And then when we returned to the hotel we discovered that if we'd turned right instead of left we'd have practically fallen into the Subway entrance. I told Anita it was a good thing we'd found out so early in our stay. "Where's your wallet?" she replied.
That afternoon I was in the mood to wander alone, so Anita said she'd have a sleep. I walked out and wandered up to the Chrysler Building, explored Grand Central Station and got me a taster of Lexington and Madison Avenues. It was all quite spectacular and exiliarating, especially Grand Central, which is a very beautiful space. I like wandering alone in strange cities. If ever I decide to pursue a career as a penniless vagabond it won't really stand me very much in good stead but at least I'll know the sort of place where I might kip down for an hour or so if I'm lucky enough not to be set alight by some feral youths out for kicks.
That evening we went to the Empire State Building, where we went on the New York Skyride, which was quite entertaining, and then took the elevators up to the 86th and then the 102nd floors. Dusk was falling, the city looked beautiful and we were glad that we had come here. We stayed up there for quite a while, just drinking in the views all around. You want to know what we ate for dinner that night, don't you?
I had sauteed crab cakes with seaweed salad and wasabi aioli for starter followed by American Red Snapper with a slightly spicy almond and sultana couscous. Anita started her meal with a mozarella and tomato caprese and then she had wine braised steak with garlic mashed potato (they called it roast garlic potato puree) and slightly crunchy buttered baby carrots. We had some very nice California red wine with it, a cabernet. And New York Cheesecake to finish. Populist maybe, but none the worse for that. That was our first full day in Manhattan. It was all good.
*
Friday morning came and we found ourselves at breakfast. Every morning I started with a cinnamon and raisin bagel spread with philadelphia cheese and grape jelly. And a croissant and/or Danish or two. And a surprisingly small yogurt. All washed down with copious swillings of delicious fresh coffee and orange juice. Usually when we're away I start each day with a breakfast frighteningly high in protein and find myself unaccountably craving food all the time. With these carbohydrate rich breaks to the fast however, my appetite seemed quite suppressed. There's a fascinating dietary aside for you.
We went down to the riverside and at one of the piers in the eighties we boarded a little boat for a cruise around the island of Manhattan. It was a fine way to spend three or four hours, and upon mentioning to Anita at one point that we were near the place where that airliner crashed into the river last year after being assaulted by a flock of feral geese, she asked me if my wallet was safe.
"Yes, my love, if I capsize and drown here, my wallet's going down with me." The Northern end of the island was, to us innocents abroad, delightfully and surprisingly green and wild looking. A fair breeze blew in our faces as we ploughed North up to Harlem and beyond, and our faces and other exposed parts reddened in the sun. I particularly enjoyed the knowledge that I had passed beneath all twenty or so bridges linking Manhattan to its surrounds. That's me.
After refreshing ourselves with burgers, fries and large coffees, we rode down to the site of the Twin Towers and got lumps in our throats looking at the building site/hole in the ground that it now is. The World Financial Centre building next door was very marbled and welcoming and impressive. We rode the subway up to Madison Square Garden and made a point of avoiding any possible German tourists, then wandered aimlessly up and down 5th and 6th Avenues. Strange how aimless wandering can be so enjoyable.
I was discussing that very subject with Doyley today. The conversation strayed into mutual wonderings about how our distant ancestors saw the world, presumably not having such a high level of day to day crap to deal with. Life must have been far more vital when all you had to worry about was avoiding being eaten or starting your next fire or killing something. Doyley showed me a book which he'd just bought from a charity shop and promised to lend it to me when he's finished it. I can't remember what it was. Doyley tends to have that effect. But we agreed that it's a fine and healthy thing to keep a deeply private universe inside one's head, a place where one can occasionally retreat into sanity.
As dusk fell we went to the Rockefeller Centre, went up to the Top of the Rock and saw the moon rising behind the Empire State. Again, we stayed up there for a while enjoying the scenery. Then we went down to Times Square and enjoyed the buzzing neon and the crowds. Then it was time for dinner so we found a place that did mixed sampler plates of starters, which we greatly enjoyed. Then I had chicken with sauteed asparagus and potatoes, Anita had mushroom ravioli and we drank Indian River light ale, a delicious brew from which England would derive great benefit.
On Saturday we decided to go to Coney Island and walk along the boardwalk at Brighton Beach. Some people are so easily pleased! I'd always wanted to go to Brooklyn and eat a dog with kraut, and that's just what I did. Then, partly because our NYC pass cards gave us free entry, but also because I love things fishy, we visited the New York Aquarium there. I've also always wanted to walk over the East river across the Brooklyn bridge, and I did that too. There's an awfully long subway ride between Coney Island and the Bridge, but we'll gloss over that just as I ignored the even longer subway ride from Midtown Manhattan to Coney island in the first place. Which isn't to say that I didn't enjoy it all, because I did. It's just that my very limited gifts of expression and description wouldn't really do the experience justice, so it will all remain a private and buttock aching memory for me.
Anyway, that afternoon we decide for no good reason to see Bloomingdales and Macys, mainly because of the number of people who'd told us "You must go to Bloomingdales and Macys". Dear reader, the concept of 'must' doesn't really come into it. If you like shopping, which neither of us see as a particularly vital part of life's rich treasures, by all means go to Bloomingdales and/or Macys. But don't feel obliged. I took a desperately needed dump in the facilities at Bloomindales, so I shall forever have a certain fondness for the place. And Anita bought our two oldest daughters some terrifyingly expensive perfume at Macys. The well groomed lad at the counter gave me some free samples of Armani toiletries. I think he thought I was hot. Go me. Though he was probably under orders just to shift as much in the way of free samples on European tourists as he could get away with. Shopping? I can take it or leave it.
I had Cornmeal dusted Calamari with a hot tomato salsa as my starter that night, followed by surf and turf, which involved a sensibly sized almost raw steak and three huge prawns, along with fries and baked tomatoes. Anita started with deep fried dill pickles and then had a buffalo steak, which was damned tasty, with delicious Idaho mashed potatoes and I finished with a wedge of Key Lime Pie. We had more of that Indian river beer, which Anita washed down with Gins and Tonics! Again, it was all good.
Sunday it rained, so we quite sensibly went to Central Park again to get wet. We did a wee bit more shopping, reluctantly, and ate cheesesteaks on the subway platform. Nobody even looks at you eating in public. I wouldn't do it here. The remainder of my scribbles in my little notebook are quite indecipherable for the rest of Sunday, but I know we enjoyed it. We went into the Trump Tower and drank Mochas. The whole thing is an obscenity of red marble and mirrored brass. There's a waterfall tumbling three or four stories down the inside of the building. It was still raining outside. We went down to Canal Street and found that the rain had stopped so we wandered around Chinatown, which was a mighty crowded piece of heaven right here on earth, and then the tiny bit of New York that is Little Italy. We saw a painfully thin teenage girl dancing in the street dodging the heavy traffic with as much skill and casual determination as she obviously dodged her meals.
Monday was our last day there, and I spent the morning wandering alone from one end of 35th Street to the other, walked a couple of blocks south and I looked across the Hudson at New Jersey, wondering about people who live there and then I walked back to the hotel by a slightly staggered route, just in time to find that Anita had quite competently packed everything. And then we came home.
In the fume free shuttle bus on the way back to the airport, a girl in front of me turned around and asked "Wo fliegen Sie?"
"Wir fliegen nach Colchester. Wir wohnen in die nahe von der Thames." I lied, struggling with my genders. She shrugged, not really caring or comprehending, and turned to face the front again. That weekend was Rosh Hashannah. Driving through Brooklyn that afternoon we saw many Jewish people in their fineries. They looked mighty fine, mostly. I just thought I'd mention it. I wondered what the front seat passengers were thinking. The Dutch are a strange race. There were two Dutch women staying at the hotel and we noticed that at breakfast they would gorge on the food available and then also quite brazenly cram muffins and fruit into large cardboard coffee cups. Then at lunchtime they would sit in the lounge area and eat the stolen breakfast food. And there were so many places to get nice fresh food in that city. I don't know what they did for food in the evenings. I don't even want to think about it.
