Before We Get There, Though...

So, where were we?

Ah, yes. Before we return and get to the nub of the matter, and because this is an occasion where I’m not at home on a proper computer but am instead at somebody else’s home on a mobile app and determined not to break the daily post rhythm, two things.

First, the traditional Emergency Picture, not of the usual Debbie Harry;

 

And second; there’s a TV on in this place and it’s showing 2 Broke Girls. It’s, ah,,, horrible.

That is all. 

Take A Deep Breath, And...

It may come as a surprise to those of you who know me as a wisecracking, fun-filled ball of merriment, but there are times when I’m not the most cheerful man in the world. God knows, there have a couple of posts on here lately that might have had the more empathic among you reaching for the phone to ask if I’m, you know, alright, but let me assure you that A) yes, most of the time I’m fine thank you and B) I never answer the phone.

Nobody’s ‘on’ all the time though, and I’ll be straight with you; if you know what’s best for you you’d be well advised to steer a wide berth on Saturday evenings. My old man used to be a bugger for this; on Sunday mornings; there’d be a regular sideshow going on, as he’d get up in a bad mood, open the living room windows and ceremonially throw each one of our admittedly over-numerous cats (Mum was a bit of a soft touch for a waif or stray) out into the front garden, calling each one of them a selection of ripe names as he did, and there they’d sit, momentarily stunned by this impolite and thoroughly unwarranted intrusion into their busy agenda of sleeping on the sofa, licking their own backsides or wailing for scraps, then slip down the alley and come in the back way, where Dad would find them, pick them up, and chuck them out the front again.

I don’t think I’ve inherited the old man’s at times incandescent temper, being more of a slow burner, but Saturday afternoons really do get on my wick. For a start, while any sensible person would have spent the day having a lie-in, maybe taking a leisurely fry-up and a wander around the shops before settling back with Final Score and contemplating what debauchery the evening might bring I, working as I do in retail, would have spent the day at work. And, working as I do in what we refer to ‘Specialist Retail’, I’ll have seen most of the day spent staring into space, or processing stock, or just begging silently for somebody to come into the shop and either have a conversation or, you know, actually spend some money.

It doesn’t help that Saturdays usually follow a pretty well-worn routine: sod all happens, then at about twelve I go out and get coffee and have a chat with Gareth in the Blackhorse Workshops; then sod all happens, then Mo comes in with more coffee, then sod all happens, then it gets a bit busy when the locals go for their afternoon stroll, and then, just as the metaphorical factory whistle gathers a head of steam for its final blow, it’ll be Timmy Time.

Timmy Time begins with a 158 bus pulling up outside, then its doors open, then nothing happens for a moment or three before, from its depths, a blue carrier bag makes its appearance. This is followed by its owner; a lumbering creature in soiled tracky bottoms and a t-shirt of no small vintage, over which is casually - and literally - thrown a beige suede jacket decorated by a selection of interesting stains. This fashionable ensemble is completed by a baseball cap embroidered with the logo of some long-forgotten West End musical flop; Oscar Wilde, perhaps, or Sing-A-Long With Pol Pot.

All of these clothe the fulsome figure that is Timmy. If you need to know what Timmy’s like, let me tell you this: I once had to accompany him home when he was having one of his more emotionally fraught afternoons. This meant getting a cab and staying with him for the journey as it was not entirely a certainty that he’d be able to recall his own address, then seeing him to his door after slapping a tenner into the driver’s hand (“I’m not letting you out, I’ve seen too many runners lately”) while I walked with him, at a pace which even the most relaxed flaneur would describe as leisurely, to his door. There, his mother, a gaunt woman in an acrylic pullover and an expression far wearier than you’d expect even on someone in their latter years and with a slightly handicapped fifty-year-old son, thanked me for seeing him home and explained, obviously not for the first time: “He was a difficult birth”. I of course told her it was no bother and hot-footed it back out onto the street, just in time to see the cab’s tail-lights as it disappeared around the corner, leaving me on a nondescript Chingford side-street with no idea where I was, as cold rain began to fall.

So: Timmy’s a challenge. But Timmy’s also good for about eighty quid a visit, so you knuckle under and get on with it, knowing that no matter how much of a strain dealing with him is going to be, you’re safe in the knowledge that at least he’ll be the last customer of the week and from here on in the weekend’s your own.

Timmy likes Spider-Man. A lot. His baggy-necked t-shirts generally feature some representation of his hero, or sometimes of Harley Quinn, the psychotic one-time sidekick who became a sensation in her own right (and yes, I’m fully aware that I’m talking about fictional characters as though they were real people with an actual existence and everything. Perk of the job, y’know?)

