The pianist Alan Clare was at a party when a guest approached him and asked if he'd play a request.
"Why yes," said Clare, "which song is it?""That's What You Are.""That's What You Are? I don't know that one.""Oh, you must do. It's been on the radio and everything.""Well, can you sing a bit of it and I'll see if I can pick it up?"
Christmas is that funny time of year when we choose for the usual "natural" order of the way of things to be seen through the distorting mirrors of sentiment and holly. When people who go out of their way to avoid each other all year get together in the spirit of goodwill to all men to compare scary jumpers. And others stress themselves to the nines to get a bit of turkey on the Christmas plate.
My parents have caught my mood aright. This is the verse to the Purple Ronnie Xmas card they've sent me:
"I hate Xmas ComplimentsI hate Festive CheerMy Yuletide Log has meltedInto Yuletide Diarrhoea"
Visiting friends for a meal and a fillum I felt I had to excuse the walking stick.
"Knees a bit dodgy," I explained."Probably sensible in this weather," they replied.
I've been wondering why the volume on this laptop keeps slipping from my default setting of Very Quiet Indeed.
Last night's rain has frozen on the pavements and odd patches of snow still litter the garden. It all looks a tad bleak. Even the blue tits and the robin are hunched up in their dufflecoats. Most of the goldfinches that usually adorn the garden have gone missing for the duration, though the duration of what quite escapes me. Winter has definitely come early: the Mahonia has all but finished flowering; most years it's at its peak at Christmas, providing a rich source of nectar and unseasonal insects for the tits and blackcaps. I'll have to put out sugared almonds.
It's been snowing in Manchester. Not the deep and crisp and even sort of snow. Just that typically-English light dusting, just enough to make it treacherous underfoot. People walking down Deansgate like so many Lego men. That sort of snow.
I'll be glad when I can take this moustache off at the end of the month. In some lights it makes me look as if I'm going prematurely grey.
The dress code for The Gabba press box this week states: "Shorts are okay but collared shorts must be worn and no thongs."
Me and my muse appear to be having an estrangement at the moment. Which is unfortunate as I've got a ton and a half of stuff needing to be turned into deathless prose, most of which is, unfortunately, work-related. There are project outlines to sketch out; a couple of training plans; some presentations and a couple of articles, hopefully for publication. Which is all usually just fine, I can just jump in there and get it all done in next to no time, in between swearing at telephones and drawing rude things on people's newspapers. Except that I can't. Over the past few months the well has been running increasingly dry and I really don't know why. The ideas are still there and I can still come up with one or two sentences or phrases that will hang an argument on the bannister but actually writing them all up coherently is definitely a serious struggle lately. Given that I am, essentially, an ineffectual dreamer this is a bit of a blow. Being able to share a vision with people who have drive but less imagination is my sole defence against the charge of fecklessness. I have no easy answers. And I have a difficult relationship with reality in the first place. There's no actual antagonism, it's just that we share so few frames of reference we find it difficult to connect amiably. But I wouldn't like anyone to be cruel to it; I like to see it dressed up and looking its best for the occasion.
I've been tagged (agh!) by that Scarlet Blue. (I blame EmmaK.) The question is: what is my secret recipe for a perfect partner? Actually, the literal question is "what is my secret recipe for the perfect man" but self-praise is no recommendation. So I'll concentrate on a perfect woman...
I like how Durex now has a range of condoms labelled "Extra Large," moulded for a really snug fit for The Insecure Gentleman.
I once had cause to throw a rose into the English Channel. You don't need to know why, it doesn't take a lot of scratching of my surface to uncover a rich seam of cloying Victorian sentimentality. Any sensible practical person would have gone out on a boat or ferry and dropped the rose off into the briny somewhere along the way as they leant against the railings. Being neither of these I decided it would be a good idea to take a walk along to the end of a very long breakwater. In a south-westerly gale. Half an hour later, what was left of the rose managed to land in the water and the job was done.
