In a futile attempt to avoid the vanity and self-importance associated with an autobiography, and fully aware that for years I have been posting many absurd childhood memories on this blog, I've decided to fill some time during this period of COVID-19-avoiding self-isolation by amusing myself (and possibly about 3 or 4 others) with some kind of self-indulgent chronological (and probably unreliable) narrative of (other) stupid things I remember about growing up.
Part 1 then. Begin at the beginning. My earliest memory? Just an image of our front room in Flask Walk, Hampstead, when I was about 2 years old. I can picture the caramel-brown settee we had there. I'm told that I took a cushion from the settee and put it next to the electric fire, causing the vinyl on its underside to melt and burn. I don't recall doing that. But I remember the burnt cushion, as we kept the settee for several years afterwards. Me and my brother would joke that someone had just sat on it and farted really badly, that's why it was all burnt and melted. As you know, most of our humour revolved around farts, poo, bums and lavatories.
My next memory was moving into Bridge House in Chalk Farm (I was 3) and my Dad and Grandad struggling to get that brown settee upstairs to flat number 29. They tried the lift, but I don't think it would fit. I was scared of lifts in those days. Justifiably, as they did often break down. You'd have to wait to be rescued and you'd climb out of the opening where the bottom of the lift overlapped a bit with the external door, and you'd look underneath to see the lift shaft plummeting down into the dark and you'd believe it went all the way to Hell (thanks to a Catholic upbringing, but more of that later).
Around this time, possibly even slightly before, I have another memory of being told that my brother had just been born and we were to go to the hospital to see him. I was hugely excited. But unfortunately I was also at the top of a slide. So instead of sliding down (which would have been too slow, as those slides sometimes were, you know, when there'd be too much friction and you'd stall and have to drag yourself down by pulling the sides) I unwisely decided to run down it. I fell knee first onto the concrete at the bottom, cutting myself, but in my mind this cut was magnified into a huge flap of skin peeling off to expose a few square inches of flesh. It was only the promise of an ice-cream that prevented me from continuing to wail as if in the throes of dying of crucifixion; but I suspect that in reality I had a graze on my knee.
For the next 3 years we lived in Bridge House, moving to flat 2 at some point and there is a whole load of stupid things I remember about that time; so I'll keep that for parts 2 onwards in order to keep this bite-sized enough not to bore you to oblivion...
Sunday, 22 March 2020
Thursday, 13 February 2020
Recovering from a bastard bloody heart attack
In my head, I've felt like an old man since I was 16 in 1986, when pop music went all shit and I threw myself into the 60s and 70s, avoided dance clubs, holidays in Ibiza and fashion. And I maintained my old man outlook on life as I moved from young adulthood into middle age, intolerant of anything fast, fatuous or fun (in the youthful sense, that is). And no doubt, you all might have noticed this. But in one important respect, I had NEVER felt like an old man. And that was physically.
Despite avoiding gyms like the plague and viewing jogging as a modern version of Dark Age monks' penitential self-flagellation, I maintained a reasonable level of fitness and healthiness that is underserving of my lack of effort in that regard. Which is why, on my first post-heart attack long walk - from hospital ward to car park - I was appalled to discover that physically I had become, albeit temporarily, I'm assured, a slow and feeble OLD MAN.
The car journey home - with my wife at the wheel, as I'm not allowed to drive just yet - brought with it the stark reality that I had better not gesticulate at other drivers with my routine sarcastic hand-clap or more occasional wanker wave, because, should anyone get out and come looking for a fight, unless they are under 4 stone with the strength of a lettuce, I 'd get a right hiding. Even that Stu Francis from 'Crackerjack' could beat me up, based on the fact that he could at least 'crush a grape'. I can't. But then it occurred to me that I'd probably get a right hiding from a good proportion of fellas on the road anyway and yet this has never stopped me reacting provocatively to selfish, arrogant or aggressive drivers. Having managed to avoid proper fisticuffs since the one time when I was about 8 (which I won, hence my faultless fight record of 1-0-0), I have acted with complacent impunity both on the road and public transport (where, as it has been documented, I often trip up rude people). I suspect, that as I'd had a similar attitude towards my health, this will one day catch up with me just as the heart attack did.
My first 'practice walk', on the day after my discharge from hospital, I managed 200 metres up the road, before feeling the need to turn back; and again, this was at such a pace that by the time I passed by the neighbours' plastic recycling bins for a second time, they had started to biodegrade. Yesterday, my wife kindly dropped me off at the cinema to watch the 1pm matinee of '1917'. If you ever go to the cinema for a mid-week matinee in school term time, you might notice that it's full of pensioners. I was the only one in there who hadn't lived through 1917, the year, never mind the film. And yet, I was still getting overtaken on the stairs. Anyway, I got a bus most of the way home, but this still left what would normally be a 15 minutes walk, but which ended up taking me 30 minutes. The embarrassing thing was, it required me to walk past a school after home time. Embarrassing, because I wasn't walking any faster than someone who would be seen as 'loitering' outside the school. And because I don't look like an old man who should be strolling that slowly, I assumed that I looked like someone very dodgy, in the 'Not On Normal Courtyard Exercise' sort of way.
The other key feature of my recovery that I feel the need to share with you, is the slight adjustment to my diet. I was reading the little booklets published by the British Heart Foundation that the hospital gave me, full of advice on changing your lifestyle to avoid a repeat incident. The problem is, it had case studies. And the photos of the people in the case studies looked nothing like me. I read about Paul and his heart attack and how he changed his diet; and I looked at the picture of Paul and I thought, 'Of course Paul had a heart attack, look at the fucking state of him.' Despite not being like Paul, I have acquiesced to some key changes in my diet - limiting dairy products, cutting down on red meat (especially the bacon, as it was the bacon that done for me) and on chocolate and avoiding saturated fats, animal fats, all that sort of stuff that gives you bum cheeks to inadvertently knock things over with in shops.
You'd think as well that this lifestyle change (and life changing event) would be a topic of conversation when I went to see a GP a couple of days after my discharge, as directed. You might even think that she'd open the conversation with "How are you feeling?" given that she had my notes in front of her. You might even think that SHE would lead the conversation with a series of questions to explore how I'm getting on, what I'm doing to look after myself, how it might have affected me mentally, etc. As it turned out, she did none of these things. She said, "What brings you here?" (which she knew, she had the notes on her screen) and I replied, "A heart attack" and she joked, "What? Now?" before we entered an awkward silence while I expected her to ask me something. I had my list of what to say and thus skipped over the section on how I was feeling to my list of questions, all of which she answered monosyllabically with no follow-up questions of her own. I asked about the theoretical likelihood of a person being stressed without knowing it and if that could have been a contributing factor to the attack. Short answer and no follow up to conclude if I had been stressed or what might have caused me to be so.
Maybe I'm being an intolerant old man, but this appointment was late Friday afternoon, the GP was young, she was probably distracted, thinking about getting home and going out that evening. To a dance club. For a fast, fatuous and fun night out.