The five hour time difference was a strange thing, I must say. We woke up at about two o'clock every morning and found it mighty difficult to get back to sleep, mainly because of the variety and volume of sounds coming up from the city streets. One night I was kept awake by what could only have been a Korean choir chanting hymns from the Motherland. Or perhaps they were Africans. And there were lots of sirens. And bangs. And shouts. But it was all to be savoured and enjoyed. The subways particularly. The stations retained a sauna-like heat and humidity, and it was a sensuous delight to board the cool, air conditioned trains. I notice these things. I wouldn't notice if I got pick-pocketed, but I notice a change of temperature when I'm using public transport in a foreign land.
One day there we were on a subway platform when there appeared a host of baseball fans, going to the Yankee Stadium to see the New York Yankees beat the Boston team. I said to Anita, "Isn't it great to think that we're here, and we're almost a part of this? Even if it is by default. For a lot of these people, this is a day they'll remember forever." That's a thought that I often have when I'm caught up in a large crowd. If something momentous happened while you were there, you would forever be a tiny but permanent part of some great event, the obvious drawback being that most momentous events usually tend to involve lots of dead people. But you can't expect a place in history as well as immortality. Though one would tend to lead to the other, wouldn't it?
She said "Is your wallet in your zip up pocket?" She's such a worrier.
I took three hundred photos. I've put forty of them in the album here.
September 18 Friday Mrs. Genital was chatting to me today. She is the secretary of a political association in a nearby town. Not this town where I live, another town about thirteen miles northwest as the crow flies. Or it would, if it hadn't made a fat pig of itself gorging on the remains of the dead badger which the council street cleaners missed on a local roadette+*, though how they missed it I'll never know, it was a stout old beast. It was quite widely distributed by the end of the day too.
Anyway, Mrs Genital was asking me how it is that in just about the second most economically deprived town south of Hammerfest**, in the middle of the worst recession in living history when the Glorious Peoples' Party have wilfully sunk the country into bankruptcy for the second time in our short lifetimes, how is it that I still have people queueing up at my door when businesses are closing all around us? It's because we're just so damned good, I told her.
"And people want to see my legs and fall in love with them," I told her. "You would too, if only you had the chance, Mrs Genital. You wouldn't be able to help yourself. It's just the way life is." And at that moment, for no good reason at all, I was reminded of my old schoolfriend Harry Crotch who would bunk off games lessons to hide in the library fruitlessly searching the Human Achievements section of the Mackesons Book of World Records, Exaggerations and Downright Lies to see if the girth, weight or volume of the largest observed human male scrotal sac was listed. He left school disappointed yet hopeful of making his mark in the world, reasonably well read, and desperately in need of exercise.
"Mrs Genital, do you want to come to the library with me later?", I thought of asking but didn't. She told me that the new and only Italian restaurant in town does a good meal. We may visit soon for a bit of Frito Misto. It sounds good to me.
*roadette+. That's a traffic-bearing mud track to you.
**Hammerfest. Yes, I know it's in Norway, otherwise known as abroad. It's in the far North. That was the point I was trying to make. September 16 No Kilt. So Sunday came and I went into Brighton to get me some new clothes. Les the Part Time Villain was at the bus stop.
"Where you going then?" he asked like someone who didn't really care. I told him that I didn't know yet, it could be Brighton or Eastbourne and as there was a fifty-fifty chance that the next bus along would be destined for either of those fine towns, I'd know where I was going when the next bus came but until then I was in an indeterminate state of indecision vis-a-vis my imminent termination point. I'd lost him before I even opened my mouth and he called me an arsehole and asked if I'd still stopped smoking.
"Yes Les I've still stopped." I told him.
"Can I borrow a fag then?" he asked.
"No." I said.
"Why not? You don't need it. You said you've stopped smoking."
"Seven fucking years ago Les! They'd be dry as your scalp if I still had any. Anyway, how can you borrow a fag? What would you return to the lender? A handful of ashes and a soggy disease ridden filter tip? That's not much of a bargain, is it?" My bus came and it was destined for Brighton. Les didn't get on. I don't think he was waiting for a bus, he just wanted to spread misery among the travelling public. Or to bum a fag off of the unwary. Same thing, really.
So on the bus I was listening to Layla on my discreet personal music playing device. Once, many moons ago, I was laying feverishly in my pre-death bed wasting away from a particularly unpleasant attack of Gastro-Enteritits and the world was fading away into the distance. In between agonising bouts of passing blood from both ends, I was vaguely listening to the radio. Three tunes played in succession. Clapton's Layla, TLC's Unpretty and Natalie Imbrogliola's Torn. In my fevered state the three songs melded together into a secret nexus of joy and knowledge in which the secrets of creation were woven into the music. So I've still got the three songs one after the other on my player as a reminder that a bleeding anus can take us into the dark heart at the centre, the beginning and the end of the Universe. And I was listening to them on the number 12 bus!
I swiftly found a pair of trousers that tugged at my heartstrings and brought a funny weak feeling to my forehead when the shop assistant rung up the price. They're 100% pure wool, charcoal and grey vertical stripe, narrow leg with a stripey patterned red inner detailing in silk, hand stitched pockets, discreet strengthening bands in the critical areas that don't always show themselves to the casual observer and those damned useful reinforcing strips stitched inside the rear leg cuffs to prevent any unsightly fraying in the heel area. They're hanging in my wardrobe now, safe from the world. Until I wear them. You could have suggested that I buy a kilt. But honestly, if you saw me in a kilt you'd fall in love with my legs from the ankles to the upper shins, you really wouldn't be able to help yourself, and I'd never be able to shrug you off until you got acquainted with me from the knees up and then I would be such a terrible disappointment to you that it would just break your heart and I'm really not ready for that kind of responsibility.
Then it was time to look for a new jacket. I wanted something not too formal, yet not too casual. I've got both already. That's just one of the many paradoxes which blight my existence. But look as hard as I might, nothing appealed. I know that the usual situation is that wives will only reluctantly take their husbands clothes shopping if at all, but in our case Anita refuses to accompany me if I'm looking for something for myself. It's not that I'm fussy or anything so much as I never really know what I want until I see it. Usually I'll go straight up to the relevant rack and an item will present itself to me and I'll try it on and if it fits I'll buy it. No messing about. In and out in less than four minutes normally, as with the trousers. But I really didn't know what jacket I wanted.
In one shop I was standing near some corduroy jackets and blazers, neither of which suit me or I them. I wasn't even looking at them directly. An assistant sidled over and before he had a chance to speak I shook my head sadly and wandered off, probably followed by a glare heavy with disappointment and yes, loathing. Everywhere seems to be over-run with jackets festooned with straps and buckles and zips. But I make it a point of principle never to wear anything which might excite Victoria Beckham or Peter Mandelson if thrown on the ground before them. In one shop I was hovering near a display of these strappy jackets and the assistant asked if she could help. I told her that I didn't really want to buy clothing that would make Elton John want to adopt me, and wasn't I a little too old and short haired to wear a pantomime dame's clothes anyway? She got all sniffy. You might not want to believe this but if I parked my teepee in a Ukraine orphanage tomorrow, Madonna and Elton would be drawing each other's blood in the fight to get custody of me. I'm that gorgeous. They'd kill for me, those desperate and chubby celebrities would.
I made my way all the way into Hove and back, finding nothing. Until a small gentlemen's outfitters in a narrow back street running parallel to the seafront attracted my attention, and more specifically, a jacket in the window caught my eye. It was single breasted, three buttoned linen number. I went in and looked at it more closely. The gentleman assistant came over to me. "You like?" he asked, with a quite unwarranted degree of intimacy inherent in his physical demeanor.
"I like the style," I said, "but do you have it in any other colours?"
"What's wrong with the colour?" he asked. It was, I failed to tell you, a washed out shade of pink, like a blousy damascus rose gone over to seed. Or hip, as the case may be.
"There's nothing wrong with the colour, such as it is, but it's just not me. I'm not looking for trouble here, just a jacket. Preferably in a more muted colour than pink."
"It's not pink. It's Weary Salmon." Honest to God, that's what he called it. I think he was taking the piss. I just wished that I had Les the Part Time Villain with me. But he'd have probably shop-lifted it and I'd have had to wear it so as not to offend him. So I went to next and bought five pairs of socks instead of having a totally unsuitable jacket stolen on my behalf. I'll just make do with the jackets I've got.
And just to bring things full circle, Les the Part Time Villain was in the shop today. He is the town's third most pathetically brain damaged stoner. Diamonds and Jerome, the towns second and first most pathetically brain damaged stoners respectively saw him and came in.
