Hymn

Robbin' Hood

What fun I have on my little fold-up bicycle: scurrying about like an unrestrained hamster.  Six months of pedalling around London and I’m still alive.  It’s remarkable.  Admittedly, I’ve had a lorry pass so close that it smeared my sleeve with grime but I lived to tell the tale.  And wash my arm.

Still, in some small way, my clown’s bike is actually keeping me out of mischief.  For as dangerous as the traffic and pot-holes and wayward pedestrians are, I sometimes feel that the most risk lies in navigating the gangs of youths that litter my journey home.  But I have learnt to worry less.

Waiting on the platform at a minor London station this evening, I found myself the focal point of the local Crew.  Now normally, I am, by nature of my innate street-cred and camouflage training, indistinguishable from the average Hoodie.  And, I like to think, impossible to tell apart even from those of this dark ‘Hood.  Of course I may be wrong.  Because something drew this mob’s attention to the sweaty balding white man riding a circus toy. 

‘Yo, motherfucker, what’s this shit?’ demanded one boy dressed in a black hooded top, jeans and Nike trainers.

‘That’s some crazy shit.’ Offered another, a boy dressed in a black hooded top, jeans and Nike trainers.

‘I ain’t seen nothing like it: it’s fucking loose, man.’ Piped up a third, a boy dressed in a black hooded top, jeans and Nike trainers, almost certainly oblivious to the use of a colon in his sentence structure.

“I’m sorry.  What?” I asked before realising that it might not be the optimal course of action.

They stared at me.  I wasn’t entirely sure if it was the look of hyenas about to enjoy a KFC Bargain Bucket or lawyers meeting an accident victim.  Either way it wasn’t pleasant.  I’ve not received a look like that since that unfortunate incident at the Jewellers with the wheel brace.

Thankfully, my experience as a Hostage Negotiator kicked in. 

“Yo. Yo. Yo.” I said, blending in.

Their silence spoke volumes – I knew I was being accepted.

“It’s a fold up bicycle, homeys.”

I collapsed it in front of them.  They took a step towards me, clearly impressed.  I realised I had reduced my means of escape to what appeared to be the output of a car crusher.  The mental image of me pedalling away to safety dissolved into a vision of being stuffed into a dustbin.

‘I wants one of those, fold-up motherfuckers.  They is well cool.’

“Eh?”  I queried.

‘Yeh, man.  They is well cool.  I could do with one of those babies.’

“Evans” I said.  “You can buy one from Evans.”

‘Yeh, man, right.’

And with that he playfully punched my arm and they wandered off to smash the few remaining windows in the station.

Although it was a cool night, I realised I was sweating.  Still, only another thirty minutes to wait for my train.  I rebuilt my Brompton.  And sat on it.

Pitch Battle

Ah, the first days of Spring.  And a Bank Holiday to boot.  Who’d have thought it?  What a coincidence. 

We had a Family Day Out.  To a sweet local town.  Where the tourists flock in the sunshine.  Thankfully today it rained.  Not all day mind, just until lunchtime, by which time, we’d made the place our own.

Now going out is always a little tricky because of little S’s afternoon sleep.  She always has a couple of hours right after lunch.  It sears through the day like the magician’s guillotine through his hapless assistant.  Of course it’s fine at home – gives us some space to potter in peace.  Not so great when out.  It’s not that I object to relaxing in some quiet place for a couple of hours.  Perhaps with a beer.  And a newspaper.  The problem is finding somewhere S will sleep.

She will sleep in the car.  If it’s moving.  Otherwise it’s a quiet room or nothing.  Today we had nothing.  Still, although she’d been as good as gold for way past her normal nap time we know that a tired toddler tends to tantrum terribly towards teatime if she hasn’t had her forty winks.

She was tired.  She was nodding.  She’d actually dropped off in her pram until a juggler on a unicycle started to warm up a crowd.  It was warm and sunny.  So we found a quiet spot in the park.   

We laid out our picnic blanket.  We laid her down.  We laid down.  The psychology of the herd, you see.  She closed her eyes.  A game of football started beside us. 