Despite avoiding gyms like the plague and viewing jogging as a modern version of Dark Age monks' penitential self-flagellation, I maintained a reasonable level of fitness and healthiness that is underserving of my lack of effort in that regard. Which is why, on my first post-heart attack long walk - from hospital ward to car park - I was appalled to discover that physically I had become, albeit temporarily, I'm assured, a slow and feeble OLD MAN.
The car journey home - with my wife at the wheel, as I'm not allowed to drive just yet - brought with it the stark reality that I had better not gesticulate at other drivers with my routine sarcastic hand-clap or more occasional wanker wave, because, should anyone get out and come looking for a fight, unless they are under 4 stone with the strength of a lettuce, I 'd get a right hiding. Even that Stu Francis from 'Crackerjack' could beat me up, based on the fact that he could at least 'crush a grape'. I can't. But then it occurred to me that I'd probably get a right hiding from a good proportion of fellas on the road anyway and yet this has never stopped me reacting provocatively to selfish, arrogant or aggressive drivers. Having managed to avoid proper fisticuffs since the one time when I was about 8 (which I won, hence my faultless fight record of 1-0-0), I have acted with complacent impunity both on the road and public transport (where, as it has been documented, I often trip up rude people). I suspect, that as I'd had a similar attitude towards my health, this will one day catch up with me just as the heart attack did.
My first 'practice walk', on the day after my discharge from hospital, I managed 200 metres up the road, before feeling the need to turn back; and again, this was at such a pace that by the time I passed by the neighbours' plastic recycling bins for a second time, they had started to biodegrade. Yesterday, my wife kindly dropped me off at the cinema to watch the 1pm matinee of '1917'. If you ever go to the cinema for a mid-week matinee in school term time, you might notice that it's full of pensioners. I was the only one in there who hadn't lived through 1917, the year, never mind the film. And yet, I was still getting overtaken on the stairs. Anyway, I got a bus most of the way home, but this still left what would normally be a 15 minutes walk, but which ended up taking me 30 minutes. The embarrassing thing was, it required me to walk past a school after home time. Embarrassing, because I wasn't walking any faster than someone who would be seen as 'loitering' outside the school. And because I don't look like an old man who should be strolling that slowly, I assumed that I looked like someone very dodgy, in the 'Not On Normal Courtyard Exercise' sort of way.
The other key feature of my recovery that I feel the need to share with you, is the slight adjustment to my diet. I was reading the little booklets published by the British Heart Foundation that the hospital gave me, full of advice on changing your lifestyle to avoid a repeat incident. The problem is, it had case studies. And the photos of the people in the case studies looked nothing like me. I read about Paul and his heart attack and how he changed his diet; and I looked at the picture of Paul and I thought, 'Of course Paul had a heart attack, look at the fucking state of him.' Despite not being like Paul, I have acquiesced to some key changes in my diet - limiting dairy products, cutting down on red meat (especially the bacon, as it was the bacon that done for me) and on chocolate and avoiding saturated fats, animal fats, all that sort of stuff that gives you bum cheeks to inadvertently knock things over with in shops.
You'd think as well that this lifestyle change (and life changing event) would be a topic of conversation when I went to see a GP a couple of days after my discharge, as directed. You might even think that she'd open the conversation with "How are you feeling?" given that she had my notes in front of her. You might even think that SHE would lead the conversation with a series of questions to explore how I'm getting on, what I'm doing to look after myself, how it might have affected me mentally, etc. As it turned out, she did none of these things. She said, "What brings you here?" (which she knew, she had the notes on her screen) and I replied, "A heart attack" and she joked, "What? Now?" before we entered an awkward silence while I expected her to ask me something. I had my list of what to say and thus skipped over the section on how I was feeling to my list of questions, all of which she answered monosyllabically with no follow-up questions of her own. I asked about the theoretical likelihood of a person being stressed without knowing it and if that could have been a contributing factor to the attack. Short answer and no follow up to conclude if I had been stressed or what might have caused me to be so.
Maybe I'm being an intolerant old man, but this appointment was late Friday afternoon, the GP was young, she was probably distracted, thinking about getting home and going out that evening. To a dance club. For a fast, fatuous and fun night out.
Sunday, 2 February 2020
Bastard bloody heart attack
Hubris, if you haven't heard of it before, is an ancient Greek concept in which someone gets a bit over-cocky and pisses the gods off, causing them to send some thunderous shitbolts his way as a form of revenge, knowing that this would shut the bastard up. For as long as I can remember, I revelled in my ailment dodging, my body's refusal to succumb to human illnesses, the tiny return I got on my NHS contributions and the suggestion that I was in fact some kind of Kryptonian immortal.
Then last week I had a heart attack.
No one saw this coming, but on reflection I might have avoided it by not eating a double round of bacon sandwiches every day for nearly 6 months. And not pouring a large dollop of tomato sauce and hubris on each round. And occasionally a slice of Swiss cheese. Or if I hadn't gone to Edinburgh a few weeks before. It's no coincidence that this was my first trip to Scotland, where heart attacks are viral and as a foreigner I don't have the immune system to cope with it. I think I caught heart attack up there.
I'll spare you the details of the attack, as clearly those who witnessed it pretty much shit themselves, while I decided to indulge in some distracting gallows humour. (Except to say that it was nothing like it is on telly or in films, where someone just clutches their arm and keels over into the tomato plants. I almost wore out the carpet scratching at it in pain for 15 minutes before the paramedics arrived.) Instead, I want to inject some typically lavatorial, black comedy into the story of my 2 days recovering in hospital.
It's true, that in situations like this, knowing that an ambulance is on the way, you do reflect on your choice of underwear; and I was reassured to remember that I had chosen a recently purchased, nicely-fitted pair that was 2nd from the top of my pile, over an old baggy pair right on top, which was detaching itself from the elastic waistband and beginning to show signs of perishing around the gusset.
Once in theatre, about to be moved from trolley to operating table, fully conscious as it was only an angioplasty, the medical staff - nearly all young women - instructed me to help them get my t-shirt and then trousers off by pulling them down over my bum. Not a problem. Then someone said, "Sorry, and your pants, please." "Not my pants," I moaned, but these were still whipped off and I groped at the theatre gown they'd put over me in order to cover my essentials. Then they helped shift me onto the table and I asked, "What about my socks?" I was told I could keep them on. "No, take them off, I look silly." You have to keep some dignity.
They had to stick a tube in through a vein from wrist to heart in order to inject some dye to help locate the blocked artery and then pop in two stents to widen it; and they had a choice of going up through my groin or from my wrist. Once I saw them shave my wrist, I worked out why this was the preferred option: They'd saved themselves 20 minutes and two bottles of shaving foam.
I was wheeled onto a ward to recover and told not to get out of bed for 24 hours. In order to go to the toilet, I could use a cardboard urine bottle or if necessary (it wasn't, as I'd crimped a few out already over the weekend) a bed pan for anything more solid. I was told to drink as much water as I could and it would be easy to roll over onto my side in bed to use the urine bottle or they could help me stand up and do it. I opted for the rolling over. But this didn't work. Obviously. I could have guessed it wouldn't. After all, when blokes in public urinals have a case of the nervous 'no-go', they don't decide to lie on their side on the toilet floor to try it from that angle. Therefore after many hours of horizontal futility, I got myself onto my feet to try with the support of gravity. At first, still nothing, except the anxiety that someone would walk in on me with my gown gaping open at the back and my arse hanging out. Which they did. Eventually, come about 2am (12 hours since my last wee, pre-heart attack), the dam burst.