"Diamonds. Jes" said Les.
"Les." "Les." They said, both slightly out of synch with each other and themselves.
"Got a message for you from someone..."said Diamonds to Les. "Er..it was um...and he said to tell you....um...not to...oh, something. It'll come back to me. But he said not to forget. You mustn't forget. Oh, who was it, Jes?"
Jerome was looking into the middle distance. He shrugged. He looked lost.
And that was about it, really. September 12 Mathew came back. Again. Fretful Mathew was standing at the counter of my little shop. His tray was between us. I had served him with tea, two ham sandwiches and a cream horn. It all sat there, consuming him with guilt. He was shifting fretfully from one foot to the other. He was looking wildly around for an escape route. His eyes were wobbling crazily in his head. In his face, anyway.
"It wasn't my fault, you see?" he was pleading pathetically. He was bleeding pathetic. "I got home, you see, and realised that you must have undercharged me by seventy pee yesterday because I paid the taxi driver when I got home and when I emptied my pockets I realised that I had seventy pee more than I should have had and the only place where I spent coins rather than notes was here, and I'm surprised you didn't telephone me to tell me that you'd undercharged me because although it isn't a lot by some standards, seventy pee is seventy pee, but thinking about it you don't have my telephone number do you, but there's no reason why you should have really is there I've never really been keen on giving my telephone number to people since before my mother died really because you never know who's going to call you for some unimportant reason do you get those letters from charities asking for thirty pounds a month I did I gave them a acheque for thirty pounds and now they're writing to me every few days asking me for thirty thousand pounds I don't know what my mother would have said it would have worried her to death when she was alive I've got to see my bank manager about it, and are you sure you didn't undercharge me by seventy pee because I couldn't think of anywhere else I'd been where I spent just coins I think I have a fifty pee coin in this pocket here how much did you say it was oh damn and blast I think my pocket must have a hole in it-"
"Mathew!" I interrupted, "Stop. Breathe." Mathew has led an incredibly sheltered life. I don't think anyone's ever told him to fuck off. Although apparently when he was at school in the pre-decimal fifties the older boys made him wear a Tessie O'Shea wig. What happened next has never been revealed. Thankfully, perhaps. He was still desperately going through his pockets trying to make the five pounds and ninety five pee which he owed me. Doesn't £5-19/0 sound better than £5.95? Those were the pre-decimal days. He likes to spread his money about his person, does Fretful Mathew. And as he wears a double breast pocketed shirt, five pocketed trousers, a waistcoat with two lower and one breast pocket and a tatty old gardening jacket with an infinity of pockets and quite a number of twigs and nettle stems attached at no extra frost with an impressive growth of nasal hair to complete the overall effect, he can drag out these fretful change gathering excercises to an extraordinary length, accompanied as usual by the even more fretful stream of subconsciousness worrying which he does so well. My, he's a good customer. He likes long sentences too. He didn't owe me seventee pee from yesterday though. But he'll worry and fret about it all over the weekend.
Right. That's it. I'm off to have a bath with a lovely mug of coffee and a good read. New Scientist or the Spectator. Both equally good. Maybe I'll drag it out and read some of both. Or perhaps I'll see if there's anything of substance in this week's Prosthetic Faux-Gonad Collectors Quarterly Review. Maybe I'll have a small plate of butter shortbreads while I'm at it. Ah luxury, come to me.
Tomorrow I shall go shopping for myself. I fancy a new jacket and some casual trousers too, I think. They have to be at least slightly casual and relaxed, I can't bear too serious trousers. Can you? They just invite mockery. Back sometime in the week to tell you about it perhaps.
Chin chin. September 11 35111/514. The natural flow of the week was broken tonight as I had a piece of chicken pie for dinner. No pork or fish, so to compensate I had some more crab as a snack with a bit of bread that I brought home from the shop. We have mostly new staff in the shop now, as I've lost the best of the old staff. Stabz has gone to work in the Pathology lab at the hospital, rummaging through people's body fluids and tissues, Tache has gone to university to learn to become a textile designer and the Boy Axel has plunged (literally) head first into the world of exclusively male adult entertainment on DVD. He is what I believe they call a 'twink' in those circles, and will unlikely ever know the pleasures of Mingling with Eve.
The latest crop of employees, especially when you consider the fact that they presented better at interview than their rivals, are frightening proof of the dangers to human intelligence of adding lead to petrol over the last fifty years or whatever. I am depressed, disillusioned and come home every evening feeling spiritually bruised and brutalised. And what's most worrying is the fact that most of the new crop are what we call ~'furriners'~, or people who have at least one ancestor who comes from a town more than three miles away.
This part of the country spent most of the last two thousand years in a rigid state of isolation from the rest of the country, leading to an unhealthy level of inbreeding. If a sheep wandered into a crowd of twelve people the gene-pool would actually shrink. And the sheep would in all likelihood write a tragic life story book in later years, partly to exorcise the totally unjustified guilt and self hatred which tormented its adult life but also to get a banging great advance from a publisher and an interview on breakfast telly. That's how bad it got.
So when the roads out of the river valley were opened up and the railways came, new people arrived, slowly and hesitantly at first, but nature eventually took its course and most of the deformities and handicaps were gradually bred out. We owe a lot to the blind and the drunk. And especially the blind drunk. Now that we have received quite a broad base of genetic diversity from these outsiders, as we tend to call those with legs of equal length and both eyes facing approximately forward, I hope for great things in the world that my grandchildren will grow into. But for now I shall despair. And wallow in bitterness. September 10 Meat. In the real world, I went to a Chamber of Commerce meeting tonight. I don't usually, but the signs were that the High Street traders, of which I am one, were not going to be particularly well represented tonight. And as the main subject of discussion was due to be the High Street's survival or otherwise, I felt the urge to go along. So I did. They'd laid out a nice buffet, so I asked the proprietor of the local Balti Bin if he had sampled the delicious ham sandwiches. He gave me a pained look, stroked his beard in anguish and sipped at his tea. You can't please everyone.
I tried to wring an answer out of our local MP in regard to a proposed out-of-town supermarket development which will probably be the final destructive blow to our High Street but had to give up eventually as the life force was ebbing disastrously from me. In ancient China I believe that there was a concept known as the 'Ten Thousand Things', which reflected the vast number of objects in existence. Now you could easily think that if there were only ten thousand things to deal with it would make life so much simpler. And if our local MP only had ten thousand ways to wriggle out of answering a simple question I would be much calmer. I'll send him some more anonymous hate mail and dead animals in the post. Well I would if the bastard hadn't moved and kept his new address secret, anyway.
The last such meeting was enlivened by the presence of a local character who shall remain anonymous for the very good reason that I don't know his name. I haven't even given him a semi humorous tag for the porpoises of this diary here. He comes in my shop sometimes. Occasionally he will buy something. But more often he will, in his self-appointed role as Local Anti-Litter Vigilante, roar up the High Street and sweep a tray of cups, saucers, and plates from one of my tables and bring them into the shop, crashing them down on the counter with a flourish and telling me that he's 'brought it in before it becomes litter'. Quite often, my customers will follow him in asking what the fucking hell's going on and does this lunatic have any connection with my shop and if so they'll never come back and if not what am I going to do about him? All I can ever do is give the customers a replacement tray of drinks and snacks and tell the Litter Clearing Loonie to fuck off. Discreetly and diplomatically of course.
As I was saying, he enlivened the previous Town Centre Mafia meeting by interrupting every single speaker with demands to know how we intended dealing with the ever growing tide of litter which threatened to engulf the world, and asking if anyone had seen the lamentable state and inadequate number of litter bins on the seafront. Nobody even acknowledged his existence and there were many tense, embarrassed silences. After finally being advised, discreetly and diplomatically, to fuck off and not come back and told that he hadn't been invited anyway, he stood in the doorway and raised his hat.
"The man who sleeps well never sleeps with his head on a pillow of gold," he told the room before disappearing into the night. On my way home that evening I saw him rooting through a litter bin near the bridge over the river. Personally, I think that the only man who sleeps well is the man who sleeps with his head safe and secure in the gently heaving sweat spangled bosom of a plump woman. And if she doesn't snore too loudly, so much the better.