Because Timmy likes Spider-Man a lot, he buys every Spider-Man comic that’s published. Which is a lot of Spider-Man titles. Core books, spin-offs, mini-series; Tim buys them all, plus a load of other stuff, all of it tucked away by either myself or the boss as part of our “You call it a Standing Order, we call it Guaranteed Money” service. Like I said, eighty quid a week.

What Timmy likes to do is to be handed the inches-thick pile of publications that we’ve put aside for him at his request, then spend as much time as possible looking at the shelves, then ask whether any title has been cancelled – this is regardless of whether he reads this particular book or not – then chat to anybody else who may be in attendance about what they’re reading – and this is regardless of whether they join in the conversation, smile politely and edge away, or just flat-out ignore him. Sometimes he goes up to another customer and just starts to riffle through whatever they’ve picked up, but we’ve explained to him more than once that if you do that, then in the fullness of time you will get hit. Then Timmy does What Timmy Does.

What Timmy Does is order more books than he can afford in any given week. It’s okay, it averages out over the month, but in two weeks out of three he has more reserved for him than the budget allows. So that’s our first question (and when I say ‘our’, I mean ‘my’, as by this time the boss is hiding in the back room, supposedly backing up the database or doing the last admin of the week, but in actuality strumming on the acoustic guitar he keeps out there for just such eventualities). “Tim, what’s your budget?” And Tim will tell us: it’s eighty quid. Sometimes it’s fifty, or in lean weeks it’s thirty. If he’s been to the theatre – and you’ll have gathered from an earlier paragraph that Tim like a musical, which I’m also quite noted for, and I’ll admit that if I’m in a good mood I may occasionally strike up a version of Fugue For Tinhorns or another of the tunes from Guys And Dolls or whatever he’s been to see – it may be as low as twenty. In a week when he's been paid for his job of collecting trolleys in a supermarket carpark, it may be as high as a hundred and twenty.

That’s when we start the real work. Tim will sort his pile out into the books he really wants to take this week, and the books that he’d like to take this week but which aren’t vital, and the ones that can go back in his box until there’s cash enough to cover them. I’ll add them up and give him a total.

And then he’ll go over the shelves again and add some more. Won’t tell me, mind. Then he’ll take things out his ‘buy’ pile and swap them for things from his ‘put them back’ pile. Won’t tell me. So the whole ‘reaching a final total’ thing can take a while. Also, during this it’s usually rubbing closely up against closing time and I’ll have been there for nine hours already so I’m not really willing to dawdle, especially as there’s shutters to bring down and lights to turn off and all the other tiny locking-up-the-shop jobs that when put together can add up to a good ten minutes worth of labour. That’s about the pount where I lower my voice into a friendly-but-menacing growl and mutter “You’re on my time now, sunshine”. Timmy doesn’t really care. He’d happily be locked in the shop all weekend, though I’ve pointed out to him that the alarm system is motion-triggered so if that were to come to pass he’d have to spend two entire days not moving a muscle of his considerable load.

Anyway, the long and the short of it is that by the time we’ve been through this palaver, then found out his ultimate choice of purchases, wrested actual cash out of his wallet, and totalled up the till, and done the credit card reconciliation, and locked up, it’s a good half-an-hour after Official Going Home Time.

I was asked, just before my birthday, if there was anything I’d particularly like as a gift. Yes, I said. Come to this shop at half past five on a Saturday – don’t tell me which Saturday, I’d like it to be a surprise – see the fucking idiocy I have to put up with, then just drag me out to the nearest pub and pour gin down my throat until it’s all been blotted out. Hasn’t happened yet.

Not that this is the end of things. The final act of this hebdomadal hellishness (and yes, my battered old Roget was brought into service there) is Seeing Timmy To The Bus Stop. This is a relatively new thing: whereas in the past Tim would walk in a different direction from me to reach his transport home, lately he’s chosen to join me, and occasionally Coffee-bearing Mo, to the traffic lights at the top of the road, walking at a stately place, making small – microscopic, in fact – talk about his favourite television programmes and generally delaying the journey home even further. When we reach the crossing Tim, being a stickler for road safety, will refuse to even contemplate putting a toe across the tarmac until the green man is firmly shining from his little box. Once he reaches the other side – and more than once he’s been distracted long enough to miss an entire cycle of the lights despite me standing next to him shouting “TIM! IT’S SAFE TO CROSS NOW!” at him – he bids us goodnight then walks all the way to his original choice of bus stop, which is opposite the bloody shop.

Yes, I know I’m being less than charitable. Impatient, certainly. Maybe even a little cruel towards the differently-able. And I’m aware that for somebody like Tim, somebody with learning difficulties, physically unprepossessing and emotionally fragile enough to be stressed to tears by the sort of incident that you or I would simply mutter an under the breath cussword at, these visits are probably the only social interaction he has that doesn’t involve ostracision or humiliation. But bloody hell fella, at least try to get a wiggle on, will you?