The acoustics at that quiet time of night in an airless hospital ward, with an empty echo chamber of a cardboard urine bottle providing a receptacle, meant that a man pissing like a horse could sound like the Niagra Falls. Almost a minute into the exercise, you start to wonder how close you are to filling it. You can't see. You shake it to try and gauge how full it is, because it's certainly getting heavy; so heavy, you fear dropping it. You wonder if you'll feel it before it reaches the lip. But, as luck would have it, I finished just before it reached what would have been labelled the 'fill level' if it had been a Pot Noodle pot. Then, as you place the container on its flat side on the table next to your bed, the spout sits at a 45 degree angle, so you worry again it will pour out; but I was about 2 mm short of that happening. The next morning I filled two more within 15 minutes of each other. A nurse came to take my blood pressure and went to move the trolley where I'd placed them both..."WATCH OUT!!!" I panicked, and just in time, we averted a curtain of warm piss being sent across the bay.
There were 4 bays on my ward. Opposite me was an old Jamaican man with the deepest bass voice you've ever heard. He'd clear his throat in the night and it sounded like an earthquake. Then you'd hear him mutter, "Mercy, Jesus!"
Next to me was a Romanian man, who got told off for giving himself oxygen, because it was there, why not. He didn't speak English. They'd ask him a question and he'd reply, "Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, no."
But at an angle from me was the world's more boring, moany old bugger I've ever had the misfortune to lie and listen to for 48 hours. He must have phoned every one on his contacts list to "update you on how I'm doing" which meant repeating the same sorry-for-himself story of his ailments in a loud, monotone monologue that would have sent each listener diving for an open oven door. Without noticing the irony, he'd finish each long call with, "But you know me, I suffer in silence." He was in for a stroke, but my guess is that he also had a charisma by-pass, which had obviously been a success. You'd feel sorry for him, as I sometimes do for life's dullards, but he was both creepily flirty with the nurses and a bit entitled in terms of his moaning at them for things he wanted done. Charmless nurk. And he didn't draw the curtain when pissing into his cardboard pot.
I had a space age bed, which adjusted itself every 5 minutes to stop you getting bed sores. The mattress would mould itself to your body, by sinking where you lay and rising in the gaps. So you'd be trying in vain to sleep at night, hear the buzz of the bed kicking into action and feel something work its way up the crack in your arse. (I assume this was the bed. It was dark, but I didn't think anyone had wandered over.)
Finally, a word about the food. My hopes were raised when I first arrived on the ward and was given jacket potato and beans. The latter are of course "good for the heart" but made me want to fart and with those acoustics, this was not the place. Some severe muffling was required. But come the next day, I opted for beef stew for lunch and macaroni cheese for dinner. Because I love both. Or rather I love my wife's version of both. The potential to ruin both dishes is limitless I found. The beef stew was fat and gristle in tasteless, phlegm-textured gravy with a dumpling as soft as an overbaked biscuit. The macaroni cheese challenged me to work out if I should eat it or use it for grouting between the bathroom tiles. The mashed potato it was served with, I hid under my pillow so I could start to tunnel out in the night.
So, there you go, every cloud has a brown lining or at least something dark to laugh about afterwards. Until the next time (blog, not heart attack), adios!
Then last week I had a heart attack.
No one saw this coming, but on reflection I might have avoided it by not eating a double round of bacon sandwiches every day for nearly 6 months. And not pouring a large dollop of tomato sauce and hubris on each round. And occasionally a slice of Swiss cheese. Or if I hadn't gone to Edinburgh a few weeks before. It's no coincidence that this was my first trip to Scotland, where heart attacks are viral and as a foreigner I don't have the immune system to cope with it. I think I caught heart attack up there.
I'll spare you the details of the attack, as clearly those who witnessed it pretty much shit themselves, while I decided to indulge in some distracting gallows humour. (Except to say that it was nothing like it is on telly or in films, where someone just clutches their arm and keels over into the tomato plants. I almost wore out the carpet scratching at it in pain for 15 minutes before the paramedics arrived.) Instead, I want to inject some typically lavatorial, black comedy into the story of my 2 days recovering in hospital.
It's true, that in situations like this, knowing that an ambulance is on the way, you do reflect on your choice of underwear; and I was reassured to remember that I had chosen a recently purchased, nicely-fitted pair that was 2nd from the top of my pile, over an old baggy pair right on top, which was detaching itself from the elastic waistband and beginning to show signs of perishing around the gusset.
Once in theatre, about to be moved from trolley to operating table, fully conscious as it was only an angioplasty, the medical staff - nearly all young women - instructed me to help them get my t-shirt and then trousers off by pulling them down over my bum. Not a problem. Then someone said, "Sorry, and your pants, please." "Not my pants," I moaned, but these were still whipped off and I groped at the theatre gown they'd put over me in order to cover my essentials. Then they helped shift me onto the table and I asked, "What about my socks?" I was told I could keep them on. "No, take them off, I look silly." You have to keep some dignity.
They had to stick a tube in through a vein from wrist to heart in order to inject some dye to help locate the blocked artery and then pop in two stents to widen it; and they had a choice of going up through my groin or from my wrist. Once I saw them shave my wrist, I worked out why this was the preferred option: They'd saved themselves 20 minutes and two bottles of shaving foam.
I was wheeled onto a ward to recover and told not to get out of bed for 24 hours. In order to go to the toilet, I could use a cardboard urine bottle or if necessary (it wasn't, as I'd crimped a few out already over the weekend) a bed pan for anything more solid. I was told to drink as much water as I could and it would be easy to roll over onto my side in bed to use the urine bottle or they could help me stand up and do it. I opted for the rolling over. But this didn't work. Obviously. I could have guessed it wouldn't. After all, when blokes in public urinals have a case of the nervous 'no-go', they don't decide to lie on their side on the toilet floor to try it from that angle. Therefore after many hours of horizontal futility, I got myself onto my feet to try with the support of gravity. At first, still nothing, except the anxiety that someone would walk in on me with my gown gaping open at the back and my arse hanging out. Which they did. Eventually, come about 2am (12 hours since my last wee, pre-heart attack), the dam burst.
The acoustics at that quiet time of night in an airless hospital ward, with an empty echo chamber of a cardboard urine bottle providing a receptacle, meant that a man pissing like a horse could sound like the Niagra Falls. Almost a minute into the exercise, you start to wonder how close you are to filling it. You can't see. You shake it to try and gauge how full it is, because it's certainly getting heavy; so heavy, you fear dropping it. You wonder if you'll feel it before it reaches the lip. But, as luck would have it, I finished just before it reached what would have been labelled the 'fill level' if it had been a Pot Noodle pot. Then, as you place the container on its flat side on the table next to your bed, the spout sits at a 45 degree angle, so you worry again it will pour out; but I was about 2 mm short of that happening. The next morning I filled two more within 15 minutes of each other. A nurse came to take my blood pressure and went to move the trolley where I'd placed them both..."WATCH OUT!!!" I panicked, and just in time, we averted a curtain of warm piss being sent across the bay.
