The land of unsleep

Nights are spent in twitching wakefulness – sleep far away. Peaceful thoughts would be welcome but instead there’s a perpetual oscillation – rolling left and right in bed, inexplicably. For beauty? For understanding? To hide what I’ve become?

VR is elsewhere and I hate that. I rise, sit on the bedside, embattled by the dark. Go downstairs, swig from a one-litre bottle of San Pellegrino, the chill and fizz cutting my throat like a knife. Impressions flit by; might they be trapped? There’s a ring-back exercise book (It opens up flat.) available. The trick being to write in pencil; when one's lying in bed a ball-point’s ink must flow upwards.

Warmed by the duvet here’s temporary quiet. Bedside light on, scribbling, worrying whether I'll be be legible. Never mind, I’m no longer thrashing like a landed trout. And I may travel.

Fifty years ago, in Dormont a Pittsburgh suburb, Mrs G, widow, nurse at the hospital, sole earner for two daughters and her resident mother, proved to be an unexpected neighbour. Fortyish and cheerful she fits none of the US stereotypes  I envisaged when I crossed the Atlantic.

Innocent yet self-sufficient she never appears in US movies or in US novels. A quintessential suburbanite, but strong with it. She welcomed our four-year-old daughter. A fleeting character on my life’s video. A comforting remembrance.

It’s 3 am. Done with writing, I turn off the light and become cocooned. Sleep? Perhaps.

4 am. More San Pellegrino. Thereafter? Presumably sleep.

 

Where we've been: 2

We went to France well-prepared; here's stuff we didn't use

Various US politicians, keen to appeal to tough-guy voters, have boasted about not wearing masks. Some have gone further and caught The Plague. I await with interest the first politico – hoping for sculptures to be raised in the state capital – to go further still and die in front of the TV cameras, a ventilator stuffed down his guzzard.*

France is not without its macho men. When the Eiffel Tower was first opened to the public citizens worried about a potential spate of aviational suicides. Cleverer administrators suggested a notice saying “Jump here”, knowing that such show-offs hated doing the obvious.

Trouble was I’d self-isolated back home and had no real comparisons. Even so I was pleasantly surprised, Masks were obligatory in the Intermarché. Not only did virtually everyone toe the line but they kept their masks on while loading their cars. And especially in the butcher’s shop (Ah, that terrific chunk of entrecote – I taste its juices still.) where the need for masks seemed visibly obvious.

We ate out several times: the restaurant tables were socially distanced and waitresses and waiters, resentfully perhaps, hid their sex-appeal behind scraps of pale blue. But you can’t keep an individualistic race down all the time. Halfway through one meal a long-haired beauty (I infer her loveliness since I only saw her back) lit up. How strange.

I go to France to inflict my imperfect, non-idiomatic French on the natives. Masks hinder this. No visits to the doctor or dentist this time. I made do with the pharmacy where I stumbled over turning the noun haemorrhoid into an adjective. Yes the pharmacienne knew the Anglo brand but handed over a French brand anyway.

When the temperature is in the thirties, the brief chill from squirted hand disinfectant is most welcome.

* This has happened since I posted.

Where we've been: 1

Note the sense of escape. The barely trafficked autoroute leading to somewhere distant, satnav prominent, bottle-spray of disinfectant securely mounted, relaxed hands on the steering wheel.

Look again and the car seats are occupied by two women. It’s my blog so where am I? In the back, reflecting that it’s now happening. The country I’ve come to loathe, temporarily I hope, is a Channel Tunnel crossing behind and I’m free from its incompetence and gerrymandering for a while.

The French villa where we’ve stayed before was booked almost a year ago. Ann, the generous and sympathetic proprietor, is willing to waive her rights to the four-figure deposit. But I’m not the only one with a strong urge to escape. As octogenarians VR and I are the most vulnerable to The Plague and it’s up to us to make the decision; VR was in no doubt from the start.

