Do you think I should buy a tweed suit?" I asked The Small Object Of Desire.
"No," she declared, firmly, "you'll be able to pee yourself and think you've got away with it."
One of the natural advantages of being English is our reputation for dissimulation and hypocrisy, which means that most anything we say may have whichever interpretation we choose at any given moment. This in turn means that the merest thing can be turned into the most outrageous innuendo with barely an ounce of effort.
A demonstration: see what happens when you add the coda "that is not an innuendo" to any phrase. Such as...
"I've just put a load of washing in the tumble drier. That is not an innuendo."No wonder the well-oiled grannies of the shires are banging away on the cottage upright in celebration of the wonderful tongue of old England.
"Downloads of The Bottom Line are available on-line. That is not an innuendo."
"There'll be a substantial bit of spotted dick in it for you. That is not an innuendo."
Place-Names of China
Written by Alan Bennett
Bolding Vedas! Shanks New Nisa!
Trusty Lichfield swirls it down
To filter beds on Ruislip Marshes
From my lav in Kentish Town
The Burlington! The Rocheter!
Oh those names of childhood loos -
Nursie rattling at the door knob:
'Have you done your Number Twos?'
Lady typist - office party -
Golly! All that gassy beer!
Tripping home down Hendon Parkway
To her improved Windemere.
Here I sit, alone at sixty,
Bald and fat and full of sin,
Cold the seat and loud the cistern
As I read the Harpic tin.
Concerning the vision of loveliness that walked through the door, the charitable observer could only think she had a kind heart. Many are the words defined as beyond the pale in civilised society; a good number of these could be traced in her varicose veins. Time had passed by the stains on her T-shirt and so, I think, should we.
Bud McNasty walked through the door. His name isn't really Bud McNasty but we'd been calling him that since he was five years old and we weren't stopping any time soon. Bud McNasty walked through the door, his jutting chin making him look like the truculent ape that he is. He ordered a coffee and a piece of seed cake and sat at the table near the window.
I looked at him.
Time and nature hadn't dealt him a kind hand. The shabby hems of his raincoat reflected the shabby hems of his face and his eyelids had disappointed the flies of four counties. He sat there, near the window, a picture of The Ascent Of Man.
"How's it going, Bud?" I asked him.
"Bog off fart face," he replied.
Bud only ever on his best manners when he had something big doing. This must be some quite considerable venture, then. I wasn't sure how interested I was, either scarcely bothered or not at all, so I returned to my crossword. The answer to nine across was "macaque" and I unconsciously glanced over to the window. Bud McNasty was keenly staring out of the window like a cat watching after a spider.
I returned to my crossword.
Five or ten minutes later, I'll never know which, I was conscious of a sudden increase in the nervous energy of the room. I looked up. Bud McNasty was waving. Bud McNasty was waving out of the window like some kid on the summer holiday ferry. I'll admit to have been unnerved by it.
And then she walked through the door. And Bud McNasty turned to her and smiled like a lovesick puppy.
Just when the world could hold no more fresh horrors, Bud McNasty was in love.
The answer to fourteen down was "bewildering."
The school playing field across the road from Railway Cuttings are as good an indicator of the season than many. Better, indeed, than the flowers in the local gardens (we've primroses, roses and magnolias in bloom currently). The wood pigeons are there throughout the year, I'm astonished they find enough to get by with (there's obviously enough for forty-odd of them to have littered the grass over the weekend). Black-headed gulls, starlings, rooks and goldfinches are also year-round habitués. I don't know where the mistlethrushes have disappeared to, I hope they've not been got at by something.
Autumn starts in August when the common gulls come back. They've generally made themselves scarce by the end of April, though there's generally one or two lurking about in the crowds. By mid-November they outnumber the black-headed gulls. Completing the set is the odd one or two lesser black-backs. Their arrival foretold the start of the school holidays, they'll drift off at Easter. I'm never sure why it's only ever one or two lesser black-backs; it's never three or more.
We only recently started getting jackdaws round our way. I've no idea where they're nesting but the feverish activity over the summer suggests they had plenty of mouths to feed. They move away from the field this time of year, moving on instead to the school playground and the local car parks with the pied wagtails.
Soon we'll know we're in for it: the meadow pipits will turn up and we'll have to get out the big quilts. Hey ho, soon be Christmas.
All those things I put off until I had a bit of time to do it...
Some of the reasons why I enjoy reading Edgar Wallace.
"…at that moment he wore the facial expression peculuar to managing editors at midnight — which may be likened to that of a man who has an engagement with the public executioner and is anxious to commit just another tiny little murder before he dies."
— from "The Caretaker In Charge," The Novel Magazine, August 1919
Amongst my Lamentations, I expressed regrets that John Betjeman was no longer Piet Laureate, what with the Jubilee and Olympics and what not.
"John Betjeman would be very, very old," said The Small Object of Desire.And by George, she was right."I know, but it would have been so jolly," I replied.