I have had a mainly fish week this week. Monday was prawns, fried in their shells with garlic and black pepper. On Tuesday I had pork chops. Not very fishy I admit, but they were lovely. I grilled them crisp and ate them with new potatoes and Courge Provencal. It would have been courgettes but we were given a huge marrow by a gardener friend of my daughter and I felt obliged to use some of it. Strangely enough, the onion I used was part of a consignment given to us by a friend of Anita's along with some eggs from her chickens. Nothing we ate was donated by any friend of mine because I don't seem to have any friends with food to spare.* Or perhaps they just don't like me enough or feel sorry enough for me. On Wednesday I cooked myself a gorgeous black bream and tonight I had a fresh crab.
*So what's your guilty little secret then? September 06 High Tide I was walking over the bridge yesterday, as I do twice every day, and I was struck by the blueness of the water. There's usually a muddy puce tone to it, but yesterday the river was flowing blue to the sea. This made me happy. September is about the saddest month for me, but there are some good things about it. And seeing the river as rivers appear in dreams is one of them. Yesterday Sian from the travel agents next door came running into the shop and she was jumping up and down.
"Oh! Your tickets are here!" she said. That's another good thing. I've got my tickets.
Then, after a relaxing late evening supper of green olives and tzatziki, during which I tried to make an anagram out of my meal and failed miserably, I stapled myself to a tall glass of caustic soda. The sun was rising somewhere east of Koala Lumpy by this time so I headed for the chasm of sleep. It came slowly and fitfully, and I worried that I had started an uncomfortable new trend. All was well though, the inhabitants of Christopher Street were blissfully unaware of my persistence and they would probably remain so. September 04 Wedding. My daughter Anna got married to Ali on Tuesday,
which was mine and Anita's thirtieth anniversary.
So he's now her husband. Congratulations to them, yes?
It was a lovely day and all went well. Here's a photo of the newly marrieds.
 Here's a photo of my granddaughter Jess. I like this picture.
 And here's George, my oldest grandson.
 So there, we've all been busy.
I got some really lovely photos in the car going to the wedding and of the ceremony itself, but just as the happy couple were signing the register, a message appeared on my camera irrationally claiming that the memory card was not initialised. This, after using it for approximately 2,000 photos over the last four years. I do clear it rgularly and save all my photos to disc. Yes, disc. No k. I never had that problem with my old Olympus Trip. So I had to reformat the card to be able to use it again, thus losing every picture I'd taken already that day. Such is life. I'll just have to make sure I take a new memory card when I next go on holiday. And format it first.
Growing Corpses. The day began quite well today. It's Mrs S.'s third week working at the shop and she's picking it all up reasonably quickly. I lost First Day Silv about six weeks ago. I had employed her for about eight months and we were both tiring of the fact that I had to instruct her in the same simplest tasks and procedures every single fucking day. Hence the First Day tag. So she left by mutual agreement.
How that works is, my comments to her get more waspish and despairing and bitter and personal, and she eventually runs out of the shop in tears, saying she's leaving. Her mum came in later that day to tell me that I should be ashamed of myself for making her daughter cry, and I told her that she should be ashamed of herself for bringing such a pathetic, useless and incompetent piece of humanity into the world. She said she supposes I think I'm big and clever because I own my own business? I said yes. And? That told her, didn't it?
Anyway, back to today. I was just emptying the second bake of Viennoiserie from the ovens when I looked at the clock and realised that it was time to open. I was on my way out to the front to open up when Sheaun the delivery man came to the back door with a delivery of chilled cooked meats and cheeses and finest mayonnaise. I was about to get some cash to settle up the bill when Hoarse Phylliis and Shag the amateur Hit Man started knocking impatiently at the front door, which I still hadn't unlocked. I had the street tables and chairs to put out, I hadn't yet put any cash in the till and Sheaun was tapping his foot and looking in a meaningful manner at his watch.
I took a deep breath and briefly meditated. Imagine just hitting the vinegar stroke with a Writhing Kylie beneath you, her index finger guiding your every thrust, when you suddenly discover an extremely tasty but very irritating bit of cinnamon stick stuck in a gap in your teeth, leftover from last night's Gnu Madras with okra fritters and chipotle fried rice. What do you do? To which end of you do you pay the most attention? Kylie or Cinnamon? Front door or back? Do you understand my dilemma Doctor? In most versions of reality the spunky little Oz would win the day, but today felt different. I checked my passport and visa today. I've got them both. They're still both valid. I'll use them soon. August 27 De Hujkers. Some of the last customers of the day in my little shop today were a pleasant group of lady Flemish Hikers. They sat outside in the late summer afternoon sunshine eating bread and cheese, sweet pastries and bicuits, and drinking tea and cappuccinos. And very nice they were too.
I asked them where they were heading for and they told me that they were hoping to walk along the coast to Seaford.
"Would you be walking along the estuary trail?" I asked them in my best 'Slaughtered Lamb' cacking-yer-pants, lets-not-frighten-the-outsiders-too-much-at-this-stage voice. I looked worried. But they'd been customers of mine for an hour by this time. They were used to that.
"Ya!" They said, in impeccable vaguely North-West European unison. "How long?"
"Now, ladies, I'm not usually one to boast, but..." I began modestly, but they continued with "does it take to walk there?"
"About an hour and a quarter, as long as you don't bump into Stalker Troll Cyril." I told them. "Here, I'm just closing up and I've got a few cheese topped rolls left. I'll wrap them for you. You'll need them if Cyril spots you and runs you to ground. But don't worry. He'll probably leave you alone, you being visitors in a strange town and all that."
"Stalker Troll what?" asked the chattiest and suddenly the most anxious looking of the four girls. "How would we know him?"
"Oh, he's easy to spot," I explained. "If you see someone who looks suspiciously like an overweight tattooed thug with a shaven head and obvious symptoms of steroid abuse, wearing three quarter length cropped leisure trousers and breathing exclusively through his mouth and carrying with him the stench of stale BigMacs and Poundstretcher aftershave, that's your man!" And there aren't too many fuckers around who match that description I thought, with a misplaced sense of irony and a chronic sickness of the soul.
The girls had soon straddled their backs with their bulging rucksacks and set off with my best wishes and earnest prayers for their safety ringing in their ears. I closed the shop just in time to avoid Marilyn's mum.
The other day I was enjoying my coffee break when I looked up from chuckling at the obituaries to see her face, bitter, twisted and inches from mine.
"You'll be glad to know that you know who has been given an injunction. He can't come round any more." She sprayed in my general direction and as usual my hand flew to my coffee cup, mainly to protect it from her flying spittle. It would have been pointless to tell her that I don't know who 'he' is, I wouldn't have a clue as to why he's been given an injunction and I have no interest in where he can't come round to any more. Maybe he's gone unconscious and someone's got an court order barring him from ever waking up again. Why does Marilyn's mum tell me these things? Why doesn't she fuck off home?
August 25 In the newsagents. I was in the queue at the local newsagents, standing admiringly behind Sue the Zen Belly Dancer when she turned around and smiled hello at me. It was almost as if she had supernaturally become aware of my presence at her rear. Or perhaps the snuffling noises and heavy sweating gave me away. She asked me how I was. It wasn't just one of those idle, disinterested 'how are you?' moments. There was an air of penetration, almost, in her query. She looked concerned.
Sue the Zen Belly Dancer has been built to a magnificent design, also she does yoga, and I am grateful for any opportunity to keep her engaged in conversation, mainly because she tends to nod her head a lot. And sometimes it seems as though an invisible thread links her forehead to her chest area. So a good lively conversation tends to involve much heaving of her bosom and a spectacular amount of cleavage movement. Would you deny me that pleasure?
As the queue was slow moving and her top was quite revealing and she'd asked me how I was, I told her that I had a thousand things to do and there was so little time available, and it felt like I constantly had a million conflicting thoughts buzzing around inside my head, each fighting for attention like sleep deprived wasps who'd overdosed on Ritalin. She looked at me sympathetically and murmured words of admiration for the word picture that I'd conjured up.
She nodded slowly, her cleavage keeping pace with her face in a wonderful example of synchronised body heavage.
"You need to meditate," she said. "Or take lots of illicit chemicals. Or have some exotic sex." I'm nearly fifty years old. All sex is exotic. I'm sure Sue the Zen Belly Dancer could and would, and probably should, provide expert guidance in all three areas of relaxation that she'd recommended. But there we were in the queue in the newsagents and she'd reached the counter. Where oh where would this conversation have led in another time or another place?
