Hymn

Coarse Riding

On the child’s ride:

I road dis horse Like I road Zac’s Mum

Parents, eh?

Vortex

I missed my train. 
By fractions of a second.  For a fractious second time this week. 
I sat outside with the exiled smokers in the setting sun.

I shooed away the pigeon beggars,
As they peddled their woebegone tales and looked for left over change;
The rain of rejections running clean off their back.

I watched the vortex of litter and leaves that span between two buildings
With commuters finding themselves in the midst;
Hating or loving passing through its eye.

Scary Hairy Mary

I hate this getting old.  Nothing seems to resemble the movies I watched as a child or the promises they made about adulthood.  There are no flying cars, I don’t own a light sabre and my home isn’t a palatial mansion.  But it’s worse than that.  I am not growing more youthful or dashing, beautiful young women do not throw themselves at me and I rarely save the day.  As if getting old was enough of a chore, increasing my doubts that I’ll ever play football in the Premiere League, Mother Nature seems intent on being mean.  She’s scratching lines into my face and stretching my skin in the more unlikely of places.  She’s determined to shift my centre of gravity to my waist and she’s robbing hairs from my scalp and planting them elsewhere on my person. 

Enough is enough.  I have drawn a line, not that I really need another.  I fear my wrinkles are here to stay but I’m hoping they’ll add character, Harry Potter, if I’m lucky; I’m sure my waistline has the potential to shrink but what else are belts for?  For the other I am taking more drastic action.

I had walked past the window three or four times before summoning the courage to go in.  My furtive shuffling back and forth had done little to create a good first impression.  On the contrary, by the third pass the girls inside were peering nervously out with a look normally reserved for bearded Arabs with rucksacks or men in trench coats.

It was too much.  I couldn’t do it.  I retired to fortify myself with a nice cup of tea and hoped they might forget about me during my twenty minutes in the café.   

I knew I was being silly.  This is the twenty-first century.  The age of the New Man.  Equality.  Tolerance.  Metrosexualism.  I had nothing to fear.  But then, I am a man who is regularly afraid of nothing.

They remembered me.  Damn it.  The girls.  The attractive, if slightly clichéd, bleached blonde girls.  With their marginally over done make-up.  And their unsettlingly low necklines, their aggressive, youthful, pouting and their ironic white tunics.  Oh, they remembered me.  Oh, they remembered me.

Some men would carry this as a badge of honour.  A gaggle of girls.  A giggle of recognition.  Some men would be pleased to have been noticed, to be the centre of their attention.  But I struggled to draw any comfort from their deduction that I was utterly utterly harmless.

I was alone with five peroxide blondes.  Half my age.  Not for the first time, I felt every ounce of confidence, and for all I could tell, every stitch of clothing, evaporate.  This was not comfortable nakedness.   I am not Caligula.  I am not cool.  And I have never been called Mr Cucumber.  Thank God I can always fall back on my natural wit and charm.

“Wax.”  I blurted.  “Wax.  I’m sorry, it’s a bit embarrassing.  Do you wax?”

One of the girls shifted uncomfortably and, without thinking, rubbed her lip.

 “I mean, obviously, you wax.  I can see that.  That’s what you girls do, isn’t it?  And I’m sure you do a good job.”

The girl on the reception desk stool crossed her legs and scowled.

“Best thing for it though, isn’t it?  I mean, have it off.  One good hard yank.  All done.  No fannying around.”

I’m not entirely sure they grasped my meaning.  Out of the corner of my eye I saw one reach for the telephone or the under-the-counter alarm or a baseball bat.

“I bet it stings a little.  Is it sore afterwards?  It’s just, I’m going to have to squeeze in between other things.”

I paused.  For some reason, I was still the only one talking.

“You do do it though, don’t you?  And you could do me?  Not now, of course.  I’d like to shower first.  Maybe afterwards too.  So in a lunch hour, maybe?”

The room was beginning to feel a little warm and a tad smaller.  I tried a different tack.

“My wife, who obviously knows about these things, says not to worry too much, it’ll only take a couple of minutes.  That I’ll be in and out before anyone notices.  She thinks it’s the best thing.  To be honest, I think she’s a bit fed up with me badgering her about it at home.  Says I should just go and do it.  Find a pro, so to speak.  Someone cheap.  So here I am.”

Although sense had long been absent, my mouth finally ran out of words.

I took a breath; relieved I’d articulated it all so clearly.  I had been worried.

I looked at the girls.  For what seemed like quite a long time. 

‘What,’ asked the girl behind the desk with as much restraint as she could muster through gritted teeth, ‘do you want?  Tell me or I’ll call the police.’

