Ah, that special "smack"

No American I subsequently met ever asked why I - wedded a mere four years and with a daughter of two - up-sticked from London and started work in Pittsburgh. It wasn’t an abrupt decision. The planning and its execution took a full year and I had to persuade the US Embassy I didn’t intend to overthrow the Johnson administration.

If anyone pondered they probably imagined we’d been gently starving to death under a socialist tyranny. Our neighbours were vague about “overseas”

In fact my reasons were complex and once we’d turned on the heating in 3214 Annapolis Avenue I quickly forgot them. Which is not to say I wasn’t happily reminded.

The guy I finally worked for – a physicist who fancied launching a magazine – played right-field with the Jugoslavs softball team. Just a name, I assure you. Although I’d bought a glove and fielded grounders with the local kids, I had no higher pretensions. On Tuesday evenings I watched the Jugoslavs play. After which, beer and a KFC tub at the Jugoslav club.

I’d become an obsessive about baseball. Softball is baseball watered down. What surprised me was the sporting competence of these guys, some “getting on a bit”. Confidently taking high hits in the outfield, humming the fat ball into the plate.

There’s a special “smack” when a hard-hit ball ends in a fielder’s glove. I can hear it now and I’m transported to that scruffy field, sitting on a bench, wondering whether Ken, my boss, is going to hit safely. Nothing evokes the nature of the USA more precisely; the competitiveness; the good-natured shouting; the prospect of beer. It wasn’t a prior reason for disrupting my London life but it became one. Retrospectively.

Bat and ball in Elysian Fields.

Two ends of a spectrum

Michael Mosley, a doctor/scientist turned TV presenter, investigated the physiological aspects of pleasure (and its close relation – pain) last night. Highly entertaining, I was left wanting more. Cleverly he bracketed the programme - first contemplating a vast Swiss dam and saying, tremulously, he was hoping to share the pleasure bungee jumpers claim for jumping off it; then, finally, filming the sequel. Terrific stuff.

In previous series Mosley has used his body unsparingly and often painfully to illuminate how surgery and medicine may examine, measure and ameliorate human ailments. Last night he was at it again: entering a chilli-eating competition which some people find enjoyable (See pic; he flunked after three rounds) and having his legs depilated, observing that smooth calves are no compensation for the agonies of having all that hair ripped away.

Men and women were formed into teams to see who could better endure keeping their hands in a bucket of ice water; my lips are sealed as to the result. Vox. pop, interviews in Britain revealed that sex only comes second in a public listing of life’s greatest pleasures. A sense of family was first which, given our reputation for lack of emotion, surprised me.

The dark side was also explored. A young girl incapable of feeling pain was seen to be pitied rather than envied. And a calm yet detailed account by a farmer from one of the US southern states who recounted getting stuck in heavy machinery should have carried a health warning.

Attitudes towards pain vary. It is at its worst when – unsurprisingly - it is administered by someone who means to harm us. Also – a theory I’d arrived at independently – the anticipation of imminent pain is, in itself, a form of pain.

Tough if you didn’t see it and haven’t got Iplayer.

Vanity and necessity

A CHRISTMAS present from son-in-law Darren consisted of a tea-towel with the image of my first novel, Gorgon Times. I have subsequently discovered that even techno-idiots can perform this act online and have two more towels devoted to Out of Arizona and Opening Bars.

To have displayed these artefacts on the ground floor would have seemed crass. But how about doors on the upper landing? Here are two (the pic in between is a print of a Robert Motherwell's painting, Je t'Aime.). Surely a fairly modest act of vanity?

ATTACHING toilet seats - a job that's irritated the Hell out of me ever since I became a home owner.

The hinge system has a basic flaw: a headless screw which screws into what is, in effect, a blind "nut" mounted on a brass plate.

Because the "nut" is blind one may only rotate the screw two or three full turns and that's it. It's inherently insecure. This becomes apparent when one screws a nut to the other end of the headless screw to secure the hinge to the toilet pan. It's fatally easy to unscrew the end attached to the blind "nut".

Yes, I understand the principle of adding another nut to give a locking action. But this depends on tightening the second nut without engaging the first nut. I have presently achieved temporary security by adding a third nut.

Question 1. How about a squirt of super-glue into the blind "nut" before tighting up the headless screw?

Question 2. I believe there are alternative attachment systems although they are not typically fitted to new toilet seats. Are these any good?