"Thanks for lending an ear, Sue," I said. And I thought about exotic sexual practices. "I'll see you then?"
"Yep. Bye! I'm off to my meditation class now. You'll have to come along one day. See you soon." And she was gone. Meditation? Medication? Or hesitation? Which does us the least damage?
It's a sad but true observation that probably nine out of ten of the people who I've met who have expressed an interest in me have been either {a} severely mentally or behaviourally challenged, {b} geriatric, or {c} deeply unattractive middle aged homosexual men. Which leads us immaculately on to Richard, who came into my shop a short while later that very same day. Richard always gushes in my presence. Metaphorically speaking, luckily for me. Physical gushing would cause comment and distaste. We'd also need tissues.
"Hi!" he gushed. "You're going to ask if you can help me, aren't you, and yes you can. Oh, Graham if only you knew how you could help me." At least I'm a discreet lecher. "I really shouldn't come in here," he continued gushing. "There's so much temptation!" And he never took his eyes off me once. For myself, I was not tempted. I have been happily and exotically married to Anita for thirty years.
Richard was gushing at me about how he loves to dance and I should go out with him and the boys one evening and let my hair down. In a possibly clumsy attempt at a light hearted let-down, I remarked to Richard that he and his friends looked like they were the place where Showaddywaddy's old rejected dance routines went to die of shame, and anyway even if I was single I'd rather spend an evening in by myself with a bowl of white anchovies, some tzatziki and a bottle of red wine, watching Casablanca for the thirteenth time on the DVD player and cheering Claude Rains when, as the devious Captain Louis Renault, he comes good at the end. Richard's sense of excitement and mine do not overlap. He'd probably rather watch a camp old Tom Mix Western and eat popcorn. That's the sort of smooth, chubby fingered old clown that he is. He bought a Tikka slice and a piece of butter shortbread and went away disappointed. All is well. Discuss.
August 14 Glade Reflections Have you seen that rather disturbing television advert for a stick-up toilet air freshener where a nauseating child tells his pathetic mother that he's going to go to Paul's to have a poo? Considering the fact that Paul may well be a sweaty, greasy haired thirty eight year old man who has a jar of sweeties on the table, a history of abuse and hidden cameras installed in his toilet, I don't think that the mother seems very concerned.
I'd go round to Paul's to have a poo. I'd poo on his carpet. I'd vomit on his kitchen work surfaces. I'd torch the fucking place. That's what I'd do.
When I was a child, post 1967, I was quite happy with the lavatory in our house. But when I was a pre-1967 very young child we lived in a seventh floor teepee in Finsbury. We shared a toilet with three other families. The toilet used to make awful groaning noises and the Victorian plumbing used to induce fear and terror in me, so much so that I would not lock the door when I was having a poo, thus allowing for an almost instant post-flush escape. And the Irish girl from across the landing always used to walk in on me. I think she knew I was in terror so she would sometimes stand and talk, keeping me company but averting her eyes. I always had to run out of the small room when I flushed because I was convinced that there were nameless terrors around the bend, waiting for that very moment to leap out of the churning, splashing water and steal my soul. The Irish girl was very understanding about the whole thing, and never told anybody, as far as I know.
But for all that, I never wanted to go to anybody called Paul's house for a poo. Apart from anything else, everybody I knew had shared lavatories. Other than my Grandmother here on the coast, but her facilities consisited of a small outdoor lav which could only be reached by crossing her back yard and negotiating her dark overgrown garden path and finding the door almost concealed in the bushes and undergrowth. So when we stayed with her I was never too keen on night-time trips to empty the bladder. So I just used to pee up against the wall of the back yard where a weak beam from the coastguard's cottages would give a slight glimmer of ghostly light. I was only six or seven or eight or nine, I suppose. My nan must have known, but she never mentioned the damp patch on the back yard wall. August 12 Darkness Falls I called it that because I just dropped my eyeballs out of the window and realised that darkness has almost fallen. Somebody had better help it up again. The lights of town are glowing in the middle distance. All is well. The other day a man left his hearing aid in my shop. I found it on the floor so it was probably likely that he'd actually dropped it rather than left it. I was eager for him to return and claim it, as the situation was bound to be rich in human comedy, with him not being able to hear until I gave it back to him, and with all the confusion and frustration that would probably ensue.
He came in the next day and it turned out that he seems to be able to hear perfectly well without his hearing aid. Life hangs on these delicately balanced moments, sometimes tipping towards humour and human richness, sometimes towards tedium and the everyday.
I got a Christmas card from one of my many cousins today. She said in the accompanying letter that I was to regard it as being an unforgiveably early card for 2009 rather than a fashionably late one for 2008. How wonderful it is to have a cousin who would send you a Christmas card accompanied by a letter at this time of year. Because she's possibly only just found my address and it is possibly the wrong address. But. It's the right address. I got it, Jane-Anne. It might be my fault, thinking about it because I know I sent her a Christmas card after an absence from each other's lives of ooh, twenty nine years, but I have a horrible feeling that I may have inadvertently neglected to put my address in the card I sent her.
Either that or one of the many thieving bastards working for the Royal Mail may have diverted it hoping to find cash or a gift voucher inside. My bank recently phoned me to tell me that they had been presented with three cheques drawn on my account totalling about eight thousand pounds, all drawn to the same person, but they didn't intend to honour them because the signature wasn't mine and I've never previously written cheques to named individuals of that certain profile. The cheque book was one that I should have received about a month earlier, but had obviously gone astray at the sorting office. I asked the bank clerk if, having a name to go on, they would investigate the matter further or even refer it to the post office for investigation. They don't do that. Apparently because there's so much of it happening. I'd chop the fucker's hands off. At the shoulders. Life once again tips to the right side of the delicate balance. Now I'm going to write a card to my cousin. Or even a letter. That would be better. Or sit at home. And think up a poem.
I spent today in the garden, digging soil and planting shrubs and things. The patio is damn near finished. We may call it the sun terrace, we may call it the top patio, we may call it Joe and Rachael's smoking station. It's a nice place. It catches the sun.
There has been much in the way of staff turnover at the shop over the last couple of years. Mainly because it's incredibly hard to find reliable people who want a part time job, the absence of which quality often forces me into a constructive dismissal frame of mind, and also because you occasionally lose a really good staff member who's moving on to university or a proper job somewhere. One new Saturday girl who I've taken on recently is quite brimming with self confidence. One of the older women in the shop was having a not very discreet whinge about her, and wishing that I could take on 'more people like me', she said. I observed that one person in the shop who'd made the leap directly from childhood to prescription painkiller addicted late middle age in the space of five years before the biological age of forty was quite enough, thank you very much. It's called letting your staff know that they are understood and appreciated. July 29 Whoale. I've told you that we're building a patio at the top of our garden. It's the bit that gets the sun all day long. Apart from the pre-7am hours in summer. One thing that I've had to do is to shift huge amounts of soil, as there is a deal of terracing involved. As we've got a smallish front garden, I've been clearing the front borders of plants and building up the soil level with spoil from the back, all the while ensuring that I evenly dig in large amounts of compost from The Heaps. It's not as exciting as having a wild eyed Californian girl trying to forcibly convert you to her peculiar brand of semi-masochistic, party fetishist pseudo-Christianity, but at least you get home at a reasonable hour and you don't have too many awkward questions to field.
So on Sunday I took a ten foot plank out to the front garden and used it as a straight edge to make the borders all neat and tidy. I had one border to finish, and when I pulled out the final plant (I don't know what it was called it was silvery grey with white flowers in spring and had a compact spreading habit and fibrous bushy roots), a hole appeared in the ground where it had been. Not just a hole that the roots would have neatly fitted inside, but a huge, deep, dark hole with the remains of brickwork on two sides, forming a right angle. I couldn't see the bottom.
Dropping my ten foot straight edged plank down inside, I estimated that the abyss was about five feet deep and about ten inches square in section. I stretched my arm down into it as deep as I could reach and there was a clammy feeling of age and menace down there. We have the original drawings of the house and there was at one time a cesspit at the south western edge of the building. There was also a stepped pathway. Before that it was sheep pasture. You stick your hand in and you take your chances. Anyway, the hole was a useful place to pack away six or seven large buckets of excess soil, but I noticed that the small lawn is uncomfortably bumpy at that end. Bumpy, did I say? The fucker is wildly undulating as we speak. But the borders are now straight edged and clear of plants. I'll plant them up in the winter. Carefully. I do apologise for the highly technical nature of some of this. But it's the details that hold the seminal vapours of the story in check, don't you see?