There were 4 bays on my ward. Opposite me was an old Jamaican man with the deepest bass voice you've ever heard. He'd clear his throat in the night and it sounded like an earthquake. Then you'd hear him mutter, "Mercy, Jesus!"
Next to me was a Romanian man, who got told off for giving himself oxygen, because it was there, why not. He didn't speak English. They'd ask him a question and he'd reply, "Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, no."
But at an angle from me was the world's more boring, moany old bugger I've ever had the misfortune to lie and listen to for 48 hours. He must have phoned every one on his contacts list to "update you on how I'm doing" which meant repeating the same sorry-for-himself story of his ailments in a loud, monotone monologue that would have sent each listener diving for an open oven door. Without noticing the irony, he'd finish each long call with, "But you know me, I suffer in silence." He was in for a stroke, but my guess is that he also had a charisma by-pass, which had obviously been a success. You'd feel sorry for him, as I sometimes do for life's dullards, but he was both creepily flirty with the nurses and a bit entitled in terms of his moaning at them for things he wanted done. Charmless nurk. And he didn't draw the curtain when pissing into his cardboard pot.
I had a space age bed, which adjusted itself every 5 minutes to stop you getting bed sores. The mattress would mould itself to your body, by sinking where you lay and rising in the gaps. So you'd be trying in vain to sleep at night, hear the buzz of the bed kicking into action and feel something work its way up the crack in your arse. (I assume this was the bed. It was dark, but I didn't think anyone had wandered over.)
Finally, a word about the food. My hopes were raised when I first arrived on the ward and was given jacket potato and beans. The latter are of course "good for the heart" but made me want to fart and with those acoustics, this was not the place. Some severe muffling was required. But come the next day, I opted for beef stew for lunch and macaroni cheese for dinner. Because I love both. Or rather I love my wife's version of both. The potential to ruin both dishes is limitless I found. The beef stew was fat and gristle in tasteless, phlegm-textured gravy with a dumpling as soft as an overbaked biscuit. The macaroni cheese challenged me to work out if I should eat it or use it for grouting between the bathroom tiles. The mashed potato it was served with, I hid under my pillow so I could start to tunnel out in the night.
So, there you go, every cloud has a brown lining or at least something dark to laugh about afterwards. Until the next time (blog, not heart attack), adios!
Tuesday, 3 December 2019
Buying a pair of bastard jeans
The moment of heart-sinking realisation came while I was stretching to tip a double mattress over a metal barrier and into a crate at the local council dump. A cold wind swept up my crotch and I looked down to see two worn out holes in my jeans. I had to immediately get rid of these and buy another pair.
I say 'immediately'. I didn't take them off and throw them after the mattress into the crate and then walk back to my car in my pants. Nor did I then drive into town and shop for new jeans still wearing my pants. I meant 'immediately' in relative terms. As in the next day. Today. Today I went shopping for jeans, one of the most unenjoyable necessary tasks in the life for someone like me.
'Someone like me' means someone male and middle-aged, who only wears jeans, because I'm not middle-class enough to wear cords, not elderly enough to wear trousers casually and far too dignified to adorn myself in grey tracksuit bottoms, the uniform of the more laddish type of man who feels the need to adjust himself only slightly less frequently than a public masturbator.
'Someone like me' means someone with only one other pair of jeans, who therefore needs something to wear when they're in the wash.
I actually have 3 other pairs of jeans, but one pair has gone missing since we moved house and the other pair - typically, my favourite black ones - no longer fit comfortably. This is because I have put on weight for the winter. By not giving a shit about what I eat. By not having any mirrors up in our new house that I can casually walk past and be reminded by my reflection, in no uncertain terms, that I really need to stop eating so much chocolate. And by not working at present and therefore not needing to fit into my work shirts or suits. I am, to put it kindly, not as lithe as I have been.
'Someone like me' has a disproportionately large head and short legs. A bit like Ernie Wise and Nancy Reagan's love child. Useful when I'm in the car, as people tend not to get too aggressive towards me, because presumably the size of my head is such that they probably think I am 6 foot 6 inches tall. This non-perfect shape means that I have to wear REGULAR or STRAIGHT fit jeans, otherwise I look too much like a spinning top. You've seen those short, overweight men in skinny jeans haven't you? Like a water balloon that's been squeezed at the bottom end. 'Someone like me' also has bandy legs, legs that would allow a pig in an alleyway to drive an aircraft carrier between them. Thus, SKINNY jeans are not for me. To be honest, they're not for anyone. I've already ranted at length about the current fad amongst Generation Z men for wearing hosiery modelled on the Childcatcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
So there I was in TK Max today, browsing through the jeans, optimistically trying on 34 waist SLIM fit ones first. My current jeans are 34 waist. I think the Lycra in them helps me get away with it. It took the trying-on of 6 pairs of jeans to strike the jackpot. TK Max has this bloke in charge of the fitting room who wears an ear-piece and microphone like he has some reason to constantly communicate with others while doing his job. He's very polite and helpful, but overly so, given that I just want to try on some bloody £20 jeans. I'm not investing in a car or a house, though he is as attentive as if I was. I say 'attentive' - with a car or house, someone would come inside with you while you decided if you wanted to buy it, and he stopped short of joining me in the cubicle. (He did escort me part of the way though, holding the jeans for me.)
'Someone like me' is also mindful of getting a couple of years out of a pair of jeans. Therefore, once I realised that SLIM fit wasn't for me and 34 waist jeans from this shop were accentuating my muffin top too much and that the jeans with fashionably contrived worn patches or even holes would end up wearing out even quicker and that I wasn't going to pay over £35 because what's the point of exploitative sweatshops in China if we have to pay such a reasonably high price, I was reduced to about 3 pairs to choose from. I'd already looked in the SALE / CLEARANCE section, but as usual this was rammed with jeans with 46 inch waists and 26 inch legs. The jeans they can't sell, because men who have got themselves wedged horizontally in an industrial compactor for crushing cars haven't come into the shop enough. But as fate would have it, amongst those 3 pairs was one that did not make me look any more pitifully misshapen than I actually am.
All in all, a lengthy exercise. But as you may have worked out, I kind of need a bit of lengthy exercise.
I say 'immediately'. I didn't take them off and throw them after the mattress into the crate and then walk back to my car in my pants. Nor did I then drive into town and shop for new jeans still wearing my pants. I meant 'immediately' in relative terms. As in the next day. Today. Today I went shopping for jeans, one of the most unenjoyable necessary tasks in the life for someone like me.
