Normal, does it exist?

Once we feared The Plague, wore masks self-consciously, became irritated, then bored. Some yearn for what was normal, calling it New Normal, cheating somewhat. New normal wouldn’t be normal.

Normal has distinct meanings. The primary one (conforming to or constituting a norm, rule or principle) is presently the least relevant. Nor is the secondary meaning (free from mental disorder) exactly in the forefront of our minds. And how about: having average intelligence or development?

I’m not sure I’d want to be average at anything. Being one of the herd? I’d rather be bad at whatever it was. Table manners, for instance

I’ve been retired for twenty-five years, long enough to regard retirement as normal. This is far from the case. Retirement is freedom if not always taken up. To think or write about something (occasionally even to do something) and then to go into the bedroom and lie on top of the duvet, eyes closed. Experiencing the sun. Wasting time by most standards.

But for 44½ years I worked. Even that wasn’t truly consistent. When I was young I got up reluctantly, later I willingly rose at 06.50. To begin with I did what others told me to do, later (as editor) I dictated my own working day. Holidays varied: I ski-ed in the Alps, I snorkelled off the Brittany cost.

Writing was a continuous thread. I even wrote short stories while doing National Service. On train journeys. Gradually I improved although this process consisted mainly of being aware of what to avoid. It isn’t boastful when I say I write better than I did. Early examples still exist for comparison. I could show you.

And writing isn’t just writing, it becomes the tool of intelligence. An aid to analysis, to expression. Abnormal things. 

October 1, 1960

Time-warp and the wedding dress
The godless smile was blurred deliberately,
I’m damned if I know why. But since that day,
And all that I’ve gained uxoriously,
I’ve earned some learning from this long delay.

The photo hints at churchly ritual,
At stoles and rings and mournful minstrelsy,
At rules avoiding matters sensual,
At problems solved by domesticity.

Back then I fixed my mind on other things,
Time past, time present, why not time to come?
The speech I later made, how now it stings,
The schism we just missed, the senses numb.

For how would marriage add to our estate?
My parents’ knot was one untied lament.
Would argument supplant our chaste debate?
Or quick words be a damned impediment?

The suit I wore, its cheapness, lack of style
My hair sleek cut, ears rashered at the side,
The paunch, the grin still weakly juvenile,
An intellect that hardly qualified.

These doubts, these faults were altar gifts I bore
From my side of the wedding sacrament;
Beware the groom confusing less with more,
Who treats the oath as an experiment.

That’s how I was, both callow and inept,
Clearly unfit for such an adult move
A lad deserving nowt but a lad’s respect
A shallow shadow of that ogre, love.

And that was then, and many since have died.
They’re there, above, their gifts I apprehend:
Thoughts, faces, wishes for me, all elide,
Those clothes! Ah yes! That world they do extend.

The dress, in white of course, it cost a mint
Ours – rather, hers – for just one nuptial day,
The fabric a celestial element,
The style a fig for any hint of disarray.

The lower skirt’s outspreading bell of light
Added a bodice sewn for modesty;
Maybe. But also something less polite:
A radiance of sexuality.

The dress, a symbol, as befits a bride,
To compensate for that drab Burton suit,
A day outshining what the night implied,
Dawn honoured by a womanly salute.

The rented dress went back; another bride
No doubt wore well its glaring purity.
And we were poor and comfort was denied
And winters brought their insecurity.

That dress and its unwonted luxury
Symbolically remains a shift in time.
A touch of grace, framed in austerity,
Before the climb that ended with this rhyme.

May 21: Faithful (and kind) readers of Tone Deaf will know I write verse, not poetry. To use the latter rather than the former would invite accusations of hubris. I've been at verse for half a dozen years and I had faint hopes this one might qualify for promotion. But in the stark light of day rather than the comfortable recesses of my noggin, I see this is not the case. There are one or two clusters ("mournful minstrelsy", "how now it stings", "celestial element") but the narrative - as I see it - is broken-backed. Reluctantly I realise I shall die an amateur and that's a word I particularly dislike.

Ambivalence

Amazon is a money-making volcano which hardly pays any taxes and puts smaller businesses to the sword at five-minute intervals. It is a useful symbol for lefties who want to berate capitalism. Its internal economy probably exceeds that of Poland. The name may well be on most people's lips at least weekly, possibly daily. Yet it remains oddly anonymous. I for one have never heard anyone say: I love Amazon.

Amazon got the way it is through logistical efficiency, a subject I was paid to understand. I can confirm: Amazon is efficient. Sure it makes mistakes but so does Poland. So does - whisper it not in Gath! - the USA.

But still you'd type Amazon as heartless.

Cast your mind back to childhood fables. The words "a magic wand" arose and you wanted one, didn't you? Hold that thought for a moment.