So you’ll see that rather than fill me with the joy that most people feel at the end of the working week, rather than stoking the anticipation of joining colleagues and friends for a post-toil booze, Saturday afternoons and early evenings just get on my sodding tits.

But here we are, two thousand words in, and we’re about as near to the ostensible subject for today as astrology is to common sense.

So: same time tomorrow?

Decide

Had to take this one down. Too much potential for relationship-destroying repercussions. One day, when everything's all sorted out, it might be re-posted. Unlikely, though. 

Another day older

Yesterday was good.

Eight of us around the table in a small alcove, just enough room to stand up so long as you did so slowly enough to check the decreasing space between the roof and the top of your head. Enough of a delay from the previous occupants that a round of drinks was comped. Small things, but pleasing ones.

If it’s a metaphor you’re after, here’s one. Family and friends together, breaking bread, talking, doing what people do when they’ve known each other for a long time but don’t see each other enough. And this time, the new addition, the one who so far has been a separate thing; known of, spoken about, but distinct and discrete from the long-termers.

But here she is, sitting by my right hand, trying to be heard above my brother. Strolling up to another place after the evening broke into its different parts, talking to the other women and getting on fine.

It’s all worked out beautifully and everything is all of a piece. So, for as long as it lasts, and I doubt it will last much longer, let’s just appreciate what we have and enjoy every second of it. 

Right...

Suddenly it’s three years later than it was.

Time is passing, too quickly for my liking, but that’s what time does and you can’t rail against it for being true to its nature.

I promised myself, three years ago, that posting something here would be a daily occurrence, even if that daily occurrence consisted only of a few words of no importance. What mattered was the forming of a routine, and sticking to it, and maybe, eventually, making something of it.

That didn’t happen, mainly through laziness, partly through other things that got in the way.

So.

Let’s try again. 

Oh, How The Ghost Of You Clings

The question is: should I go out and buy a packet of fags?

It’s this ‘Stopober’ thing that brought the matter up. Stop drinking. Stop smoking. Stop eating luxuriant food. Stop doing all the things that are enjoyable, the things that make life worth living, and do it all in the name of charity.

One has to ask whether those self-righteous souls who are denying themselves pleasure are following this through and actually donating to charity the money usually spent on fun, and one has to answer ‘probably not’. In the same vein, one has to ask whether at the end of this week, when October ends in a flurry of badly-carved pumpkins and unwelcome knocks on the door from small people who can’t be bothered to dress up but think it’s socially acceptable to demand coins – not sweets, mind you; they pooh-pooh the proffered fun-size packs of Smarties and instead rail for cold cash – when the haunted month gives way, as it must, to chill November and its accompanying charitable effort ‘Movember’, when all men with a working hormone must cease the daily meeting with badgerhair and razor, growing instead some abomination on their upper lip, will they be handing over the necessary to Sue Ryder?

Will they hell.

As a card-carrying contrarian, or at least as one who would be such a thing if the very idea of officially being anything didn’t bring a shudder of disgust, I’ve found ‘Stopober’ to be the ideal time to stop stopping. Since the beginning of this month I’ve enjoyed the first proper drink since June (although there have been a couple of minor lapses, both involving dinner with the same woman who stares reproachfully at the lime-and-soda or the Becks Blue as she gleefully sinks another large vodka) and, as a result of having an abscess the size of a small orange on my lower jaw, there’s been a lot of time spent in the blissfully muzzy realm, just a press of the bubble-pack away, of the prescription painkiller. What a place that is. Just cordoned off enough from the real world, a place of light-footed pleasure and winter-jumper warmth, a place that you know would be a delightful holiday home for a week or three if it wasn’t for the persistent weight on the shoulder of addiction. I know how easy it would be, and how much it would be enjoyed, so into the bin the left-overs went.

Returning briefly to ‘Movember’; my face has been partially concealed for some months now by what can only be described as ‘a beard’. It’s not a big beard, it’s not the full Brian Blessed, it’s kept down to a number two trim with the aid of a Babyliss, but I like it. It suits me, it makes me feel more myself than I have for too long. It’s grey in patches, which isn’t good, but those melanin-free areas have the effect of slimming the face, of reducing the increasing sagginess of the jowls. I’m told it verges on ‘sexy’ and given the sudden rise in the number of far-too-young women I find myself flirting with, I can only concur.

But it’s that month, the month when beards are a badge of Doing Your Bit, and I don’t wish to be a part of that. Should the beard, then, be sacrificed in the name of personal freedom? Trimmed a little closer? Washed in its entirety down the bathroom plughole of social friction? No, I like it too much. And it likes me.