I know that we live in a world suffocated by obesity, where fat threatens to swamp us and evolution promises to redesign our hands to hold games controllers more efficiently but really, did these boys really need to start playing soccer right next to us? 

At first it was just a couple of them.  Then more joined.  I felt my blood begin to boil.  How selfish, I thought to myself.  How irresponsible.  Couldn’t they see our baby trying to sleep?  I glared.  I tried to shield my little girl from the noise and the inevitable near miss. It felt like dozens of boys were running around us now.  We laid resolutely on our blanket. Like silly Cnuts trying hold back the sea.

S started to cry.  Enough.  Enough already.  I stood up to give these idiots a piece of my mind.  It was then I saw the goal posts.  And the spectators at the edge of the pitch.  And the Ref having an intense conversation with a group of concerned parents.

We took S home to bed.

Bed Ridden

Just as I thought I was getting back in the saddle, managing to write a little more regularly, finding whispers of inspiration in the most curious of places and surprising myself with an astonishing ability to navel-gaze, the hours stood shivering at the weekend have left me bed-ridden.  For five days.  Five God-forsaken days.

Now don’t get me wrong I’m sure a week in bed sounds marvellous to some.  Especially for those enjoying the company of the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders.  I daresay in less-phlegmy circumstances, I might have enjoyed the rest.  I can say with some confidence I would have enjoyed the Cowgirls. 

As it was, I have spent days and nights barking like a dog and then waking up sloshing in a pool of sweat.  Again, not so bad if the cause had been a dozen girls with pom-poms but a load of germs partying in my chest is no real substitute. 

But now I am up.  The rabid barking cough as subsided into a more occasional volcano and my temperature has dropped from molten rock to smelly dog. 

Definitely on the mend.

Weakened

My, what a weekend I had planned.  The big annual skydiving event.  A Weekend Pass.  A chance to give the MG a run.  The opportunity to gain my next skydiving qualification.  Catch up with friends.  My, what a weekend it tuned out to be. 

Let’s start with Friday. 

The next door neighbour reverses into our family car, writes it off.

Leave work early but points failure turns two-hour journey into four.

Lights blow on MG.

Saturday.

Complete blanket of cloud and howling gale.  No likelihood of jumping but organisers stay tight-lipped. 

Wait in freezing cold for six hours before giving up and driving home numb.

Despite extortionately expensive engineering work on MG, it still drives emitting plumes of smoke and overheats.

Sunday.

Spin MG on oil spill.  Surprise other drivers by facing wrong way at roundabout.

Arrive at airfield to be told event cancelled.

Drive home.  Car overheats.  Stop to add more water, remove radiator cap too soon, super-heated coolant sprays all over me.  Scold most of face.

Spend rest of day with cold compress on swollen cheek and eye in attempt to stop blistering.

Feel quite bloody miserable.

A good friend of mine once said talking to me always made him feel so much better about his own life.  I think I should give him a call.

Can’t wait for next year.

Nighttime Ghoulies

It was unusually frosty this morning.  Not outdoors.  Indoors.  In the bedroom.  In the kitchen.  Over my Cornflakes.

Now, lack of chat in our house is quite normal at breakfast time.  It takes us a while to wake even after we’ve risen.  Little S hasn’t inherited our inability to talk first thing in the morning, she sings, laughs and chirps away without a care in the world but Mummy and Daddy are technically only conscious because they are out of bed.

This morning though the quiet wasn’t tiredness-induced, it was deliberate.  Even from my murky coma, I could tell something was up.  The silence hurt my ears.

“I had some odd dreams last night” I said attempting to crack the permafrost.

‘Yes, I bet you did.  Like clambering across the bed in the middle of the night.’

“I’m sorry.  What?”

I wondered where this was going. 

‘Oh, you were sound asleep.  You were oblivious to the fact that you were using me a climbing frame.  And when I asked you what you were doing, you said it was all right, there was nothing to worry about, you were just checking that your prickly tee-shirt was safe.’

Although it sounded utterly implausible behaviour for a man of my sound mental state, I couldn’t argue with her.

‘It’s all very well you getting up in your sleep but do you have to dangle you bits all over me when you do it?

I had to admit it didn’t sound very appealing.