'Someone like me' means someone male and middle-aged, who only wears jeans, because I'm not middle-class enough to wear cords, not elderly enough to wear trousers casually and far too dignified to adorn myself in grey tracksuit bottoms, the uniform of the more laddish type of man who feels the need to adjust himself only slightly less frequently than a public masturbator.
'Someone like me' means someone with only one other pair of jeans, who therefore needs something to wear when they're in the wash.
I actually have 3 other pairs of jeans, but one pair has gone missing since we moved house and the other pair - typically, my favourite black ones - no longer fit comfortably. This is because I have put on weight for the winter. By not giving a shit about what I eat. By not having any mirrors up in our new house that I can casually walk past and be reminded by my reflection, in no uncertain terms, that I really need to stop eating so much chocolate. And by not working at present and therefore not needing to fit into my work shirts or suits. I am, to put it kindly, not as lithe as I have been.
'Someone like me' has a disproportionately large head and short legs. A bit like Ernie Wise and Nancy Reagan's love child. Useful when I'm in the car, as people tend not to get too aggressive towards me, because presumably the size of my head is such that they probably think I am 6 foot 6 inches tall. This non-perfect shape means that I have to wear REGULAR or STRAIGHT fit jeans, otherwise I look too much like a spinning top. You've seen those short, overweight men in skinny jeans haven't you? Like a water balloon that's been squeezed at the bottom end. 'Someone like me' also has bandy legs, legs that would allow a pig in an alleyway to drive an aircraft carrier between them. Thus, SKINNY jeans are not for me. To be honest, they're not for anyone. I've already ranted at length about the current fad amongst Generation Z men for wearing hosiery modelled on the Childcatcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
So there I was in TK Max today, browsing through the jeans, optimistically trying on 34 waist SLIM fit ones first. My current jeans are 34 waist. I think the Lycra in them helps me get away with it. It took the trying-on of 6 pairs of jeans to strike the jackpot. TK Max has this bloke in charge of the fitting room who wears an ear-piece and microphone like he has some reason to constantly communicate with others while doing his job. He's very polite and helpful, but overly so, given that I just want to try on some bloody £20 jeans. I'm not investing in a car or a house, though he is as attentive as if I was. I say 'attentive' - with a car or house, someone would come inside with you while you decided if you wanted to buy it, and he stopped short of joining me in the cubicle. (He did escort me part of the way though, holding the jeans for me.)
'Someone like me' is also mindful of getting a couple of years out of a pair of jeans. Therefore, once I realised that SLIM fit wasn't for me and 34 waist jeans from this shop were accentuating my muffin top too much and that the jeans with fashionably contrived worn patches or even holes would end up wearing out even quicker and that I wasn't going to pay over £35 because what's the point of exploitative sweatshops in China if we have to pay such a reasonably high price, I was reduced to about 3 pairs to choose from. I'd already looked in the SALE / CLEARANCE section, but as usual this was rammed with jeans with 46 inch waists and 26 inch legs. The jeans they can't sell, because men who have got themselves wedged horizontally in an industrial compactor for crushing cars haven't come into the shop enough. But as fate would have it, amongst those 3 pairs was one that did not make me look any more pitifully misshapen than I actually am.
All in all, a lengthy exercise. But as you may have worked out, I kind of need a bit of lengthy exercise.
Wednesday, 27 November 2019
(They're not really) Bastard Cyclists
I'm not racist against cyclists. Some of my best friends ride bicycles. Maybe not 'best' friends, but I do know people who like to don the Lycra and take to the roads. And I respect their right to do something different to us motorists. I even know that some motorists identify as cyclists and, well, it's the 21st century, so live and let live I say.
It would be wrong to mock them for how they dress, just because it's different to the rest of us. I would be indignant if a public figure, like the Prime Minister or the Queen or someone, said something offensive in a Tweet, such as 'Cyclists wear silly shorts that look like they've sat in a warm bath until they've shrunk' or 'Cyclists look like they've accidentally sat in tar' or 'Cyclists ride up the high street while their shorts ride up their arses'. That sort of prejudice is just not on.
When I was younger, we knew a bloke who suddenly got into cycling, bought all the gear, looked like he'd gone top of the range, helmet from NASA to reduce the effects of G-Force, glasses from one of Michael Jackson's backing dancers. And we mocked him for shaving his legs between the top of his socks and the bottom of his shorts. He explained that it bought him an extra 3 seconds every minute when he was racing, as hairs on legs increase wind resistance. He didn't race. But he identified as a cyclist and we should have accepted his lifestyle choice and not have indulged in confirmation bias by saying to each other what an 'utter fucking bell-end' he was.
Some people argue that everyone is naturally racist towards cyclists, because they haven't integrated with us motorists, even though some of them drive a car as well. They try to argue that we all naturally experience a negative emotion as soon as we see the garish colours of a Tour-de-France-wannabe on the road ahead of us, even though we have been conditioned to safely give cyclists space as we over take, that deep down we want to nudge the back tyre with our bumper and make them wobble and go flailing headlong into a ditch or a lamp-post.
As a motorist, I feel embarrassed for the historic evils of my ancestors, who colonised the roads with better technology than bicycles and forced cyclists into the role of second class road-citizens. I feel deep shame for the past and as a result I like to campaign for the rights of cyclists by trolling people on Twitter who say anything negative against them as a minority group, because I am assuming in my ignorant, over-earnest, desperate bid to be empathetic, that they will feel victimised by all forms of criticism.
I also feel deeply ashamed that as a motorist, I am consciously and deliberately killing the children and grandchildren of cyclists by polluting the planet. Cyclists are better people than us, they live by a strict code of ethics that ensures that all of their actions protect the environment. All the carbon emissions created by the manufacturing and disposal of their non-recyclable helmets, glasses, Lycra swimsuit... er, costumes, er… outfits (damn my unconscious racism), bicycle seats, handle bar grips, tyres, brake pads, reflectors, light casings, water bottles and specialist cycle shoes are nothing compared to the death machine I drive and refer to euphemistically as a Nissan Qashqai.
I have motorist friends who share my concern for the plight of cyclists and indulge in a bit of cultural appropriation by wearing Lycra cycling shorts as underwear whilst driving.
And because cyclists are better people than us, we should make additional allowances for them. They cannot achieve equality with motorists until they enjoy privileges that motorists do not enjoy. And yet motorists ignore the institutionalised privilege of their positions and play the victim, undermining the movement for equality by insisting that they too should be able to block the road by driving two-abreast in order to talk to a friend in another car. Or weave in and out of other vehicles, undertaking and overtaking at such a speed that no one knows which way to look. Or driving through red lights. Or mounting the pavement and, without warning, re-joining the road and generally expecting everyone else to be a fucking mind-reader.
I think it's time to start a movement called 'Cyclists Pride', with annual parades in every city, compulsory teaching in faith schools (with religious beliefs that demonise cyclists) and a symbol to represent it, something already commonplace that can make people think of cyclists every time they see one. Perhaps a circle. The 'Cyclist Circle'. Then you wouldn't be able to look at a circle, anywhere you go, without thinking of cyclists and loving them more and accepting them.
So, that's my message for today's blog post. In my next post, I will be campaigning on behalf of people who can't help being sarcastic bastards all the time.