There’ve been major convulsions and we four in the car are the lucky ones, unaffected by travel uncertainties. Flights for the other four were cancelled and son-in-law Darren has worked prodigies, stitching together a sequence of train and TGV hops, broken by an Uber taxi ride across Paris linking the Gare du Nord with the Gare de Lyon. Large extra sums of money have been needed and VR and I have provided them. An initial online order of food and drink from a French supermarket has been contrived by computer whiz, Daniel, granddaughter Ysabelle’s partner. It will cost over £800.

In the sense that there are laws, we are not breaking them.

So why am I not driving? I’ve done it many times before. Because I have complete faith in daughter Occasional Speeder and Ysabelle. I loll and construct imaginary conversations with French citizens.

Next post: Did the French cope?

Incorrigibly inanimate

Was I the most unpromising schoolboy that ever wearied the arms of cane-wielding masters? Not quite.

I lolled comfortably as Shakespeare was enacted mainly because I wasn't "being taught". Later in life I developed an interest in physics, mathematics and that orphan of the schoolroom, chemistry. But these enthusiasms owed nothing to those grindingly dull and badly expressed classes in which I cowered and sought to make myself invisible. History? A random series of dim events. Divinity (These days, comparative religion)? As risible as Grimm's Fairy Tales. Geography? Coal is mined here; don't forget it.

My problem was I didn't know what school was for. Whatever I did with my life I doubted the Don Pacifico Incident would enhance it. Nor would I be hailed by the halogens?

Why now, after all these years? Because certain schools have been opened and children, well-scrubbed, with earnest faces, ice clean tee-shirts and cumbersome shoulder bags are running eagerly towards gates that are unpleasantly reminiscent of open prisons. Questioned, they say they are glad to be back. I'm happy for them; they will make their mark in occupations that don't depend on the racketiness that is at the heart of journalism, my trade.

Most of all I recall the cruelty of the summer holidays. That an irresponsible existence should ever come to an end. That a dark tunnel was re-opening on punishment, coercion and a profound conspiracy that adults know best. That I would - yet again - be seen as unworkable material.

And again, that smell which I associate with gym shoes, then called plimsolls. Rubber is not a neutral smell, it’s sharp, even acrid. In contrast horse manure is more welcoming.  And there’s a poetic juxtaposition, if you like. Unlearned in school.

This difficult world

ORACLE SPEAKS

How do you solemnise a marriage?
He: What's on telly tonight?
She: Try not to be vulgar, dear. Simply peruse the Radio Times.


Tune a motorbike?
Customer: I bought it to be manly. It sounds like Alka Seltzer.
Mechanic: Larger engine, sir. That will be £3561 plus VAT.

Leave the EU?
Welsh farmer: Can't stand foreigners, boyo. As far away as Basingstoke, look you.
Lib-Dem MP: Add water to this powder, fill a syringe, inject. Then dream.

Hit very high notes (Male singer)?
Vet with pincers: It's a very simple procedure.

Hit very high notes (Female singer)?
Wearied critic: Just screetch, dearie. This is Britain.

Find employment?
Desperate man in three-piece suit: I used to be big in sales admin management.
Man with smartphone: Trawler bound for Libya. Ask for Daesh Recruitment.

Find a book that's not about writers writing about writing?
Stall vendor, outdoor market: Here y'are, mate: Haynes Repair Guide, 1963-74 Ford Zodiac.

Find peace?
Aesthete: I just can't bear it. Any of it.
Financial whizzkid: There's the Thames.

Renew passport?
Panicky voice: Don't try there! Honest! Friend of mine never came out.

The egged face

My previous post, Q&A , was over-complex and over-serious. Does what follows compensate?

● Introducing my youngest brother to rock-climbing I was solo-ing a climb I'd done before, rock broke away, I fell into a gully and had to be rescued. My brother never subsequently climbed.

● As a tyro reporter I interviewed a young woman and became infatuated. In the article I misspelt her name.

● My motorbike licence entitled me to drive a tiny three-wheeler car. Without any instruction or experience I bought such a car, drove it home and could only bring it to a halt by crashing it (mildly) into my mother's washing-line post.

