Hymn

Exhausted

I know it’s traditional to call ships ‘she’; what about cars?  Seems a little weird.  My car didn’t look feminine.  If it was a lady, it was a pretty butch one.  A butch lady.  Maybe.  Frankly, unlikely.  Frankly, that makes me feel a bit uncomfortable.  The thought that I was regularly riding a mannish lesbian suddenly puts all those journeys to Milton Keynes in an entirely new light.  Still, I was fond of the Old Girl.  Actually, now I think about it, it’s more camp than butch.  Yes, definitely a camp car.  Orange, you see.  Called ‘Blaze’ in the brochure. It was called ‘Baby Sick Yellow’ in the pub. Camp.  As mustard.  Yes, now that makes me feel a whole lot better, riding around in a screamingly camp car.  Suddenly a number of curious incidents with truck drivers make sense.

Anyway: gone.  We’d taken it in for a handful of minor repairs.  You know, tip of the exhaust had fallen off, a couple of bits of trim loose, faulty handbrake light.  That sort of thing.  Minor.  Slightly bothersome.  Nothing to worry about.  By the time we drove into the garage, it was dead.  It’s only a short drive too.

‘What’s that leak?’ our friendly mechanic asked.  And I’m not being sarcastic.  He’s always friendly.  Certainly pleased to see me.  Maybe it’s because, as he sucks air through his teeth, he’s glad it’s not his?

“What leak?”
‘That one.’
“Where?”
‘There.  The one gushing fluid from the gear box.’
“Oh yes.”
‘And there’s another there.’
“Oh good.  Good job I bought it in then.”
‘I’ll say.’  He rubbed his oily hands as though cleaning them and looked suspiciously like Fagin.

A couple of hours later he called.
‘I’ve got some good news and some bad news.’ he said brightly.
Why do I know that’s always a lie?  Or at least only half true.  And why does that phrase make me want to punch someone really hard?
“Oh yes?” I said, trying not to humour him.
‘I’ve found out what the problem is.’
“Is that the good news or the bad news?” I asked
‘Eh?’ he replied, slightly hurt that I wasn’t really playing along and, at the same time, missing the deeper metaphysical question I’d posed.  He carried on:
‘It’s coming from your gear box.  It’ll have to come out.  Might mean the clutch is a bit iffy too.  I have to take that out too so we can check.  And you’ve bust a brake pipe.  Lucky you didn’t want to stop quickly on the way here.’
“All in all, it doesn’t sound good.”
He sucked some more air through his teeth.
“How much?”
‘Well could be anything between a tenner and three hundred and eighty-nine thousand pounds.  Won’t know ‘til we get it all out.  ‘Course that will cost you three hundred.’
“Uh hu.  But it’s not worth that is it?  Not with it’s age and mileage”
‘And colour.’ he added helpfully.
“Yes, thank you.”

I bent over the windscreen. 

I whispered, “Sorry old girl.  Boy.” I corrected myself, “We’ve had some good times together.  And some uncomfortable ones - what with that gear stick and all.  But you know, there comes a time in every relationship when things change.  People change.  Time to move on.  It’s not you.  It’s me.  Things are moving too quickly.  I’m just not ready.  You’re too good for  me.  You deserve better.  I think of you more as a sister.  Brother.  Friend.  I hope we can still be friends.”

I kissed the wing mirror tenderly.

“What’s it worth - scrap?”

Choice

‘What would you like?’
“I don’t mind.  Really anything.”
‘No, come on, decide.’
“Really.  It’s fine.  Whatever you think.”
‘No, you choose.’
“Erm, okay, I’ll have Chicken with Cashew Nuts then.”
‘No, I’m not buying that.  I don’t like it.’

Singularly Unattractive

Her bust was too large for her top and her skirt too short for her legs.  But her dress wasn’t fun and playful, it was predatory.  She was reading ‘Sex, Lies and Online Dating.’  She screamed scared singleness.  And desperate.  It’s not a good look.  And in the same way that one's tongue can't ignore a lose tooth and toes always find the hole in the sock, my eyes couldn't avoid seeing the unseeable: so preposterously short was her dress that I had to endure the black triangle of her crotch for the whole journey home.  That’s not a good look either.