I haven't re-ignited my love affair with Autumn but I have, at least, recovered a fondness for it. To celebrate the realisation I started the day with crumpets laden with my sister's home-made rowan jelly. I supplied the rowan berries a couple of years ago; this year's crop is in my freezer ready for her. It's a good job that I got a couple of bags full when I did: on the Sunday the tree was ablaze with orange berries, with odd bits of green leaf poking out here and there when the wind blew, by the following Saturday there was nary a one to be seen. Half a dozen blackbirds scoffed the lot, in between chasing each other noisily round the branches. I also have the Himalayan rowan, Sorbus hupehensis, which the blackbirds generally leave alone and which are usually festooned with pearly white berries right up to the middle of January when the mistle thrushes finally cotton on to them. They'll find meagre pickings this year as the blackbirds have scoffed the lot already. Some or other wise old weather-beaten sage would read much into this. I just think the blackbirds had a good breeding season and raised a brood of greedy hooligans. For some reason all of them ignore the roadside hawthorn just down the road and every Spring we're treated to a red and white confection of haws and mayflowers.
It was a hard week at work. Mind you, they're all feeling like hard weeks at work these days. I'm getting mard. Plans for an early night and a bit of kip were dashed by the party a few doors down. They'd put the dogs in the garden out of the way, so we had a whole evening's yapping from the dogs, understandably miffed that they were missing out on a good thing. The party spilled out into the garden just after 2am and the fight started in earnest just before four. How delightful.
"Do you know what your son just said to me?" she asked my dad. I know I'm in deep shit when I'm "your son" or "your brother."
"You'll have to watch out for yourself," said my mother. "It says here that homes across the country are going to be invaded by sex-crazed spiders."
Over the past few weeks I've noticed that the media and web pages I'm reading keep making slighting comments about Nick Clegg's conscience. I find this dismaying. This is, of course, more proof, as if needed, of the increasing delinquency and barbarism of the modern age.
There is much in this life that depresses me. The idea that any part of Salford could be re-named "MediaCityUK" provokes a long howl of despair.
A random selection of music to do the washing up by threw this one up as the first song.
Don't forget your wellingtons.
Much though I get on reasonably well with women on a general level once every so often I'm reminded that they're not like the rest of us. A case in point: freckles.
Looking at the state of the living room - those piles of books here, that pile of DVDs there, the layer of dust on the mantlepiece (I only dusted it last month, I don't know where it all comes from) - I wonder, yet again, if this place couldn't do with the occasional bit of attention by one of those strange chaps with the lumps on the front. Not to do the cleaning and tidying, well not necessarily anyway, but to look disapprovingly or to need to sit down somewhere, that sort of thing. I know how it feels: there have been times in my life when I could have benefited from somebody saying: "you're not going out like that!" or "I think you're over-thinking that one," or, more usually, "you know that thing that you said you were going to do? Did you remember to do it?" Of course, this would need to be said in a gentle and loving way as I don't respond terrifically well to nagging. Mind you, I'm told I don't respond terrifically well to such requests made in a gentle and loving way, either, though I suspect the personal agenda of the source of that opinion.
The cold snap has arrived and I've wheeled out the slow cooker again. Chickpeas, carrots, leeks and walnuts: a stew on day one, a vegetable accompaniment to sausages on day two and soup on day three. Nothing special but at least comfortable.
A felicitous mishearing on the train:
"We will shortly arrive at Lancaster. This train will then become the service to Bahrein and Morecambe."
The small niece-child was telling me a phenomenally-animated version of Alice In Wonderland. We had the white rabbit and falling through a strange hole in the ground; then we had to eat some sweets to get through a very small door and we met queens both white and red. I was enthralled.
In the ceaseless war against crime Greater Manchester Police are utterly ruthless. Not only do they deploy attractive young policewomen with huge brown eyes to the Piccadilly Gardens patrol...