● A Frenchman serving behind a bar way up in the Massif Central maintained I had mis-pronounced the word "rugby" so un-Frenchly he had no idea what I was talking about.

● At school, aged 11, I showed off in an essay by including several obscure words. My hand-writing was (and is) appalling and the master asked me to identify one word. "Intri-gewed," I said confidently.

● In the USA I was inveigled into a game of volley-ball not knowing the rules. Within a minute I consecutively hit the ball three times. In disgust another player (who didn't think much of foreigners anyway) immediately walked off saying he didn't play "pointless" games.

● My son-in-law, lunching in France, asked me about an "andouillette" (a sausage composed of sweepings from the butcher's floor) listed on the menu. Jocularly I said it was only for adults. He took this as a challenge, ordered one, ate a small slice and pushed it to the side of his plate. I teased him for being a child and he asked me to try it. It had, I think, putrefied.

An hour's an hour for a' that

The tide of spam swells and Starbucks invites me to a "happy hour".

Surely a misconception. A happy hour involves booze. Half-price cocktails for a limited period during the early evening have only one aim. To get you pie-eyed and incapable of movement, so you'll stay on, spend a fortune and be thrown out at closing time.

A happy hour based on coffee would have the opposite effect. Three cheap Americanos and you'd fidget like an ant in a frying pan. Address the staff in Spanish, urge revolution, speak lewdly to the opposite sex (later the same sex) and be shown the door at seven.

I have never knowingly taken part in a happy hour, perhaps because it seems so blatant. In my youth, and especially in London, I needed no such encouragement. Later I became cautious. To wake up near midnight on a tube train three stations short of Ongar was salutary.

My happy hour would be in a pub where everyone read books – hardbacks, since they show greater commitment. Or sipped quietly, listening to a lecture on hermeneutics. BBC Radio 3 on low volume, the Composer of the Week always Gesualdo. And men speaking to women in the clipped etiquette of 1950s TV commercials ("I'm going home to an evening meal of fish fingers and Pom." "O, I say, may I join you?"). Mayhem would be permitted but in a car park half a mile away.

But imagine a pub full of happy people. It would be un-English.  Most are either miserable or anticipating misery. Getting drunk and shouting isn’t happiness either; it’s a way of shutting out quotidian boredom.

How about an unhappy hour with lager brewed in the UK at twice the price? “Share your meaninglessness with us,” would have some takers I’m sure.

Lost 3

Swimming is the perfect exercise for my aged, whalelike body. For several years I swam a mile twice a week. Much against my will, I had to stop.

A mile is 80-plus lengths of a large pool in about 52 minutes. You're looking for efficiency and that means crawl, breast-stroke is a non-starter. With proper crawl the head is underwater for 95% of the time and this means learning to breathe in an entirely different way. Taking in sufficient air in a quick twist of the head lasting no more than 2 seconds; breathing out into the water.

The problem is psychological; fighting the mind's belief that such breathing cannot be sustained. When I first completed an all-crawl half-mile the endorphins surged through my body in a fine fizz.

Although the municipal pool had a section for length swimmers, most were there for social reasons; it was too crowded. A local hotel had a pool but it was irregularly shaped and intermittently crowded. I joined a proper leisure centre with two large adult pools and a smaller one for children. Most swimmers were there to do lengths. Just one problem: there were no straight lines on the pool-bottom to keep crawl-swimmers on track.

For two years I did my careful lengths but then a disabled woman swam into me. That was traumatic. The possibility of another such crash - especially involving a woman - weighed heavily and I gave up my membership.

Alone, off Karpathos in the Dodecanese, I used to swim a mile to a small beach, then back again after a short rest. But that was just two weeks of the year. I dreamed of winning the lottery and buying a house with a pool. I no longer swim.

Loss 1

Not me. Knees bent, shoulders facing
down the slope, the pleasure self-evident

You lean forward however steep the slope, otherwise the curved edges of your skis won't bite into the snow and turn. Turning is at the heart of skiing, the mechanism which tames steepness, imposes control and brings about dynamic beauty. You're on the slope specifically to turn - left, right, left, in a sequence of esses - because it's only incidental that you reach the bottom. What counts is style.