Another world

London, where I once lived, isn't Hereford, where I presently live. London isn't even Britain. It's a crowded corral where an elite endures extreme circumstances. An elite that includes the poor and the rich.

Two nights ago I stood on the south bank of the Thames taking in this sight. These flickering decorations are the headquarters of banks - detestable institutions rendered slightly less inhumane by their remoteness.

VR and I had just heard a free Schumann recital by musicians based on an elegant campus influenced by Sir Christopher Wren. His other works include St Pauls Cathedral.

Previously a taxi driver had driven us through an area disfigured by long-standing construction work. What are they making? we asked. "Probably a cycle track," he said. The joke was he knew quite well.

We were staying with friends in the south-east of the city (part of the elite, I suppose). To reach the city centre we'd propitiated robots by waving plastic symbols of wealth at them; our railed carriage took us from one concentration of light to the next. In London light is profligately disbursed.

Two small plastic containers of strangely citrousy beer and a teaspoonful of malbec from Argentina would have paid for a week's labour from a Lithuanian working in Hereford. But not for long now.

Non-residents - both fearful and envious - are constantly aware of their role as transients in this city. From London Donald Trump becomes a black hole: menacing but distant and apparently empty.

Comfort's sell-by date

How do you measure time's passage?

Short-term with a wrist-watch (Don't talk about smart phones, p-uh-lease!) Longer term with a calendar. Even longer term by examining physical decay (Gruesome? Yes, but we've all watched those stark science programmes on telly.)

How about via one's material possessions? Because I’m finding that terribly salutary.

We moved to Hereford on VR's birthday in 1998. The house was new, we were its first owners. All those things to buy: three bog brushes because we now had three bogs, a huge load of light-bulbs, carpets. Carpets for a slew of empty rooms. A small fortune but never mind, we wouldn't have to think about carpets ever again. Or, let's say, for a very long time.

And nineteen years is a long time. Along the way we replaced the stair carpet and the one in the living room but we rationalised them; both had got a lot of hammer over the years.

But the bedroom carpet is another matter. It's a comforting dark green which we both love. When my feet touch its texture in the morning, it confirms I've survived another night. But now the dark green is faded and there are bubbles. Goodness we've hardly seemed to walk on it at all, and then often without shoes. It covers the floor as my skin covers my flesh but that isn't the analogy that most gives me collywobbles. I'm more concerned with another parallel: that non-renewable resource known as my mind. I suspect it too has bubbles. Certainly it’s faded.

The carpet we can replace...

Weihnachtsmarkt 1. People

People not "things".

In France I revel in the linguistic complexity, the need to be specific, the way they provide directions; I respect the French, admire them, am encouraged to compete with them.

But in Germany (we were there for Cologne's Christmas market) I drive away full of affection.

As with the elderly woman in the little tourist train giggling and nodding as she overhears me speculate with VR and Occasional Speeder on a shop called Treff ("It's gotta be from treffen, the verb to meet...").

As with the student at the Chocolate Museum café, seeing me struggle to get out my camera as a Rhine barge goes by, says: "There'll be another soon" and there is. Who grins, but self-deprecatingly, when I ask who'll win the next World Cup: "Germany, but hey..."

PS: We buy our coffee there because of the view; the museum remains a mystery.

As with the fifty-year-old waitress at the Brauhaus Sunner in Wallfisch who squeezes my shoulder and asks "What else can I bring you darleengk?"

As with the guy at the market stall serving us with three potato pancakes (the minimum unit). Told only one of us wants the blob of savoury sauce, has to physically restrain his hand from adding blobs to the other two (It's traditional! you see.) but manages it, after a fearful struggle, because the customer is always right.

As with the fat guy (a rarity in Germany these days) inexpertly playing a game of curling. When I point to a stone chundering on to the wooden walkway and ask riskily: "Zu viele Bier?" (Too much beer?) he laughs uproariously.

Yes the Dom (cathedral) is magnificent, the Rhine enveloping, the market decorations welcoming - but none is human, none talks, none jokes. It’s contact I’m after.

A day at the races

Granddad, Dad (Darren) and future Seb Vettel

I'm bad at organising holidays. I tend to wander thoughtlessly, expecting holidayish things to happen. Mostly they don't.