“I’m sorry.  What?”
‘What do you want?’

Poor girl.  Obviously struggling to understand plain English.

I spoke more slowly.  And a little louder.

“I have some hair.  I’d like you to wax it off.”

A beat.  Four of the girls visibly relaxed.  And looked at the fifth.  I can’t be sure, but I’d swear she’d gone a little pale.

The receptionist, suddenly animated, pulled out the appointments book.

‘In a couple of days time?’ she asked with surprising enthusiasm.  ‘Give us enough time to get everything ready.’

“Marvellous!” I cried and skipped out the of the salon, pleased it had all gone so well.

Plant Box

Little s loves to help.  Today we were in the front garden.  I arbitrarily ripped up the plants I considered to be weeds, showing my little girl all the ants, bugs and wriggly worms I discovered along the way.  She dutifully carried tiny fistfuls of debris to the bin.

After half an hour or so, I noticed that the bin didn’t appear any fuller but s still shuttled back and forth between my pile of disembowelled plants and the tub near the door. 

Naturally, and given her gastronomic enthusiasm, I feared the worst: that she was gently munching her way through the foliage and insects.  I need not have worried.  She wasn’t eating it.  She was pushing all through the letterbox.

And, such is the nature of things in our house, at the moment I noticed this inventive solution from the outside, T, busy tidying, discovers it from the inside.  I could tell - I'd know that scream anywhere.

She didn’t even seem excited to see the ‘wiggly warm, mummy, wiggly warm’ on the hall carpet.  I don't know why she was so upset, it least it was a whole one this time.

A Bit of a Tit

I sometimes wonder if I’m wearing an invisible sandwich board.  Or if those suspicions that someone’s playing an elaborate joke are true after all.

“Here you are, mate,” said the sharply-dressed man in the cafe. 

“Great pair of tits in there,” as he handed me a newspaper.

“On page 3.” 

‘Thank you’ I offered, dumbfounded but not forgetting my manners.

My lunch-sharing colleague gawped at me from across the table, his forkful of omelette held in suspended animation an inch from his mouth.

“Did you know him?” D asked eventually.
‘Nope’ I replied, trying to sound nonchalant.  ‘These things tend to happen.’ I added in way of explanation.

A laden silence fell on the table.

I’m not sure which aspect of this encounter worried me most.  The fact that I give the impression of a man in need of Carry On-style titillation, or the fact I look naive enough not to know where to find the eponymous topless beauty.  Libidinous and stupid.  A tough combination to master unless you’re a hedgehog with a scrubbing brush. 

Or me.  Apparently.

Life's a Gas (Guzzler)

Someone should wrench my computer away from me.  Save me from myself.  I am clearly not to be trusted with a link to the outside world.  Stop me from making it worse.  It might be too late: I have done a Bad Thing.  Of course, I blame bad parents, poor teachers, the Government, the man across the street, my lack of good socks.

You might remember how our perfectly good car was written off by a perfectly bad driver.  Idiot.  The most annoying thing was that the damage was superficial.  It’s just that the car was already technically worthless.  Damn it.  Anyway, we’ve had enough of being shabby: I’ve bought a new car. 

Obviously when I say ‘new’, I mean ‘new’ in the way the Pyramids are new compared to Stonehenge.  And when I say ‘bought’ I mean ‘ebay.’ 

Well. Why not I thought.  What can possible go wrong?

The 1.6 litre was underpowered.  I wanted a 1.8 . I was offered a 2.0 litre.  I bought a 2.5 litre.  V6.  Sports Injection.  In a fit frustration.  In a moment of madness.  From a man in Essex.

Apparently it’ll do 0-60 in one shake of a lamb’s tail.  And travel two or three miles on a full tank of petrol.  It is a perfect family car.  Especially in these times of cheap fuel.  I am a pecuniary genius.  And ebay is my perfect muse. 

Or I am a fool.  Tricky one...

Deaf Old Cats

I haven’t really been to many concerts.  I’m not entirely sure why.  Maybe, I’ve been busy.  Those I have attended read like the top ten gayest bands of all time: Erasure, Pet Shop Boys, Madonna, Prince, Erasure, Mel C, Britney. It is all rather uncool.  Even at the time, it wasn’t trendy.  Now it’s utterly inexplicable and verging on the unjustifiable.  It’s not even as though I’ve been Making a Statement.  It’s just coincidence: I happen to like gay disco music.  And Spandex.  Obviously.  I am clearly a very confused young man.  Well two thirds of that statement is correct.

Still, there’s nothing like being mildly ashamed of one’s earlier musical tastes.  I don’t have the decency to be as embarrassed as I ought.