Summer Loving

There’s something really uplifting about the first glimpse of Summer.  I know.  I know.  We’ve only just entered Spring but tonight, coming home in the light, real day light,, with the sun making buildings glow gold and the sky bright blue, it felt like a delicious Summer’s evening.  It almost made me skip.  Then I remembered what a big butch fellow I am and kicked a discarded can meaningfully instead.   

Bite of the Apple

People who generalise are all the same.  No-good, Good-for-Nothings all of them.

Of course, I wouldn’t make sweeping statements, tarring everyone with the same brush so I wouldn’t say that all women are mad.  Just all the ones I’ve ever met.  I’m too old to worry about it much anymore but sometimes it still takes me by surprise. 

This is exactly what happened this afternoon:

A number of us sat in an important meeting over lunch.  It’s always easier to swallow bad news if your mouth’s full of a Coronation Chicken roll.  Still, it hadn’t been that bad.  The discussion trotted along nicely until  I took a bite out of a lovely juicy apple.  It made the loudest crunch ever.  In the whole world.  Two people opposite laughed.  I put the apple down and watched it go brown during the rest of the meeting.   

Returning to my desk, I was confronted by a screaming banshee.

This is what she said happened:

As she was making a very important point to some very important people, I, in full view of everyone, stuck two fingers up at her.  In front of everyone.  Disrespecting her.  In front of everyone.  Making some laugh.  In front of everyone.

Now, some lesser mortals, encumbered by a nagging sense of reason might have assumed that such behaviour, in full sight of everyone, would be so wildly inappropriate for such a meeting that it simply wouldn’t happen.  I’m the first to admit that I’ve done some pretty odd things in meetings before now, the trick with the orange and pencil sharpener not least among them, but I’m only ever making a fool of myself.

I tried to point this out.  She would have none of it.

She’d already confronted the two Laughers.  They had repeated, separately, unprompted, un-coached and unrehearsed exactly the same version of events as me, i.e. the actual events.

Again, their assertions absolutely inadmissible.  She hadn’t accepted my shocked rebuttal or the genuine opinions of the others.  I began to suspect this wasn’t going to be a negotiated settlement.

As she ranted and raved and waved her arms about I actually wondered if she’d perfected the art of swatting away sound waves before they could penetrate her ears.  She began to look like a hopelessly incompetent beekeeper.  Or a marionette in the hands of an amateur tightrope walker.  I smiled to myself but some of the grin leaked into the real world.  Needless to say it did not help to defuse the situation.

I tried reason.  I tried sympathy.  I tried evidence.  I tried empathising until my head hurt.  I even suggested I could understand why she might have thought I had stuck two fingers up to her in front of everyone.  Although I couldn’t understand it at all.  The one thing I couldn’t do was apologise for something I simply hadn’t done.  I’m not sure it would have done much good.  I’m not sure she was listening.

After another couple of minutes of noisy helicopter impression, she stormed off leaving me completely perplexed.  Like I say, barking mad.

Still, at least the apple was tasty.

Can Do

We have new neighbours.  They’ve moved in while we were away.  Thankfully not into our house, they are not squatters. They seem nice.  Of course they could be psychos.  Nice psychos.  They may be thinking the same about us.  But so far so good: no all night parties involving the regional chapters of Hell’s Angels; no nocturnal deliveries of wooden crates with exotic stamps in indecipherable fonts; no exotic pets killing cattle or uprooting the trees; no one who smells excessively of urine.  That makes them okay neighbours in my book.  I am a simple man.

However, I did have a intriguing glimpse into their garage during a recent So-you’ve-moved-in-then conversation.  I couldn’t count them, so I can’t be certain of the exact numbers but it looked like the garage was entirely full of cans of 7-up.  There must have been a million of them.  I have not heard the family burping unduly so I can only assume that the soft drink is for some other purpose.

He says is a builder.  I’m not entirely convinced.

Penny Drop

I don’t go to the supermarket on Saturday night very often.  Not because I’m out partying like a Whirling Dervish but because, more often than not, I’m slumped on the sofa like a Boring Old Fart.  It comes to something when life is so exhausting that the most attractive use of spare time is brain-dead dozing.  Having said that, a night out at the local Sainsbury’s isn’t really my idea of fun.  Still, it seems I’m missing a whole host of weekend activities that had eluded me before.