We are living in times which disprove John Donne's most famous line of poetry: all men are islands. We phone our closest, email them, text them, Skype them but they remain unapproachable. Sometimes we feel the urge to do more. Send them a gift, not lavish but well-chosen. Most of all we want to do it now, while the urge still burns. We need that magic wand, and Amazon supplies it. The pop-up says: Buy it. One click, it's done.

VR magically caused John Carey's A Simple History of Poetry to drop into my lap. Brother Sir Hugh did the same with Staying Alive - Real Poems for Unreal Times (even more generous given I'd savaged his first sonnet). Deborah Orr’s Motherwell arrived for VR from daughter Occasional Speeder. There've been others and we’re ashamed of our forgetfulness.

Hateful Amazon. But so efficient.

Modus vivendi

Ok, they're two fellers. But you get the idea

I like broad beans, the novels of Elmore Leonard, and impromptu conversations with French people. VR likes none of these things.

VR likes cucumber, the Ring novels and travelling on buses, all of which I detest.

Living comfortably with someone means shutting your eyes to certain antipathies. In some cases accommodating them.
I like cauliflower, VR tolerates it. VR’s favourite vegetable is spinach, I eat small amounts.

That phrase – “for better and for worse” – tends to apply to large-scale privations: the illness of a child, lack of money, unemployment. Happily such horrors are infrequent but the Pork-Pie/Debussy’s-Music Divide may endure for decades. Living together forces you to measure these smaller but nevertheless dark entities and ask: How much does this matter?

Forget the shared enthusiasms, they’re never the issue. Not flushing the toilet is more likely to loom large. I have not yet used the verb “tolerate” and don’t intend to. For me it carries the sin of self-regard. But there’s no space for that.

Why should two broadly intelligent, frequently introspective, differently brought-up people of opposing genders continue to live together long after the first thrilling glow? In some cases by ignoring each other. In others by habit. Even through fear of loneliness. None of these are inspiring reasons. One alternative is to ask: what am I getting out of this? An even harder option is: what am I putting in?

There can be small recognisable rewards. VR read A Dance to the Music of Time decades before I did; finally there was a concurrence. VR now likes string quartets.

I like Benjamin Franklin: He that falls in love with himself will have no rivals.

It's just a jigsaw

Marriages, partnerships, mortgage sharing and other modern-day unions de convenance  profit from shared interests. But few shack up with identical clones. People differ: how does that work?

One major VR/RR rift concerns cucumbers. Even the smell drives me into hysteria whereas VR relishes them several times a week. Yet it’s under control, mainly because it’s up front: visible and olfactory. Allowing me to see myself as tolerant, a marital goodie-goodie. This claim may sicken others but cucumbers benefit me.

VR hates Western movies; I revere The Searchers. But VR can read through telly, sometimes sleep through it, as with international rugby matches. Obviously I would not watch The Unforgiven at peak viewing; the situation demands delicacy. VR's powerful abilities must not be over-stretched. It’s called an accommodation.

Like many women VR hates physical cruelty, real or simulated. I'm more immune. But VR can accept simulated cruelty, as in The Sopranos and The Wire, if the story has recognisable integrity. Bringing about that conversion involves nerve-shuddering nicety. Force on my part is instantly detected. Very much give and take.

VR favours public transportation, rhapsodises about trains. I'm not a petrolhead but suffer in buses and planes (insufficient kneeroom) and financially on the railways. Cars have disadvantages but offer qualified independence. VR no longer drives and I think recognises a balance here. VR's adulthood emerges.

Although just as atheistic as me, VR sets store by the decorative trappings of Christmas. Left to my own devices I wouldn't install a tree with lights outside the front door. Without applying moral force VR persuaded me to believe the tree looks well at night. And now it does. An excellent resolution: a concession in which all sense of resentment has faded.

Rediscovery

 The world through a replacement eye

● Notices identify the aisle contents in the supermarket: Pasta/Cooking Sauces, Eggs/Canned fruit. Just beyond the focus of my glasses. Now I can read them bare-eyed and have fallen in love with the typeface used. Curvaceous and clear, reminiscent of the moment in 1959 when I said: I'm going to marry her. And did.

● Stark naked on the weighing scale I was unable to read the digits, unaware of my diet's progress, now in its fifteenth month. Glasses? Nah, they'd have added weight. Had to call in VR. Yesterday, for the first time I saw the total unaided. I'd lost three more pounds.

● Women 10 m away no longer merge into the background: their contours may be measured, their faces scanned for beauty. All are beautiful.

● No advertising poster is wholly dull, no municipal announcement menacing, no planning notice obscure - they are there to be read. My bowels turn to water as I revel in info seizure.

● Now I can scrutinise his every discouraging detail (especially the snarl that forms on the left-hand side of his mouth), BBC news presenter Huw Edwards is frequently absent from the 10 pm bulletin. His defences are down.