As a beginner your turns are more complex but safer. Also uglier. You tire quickly. You yearn to be effortless.

It's astonishing how little you do to turn properly. You straighten up ever so slightly from bent knees and simultaneously push gently with your knees; the shape of your skis does the rest. The pleasure is sensual or possibly sensuous, enhanced by the sound your skis make: hissing if you've done well, scratching if you haven't.

As you turn you "walk" your poles rhythmically on either side of the curve you are making/following. Beginners have problems with poles because they appear to contribute nothing physical. True, pole movements simply co-ordinate your turns as a metronome times the music you create. Nevertheless precise pole movements add to the beauty of skiing.

The skier who's turning correctly turns his shoulders to face down the slope. This shoulder movement is non-intuitive since the body wants them to face up the slope. You know when you've got it right because everything else is slightly easier to perform.

I skied for about twenty-five years, always improving during the latter years. Then nothing, without warning. It was like losing - let's say - my nose. I am different, reduced psychologically, incomplete.

A cut above (amended Dec 28,29)

"It will leave a scar," said Dr X.

"Yeah, but will it add character to my face?"

"I prefer not to guess," said Dr X neutrally. I pondered: adding character implied character already existed. During a long lifetime I haven't gathered a scrap of evidence to support this. A serious lapse.

I was asked what I'd done for a living. Mentioned journalism, and elaborated, saying I once visited Venezuela. "To do what?" "Observe a steel plant," I said. "Oh," said my audience.

Professional Bleeder was in the waiting room, happily sustained by her Kindle. She told me other patients had grumbled at the time I was taking in surgery - two hours in total. None grumbled when I appeared and it was only when I caught sight of my face in a window and noticed the size of the dressing that I understood why.

As we walked towards the bus station I noticed people staring at me then averting their eyes. It gave me a sense of power. No doubt illusory.

On Friday there will be a Wound Review.

SON-IN-LAW Darren gave me this personalised tea-towel for Christmas. The tiny circle of my novel readers will recognise its origins. I am considering converting it into a body gilet.



SUBSEQUENT COMMUNICATIONS
Coms 1 (text). Grandson Ian to Daughter 1 - his Mum: "Can't wait until the Wound Review. Will he be using the star system: one star (worst), five stars (best)?"
xxx
Coms 2 (text). Daughter 2: "Is The Quibbler - ie, RR - OK?"
Daughter 1: "He's toying with mixing kirs (ie, white wine and cassis liqueur)."
Daughter 2: "Tell him to stop toying and start pouring."
xxx
Coms 3 (email). RR: "Prezzie transferred. Alas the post-surgical dressing has so thickened my head, the r/h sidebar of my glasses pressses onerously on the wound which is beginning to lose the effects of the anaesthetic. It’s not glamorous being old I can tell you. Grandad."
Grandson Ian: "Thank you very much. Hope you feel better soon and your head returns to normal thickness."

After Christmas dinner, courtesy Occasional Speeder, we watched
the Walter Disney CGI movie "Frozen"

CHARACTER-FORMING? The Practice Nurse thought so and is looking forward to taking the 14 stitches out next Wednesday. For my money leaving the stitches be seems more decorative. I'm having the extracted stitches woven into a basket - ant-size.

Inescapable

Certain posts are unlikely to draw comments. This is one.

Yesterday The Guardian published a heart-wrenching feature about a Twitterist who posted "a regret" and invited others to respond with their regrets. About 300 replied (a modest figure at Twitter) but it was their profundity that impressed - people who regretted great chunks of their lives and said so with great honesty. Notably:

"I regret accepting the first proposal of marriage because I didn't think there'd be any more."

"Not taking a job in Paris."

"I regret being scared all the time."

"That my mum died too young to see me turn from an ungrateful truculent teenager into a person and a father I hope she'd be proud of."