It would be wrong to mock them for how they dress, just because it's different to the rest of us. I would be indignant if a public figure, like the Prime Minister or the Queen or someone, said something offensive in a Tweet, such as 'Cyclists wear silly shorts that look like they've sat in a warm bath until they've shrunk' or 'Cyclists look like they've accidentally sat in tar' or 'Cyclists ride up the high street while their shorts ride up their arses'. That sort of prejudice is just not on.
When I was younger, we knew a bloke who suddenly got into cycling, bought all the gear, looked like he'd gone top of the range, helmet from NASA to reduce the effects of G-Force, glasses from one of Michael Jackson's backing dancers. And we mocked him for shaving his legs between the top of his socks and the bottom of his shorts. He explained that it bought him an extra 3 seconds every minute when he was racing, as hairs on legs increase wind resistance. He didn't race. But he identified as a cyclist and we should have accepted his lifestyle choice and not have indulged in confirmation bias by saying to each other what an 'utter fucking bell-end' he was.
Some people argue that everyone is naturally racist towards cyclists, because they haven't integrated with us motorists, even though some of them drive a car as well. They try to argue that we all naturally experience a negative emotion as soon as we see the garish colours of a Tour-de-France-wannabe on the road ahead of us, even though we have been conditioned to safely give cyclists space as we over take, that deep down we want to nudge the back tyre with our bumper and make them wobble and go flailing headlong into a ditch or a lamp-post.
As a motorist, I feel embarrassed for the historic evils of my ancestors, who colonised the roads with better technology than bicycles and forced cyclists into the role of second class road-citizens. I feel deep shame for the past and as a result I like to campaign for the rights of cyclists by trolling people on Twitter who say anything negative against them as a minority group, because I am assuming in my ignorant, over-earnest, desperate bid to be empathetic, that they will feel victimised by all forms of criticism.
I also feel deeply ashamed that as a motorist, I am consciously and deliberately killing the children and grandchildren of cyclists by polluting the planet. Cyclists are better people than us, they live by a strict code of ethics that ensures that all of their actions protect the environment. All the carbon emissions created by the manufacturing and disposal of their non-recyclable helmets, glasses, Lycra swimsuit... er, costumes, er… outfits (damn my unconscious racism), bicycle seats, handle bar grips, tyres, brake pads, reflectors, light casings, water bottles and specialist cycle shoes are nothing compared to the death machine I drive and refer to euphemistically as a Nissan Qashqai.
I have motorist friends who share my concern for the plight of cyclists and indulge in a bit of cultural appropriation by wearing Lycra cycling shorts as underwear whilst driving.
And because cyclists are better people than us, we should make additional allowances for them. They cannot achieve equality with motorists until they enjoy privileges that motorists do not enjoy. And yet motorists ignore the institutionalised privilege of their positions and play the victim, undermining the movement for equality by insisting that they too should be able to block the road by driving two-abreast in order to talk to a friend in another car. Or weave in and out of other vehicles, undertaking and overtaking at such a speed that no one knows which way to look. Or driving through red lights. Or mounting the pavement and, without warning, re-joining the road and generally expecting everyone else to be a fucking mind-reader.
I think it's time to start a movement called 'Cyclists Pride', with annual parades in every city, compulsory teaching in faith schools (with religious beliefs that demonise cyclists) and a symbol to represent it, something already commonplace that can make people think of cyclists every time they see one. Perhaps a circle. The 'Cyclist Circle'. Then you wouldn't be able to look at a circle, anywhere you go, without thinking of cyclists and loving them more and accepting them.
So, that's my message for today's blog post. In my next post, I will be campaigning on behalf of people who can't help being sarcastic bastards all the time.
Tuesday, 22 October 2019
Never mind Global Warming, have you ever had Vosene in your Eye?
Recent environmental protests - the Extinction Rebellion's passive aggressive sticking and gluing and the messianic Greta Thurnberg's wrathful adult-bashing - employed approaches that triggered even more social polarisation in our divided society. One feature of these and other contemporary demonstrations of concern for the future of the planet has been the claims of young people (or older people on behalf of their children) that they are genuinely SCARED. And they present this FEAR with all the earnest emotion of someone expecting that level of PANICKED HORROR to cause an imminent soiling of the underpants.
I've seen enough episodes of Doctor Who over the decades to understand that 'end of the world' fear can affect people in just such a way, although THAT horror has been exacerbated by whichever robots or monsters were causing that threat. It would seem that the monsters in the minds of Generation Z's environmental child protesters are adults. Because of all the plastic we make for them to use.
Now, I'll hold back from being too scathing about their concerns, because I believe that they are genuine and no matter what your view is on evidence of this planet's environmental malaise and impending disintegration, it is better for us to do what we can to protect ourselves. But I do find it impossible to equate their level of fear to what was scaring the shit out of me when I was growing up.
I'm not JUST talking about the Cold War and its shadow of nuclear holocaust, which everyone agreed on and which could have happened at any moment. Yes that was scary, but the very real, daily, poo-inducing fears that I recall suffering from are probably laughably trivial in your minds; and for that reason, I will detail them here:
1. Having my hair washed.
Like most mum's, ours would wash our hair by holding us backwards over the bathroom sink and pouring water from a plastic cup onto our foreheads, almost like a baptism. Getting water in your eyes, which invariably happened, was unpleasant; but if Vosene was your mum's shampoo of choice, then this unpleasantness paled in comparison to the impact of getting some of that stuff in your eye. If she'd poured kerosene over your eyeballs and set fire to them, it wouldn't have been any worse. Vosene, in its distinctive dark green bottle, looking not unlike a container for toxic, radioactive substances, was absolutely terrifying. Why riot police, armed militias or terrorists did not employ this as a weapon in the 70s is baffling, but fortunate.
2. Gaps between the planks on Brighton Pier.
You Tube often brings us videos of hysterically frightened Japanese people as they willingly do the walk of death, standing on glass floors at the top of 100-storey skyscrapers or perilously edging their way on tightropes or climbing hooks on the sides of sheer cliff edges, thousands of feet above the ground. The best reactions are when these 'volunteers for fear' weep and crawl, clinging to whatever is to hand. Well that was ME whenever we went onto Brighton Pier on childhood days out or holidays. The fact that you can see the sea between the gaps in the planks led me to believe that they could not possibly be secure enough to take my weight. Where possible, I walked along the joists in order to minimise the chances of falling through to a certain death in 3 feet of sea water.
3. The Dark.
Being brought up Catholic afforded me the joy of superstitious belief in just about everything. If you can believe in the Devil, then the natural sequence of credibility will take you to accept the existence of ghosts, monsters, goblins, witches, demons, the anti-Christ and the whole panorama of malevolent beings that have existed for centuries in folklore and culture. And because you never saw them during the day and because they were evil, logic dictated that they would exist in THE DARK. And THE DARK was everywhere. It was at the bottom of the garden at night, in your bedroom cupboard and even under your bed. Therefore, thanks to family religion, being allowed to watch The Omen at a young age and my Dad's regular attempts to scare us shitless by turning off lights and shouting, 'DAMIEN!' when we were alone upstairs, meant that I lived in a semi-permanent state of dread. THAT would put the willies up you much more than a melting iceberg would.