I was at the local store twice this evening.  For the same thing - such is my organisational prowess.  I wouldn’t admit it in public, but it was quite a pleasant experience.  Obviously it’s a relative term.  There were no queues, the shelves were stocked and my fellow customers seemed unusually friendly.  I’d heard rumours before about the grocery aisle being ranked third after Christmas parties and Internet Chatrooms for pick-ups but I don’t think I’ve ever had quite so many conversations about my root vegetables. And I’ll never be able to look at a pineapple again after my comments about the sword-shaped leaves were so wildly misinterpreted. 

I decided against collecting some muffins for breakfast. 

There was more excitement at the far end of the supermarket.  I saw a queue of people clustered around a dispensing machine.  They were giddy with anticipation and all carried unfeasibly heavy sacks.  I have never seen so many tuppences.  The object of their desire was a Small Change Converter but to these people, it was more magical than the wizard from Oz.

I watched as each person poured enormous quantities of copper coins into the bin on top.  The machine whirred and clicked as the pennies dropped.  The audience stood enrapt.  One small man in a tank-top couldn’t contain himself:  he clapped excitedly. 

The ‘fridge-sized box vibrated a little. 

A tantalising moment of silence while the magic worked. 

The tension was palpable.

Finally the money came.  I think the man in the tank-top did too.  This simple mechanical device produced unalloyed glee in its users.  Copper into silver.  What magic, what alchemy. 

Supermarkets  will never seem the same again.

Sprung on Us

How did that happen?  Yesterday it was winter.  Today the trees are full of blossom.  Now that’s a pleasant surprise.

Picker

We’ve all done it but it’s still horrific to watch.  In a moment of madness we believe we have disappeared from view and can do as we please.  It’s not true; everyone can see.  Everyone.  On train this morning I watched a young woman pick her nose.  The man next to her watched.  The girl opposite too.  I suspect we weren’t the only observers.  She remained oblivious to the attention, focussed as she was on the matter in hand. 

There’s a curiously common ritual associated with public picking, not that I’ve considered this at length, you understand.  It is thankfully rare that one comes across a flagrant and apparently proud picker.  Most partakers are modest and rely on wishful thinking, sleight of hand and distraction to cover their activity.  They are deluded.

She started with a nonchalant scratch followed by a careless rub.  Believing that these simple gestures constituted a magic charm and rendered her invisible to her fellow travellers the real work began.

There was nothing obviously untoward about her nose.  She had an ordinary sized face and all her features seemed in proportion so it was quite a surprise to see her finger disappear entirely up the left nostril.  I wondered briefly if she was actually scratching an itch on her frontal lobe.  Or maybe she was a novelty sword-swallowing act.   Frankly, the tell-tale nasal bulge came as a welcome relief. 

There was a good bit of exploratory poking.  She had a real dig.  A seriously good ferret.  Then, like a lucky angler, she clearly caught a whopper.  It took her a while to wrestle it out though.  We watched transfixed.  The tension was palpable: would it get away?  Would it pull her in?  After what seemed a lifetime of struggle, out it popped. 

I can’t imagine where it’d been hiding - it was the size of a house brick.  She inspected it slowly; a look of pride spread across her face.  Then without looking up, she rolled it into a ball with her fingers and dropped it on the carriage floor.  I think I heard it land.

She leaned back.  Exhausted but content.  She raised her eyes for the first time in ten minutes.  She was smiling.  We looked away, imperceptibly.

Back in the Saddle

The girl next door is clearly heart-broken.  Her first love: gone.  Still, she’s doing what she can to bear the pain.  Today she was playing tonsil tennis with a new Beau.  He looked older than the last one but no less eager.  I don’t think they paused through embarrassment so much as a need for oxygen. 

I think it’s admirable that she’s so boldly proclaiming to the world that she’s over the last boy but I wish I didn’t have to shuffle past tonguing teenagers every time I leave my house.  At least in the past they had the decency to be indecent behind closed doors.