Yesterday I happened to meet Bob-a-Job, the live-in man friend of the previous owner of the house. I mentioned the hole in the front garden to him. He laughed.
"Ah, so you found The Void!" he chuckled.
"You knew it was there?" I asked him. "What's the story? Where does it lead to? Why didn't anybody, such as yourself particularly, tell us about 'The Void'?"
"It's only a hole," Bob-a-Job said. "You haven't lost anyone down it, have you?"
"I fucking well nearly lost myself down it." I told him. "What is it, anyway? A portal to the Underworld? Satan's drawing room door? Can I expect to see serpentine coils of sulphurous vapours exuding whiffily from the ground? What do you know about it?"
"I dunno, mate. It's just The Void. I found it once. I filled it in." And Bob-a-Job was gone. How can someone be so unconcerned about a hole that I now assume presents itself to each owner of the house and then allows itself to be filled in? What does it all mean? Is it an omen? Did Bob-a-Job bury someone down there? I worry about these things.
~*~
Have you ever eaten Guinea Fowl? I did for the first time yesterday. It's a fine tasting bird. I roasted it, smeared with butter and wrapped in streaky green bacon. Green means unsmoked, if you're under thirty five and you think that I don't eat cured pork products until they have decayed to the point of decomposition. It takes about an hour and a bit for a two pound bird. To eat with it, I did some boulangere potatoes with extra garlic and herbs. Six new potatoes, scraped and finely sliced, a medium sized onion, also finely sliced, and four large cloves of garlic, chopped and crushed with large crystal sea salt. Soak the base of a dish with olive oil, cover with a third of the potatoes, add some onion and garlic, along with parsley, rosemary and oregano, then add the next third of potatoes and cover with the remaining onion, garlic and more herbs, then finish with the last of the potato slices.
Pour on a good dash of olive oil, dab with an ounce or two of butter, and pour on a cup of vegetable or chicken stock. Bake for an hour until golden and crispy on top, and sprinkle with black pepper. To make a juice for the fowl, I just put the bird to rest for ten minutes, poured the fat out of the pan and deglazed it with half a cup of port and a spoonful of redcurrant jelly. Simmer for a minute and pour on to the portioned bird. I like an extra sprinkle of fresh ground black pepper, because as well as being a great breath sweetener and blood conditioner, I firmly believe that fresh black pepper can give a boy a root that would be eye watering if you were on the receiving end of it. And that's how I ate my first Guinea Fowl. I had some cold in a sandwich tonight.
A friend of mine, Paul, who lives in the Dark Continent with his child bride for some of the year, told me that on his estate out there they catch Guinea Fowl by feeding them with maize soaked in brandy, then when the poor creatures are unable to fly unaided, they bring them down with small well aimed pebbles. But I don't suppose that they have very far to fall. For the remainder of the year, he lives over here without her and the native guinea fowl remain sober and uninjured, presumably. July 22 When Stuff Happens. My daughter Sarah had a baby boy on Monday. They named him after me. Jack. How about that? He's a handsome little beast, as all new grandchildren are. Here's a picture of him with his big brother Josh. Josh is a handsome little beast too.
 Jack Graham W. How lovely is that?
Forty years to the day after man first walked on the moon, I get a new grandson.
I'm glad they didn't call him Neil or Buzz though.
Not that there's anything wrong with Neil or Buzz.
They're damn fine names. And damn fine men.
So congratulations to Sarah Dean and Josh, and welcome Jack.
~ * ~
A couple of weeks ago I fell off a plastic patio chair which had assured me that it was a perfectly safe substitute for a sturdy step ladder. My foot twisted a bit when I hit the floor, but I thought little more of it. Until last week. On the previous weekend we had shifted much ballast from the front drive, round the side of the house, across the enclosed courtyard, up the steps to the north lawn and across said grassy area in preparation for making a sun patio at the top of my garden, under the plum trees and by the snakelands near the shed. Believe me, it's nowhere near as grand as I try to make it appear. My foot and shin twinged a few times. Then last Wednesday we took a large batch of paving slabs on the same journey, along with the small Arctic forest's worth of redundant railway sleepers which are now enjoying a new lease of life as a retaining wall. It's all heavy stuff and the carrying involves lots of sharp turns and refreshing cold drinks.
I decided, after some wanton but well aimed encouragement from my wife, to do the annual maintenance job on the garden furniture. She's good at hinting, is Anita. Stuff like 'are you ever going to sort out that furniture or has it got to actually die before you do anything about it?' She sees all things as part of one interconnected living continuum. I just see it as a set of garden furniture. But then she sits on it and I have to maintain it. There is a difference. Especially when your kneecap has come adrift.
So the hardwood slats got wire-brushed and oiled, the broken slat on the three seater got replaced, the new wood requiring cutting, drilling, sanding, staining, oiling, and fitting. The cast iron structures I gave a thick coat of metallic bottle-green hammerite. I love that stuff. It reminds me of glue. Dip your toe into the ocean of degradation and sniffles. Then withdraw. I don't mind admitting by the time I'd finished my leg, or more precisely my knee, was a-throb. And on Thursday it hurt. Friday morning, I managed three hours at work and for only the third time in my life, I had to go home unable to carry on. If you must know, the first time was when I slipped with a knife and almost amputated my little finger (it still has no tendons and few nerves) and the second was when I had a particularly vicious kidney stone ripping up my urethra.
So I spent two of the most boring days of my life sitting down with my knee strapped up and wrapped in ice. To relieve the tedium I watched films. Battle of Britain. The Ninth Gate. The Aviator. Withnail and I. Good stuff like that. And I read. I'm currently reading Eisenhower's biography. He was the U.S. President when I was born. I'm an Ike baby. That's history. Anyway, the ice and the straps and the DVDs worked and now my leg's all functioning again. If my knee wasn't still so tender, I'd go out and kick the plastic patio chair. I'll get my revenge though. I've marked it and it will spend next summer locked in the garage with an empty hammerite pot sitting on it.
~ * ~
I got a letter today inviting me to a reception hosted by the local CCA, for those who helped in the recent local elections. I asked Sylvia the local agent why I was invited. Beside the fact that I'm not a member of, and don't even support, any political party, I certainly didn't help the Tories at the local elections. I didn't help anyone at the elections. Especially the poor fool that I voted for. I just don't get involved in things.
"I don't loathe your lot quite as deeply as I do the Lib Dems or Labour, but I'm just not political. You know me. I disapprove of all and sundry, without fear or favour. I'd solve the immigration crisis in days with heavy chains, a bulldozer and a large, deep pit. I'd sort out the NHS by selling off the hospitals to Smeg Breweries and giving anyone who asks for a sick certificate a one way ticket to Switzerland and a Dignitas gift voucher. And believe me, my friend, I'd make sure that they used it. I'd make children learn to spell and do their times tables. I'd have them whipped if they got less than eight out of ten in any test. I'd have them brutally thrashed if they didn't have a hobby that didn't involve insulting, humiliating or maiming at least one other child in each year group, or failing that a small domestic animal. They must learn that life involves winners as well as victims and utter failures. Education, sorted. I'd ban computer games. I'd shoot professional vegetarians and green activists. Slowly. I'd allow pensioners fresh meat twice a week and I'd jolly well make them eat all their vegetables. But I wouldn't insist on their eating brown bread. They can have buns. I'd lock conspiracy theorists and their followers in a small room with the strange and terrible Millibore brothers. And slowly reduce the supply of air. So why do you invite me to your party? What for you want me to be there?" I asked her.
She looked at me. She blinked. She coughed. "We wanted to listen to your ideas. We thought we did, anyway. Shall I pass on your apologies?"
"Yes, I think so. No, hang on! I think it might be fun. Sign me up baby!" I've still got the invitation here. I'm trying to decide. I probably won't go though. I doubt that they'd 'get' me.
July 10 Legs like a Railroad... ...Face like a Song.
As the song goes. Or went. So, I have got an admirer. She's a new regular in my shop. She's a dark haired tall American girl with intense cheekbones and a dogged determination to get me to spend all my time at work listening to her talking about me to me.
"Hey, you're alright," she told me the other day. "You're cute. Kinda provincial and set in your ways, but you're okay."