An inadequate education left me lacking cultural depth. By happenstance, a word I first encountered in a James Bond novel, my luck changed on Wednesday. I was  wondering idly whence the k came in karting (Don't tell me; the desire died long ago.), we had a short chat and our whole group drove over to the immaculately maintained Circuit de Caussiniojouls. Five of  us willing to give karting a shot.

Not me, of course. Once I was forced into a ski-slalom and was appalled by the number of skiers who crashed out. I made finishing my priority and did finish – but last. As compensation the non-ski-ing Oz manager of the event gave me a mint humbug. Horrible humiliation.

At Caussiniojouls 1 m 25 cm grandson Zach was reckoned too small to race communally and drove his laps alone, under the stigma of a flapping flag. First he trundled, then speeded up. Entering the pits after his first stint he over-shot (“didn't brake hard enough”) and used the fence as a catch-all.

Daughter Occasional Speeder regularly drives me in my Skoda, does so with panache, but wasn't comfortable with the hairline sensitivity of the kart's steering. Granddaughter Bella, constantly exploring the rumble-strips, got progressively smoother and faster. But the two lads, OS's hubbie Darren and Bella's partner Daniel, became faster and more daring, overtaking and making a real race of it.

Coward Me and VR watched and were thrilled. Afterwards, as the heroes shouted out their excitement, the sense of adrenalin was palpable. Faces shone. Not exactly a cultural experience. Closer to  bonding, a word which I fear has always sickened me.

VR and Occasional Speeder happy as Larry

Dad as Pooh Bear according to OS

Often new, usually banned

I don't yearn for youth as such; these days I'm cleverer, more in control, less disadvantaged, familiar with subtler pleasures. It's the experiences of youth that tempt me.

Tomato juice. It had just become available in quart tins. The flavour was unbearably piquant and I was convinced its attraction would last for ever. Fatally - because youth can never envisage the predictable - I drank a quart within five minutes. Never touched it again for at least a decade. But I'd love to relive that period of gustatory innocence.

Climbing trees. Now I'd be reported, suspected of  something undesirable, probably sexual. But then the tactile pleasures of the bark mingled with the thrill of going higher. Trees with thick branches sometimes allowed you to emerge into fresh air. Regally.

Girl ignorance. How did they differ? More frustratingly - why? What happened to a group of three boys when a girl was added? Why was everyone so damn secretive about these effects? (Not that things are entirely clear now.)

Comics. Do you know what? Adults read pages and pages of stuff without pictures. To show off, obviously.

Dirt. It simply had no untoward effects. Why did parents go on about it?

Pop. You gulped it down then belched. A searing pain scoured the insides of your nostrils. A sensation so alien it was kind of thrilling.

Pegging off. Who on earth wanted to wait until the bus had come to a halt? What was the fastest speed you could manage and still stay upright?

Death. Nah, it'd never happen to me. I mean... it's unimaginable. Innit?

Exams are over, thank God

Mrs LdP received “The O-Level Book - Genuine Exam Questions From Yesteryear” as a present from daughter, Occasional Speeder. Slightly disturbing, Was there really a time when we both could have tackled: “Solve the equation 2x(squared)+ x – 7 = 0, giving each root correct to two decimal places”?

I was harassed by the music exams. Have I put these into correct chronological order: Now is the month of Maying (Morley), Nymphs and Shepherds (Purcell), Messiah (Handel), Surprise symphony (Haydn), Who is Sylvia? (Schubert), Meistersinger (Wagner), Midsummer Night’s Dream (Mendelssohn), Enigma (Elgar), Peter and the Wolf (Prokofiev), The Little Sweep (Britten).

But after “In what respect do rounds, canons and fugues resemble each other and in what way do they differ? Name one example of each and write out any one round.” I closed the book, wondering whether I’m up to Tone Deaf.

POP EXPLORED, part six. The Specials. Too Much Too Young. (rec. Cool Kid). Now this is the pop I’ve been expecting. Alienation! Pinch-faced, beaky youth whinges that radio stations have denied this song exposure then launches his sheet-metal sawing voice into rap-style monotone backed by three guitars, an organ and two (I think) tambourine wavers. The lyrics are embittered:

… now you're married with a kid
when you could be having fun with me…

…Ain't he cute? No he ain't
He's just another burden
on the welfare state

but why must the music be uncongenial too? Cool Kid says this song was popular and implies it may have been seminal. OS thinks the lyrics are “very good”. I’m reminded of Hugo Wolf lieder - technically brilliant but unpleasant to listen to.