Wet Nurses

Sometimes I wonder about the nursery S attends.  Don’t misunderstand me, it is a marvellous place; excellent pedigree, top marks in all the official tables and all that and S adores her time there.  It’s just that, sometimes, every now and again, I’m not entirely sure what’s going on.

Tonight she was the last child remaining. 

I couldn’t get an answer from the bell.  The cleaner let me in.

Even for last thing in the day, it was quiet.  I peered through the door into the Pink Room.  I witnessed a scene that astonished me. 

S was in the middle of the room.  Giggling.  Lined against one wall stood the six nurses.  They were calling excitedly and waving their arms.  They were giggling too.

‘Scarlley-woo, pick me.’
‘No, me, pick me!’
‘Scarlley-woo-wah.’
‘Pick me, pick me, I want to be your favourite.’

S saw me at the window, lost interest in the clamouring girls and ran over chirping ‘Daddy, Daddy, Daddy.’

The girls looked crestfallen and a little embarrassed. 

‘We were just playing a little game.  Where S picks who she has a cuddle from.’ Said one sheepishly.  ‘Because we keep fighting over her.’

Heaven Scent

Our cat’s been behaving oddly.  More oddly than normal.  Odd for him, positively bizarre for any ordinary cat.  He keeps jumping from side to side and rubbing furniture is a disturbingly aggressive way.  He might be going mad.  Madder.

‘What is that smell?’ T asked for the third time in an hour.
I still didn’t know.

We’d checked the baby.  We’d looked for discarded fish and other monstrosities behind the sofas.  Why, we’d even thrown away perfectly good cheese.  We’d checked the baby again.  Still the smell hung in the air like a slowly deflating party balloon.

‘It’s in the car now.’ She said, verging on hysteria, ‘What is that God-forsaken smell?’  Increasingly there was an inflection to her voice that could be classed as justification in a court of law. 

And then it dawned on me.  I knew what it was.  It was T’s latest attempt at civilising me with aftershave.  It was me.  A couple of days ago, she’d caught me, in attempt to avoid wearing the infernal stuff, throwing it around the bathroom.  Droplets evaporating off the stone tiles had smelt quite pleasant and deceived her into believing I was splashing it on.  Foolishly, in the Do-You-Know-How-Much-That-Costs discussion afterwards, I agreed to start applying what I genuinely thought was a subtle amount.

I think I have made my point.  And the ninety-mile car journey certainly helped.  It doesn’t actually matter how expensive the cologne, I still manage to convert it into mustard gas.  T has conceded defeat - I am un-scentable.  Thank Heavens for that.

Silly Sod

It’s not a big lawn.  And it’s only bloody grass for Goodness sake.  One of the hardiest plants known to man.  Grows anywhere.  Everywhere.  Can’t stop the stuff when you don’t want it.  If I wanted green blades on my driveway, I’d be a happy man.  Yet here I am again, embarking on my annual battle to transform our patch of slimy, mossy ground into something resembling a Wimbledon tennis court.

I mowed it for the first time this year today.  Sometimes I astound myself at the recklessness of my own actions.

Now, one might assume that a lawn mower, set at the gentlest level, would delicately slice the tips off the winter growth.  Assume away.  Because someone, over those quiet winter months, had replaced the blades with a ploughshare.  Instead of a subtle trim, the contraption took to gouging out great sods of earth at random intervals and ripping the remaining grass to within a millimetre of its life.

Now, I’m not one to let the current situation distract me from my chosen path.  I am nothing if not intransigent.  The fact that the lawn looked as though it had had a rather unsuccessful scrap with a mechanical digger did not deter me from pressing on.  In fact, it strengthened my resolve.  I knew it could still be saved with my extensive horticultural knowledge and my sympathetic gardening ways.  I brought out my rake.  At least now, after receiving a US Army crew cut, I could see the moss.  And, after all, the grass’s predicament was the moss’s fault. 

I started scratching away.  I raked and clawed as though my life depended on it.  The pile of green matter grew steadily beside me.  I was winning.  I was winning.

As I paused for breath, I heard a distant tapping.  At the window, babe in her arms, T was mouthing something.

I squelched over to the kitchen.  I caught a reflection of a mud-stained scarecrow in the glass.  A rake in his hand.  T stabbed violently at the pane.