"Thanks Lolly," I replied. "You're so incisive and keen to please, you know? And maybe I enjoy being provincial."
"It's Molly, I already told you. And you know, you need a new colour scheme here." She probably spells it 'color', but we'll let that pass for now. "And your girls, they're cute too. But get them out of those drab outfits you got them wearing! Give them some funky rags to wear!"
"Polly, I really dislike the use of language like that in my shop. Funky might mean something different in Moosejaw, Alabama or wherever it is you come from, but here it signifies the eye watering odour of someone who sleeps in their own urine. It's like pavement and sidewalk. You just don't know when you're going to cause offence, however innocently, do you?"
She smiled, patiently. "I told you, it's Molly. And where's Moosejaw? Guess where I come from? I bet you can't!"
"Well, it's got to be Canada or the US. Your innocent enthusiasm for funkiness and your dislike of my staff's drab appearance would say California to me. California?"
She bounced at me. She sang a few lines of California Girls. "How did you guess?" She was delighted. Her intense cheekbones framed a gorgeous toothy smile.
"Anyway Holly, what brings a girl like you to Dullhaven?" I asked, trying to take the upper hand.
"It's Molly. I came here for peace, and it's kinda local, and I lost my last apartment, and I got a friend here, Paul, he likes to take me drinking. Boy, you guys like to do some drinking, don't you?"
Yes, and it's probably a case of the ends justifying the expense in Paul's case. "Do you really come from California? It was a blind guess. I bet if I'd guessed Wisconsin you'd have said yes and started talking in Swedish, wouldn't you?"
She looked at me like I was a crazy man and laughed. "No!" she shouted.
"Hey, it's kinda quiet around here."
"It's three o'clock on a Saturday afternoon. It's going to be quiet. That's the way it is." I explained. Then I ranted on a bit about the town, mainly because she kept asking me questions about it.
"You're passionate about things, aren't you?" She said. "I'll be coming back here, just you watch me. This could be a really funky little cafe; you just need a new color scheme!"
"So you say, Holly. And it's colour."
Molly had a carrier bag with her. She told me to guard it while she went to the Ladies. I looked inside, of course I did. She'd bought some used videos from the charity shop. Two Friends videos and an Animated Bible Classics one.
"Nice collection of movies you've got there, Molly" I told her.
"You looked?" she asked.
"I certainly did. I don't know you. There could have been anything in there. Call it a self preservation strategy," I told her.
"You're cute" she repeated.
I wondered, did she do French? But I thought I'd better not ask.
As Molly has very long and shapely legs, and she was wearing a very short skirt and some really funky patterned tights, I forgave her for being so forward.
She came back to the shop every day this week. On Monday, she had a carrier bag stuffed full of the little individual sachets of sugar, sweetener, ketchup, seasonings and stuff, and jiggers of milk and cream that suggested to my jaded eye that she'd spent Sunday visiting railway station buffets, fast food restaurants and cafes, stealing the goods with wild abandon. Maybe I should appoint her as some sort of freelance stock appropriation specialist?
She came straight over to me.
"Hi Polly." She ignored it. She leaned over close towards me.
"I've been talking to people about you!"
My stomach dropped and my blood ran cold. "People? About me? Well whatever you've heard Molly, it's a lie. All of it. Don't believe anything you hear here, you hear? The local English are, without exception, incapable of telling the truth about me. What did they say? Was it saucy? Does the local gossip make me seem raunchy and interesting?" Again she looked at me. She frowned. Then she smiled. She leaned even closer. I could see her pores. And you don't get much more intimate than that without exchanging bodily fluids.
"Word is, you're sitting on a little Gold Mine!" she giggled in that faux conspiratorial manner that only half insane American women can carry off without you wanting to drown them in a bathtub. At least now I knew how she felt. About where I was sat. It's smut. Subtle maybe, but smut all the same.
I made her a baguette filled with salad leaves, melted brie, melted cheddar, hot sliced tomatoes and drizzled with balsamic vinegar and black pepper. I always admire a girl with an appetite. Molly has an appetite. And she's got nice legs too. You've got to admire that.
Tuesday's visit was pretty much a non event. I was extra busy so I couldn't be distracted, despite myself.
On Wednesday she came over to me when I was sitting with a coffee. It was my morning break.
"Graham, I want to talk to you. I want to have a meeting. With you, and some of my friends. I want to talk to you all about our relationship with God."
"You have to go and spoil things, don't you Moll?" I complained bitterly. "You see, I think we worship different Gods. My God is a jealous and vengeful God. He strikes down his enemies and doesn't really give a shit. He's big on retribution and instant justice. If He was subject to the concept of time as you and I know it, He would spend His time going round smiting the wrong-doers, sorting out those who commit abominable acts, smacking with a very firm hand and a horny palm those who worship graven images, and generally being awe-inspiring and great and terrible and destructive.
Whereas I'd guess that your God is a bit of a woolly minded New Testament deity, a Creation figure for the Pathetic Tendency who goes around forgiving sinners, going vegetarian and believing in the global warming bollocks and donating alms to bloody Friends of the Earth. He probably eats Quorn and swallows the Guardian. Christ, He probably writes for it, in between the bouts of self loathing and desperate hand wringing. We haven't got much common ground really when it comes to the divine and the eternal, have we Molly? I'd be happy to do the catering for your meeting though, even if I'm going to be far too busy to attend."
I'm getting to like Molly. I think she's got the hots for me. The Lass said that Molly looks like she wants to convert me, and then she smirked. Molly came back yesterday and today too. Her cheekbones were slightly less intense though and we didn't discuss much. She eats well, I must say.
I have been told that the secret of good blogging is to keep things short, concise and focused. Avoid religion, don't criticise foreigners unduly and be nice to people generally. Respect the prejudices and bigotry of others as you would have others respect your own. And don't do smut. That's my blogging career, such as it is, pretty well buggered then, isn't it?
July 02 A Fear of Flying. Now, we have a little porch on the front of our house. When we moved in here twelve years ago, the porch looked like a horrible brown rabbit hutch attached to the front of the house. The previous owners of the house liked to use silicon sealant and dark brown exterior wood preservative at every opportunity. That's partly how we got a five bedroom semi for the price of a three bedroom terrace. But it meant that I spent pretty well every spare moment for the first ten years here working on the place, mainly removing grease and silicon sealant, and replacing most of the interior wooden fittings and fixtures with new timber and either painting them white or sealing them with clear varnish. This includes things like doors, skirtings, architraves, window sills, pretty well everything. After we'd been here for about two years it was the turn of the porch to be transformed into something that did not cause me shame and grief.
The base, made of bricks and concrete, was sound. The upper wooden walls were awful. Painted with dark Sadolin and full of cracks where the rain came in, I stripped them off and replaced them with nice shiplap cladding which I painted in a nice shade of white, sealing all the joins. The original windows were simply sheets of glass silicon sealed onto the whitewashed chipboard interior walls. I made some artful wooden frames and my friend Colin the glazier cut me some sheets of glass to fit, and so I had nice proper opening windows. The horrible whitewashed chipboard walls I burned, and replaced with proper plasterboard walls. These I painted a clean light green and stencilled with a bamboo design in shades of cream and green. The floor is now wooden boards rather than the original bare concrete. Very pleasant. Rogue the builder replaced the flashing and put on a nice new roof, with some tiles angled off as an artistic design feature. I told him I wasn't going to pay extra for the design feature as I'm mean with money and it was his idea anyway.
So now it's ten years later and I thought it would be a good idea to do the second five yearly maintenance project. Yesterday morning I was conscientiously slapping on the undercoat, after making good the few small areas of decay, refilling the joints and sanding down the paintwork. Being not really the world's most safety conscious painter and decorator, I was using an old plastic patio chair to stand on, on account of it was easier to get out than either of my two step ladders which were tucked away safely at the back of the garage. Being a bit pervy, I was wearing a pair of Anita's clog type shoes, also on account of the fact that I couldn't be bothered to put my proper boots on and it was hot. So just as I was about to step off the chair after finishing the south eastern elevation, I was not quite surprised to feel the chair sort of sliding forwards onto its front, leaving me behind two feet in the air above the rather hard and, I suddenly realised, quite treacherously sloping front path.