4. Getting caught doing something wrong like skidding your pants
Ironically, given that I have described FEAR in scatological terms (ha, I describe EVERYTHING in those terms, you might have noticed), it was the worry of our mum discovering that I'd skidded my pants that also caused me fear in those days. My parents were never nasty or abusive (although you might have made up your own mind about that during point 3 above), but they were strict enough for us to worry about getting caught for doing something wrong. In the 1970s all pants were white Y-fronts, meaning that if you didn't adequately apply enough rigour to your post-lavatorial hygiene machinations, you'd end up with some very conspicuous skidmarks (or worse) that you wouldn't want your mum to discover. As good as Persil and Aerial purported to be in those days, that sort of laundry would require a blow-torch and chisel. So rather than land ourselves in it by casually flinging any offensively soiled pants into the dirty wash, we'd strategically hide them behind the toilet or sink, where they'd dry out and fester for weeks before discovery. By which point I'd use that very human of excuses for wrong-doing, which is that I'd done it 'ages ago', implicitly claiming that TIME has naturally caused me to become a better person since then.
I could go on, but I might try your patience further. There are also tube trains coming out of tunnels, wasps, spiders, God, the Devil, nuns, waste disposal units, our PE and Geography teacher, older girls from Minchenden school who sat upstairs on the 121 and talked to you and having to drink a warm bottle of milk at primary school. I suppose I should fear global warming, but fear rarely led me to do the right thing in those days. I carried on using Vosene when I was old enough to wash my own hair, I dared myself to go to the bottom of the garden, I've been back to Brighton pier countless times. And as for skidding my pants... well, let's just say I don't throw them behind the toilet anymore.
I've seen enough episodes of Doctor Who over the decades to understand that 'end of the world' fear can affect people in just such a way, although THAT horror has been exacerbated by whichever robots or monsters were causing that threat. It would seem that the monsters in the minds of Generation Z's environmental child protesters are adults. Because of all the plastic we make for them to use.
Now, I'll hold back from being too scathing about their concerns, because I believe that they are genuine and no matter what your view is on evidence of this planet's environmental malaise and impending disintegration, it is better for us to do what we can to protect ourselves. But I do find it impossible to equate their level of fear to what was scaring the shit out of me when I was growing up.
I'm not JUST talking about the Cold War and its shadow of nuclear holocaust, which everyone agreed on and which could have happened at any moment. Yes that was scary, but the very real, daily, poo-inducing fears that I recall suffering from are probably laughably trivial in your minds; and for that reason, I will detail them here:
1. Having my hair washed.
Like most mum's, ours would wash our hair by holding us backwards over the bathroom sink and pouring water from a plastic cup onto our foreheads, almost like a baptism. Getting water in your eyes, which invariably happened, was unpleasant; but if Vosene was your mum's shampoo of choice, then this unpleasantness paled in comparison to the impact of getting some of that stuff in your eye. If she'd poured kerosene over your eyeballs and set fire to them, it wouldn't have been any worse. Vosene, in its distinctive dark green bottle, looking not unlike a container for toxic, radioactive substances, was absolutely terrifying. Why riot police, armed militias or terrorists did not employ this as a weapon in the 70s is baffling, but fortunate.
2. Gaps between the planks on Brighton Pier.
You Tube often brings us videos of hysterically frightened Japanese people as they willingly do the walk of death, standing on glass floors at the top of 100-storey skyscrapers or perilously edging their way on tightropes or climbing hooks on the sides of sheer cliff edges, thousands of feet above the ground. The best reactions are when these 'volunteers for fear' weep and crawl, clinging to whatever is to hand. Well that was ME whenever we went onto Brighton Pier on childhood days out or holidays. The fact that you can see the sea between the gaps in the planks led me to believe that they could not possibly be secure enough to take my weight. Where possible, I walked along the joists in order to minimise the chances of falling through to a certain death in 3 feet of sea water.
3. The Dark.
Being brought up Catholic afforded me the joy of superstitious belief in just about everything. If you can believe in the Devil, then the natural sequence of credibility will take you to accept the existence of ghosts, monsters, goblins, witches, demons, the anti-Christ and the whole panorama of malevolent beings that have existed for centuries in folklore and culture. And because you never saw them during the day and because they were evil, logic dictated that they would exist in THE DARK. And THE DARK was everywhere. It was at the bottom of the garden at night, in your bedroom cupboard and even under your bed. Therefore, thanks to family religion, being allowed to watch The Omen at a young age and my Dad's regular attempts to scare us shitless by turning off lights and shouting, 'DAMIEN!' when we were alone upstairs, meant that I lived in a semi-permanent state of dread. THAT would put the willies up you much more than a melting iceberg would.
4. Getting caught doing something wrong like skidding your pants
Ironically, given that I have described FEAR in scatological terms (ha, I describe EVERYTHING in those terms, you might have noticed), it was the worry of our mum discovering that I'd skidded my pants that also caused me fear in those days. My parents were never nasty or abusive (although you might have made up your own mind about that during point 3 above), but they were strict enough for us to worry about getting caught for doing something wrong. In the 1970s all pants were white Y-fronts, meaning that if you didn't adequately apply enough rigour to your post-lavatorial hygiene machinations, you'd end up with some very conspicuous skidmarks (or worse) that you wouldn't want your mum to discover. As good as Persil and Aerial purported to be in those days, that sort of laundry would require a blow-torch and chisel. So rather than land ourselves in it by casually flinging any offensively soiled pants into the dirty wash, we'd strategically hide them behind the toilet or sink, where they'd dry out and fester for weeks before discovery. By which point I'd use that very human of excuses for wrong-doing, which is that I'd done it 'ages ago', implicitly claiming that TIME has naturally caused me to become a better person since then.
I could go on, but I might try your patience further. There are also tube trains coming out of tunnels, wasps, spiders, God, the Devil, nuns, waste disposal units, our PE and Geography teacher, older girls from Minchenden school who sat upstairs on the 121 and talked to you and having to drink a warm bottle of milk at primary school. I suppose I should fear global warming, but fear rarely led me to do the right thing in those days. I carried on using Vosene when I was old enough to wash my own hair, I dared myself to go to the bottom of the garden, I've been back to Brighton pier countless times. And as for skidding my pants... well, let's just say I don't throw them behind the toilet anymore.
Thursday, 10 October 2019
Moving to the Country
I've always considered the countryside - and nature in general - as something to be admired from afar, in pictures or on telly or for a few days holiday in comfortable surroundings (never a tent, I don't get the concept of 'holidaying' by recreating in tiny form the conditions of a Calais migrant camp). I admire its beauty, its peace and tranquillity and its spaciousness; especially the latter, which to a misanthropic bastard like me, holds much attraction. But as someone who has only ever lived in London or large satellite towns, where nature exists in mere bitesize chunks, I had viewed the countryside as something intrinsically DIRTY. Up close it's all mud and insects and bloody stinging nettles.