● Helen, a member of VR's painting class recently had the cataract op. I compliment her on her vestigial glasses. She hands them to me to try. They're as light as a butterfly on my nose. Less likely to slip. Expensive, but what the hell?

● French class resumes since I am now driving again. My eyesight slides over the words of Rien ne s'oppose à la Nuit (a novel) and I'm able to scan ahead. And thus elide words. Elision is vital in spoken French.

Why I am who I am

Pittsburgh, Christmas 1971

I waited, knowing the festivities

Would choke the flow of  transatlantic calls,
Delays which brought their own blank auguries,
A prelude to the saddest of farewells.

“Ah… yes…,” my brother said, quite languidly,

Languor that looked for comfort in delay.
But what he added lacked necessity,
The link was cut and youth had gone astray.

She died within a distant older place

I’d left behind with callow eagerness,
Yet unrestrained by any false embrace,
Encouraged, taught, with chances of success.

She wrote, I write, but here’s the difference

No letters, now, to foil my ignorance.

AUGUST 11 My mother’s birthday. She would have been 107, a cumbersome uninteresting fact. I write because, among other things, she encouraged me. Her poems were published in small magazines.

I did this sonnet a year or two ago, posted it then. The clumsy and obscure eleventh/twelfth lines irritate the hell out of me but I’ll let them be. Defects can be eloquent: revision is more than half the battle.

My mother wrote under her unmarried name: Dorothy Hilda Stringer. A workaday sort of name. It’s all a long time ago. But her interest in what I do still reaches out: full of emotion yet useful.

Advice - a delicate child

Once a week VR takes the bus (free of course) to Hereford, usually to change library books, occasionally to buy an edible luxury. I tend to stay at home but I'm presently between novels and time is dragging. Magnanimously I volunteer. Magnanimity turns sour when the twice hourly bus fails to arrive and leaves me playing mental solitaire.
             
VR is looking for shoes. Her choice is limited: her feet are 3½ and you could roll a golf ball under either of her high arches. "I'm looking for something pretty," she explains. "Would you like to help?"
             
In fifty-three years of marriage this is a first. I take my duties seriously. I dismiss one pair for being hugger-mugger, another for looking like sandals, yet another for lack of integrated design. "These are the ones," I say, pointing.
             
VR says nothing, gathers up three other styles and we go to the sitting-down place. I feel a sulk coming on.
             
The three others are tried, discussion ensues and I am invited to rate them. I do so, grumpily. Finally my choice is tried. "They're the best," I say, and VR nods to the sales assistant. Full whack price, too.
             
The moral? In a marriage as long as ours, one may accept the other's advice. But only after demonstrating one hasn't been steam-rollered. I was quietly pleased but said nothing. An English couple, behaving typically 
             
TA FOR THAT In Hereford, everyone leaving the bus thanks the driver. It doesn't weary me and I've joined in. My bonhomie doesn't, however, extend to ATMs.
             
UNCHRISTMAS I've cut my Christmas card list savagely; a book of a dozen postage stamps covers it easily. It's May and I'm still sending letters decorated with images of Santa Claus. Will people guess why?

PS: VR's feet are 3, not 3½.

Sliding towards 2013

Sir Hugh visits, having delivered daughter/granddaughter Jill/Katie to a wedding in Oxford, a horrible dog's leg that takes up most of Thursday due to overcrowded motorways. He looks knackered and sleeps til nine on Friday - quite uncharacteristically since he normally gets up early and attends to his own breakfast.

Friday, his only full day here, is fragmentary. In preparation for a group he belongs to he attempts to read Christ Stopped at Eboli but only manages a page here and there. His Iphone burbles the arrival of messages, one from a long-standing friend who passes on his reaction to Gorgon Times, saying it resembles David Lodge in some ways. I am absurdly pleased by this.

It's raining. Knowing there'll be a leg of lamb that evening we set out for a "light" pub lunch and end up at The Duck in Ewyas Harold, one of Hereford's pleasingly named villages. The return journey is deliberately stretched out through Grosmont, Skenfrith and St Weonards on deserted narrow roads that are glorious in summer and only slightly less so in winter, evoking the monochrome tiers of a Chinese water colour.

Emails from The Crow and Joe tease away at aspects of short-story writing and VR's lamb comes with sweetheart cabbage deliberately divested of its thicker veins and cooked (with caraway seeds) for three minutes in butter. Whereby it ceases to be an accompaniment, becomes a dish on its own. VR announces she wants to transfer her book reading records to the computer and I argue with Sir Hugh about the relative merits of a database versus a spread sheet.

Now it's 7.16 am and I finish this, wearing my new fleece dressing gown, adjacent to dark windows.

Pic: Ewyas Harold memorial hall, where VR is tutored in painting