"Think about it," she said. "If John Betjeman had been around, he'd have Alzheimer's by now. If you think of Carol Ann Duffie as John Betjeman with Alzheimer's the world is suddenly a better place."
Well, I'm well under the cosh... (Caution: This post includes middle-aged bloke whingeing)
The Small Object of Desire is out with her mates again, having coffee and cakes and a gossip while I'm left behind cat-sitting again. Cat-sitting at Railway Cuttings mostly involves being sat on by The Cat I Do Not Have, in between its being asleep and its eating. It saves going out for a romp* in the garden for three o'clock in the morning and the moment the breakfast toast is just starting to singe. Yelling at the door for me to let her back in is saved for four o'clock in the morning and the moment we're trying to leave for work at the latest possible moment because it takes The Small Object of desire about four hours to wake up enough to be safe to drive. Tonight I had to rescue the silly pillock† from the wash-house roof (because it's raining and it didn't want to get its feet wet). Stone me, what a life...
The Small Object of desire has been abandoning me to wanton Fate quite a bit lately. The other day it was to go to a Johnny Morrissey concert, the local stop in his I Opened Chester Zoo You Know Tour. She was there amongst the crowd waving their Linda MacCartney vegetarian sausages, which he made speak a quirky commentary with a series of unlikely voices from the corner of his mouth. He's a game old bird and she came home happy with her "Surly Brute From Stretford" T-shirt so all ended well.
Me, I'm just pootling along. There's a phenomenal load of stuff going on at work at the moment, to silly deadlines, so I'm pretty much crashed and burned before I get through the doorway. Which may pass as half an excuse for the state of both house and garden. Somewhere out there there's about six pounds of boysenberries to pick, once I force my way past the roses, geraniums and boysenberry runners. Much to my surprise, and probably due to the vile weather, the gooseberry bush hasn't been ravaged by sawfly this year and we got a pound or so off safely. The downside to the sawfly leaving the leaves alone is that I forget that the bush has inch-and-a-half-long thorns (that's forty six kilometres in the new money), which gave me the opportunity to teach the new goldfinches a few new words in basic Anglo-Saxon.
And aside from all, next to nothing's been happening lately.
* "Going out for a romp." As in: "I'll just scrape my shoe on your doorstep, I trod in a romp on my way here."
† The cat, not The Small Object of Desire. She hardly ever gets stuck on rooves these days.
I was going to write a tribute to the late, great Eric Sykes but Scaryduck has written a blinder.
One of the earliest Sykes scripts I know of was a monologue written for Frankie Howerd on "Variety Bandbox" back in the days when the Light Service ruled the wireless. In it, Howerd had got work in a zoo and the first job he was given to do was to deliver an elephant to an address across town. By bus and tube. Frankie Howerd milking the fits of giggles generated by the mental picture of his trying to coax an elephant up an escalator is a joy and I wish I could find a copy to post on here.
Instead, I'll offer up a piece of gentle silliness from the 1963 Royal Variety Performance:
Up with the lark, tra la! -- so long as someone had coshed the lark with a sock full of wet sand -- to minister to the breakfast needs of The Small Object of Desire and The Cat I Don't Have. It is not a morning for delicate masculine sensibilities.
Looking at the state of the bath I wonder, yet again, that The Small Object isn't bald.
"You could stuff a good-sized middle-aged man with all that hair," I said.
"That had been my plan," she replied.Waving her off to work with a cheery smile (which prompted her to point out that there's nothing erotic in "a grimace and a lot of snot-filled grunting"), I turned to look at the hall. Railway Cuttings will never be an Ideal Homes photoshoot but even by my standards it's got a bit untidy so I took to giving the stairs a sweep with the hand brush. The look of disgust that The Cat gave me as she stalked out of the front door will haunt me till lunch time.
You've got to feel sorry for them… Back in the old days, F.A. Cup day was a bit of an event. It was the last part of the Spring triptych of sport, following on from the boat race and the Grand National. Back then, telly didn't even start until after Ed Stewpot Stewart had put his socks back on and was wending his weary way away from Junior Choice and we'd all finished reading that week's editions of "The Tiger" and "The Rover" and had stopped being giddy about Splash Gorton's penguin. After dinner we'd settle down quietly — or else! — and on would come the telly. Whether it was Grandstand or World of Sport that year the festival would always start with somebody baking cakes in the team colours and an interview with a dolly bird. Then there'd be a celebrity quiz or It's A Knockout or both and there'd be a quick cut-away to see the teams in blazers getting on the coach. By three o'clock we'd have exhausted Ralph Reader leading the community singing so they'd put on a game of football to give us all a rest.
That nice Pearl periodically uses the caprices of title selection by audio shuffle to read the auguries of the day. The serendipity of this appeals to me rather so I thought I'd have a shot at it during a tram ride to the Small Object of Desire's gaff...
The songs my iPhone threw out at me were:
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.
What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.
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