Overheard on the tram:
"Daddy, what's that blue light for?""That shows when there's an emergency.""What's the green light for?""That's an ejector seat.""Oh. Then what's that red light for?""When that's on you can talk to the driver and he'll tell you off for pressing that big red button on the door.""What happens if you press it and ask him for sweeties?""He tells you to fuck off."
I'm quite fond of the work of Neil Innes and have been since back when he was with the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band. His songs have a depth of impish wistfulness which appeals to me. The combination of his sometimes beautifully poetical music with slyly off-kilter, occasionally even sinister, lyrics and delivery are always worth a second or third listen. His dark songs are very dark indeed, though always with an element of "let's take the piss out of the bogey man" to be found somewhere. And his straightforward let's-be-silly songs are an utter joy. It's a nice day, so I thought I'd share.
Lunch with my cousin. We've not seen each other for over a decade and have never really been particularly close. Lunch is an affable enough affair, we chat about this and that and catch up with family ailments. He's a nice enough chap, though not without his eccentricities.
Standing in the Co-op, buying a People's Friend and a tin of pineapple chunks, I'm bemused by the conversation behind me. A girl and two lads, all in dark "first accountancy suits." They were talking about the gossip mags on the rack, all boasting pictures of Abby Clancy, who is Nursing Heartache over Peter Crouch's Infidelity. Or as we used to call it: footballer's girlfriend pissed off at his dicking about.
"I mean," said the girl, "if you had a girlfriend like that would you go an sleep with a prostitute?""I dunno," said one of the lads, "she looks a bit ropey in that picture.""She's upset, she's not going to be looking her best.""Well, I dunno..."
When my grandfather was pinned down by sniper fire in a banana grove in Burma I wonder if he ever imagined I'd be sat here watching a train called "The Spirit of Osaka" taking Chinese white goods to what used to be the Empire's largest industrial park.
I don't mind the squirrel taking all the hazelnuts from the top of the bush before they're fully ripe. After all, I can't reach them so they may as well be doing somebody some good.
It's not so bad.
As a last-minute nod to the weekend necessities of the domestic hearth I've just cleared out shelves two and three of the fridge. I had decided that there was no room in my life for anything with a "best by" date of 19 Sep 99.
I've long since stopped trying to fathom out how, or if, my mind works. For whatever reason, I was reminded of this hoary old chestnut on the bus home tonight. I expect it was told by Stainless Steven or someone of that vintage, back when the menfolk in their audience had a smattering of French after their participation in the first unpleasantness...
"Voulez-vouz donnez-moi un ton de nutty slack."
"Certainments, madame, do you want it a la carte or cul de sac?"
It would be churlish to complain about the noise from the children's party down the road, so I won't.
I remember my sister's first Radio One Annual. It was the year after the Summer Of Love.
The entrance to the station was decorated by a line of plastic flowers, a dead frog and a home-made notice depicting a photograph of a tortoise with the caption
The mark of a good hero, they say, is the quality of his villains. Well, up to a point, Lord Copper. I'll grant you that the mark of a good villain is often the quality of his hero but I think the reverse is a largely modern phenomenon. There doesn't have to be a single mirror point of antagonism for the heroic ideal to be displayed against. More often than not, in both legend and literature, quantity not quality is the measure of the hero.
The parade of human history is littered with the faces of people who have done horrible things. Accompanied, as always, by the songs of the Greek Chorus; "he was so ordinary..." "you'd never have thought to look at him..." "he was a model neighbour..." Unremarkable people do remarkable things and they may be for evil as easily as for good. Perhaps more easily: "you'd never have thought to look at him..." could cover a multitude of sins. When they are brought to justice, by court or by history, even the worst of them turn out to be ordinary human beings. Crumpled, grey and empty. Even the most charismatic of them are rendered mute by the camera's eye, entirely missing that vital spark that sometimes only the photograph will reveal. The emptinesses of their existence drives them mad and makes them think they are God. And if God's existence can mean so little, why would the lives of lesser mortals pass mention? And so, unremarkable people do remarkable things. The grey bureaucrats of Kafka and Orwell strike terror and the parlours and morning rooms of genteel England are littered with the corpses of the stabbed and poisoned.