Tonight though was different.  Tonight was an opportunity to redress the balance.  Tonight I nail my colours to an entirely different mast.  Although I suspect it’s not improved my standing in the cool stakes.  Tonight I went to a joint Whitesnake/ Def Leppard concert – a band famous for having sex during the guitar solos.

It was T’s night, really.  She’s never really abandoned her youthful tastes.  For her, this was a dream come true.  Had we been able to make next week’s gigs, she would have died and gone to Heaven – Thunder were joining too.  I’m already out of my depth.

Obviously I’d spent most of the 80s wearing clothes that were marginally too tight but the whole Rock/ Metal phenomena hadn’t entirely passed me by.  I do own a Whitesnake LP.  It’s in the attic.  T has every song they’ve ever released.  There’s quite a lot of them.

The bands are celebrating 30 years on this tour.  I hadn’t appreciated the significance of that until we sat down.  Everyone was old.  Really, uncoolly old.  And not prepared to admit it.  There wasn’t a dignified person in the whole place.  There were some grey-haired head-bangers.  The superannuated man next to me had a hearing aid.  Everyone had more wrinkles than an old leather jacket.  Even the rockstars made inappropriately coarse and embarrassing remarks (although I suspect there’s still enough glamour around them to justify some prescription Viagra during the instrumentals).

Still, we had a grand time.  I even recognised one of the songs.  And we all left early enough to catch the last bus home.  With our free bus passes.

Train Loop

There are few things about which I could claim to be an expert.  Although as I come to list them, ‘few’ actually means none.  You might expect ‘The Life and Times of Me’ would feature in some personal knowledge inventory but I suspect there’d be too many challenges for that to hold up in court.  And I’d have to accept some responsibility.  Besides, I’m not sure I’ve been in the story the whole time.  And if I have been, perhaps I shouldn’t.  I was quite familiar the soccer stars of 1978 once but I have lost the near complete sticker book.  And there are allegations that during my adolescence I was intimate with certain sections of the Littlewoods mail order catalogue but because I was too young to own a credit card there are no records to prove it.

I am, however, pretty confident that I have a working knowledge of the inside of a railway carriage.  I know, for example, which way the carriages are numbered.  Where First Class will be.  Where the available space in Chicken Class is likely.  How many wretched commuters can squeeze into the luggage rack.  I am fairly certain that I understand both the general construction and physics of the standard railway car.  Until today, I was reasonably sure that the typical Virgin Pendalino did not contain either a cloning device or a wormhole in the Space-Time Continuum.  I am not one, however, to completely disregard empirical evidence.

It was the man with the wedding cake that did it.  Because one tends to remember a man with a wedding cake.  Actually I exaggerate.  He was only carrying one tier of a wedding cake.  In a box.  He carried it past me.  I know – I was there.

Five minutes later, he went past again.  From the same direction.  Now, of course, five minutes had elapsed since the first passing - a period too short to have forgotten and too long to confuse with déjà vu.  I think it was carefully calculated – a stretch just long enough to make you doubt your own sanity.  And, I was as sure as I could be without being a stalker that he hadn’t simply turned around and gone back the way he’d come.

But that was just twice.  I mean, these things happen.  Like World Wars. And alien abductions.  No-one really worries about them. Just coincidence.  A mistaken recurrence.  You can’t define a trend by just two events.  Unless you count my couple of pink shirts. 

A few more minutes then he went past again.  Goddammit.  With the third tier.  Same guy.  I wondered if he was a twin.  Or a triplet.  But would they all wear the same clothes.  That wouldn’t be hygienic, surely?  Dirty and impossible.  Twice, you could pass off.  Twice, you could ignore.  Three times?  Something’s going on.

Needless to say with my cat-like reflexes, he’d gone by the time I’d registered.  It made me really mad.  No-one else seemed to notice.  At least they didn’t notice the Amazing Reappearing Man.  Or his Cake.  They did start to notice a slightly twitchy me though.  I saw the elderly couple opposite nudge each other and in a volume that betrayed the advanced stages of deafness, whisper, ‘What’s eating him?  Do you think he’s simple?  Don’t stare.  He might be dangerous.’

Now though I was watching.   Unblinking.  Staring.  The minutes ticked by.  And what happened?  Oh, he came back.  From the same way.  Without slinking past me.  Or scaling past the window.  Or playing Chinese Traffic Lights with a moving train.  He came back.  The same way.  Without a cake.  But with a small boy.  A crude but effective form of defence.

“Oh come on!  This is ridiculous.”  I shouted at his back as they scurried away.

The elderly couple moved.  I didn’t see any of them again.