But 3 weeks ago, we moved house and now we live in a village (a small one at that, a hamlet to be more accurate perhaps, as it has no shops and just one pub and a village hall serving what I guess is less than 50 households.) We might only be a 5 minute walk to the edge of the city of St Albans and 10 from the nearest shop - and my wife, who grew up in a slightly more remote area of the countryside scoffs at me for even describing this as 'the country' - but we are surrounded by fields and therefore we ARE in the countryside and can now self-identify as proper yokel country folk. (By the current rules of self-identification, we could have claimed this living in a city, but without the credibility, obviously.)
The inevitable paranoia of a town-dwelling nature-phobe struck me on the day we walked through the door of our new home. There were spiders everywhere. I thought, fuck, it's the countryside, we have to share our house with a million spiders. I'd been used to houses where almost every crack was sealed up and spiders were a rare intrusion; and here we were in a house (part of which is an 1850s built cottage) which appeared practically open to nature. What else would we find living here? Small, round, hard, black bits all over the place led me to panic that it was also infested by mice. My wife insisted - as I rolled up and squished some of this evidence between finger and thumb - that this was not mouse poo, but it looked and felt like it and short of tasting it, I was not to be convinced otherwise.
Having reached this stage of unexpected anxiety at what should be a magic moment of walking into a new house, I was open to further panicked doom-mongering. The wallpaper was bumpy in places and I feared damp underneath. There were cracks in the plaster under this; and you'd get a sense of sloping floors as you walked from room to room - like the villains' hide-outs in the 60s Batman series - and I thought the house was sinking into some undiscovered Medieval cess pit and only months from fully collapsing.
The departing family, despite having nicely modernised the house and made it very presentable for viewings when selling, appear to have had adapted to country life by becoming slightly DIRTY themselves. I assumed that they came to accept spiders as part of the deal and thus left them hanging immobile around the ceiling edges of the lounge. One of my first actions - and most of you won't approve - was to run the hoover attachment along those edges to suck up every cobweb and every unsuspecting spider. (I did empty the hoover straight afterwards, so hopefully they survived the experience and escaped from our outside bin). Over a few days, noticing that spiders did not return in the same vast quantities, I was put at ease and even managed to tolerate them. (Was I becoming DIRTY thanks to nature?) The fact that we now only have a couple, they are very spindly and small and they don't move, means that I tend to leave them alone. (Any that DO move, however, especially if bigger or fatter, are electrocuted with a specially designed electrified tennis racket-shaped piece of anti-insect weaponry that, again, you will judge me poorly for resorting to. In my defence, I only do it because I feel my life is in danger. Ish.)
The previous owners' slight, nature-related DIRTYNESS also accounted for what I thought was mouse poo. It was just bits of dirt, possibly mud. It hasn't returned. Somehow, we don't have mice. Paranoia abated, thankfully.
And the wallpaper is only bumpy, because whoever put it up appears to have lacked one key skill required when wallpapering and that is the skill of 'not fucking up the wallpapering.' I suspect the decorator was wearing boxing gloves or a blindfold or was drunk. There is no damp problem. Cracks were in the plaster not the brickwork. We aren't crumbling into ruins.
So after that initial misguided and frankly quite stupid bout of pessimism, I find myself totally unable to moan about moving to the country. The feeling is a strange one. A sort of uneasy contentment, a realisation of being a bit of a lucky bastard and I am now void of ideas to write a cynical blog post about.
I will need to make sure I visit town regularly enough to remind myself of all the things I hate. otherwise I'll have less to write about.
But 3 weeks ago, we moved house and now we live in a village (a small one at that, a hamlet to be more accurate perhaps, as it has no shops and just one pub and a village hall serving what I guess is less than 50 households.) We might only be a 5 minute walk to the edge of the city of St Albans and 10 from the nearest shop - and my wife, who grew up in a slightly more remote area of the countryside scoffs at me for even describing this as 'the country' - but we are surrounded by fields and therefore we ARE in the countryside and can now self-identify as proper yokel country folk. (By the current rules of self-identification, we could have claimed this living in a city, but without the credibility, obviously.)
The inevitable paranoia of a town-dwelling nature-phobe struck me on the day we walked through the door of our new home. There were spiders everywhere. I thought, fuck, it's the countryside, we have to share our house with a million spiders. I'd been used to houses where almost every crack was sealed up and spiders were a rare intrusion; and here we were in a house (part of which is an 1850s built cottage) which appeared practically open to nature. What else would we find living here? Small, round, hard, black bits all over the place led me to panic that it was also infested by mice. My wife insisted - as I rolled up and squished some of this evidence between finger and thumb - that this was not mouse poo, but it looked and felt like it and short of tasting it, I was not to be convinced otherwise.
Having reached this stage of unexpected anxiety at what should be a magic moment of walking into a new house, I was open to further panicked doom-mongering. The wallpaper was bumpy in places and I feared damp underneath. There were cracks in the plaster under this; and you'd get a sense of sloping floors as you walked from room to room - like the villains' hide-outs in the 60s Batman series - and I thought the house was sinking into some undiscovered Medieval cess pit and only months from fully collapsing.
The departing family, despite having nicely modernised the house and made it very presentable for viewings when selling, appear to have had adapted to country life by becoming slightly DIRTY themselves. I assumed that they came to accept spiders as part of the deal and thus left them hanging immobile around the ceiling edges of the lounge. One of my first actions - and most of you won't approve - was to run the hoover attachment along those edges to suck up every cobweb and every unsuspecting spider. (I did empty the hoover straight afterwards, so hopefully they survived the experience and escaped from our outside bin). Over a few days, noticing that spiders did not return in the same vast quantities, I was put at ease and even managed to tolerate them. (Was I becoming DIRTY thanks to nature?) The fact that we now only have a couple, they are very spindly and small and they don't move, means that I tend to leave them alone. (Any that DO move, however, especially if bigger or fatter, are electrocuted with a specially designed electrified tennis racket-shaped piece of anti-insect weaponry that, again, you will judge me poorly for resorting to. In my defence, I only do it because I feel my life is in danger. Ish.)
The previous owners' slight, nature-related DIRTYNESS also accounted for what I thought was mouse poo. It was just bits of dirt, possibly mud. It hasn't returned. Somehow, we don't have mice. Paranoia abated, thankfully.
And the wallpaper is only bumpy, because whoever put it up appears to have lacked one key skill required when wallpapering and that is the skill of 'not fucking up the wallpapering.' I suspect the decorator was wearing boxing gloves or a blindfold or was drunk. There is no damp problem. Cracks were in the plaster not the brickwork. We aren't crumbling into ruins.
So after that initial misguided and frankly quite stupid bout of pessimism, I find myself totally unable to moan about moving to the country. The feeling is a strange one. A sort of uneasy contentment, a realisation of being a bit of a lucky bastard and I am now void of ideas to write a cynical blog post about.
I will need to make sure I visit town regularly enough to remind myself of all the things I hate. otherwise I'll have less to write about.
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