Somehow, and don’t ask me how, the slightly overgrown meadow and child’s playground that sat behind our house had been turned into a scale model of the Somme.  Not one ounce of vegetation remained. 

I turned to express my disbelief to T but she had gone. 

And the door seemed stuck. 

And it started to rain.

Eau de

I’m not a big fan of aftershave.  Or other ‘manly’ fragrances.  I prefer to smell as God intended, of Carbolic.  And I have the gentle Brothers of Convent School to thank for that.  They clearly believed I was very dirty indeed.

T, however, is determined to have me smell ‘nice.’  I’m not entirely sure what’s she’s suggesting.  She keeps buying me assorted scents; delivering them as gifts and imploring me to wear some.  I do try.  But, like so many things, herbal tea, pipe tobacco, housework, they’re only attractive when someone else is partaking.  As soon as I wear even expensive cologne, I smell like cat wee.  Doesn’t matter what brand I try, it’s always the same  - I reek like a tramp who’s lived in a cattery for a decade or more. 

T’s belief in their redeeming qualities is unshakable though.  I believe she is working her way through every make on the planet is her search to find one that ‘suits’ me.  It is not pleasant.  The better ones simply keep flies away, the worst cauterise my nasal passages leaving me unable to smell anything for days.  Sometimes it is a blessed relief. 

So I have embarked on a strategy: I am pretending.  Each day I sprinkle some ‘Eau de’ around the bathroom, open the window (for the sake of the cat) and proudly declare that I’m aftershave-tastic.

As with all great scientific advances, the placebo is at least as effective as the real thing and T is delighted.  “Subtle isn’t it?” she coos. 

So everyone is happy.  And it’s removed all the limescale from the sink.

Smacked Lips

I can’t really criticise irritating habits.  Hell, I’m a walking sack load of them but still I can’t help but get annoyed at the smallest things.  I know, I know, I need to breathe more deeply, and avoid becoming trapped in a cell with mirrored walls.

The man sat opposite me seemed pleasant enough - smart brown blazer, inoffensive tie, pale blue cotton twill shirt with button down collars, moustache.  Actually, I doubt that a moustache is ever pleasant unless you’re Tom Seleck, but the greying whiskers on my companion’s upper lip didn’t arouse in anyway.  No, it was the apple that did it. 

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not a fanatical member of the Apple Liberation Front or the Anti-Apple League.  I don’t fly into a rage the moment someone pulls out a Granny Smith.  No, I don’t find apples themselves offensive.  I’m as fond of a Pink Lady as the next man.   It wasn’t the object to which I objected, it was the manner of its consumption that brought back that twitch in my trigger finger. 

He did this:

Pick up apple.  Bite.  Put down apple.  Crunch.  Crunch.  Crunch.  Smack lips.

Repeated until only the core remained.

It must be something about patterns, I find so gnarling.

I know I have an issue with smacking lips.  I first realised at College when a girlfriend insisted food was more flavoursome if you ate with your mouth open, sucking in air as you chewed and loudly slapping your lips together as you swallowed.  It made me want to find the largest halibut in Yorkshire and slap her unconscious with it.  It didn’t last long.  She dumped me because she said my habit of digging a fork into my hand when we ate together made her feel uncomfortable.

Now when I’m confronted with smacking lips I lower my eyes, sing quietly to myself and think happy thoughts.  Just as the kind doctor told me.  With effort, I can endure the sloppy munching of an entire family-sized bag of crisps with this technique.

Today though that wasn’t enough.  Because as well as his wet flapping, Caterpillar Lip Man kept picking the apple up and putting it down again.  Up and down.  Up and down.  Right where I’d lowered my eyes.  Up and down.  Up and down.

It started to rain in my Happy Place.

Up and down.  Smack.  Smack.  Up and down.  Smack.  Smack.  Up and down.

I felt my tick return.  I wanted to deliver my own version of smacking lips.

And then he finished.  He calmly dropped the core in the bin.  He had the audacity to smile.  Presumably because he’d enjoyed his apple.  Like that was okay. 

I suppose I should be grateful that he wasn’t sniffing.