On the intersection with Deansgate a crowd had gathered.
"And what is this?" he asked. Dumb, really, but there you go."It's a fire extinguisher," I explained."No, sir, it is not!" he declaimed. I think it was declaimed, it was certainly something beginning with D whatever it was."No, honestly, it is. If you look, it even says so on the label. The lettering's very distinct.""No, sir, it is not a fire extinguisher. It is an anachronism.""I'm pretty OK with anachronisms," I pointed out."This is not just an anachronism. It is a dangerous anachronism."
"No, it's definitely a fire extinguisher. It's got instructions on what to do in case of a fire and everything.""It is a fire extinguisher that you fill with water," he spat. He could have filled the blessed thing with two sentences. "That makes it dangerous. It would be deadly in the case of an electrical fire.""Would it help if I promised not to set fire to any electricity?""It would not. What is it doing here?""Well, actually, I'd bought it for decorative purposes rather than in case of fire.We've a perfectly serviceable fire extinguisher on the wall over there and I've been fully trained in the procedure for running screaming out of the building if anyone so much as lights a cigarette, so we didn't need another one except for decoration.""Decoration?""Yes. An objet d'art. Or, more properly, an objet trouvé.""Objet trouvé? And where did you find this thing?""In the window of an antique shop. They were having a sale.""This is intolerable! What if some unsuspecting person thought that this was for real? There could be a disaster.""There's only you and me who ever work here. I know not to use it and you wouldn't use it even if it were in full working order. So where's the problem?""And where would you have this abomination for safekeeping?""I rather thought it would do over there by the roll-top desk, along with the sit-up-and-beg Imperial typewriter, the Bakelite telephone and Mrs. Edna Putiss.""Mrs. Edna Putiss?""Yes, she followed me here from the bus station. Can I keep her?"
Day eight of the hosepipe ban; the ninth day of torrential rainfall. Still, it's good for the garden.
It's not been a bad year for fruit so far. I had an over-sufficiency of blackcurrants. I off-loaded some on my parents but as I'd already taken a few pounds off their bush they were getting a bit fruit-packed. Especially as they're not supposed to be eating a lot of sweet stuff. I don't have a sweet tooth myself (he says, hiding the evidence of a tube of fruit pastilles I accidentally scoffed in one while shouting at the television news), so I've not been making tarts and the like. Picking at the raw blackcurrants is fine but let's be honest, that faint whiff of cat is always a bit off-putting. Then I had an idea, which is why I've now a couple of jars of blackcurrant ketchup. As always with me, the recipe is very approximate.
My dad was playing on the swings with my small niece.
"Dinosaurs were very, very big," she said."Yes they were," he agreed."They were HUGE. And very, very fierce. Dinosaurs were very, very big and really fierce.""Ooh yes.""I've seen a dinosaur's bones. I saw a dinosaur skeleton. We went to the museum and we saw a dinosaur skeleton. It was huge. And I touched its claw. But it was all right because it was only the skeleton.""Very good. Did it have big teeth as well?""It had very big teeth. But I wasn't scared: there aren't any dinosaurs any more. They died out. They all died out a long, long time ago.""Well, that's a relief, isn't it?""It must have been very scary when you were a little boy, with all those dinosaurs running around."
Been here.
I'm a bit over-run with marjoram and lemon balm at the moment, which is no bad thing. I literally can't sit in the garden without having to sit on a bunch of one or the other, which is rather lovely.
The youngest relative has returned to the topic of my marital status. I think we've agreed that she's not setting me up on a blind date with either the Year Three teacher or the mother of one of the girls in her class. I don't entirely trust her not to try and get around the agreement though.