As if in some Roadrunner cartoon, I trod water in thin air for what felt like a lot longer than it really was, and did a horrible, spastic Moonwalk on the now quite rapidly escaping chair which suddenly shot out away from under me. "Whoops!" I thought. "I'm going to make a nasty stain when my head hits that brick wall bordering the path directly beneath me!" and I began my descent.
When I was a child in London, there were some wartime air-raid shelters still standing on the estate where we lived. Once, when I was about five or six, I decided that it would be interesting to see what it felt like to fly, and jumped from the roof of the shelter entrance which was about eight feet high. I felt a strong hand grasp my back when I was in mid air and I was gently lowered to the ground. And of course, there was nobody there. I think that my guardian angel was there again yesterday, because I landed flat on my back, my head bounced off of the wall and the open can of undercoat was upright in one hand, the brush in the other and I had seven little flecks of white paint on my leg. I stood up and looked around to make sure nobody had seen my fall. Why do we do this?
I tasted a sort of of blood like taste in my throat and waited to collapse and die. I do worry, you know. I'm not dead yet though. I don't think I am, anyway. I finished undercoating the porch and then remembered I had a half ton of soil to shift in the garden in preparation for making a new sun patio at the top of the garden where it's never shady. So I did that next. Then I listened to the new Regina Spektor CD, known as Far, that I got last week but hadn't yet got around to listening to. It's very good. I listened to it twice. That was my day off. I was going to give the porch its first topcoat tonight, but as the weather girl on telly said it might rain in the night, I took that as an omen that it might rain in the night, and so I didn't didn't bother. We have 3500lb of ballast on our drive waiting to be laid and compacted on Saturday. I know how it feels.
June 30 The Pizza Cure I wasn't going to come on here tonight. I have so much to do. But I just decided to click in, see what's happening and I found myself drawn to my stats page. I've been found by a wily oriental on Baidu who used the search term 'eating+pizza+topped+with+tomato+paste+can+help+prevent+sunburn'. How about that, boys and girls? Did you know how wonderful pizza can be, with all its many uses? Smear it on your nipples before sex and you'll never get pregnant. Go on, try it!
Today was a very hot day, wasn't it? There's a girl called Heavenly Jewels who comes in my shop. That's not her real name, obviously. But it sort of describes her. I was chatting to her at the counter and my eyes got drawn magnetically to the area that's most visible and well, on display.
"It's very hot, isn't it, Jewels?" I asked, more as a way of keeping her breasts three feet away and in direct line of sight than out of any interest in the weather. She wobbled a bit.
"Phew! Yes! But it's better if you're out!" She replied. I dragged my eyes up to meet hers.
"But I thought you were, Jewels."
Smut. Lechery. Low cut tops on women blessed with the more generous figure. Where would we be without them? June 23 Shark Dance - the revised and extended version. Last weekend we decided to get away for a day or so, as life here is becoming unremittingly grim. On Friday night I went on the interweb and found a cheap hotel in Arundel which is about an hour's drive from here. I booked a room. Saturday morning came, we had breakfast, threw a few items of clothing and toiletries in a bag and after sorting out a bit of urgent last minute shopping, putting away some washing and phoning my dad and doing some other unavoidable and quite time consuming stuff, we finally left just after lunchtime.
It's quite a pleasant journey, the more so for me because I don't drive. We arrived at the Comfort Inn just outside Arundel at about one o'clock and ignoring the reminder that you can't check in until two o'clock, we checked in. The very nice Eastern European girl on reception found us a nice quiet room at the back of the building overlooking some bushes and a field of white cows. Which seemed to us quite preferable to a room at the front of the building which would overlook a service station, a McDonalds undergoing refurbishment, a car park and a hacking clutch of Northern pensioners coughing their last as they heroically sat in the HGV area of the car park smoking for Queen and Country. Good for them, I say.
There is definitely an audible difference in the cancerous coughs of people from various parts of the British Isles. Southerners tend to try to suppress the cough until it erupts, messily and eye wateringly from the chest. It's hard to tell the difference whether a Welshman is speaking or choking. The hardy Yorkshireman will just splutter the contents of his diseased lungs all over you. And then tell you you're soft if you dare complain. My Irish friend Pat just wheezes and dribbles. And gets offended if you offer any sympathy. The Scouser will simply eject a plume of self pitying bile all across the room and still expect you to be grateful for his company. Then he'll tell you in that peculiar nasal whine that these awful people employ that he went to school with John Lennon. That John Lennon's school must have had some huge classrooms. It's like all the people who claim to have seen Hendrix play at the Isle of Wight. The Solent would have to be size of Australia to accommodate them all.
The room was clean and the bathroom was pleasant. The windows opened and there was a well stocked hospitality drawer. So we stowed our gear and took the three minute drive into town. It was my first visit to Arundel, and very impressed I was with it too. After spending so much time in my hometown's High Street, where every other shop is standing empty and a general air of desperation and gloom pervades your very soul, it was lovely to be in a busy town ágain . After having tea and cakes in a little tearoom run by the Lions, we spent the afternoon at the castle which dominates the town. How very civilised, I remarked to Anita. Yes she said. Get your hands where I can see them. People are looking. There was a historical re-enactment event going on in the grounds, with vast armies of five men each clashing on the manicured lawns and ladies with soot smudged around their faces making flat breads and funny faces. And something going by the name of Mythago. People dressed in black with bells and clashing sticks and whooping. All nice. I recommend the Fitzalan Chapel as somewhere to visit. It's soothing to the soul, and there are some impressive tombs there.
We returned to town that evening to find a restaurant. We walked into town. The three minute car drive takes half an hour to walk. It was a pleasant evening. That's why we walked. Also Anita is fastidious about not driving when she has had a drink or two. And we were determined to have a drink or two with our dinner. Hence we walked. We were hungry. We have found through trial, error and experience that the restaurant that looks clean, smells nice from up the street, with an appearance of busy-ness but not rowdiness and without three members of staff blocking the front door as they have an illicit cigarette break is usually the best one to eat in.
We found one called The Bay Tree which fitted this description perfectly. So we went in and the lovely waitress found us a table out on th'rear patio, or terrace. It would have been sun dappled in the day time, but we were there in the gathering midsummer twilight, which was even better, if you ask me. It was the best meal we've had in a long time. For starters Anita had smoked chicken with ricotta on bruscetta, and I had warm smoked lamb fillet with blackberry and apple conserve. We had some Pinot Noir too. For the main course Anita had rib eye steak with peppercorn and cream sauce with dauphinoise potatoes and I had a grilled sole in watercress butter with crispy roast garlic potatoes. There were fresh vegetables too. Then I had peach cheesecake and Anita had sticky toffee and banana pudding. Then coffee and mints. It was a long and warmly enjoyable evening. And who says you can't have red wine with fish? Just watch me. I'll drink it with anything.
Even the shower of rain mid evening didn't spoil things. I didn't actually notice it, because we were stitting under a large umbrella and anyway my attention was on my companion. The party at the nearby table noticed it, but one of the party at the nearby table was a dedicated vegetarian who I thought may have spoiled her own evening out by interrogating the waitresses about the precise ingredients of every single menu item. I thought she could have stayed at home and munched on a freshly picked bunch of tofu stalks, but it emerged that it was her birthday, so that would have been quite a sad thing to do. I'm sure she enjoyed her meal as much as we did ours.
We had a slow, winding and enjoyable wander back through town and over the hill and through the valley to the hotel. On the way we smugly passed a few of the hotels which apart from being far more expensive than the one we'd chosen were also fully booked. The next day after breakfast we checked out and drove to Chichester to wander aimlessly around the historic town centre and to visit the Cathedral. Anita drove, of course. I am the eternal passenger. And naturally being a Sunday morning there was a service going on at Church, and not wishing to interrupt the flow of the sermon which was being preached and then spend the next two hours shuffling uncomfortably on a pew while the regulars frowned at us and wondered who the hell we thought we were, we did the external tour of the Cathedral. A fine building and a pleasant town. We had tea, coffee and cakes on the lawn of the Cloisters Cafe area of the Cathedral. Anita had tea. I don't drink tea so I had coffee. You love these inconsequential details, don't you? On the way home, I noticed a house called 'Shark Dance'. There were no sharks about. And nobody danced. But it's a memorable name for a house, don't you think?
So that was our weekend. I've even gone to the trouble of showing you some of my digital snaps. They're up above, over on the left and they go by the name of "Arundel".
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