Back to the fags, then. Our present standard-bearer for the cigarette is Nigel Farage, he of the saloon-bar bonhomie and the unpleasant views and the followers who fall like electrocuted flies as one by one they find their pasts – and their presents – dredged up and flung into the antiseptic glare of public approbation. Association with him, even if only by dint of a shared vice, is unacceptable. Obviously there’s the health risk, and the smell, and the noxious nature of the smoke, which drifts into others’ lungs and makes their day a little less pleasant. I believe there’s a down side as well.

As with the drink, I can’t say nicotine hasn’t paid the occasional clandestine visit over the last few years. Many who consider themselves to be non-smokers can put away a packet of twenty in one evening, just as those who consider themselves teetotal can find themselves sprawled on somebody else’s sofa, awash in empty Lambrini bottles, on a Friday night when their guard’s down.

Things have never gone that far, but occasionally, at the end of a long day, a packet of ten has found its way into the jacket pocket, joined in their journey by a box of Swan or a transparent lighter. Each time ends the same, like the morning after a bad one-night stand; with the shabby packet cast into the bin the next morning, still eight-tenths occupied, the previous night’s exotic glamour exposed as a bad dye-job and an ill-fitting dress.

So, then, to hell with it. I fancy a smoke so I’m going to have one. I want to feel the edges of the pack give slightly under the pressure from my fingers. I want so badly to tug at the tear tape as if it were the zip on a lover’s gown, to see the match flare and light up my face, to feel the brief giddy rush as the first deep intake floods my body. A good cigarette, enjoyed in the moment; as a sole pleasure, not to be a habit but a barely licit indulgence, is almost – only almost – as great a thing as good, and preferably equally barely licit, sex.

There’s a shop down the road.

Let’s go.

FOOTNOTE, FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER: Nine pounds eighty five? For twenty Camel? Nine pounds eighty five?! Bollocks to that.

Just Cracking The Fingers Here...

It’s been a hell of a year for spiders, hasn’t it? There’ve been some big ones. I mean really big, fuck-off sized buggers, big as your fist with legs thirteen inches long, strolling across your living room floor like they own the place, which as far they’re concerned they do and never you mind whose name’s actually on the paperwork.

I don’t like them. I’ll be upfront about that, I don’t like them and I never have, We’ve come to something of an arrangement lately though, I won’t hit them with a shoe or blitz them with fly killer (which might not work on spiders, and if it does, isn’t it kind of like friendly fire for them given that they’re flykillers themselves?) so long as they keep on walking and get out of my sight pretty sharpish and don’t creep up on me along the back of the sofa or across my feet because if they do that then I’m sorry but the truce is over and I’m bringing out the big guns. Big shoe. Whatever.

I have a friend who loves them. He’ll stand and stare at them for hours, he says they’re lovely delicate things that we should watch and admire. He’ll get right up close to them and study them as if they were kittens or roast beef sandwiches or something that isn’t intrinsically evil, and I’ll see him doing this and I’ll say Steven! Step away from the spider! It is intrinsically evil , it is worse than Crippen and Doctor Doom and Jeremy Kyle all rolled into one! If you do not move away from the spider it will attack you and it will burrow down under your skin and get deep into your inner workings and when it is there it will use you for its own ends, it will wear you like a suit made of meat and bone, it will take you over and join your constituency political party and rise effortlessly up within its ranks until it becomes Prime Minister, and then it will redirect all of the country’s budget into space research and build a rocket to the moon, but it will use that rocket, because it is evil, it will use that rocket to spin an enormous web between here and the moon and it will use that web to catch unwary alien visitors to our planet, and once it has done that it will take over their alien body just like it has yours and it will head out into the solar system and beyond into the galaxy and it WILL NOT STOP until it has enslaved the whole universe and Steven says to me “You’re over-reacting, I’ll put a glass over it and slip a bit of paper underneath and I’ll take it outside and let it go, would that be alright?” and I say ‘Yeah, OK.”

What’s also bad about spider season is that some people, some people with no sense of consideration for others, they’ll have one of these giant bastard spiders in their house and they’ll take a picture of the thing and then they’ll tweet it, and you have no idea this is going to appear in your Twitter feed, you’ll be sitting there thumbing down your timeline or whatever the hell it’s called and suddenly JESUS CHRIST WHAT’S THAT! There should be a rule that says if you’re going to tweet, or Facebook, or Vine or whatever, a picture of your own personal Bloody Big Spider you should send out a spoiler tweet before you do, something like ATTENTION! IN FIVE MINUTES I AM GOING TO TWEET A PICTURE OF A BLOODY BIG SPIDER SO IF YOU DON”T WANT TO SEE IT LOOK AWAY NOW, OR UNFOLLOW ME OR SOMETHING BECAUSE REALLY, DO YOU WANT TO KNOW A PERSON WHO TWEETS THIS KIND OF THING?

But that’s a lot more than 140 characters so, y’know, maybe not.