"So why aren't you married?" she asked."I like being miserable on my own and I haven't found anybody who would want to be miserable with me.""Oh well. If you just want miserable you may as well get yourself a baby. They're dead miserable, honest. All they do is cry and scream and eat and cry and poo and cry a bit more. And they wake you up in the middle of the night so that they can cry and scream and poo.""I've known women like that," I admitted.
Back in the old days, cameras were mechanical devices. You pressed the button and a mechanical iris engaged to set the width of the lens diaphragm and a shutter opened and closed at the required speed for the exposure. A Leica made a lovely, gentle hiss (I borrowed one once) and my industrial-strength Zenit made a loud clunk. Possibly because it was made out of the combine harvesters that were remaindered during the Kazakh famines of the 1930s. The Zenit was the entry-level SLR; it was about a quarter of the price of the next cheapest model on the market.
In an interview in London I was once asked what was the best cultural event I'd ever been to. I answered that I'd seen Shakespeare in Stratford; von Stroheim in Edinburgh; opera, dance and all sorts of theatre but the single best cultural event I'd ever been to was a Frank Sidebottom gig in a working men's club in Timperley. The audience were all grown-ups with all the cares of the world about their shoulders but for a couple of glorious hours they were allowed out on licence and were eight years old again, laughing and singing and joyful in their tomfoolery.
This is by way of an entirely inadequate thank-you.
Godspeed, Chris.
My small niece has an unerring sense of logic. She is also cursed with her uncle's gift of commentary.
She had popped in at my parents' house, as is her wont, to cadge rather a lot of toast off my dad. And a bit of cheese please. And some more toast.
"You know how my dad supports Man City..." she said, "well, I support them, too. But I shouldn't really, should I? When I came out of my mummy's tummy I was in Middlesborough, so I should support Middlesborough, shouldn't I?"
To his credit, my father reassured her that it wasn't compulsory. The child is of mixed parentage - Lancashire and Yorkshire. It's quite funny listening to her talk as she's got her mother's Middlesborough quirks like "cayek" for "cake," but all with our southern Mancunian accent.
A little later, her mother wanted to know why she hadn't eaten her dinner. My dad owned up and got a rollicking for it. As the fur subsided my niece turned to him and said:
"Don't take any notice. Parents get like that when they're old. They go all yaddadadayaddayadda. They can't help it."
I'm taking a breather from the garden, give my eyes the opportunity to stop itching. (Shameless attempt to coax sympathy from his audience).
It's pouring down outside so the planned foray into the teeming mass that passes for my garden has been postponed awhile. Instead I decide to have a go at making a bid for domestic godhood.
My small niece is looking forward to her holidays.
"You can come with us," she tells my mum."No, I can't," explains my mum, "I don't have a passport any more.""You don't need a passport. We're going to English Spain, not Spanish Spain."
Advert on the telly:
For some time now my local railway station has been kitted out not just with new tannoys but also induction loops for hearing-impaired people. Presumably this latter is to fulfil obligations under the disability acts. Neither seems knowingly attached to anything and we certainly don't get any announcements but it's good to know that we have an equality of access to no information about our train services.
The train into work got stuck at signals awhile. I'd been staring at something on the embankment for a good five minutes before I realised what it was. It was an elm sapling. I can't remember when I last saw an English elm. When I was a kid the main road was an avenue of old elms, green and sticky with sap in the July sunlight.
Was it only last week we were on a frost warning?
Prudence, Caution, Deliberation.
The Hermit points to all things hidden, such as knowledge and inspiration,hidden enemies. The illumination is from within, and retirement from participation in current events.
The Hermit is a card of introspection, analysis and, well, virginity. You do not desire to socialize; the card indicates, instead, a desire for peace and solitude. You prefer to take the time to think, organize, ruminate, take stock. There may be feelings of frustration and discontent but these feelings eventually lead to enlightenment, illumination, clarity.
The Hermit represents a wise, inspirational person, friend, teacher, therapist. This a person who can shine a light on things that were previously mysterious and confusing.
I must have been doing the cat's shoelaces
when this lot came a-calling.
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