You can see why I'm not expecting an avalanche. The tiny Tone Deaf community knows a fair amount about its neighbours and it takes a very strong-minded (or extremely regretful) person to reveal such personal detail.

Besides there's the cliché reaction that ultimately says nothing: Don't waste time on regret. The point being that those in the Guardian feature lacked this robust option.

So what about me? Yes I regret getting a job where the sole attraction was more money. The magazine was failing despite my efforts, I was miserable for four years and, given my age, increasingly terrified I wouldn’t find work that would ease me pleasingly and rewardingly into retirement. God seemed to intervene. My manager abruptly switched me to an editorship which I’d been (unconsciously) preparing myself for the previous twenty years. Though I say it myself, I was a success. So not a “true” regret.

I expect silence to be eloquent. True regret is hard to live with (re-read the examples) and even harder to confess.

Lead unkindly light

These are the bad times, the dark times. I rise at 06.25 and there's still an hour of oblivion out of doors. Last night's wine glasses and decanter need putting away and I must use an Eye Wipe to clear up the gruesome results of blepharitis. Curtains are pulled, blinds raised. Sometimes, if there's enough spirit in me I do these tasks without turning on the downstairs light; today, crushed, I flick the switch and endure a shock to the optic nerve.

This is the time of year when nasty arguments occur. There was one last night, my fault. Will the effects have lasted overnight?

I could write a few paras for Opening Bars, my account of the singing lessons, now standing at 25,883 words; almost 1000 words past the original target. I could re-examine my novel, Rictangular Lenses, (28,752 words, untouched since November 23 and there's a shock). I could write a maudlin post. Yes, why don't I write a maudlin post.

At 10.00 there's a singing lesson, a return to the Mozart I sang on the first lesson a year ago. But in detail. "Concentrate on the little problems," said V last week. "Do them several times before singing the whole song." The professional approach, but I'm weak and amateur; I need the reassurance of the song's lovely completeness.

There's a fearful temptation to dwell on past times, when I climbed, cycled, motor-biked, swam, swilled pints of beer and argued, hectored PRs at press conferences. But that's self-destructive nostalgia. Those laddish times are now held in a silo called Raw Material, to be drawn off in spoonfuls and recycled as fiction.

Be positive! Hey, I got up! Stirling Moss still lives! - early reports said he'd died. Music's to come. Maudlin's now a post.

The Gardener

Sonnet: On visiting the blog of a dead friend

The sap has dried, disabled stalks have turned

To compost – and he’d know the truth of that.
For me decay, for him life’s stuff re-formed,
It’s not my field, I’ll simply tip my hat.
 

Others have taken this way.  Like E. who

“Passed by – like Time” and died, another friend.
Her roots were strong, the wit between us grew,
She blossomed to an uncomplaining end.

In glades of death the plant that grows is loss,

Who needs a bell that sounds nonentity?
Why should it be worth my while to doss
Down here wanly in tranquillity?

Text is quite silent, echoes come from sound,

Where else might such a miracle be found?

How we became who we are

The English queue; Americans, prosaically, stand in line. Perhaps because queue is harder to spell.

The English joke about queueing, claiming to be “good at it” but it’s not a joke. Secretly the English see it as the basis of a calm and ordered society, whereas it could suggest national passivity. I’m sure Italians, who are very bad at queueing, especially for ski-lifts, view the English as passive.

My theory is that the English docilely form queues because we must, it is now part of our psyche born of the period 1945 – 1955 which should have been triumphal but was instead devoid of hope. We had just won a war (or that’s what we told ourselves) and we had virtually nothing. What little we had we queued for: infrequent buses, seats in the cinema, a pitiful range of groceries, sweets (US: candy) and – for all I know – accommodation in the cemeteries. Also the services of a doctor.

Then, you didn’t book a doctor’s appointment, most of us didn’t have phones. You turned up, stood then sat in the packed waiting room, went in when it was your turn.

“When it was your turn” – how freighted with emotion those words are. You were met by the bovine stare of two-dozen middle-aged people, all clearly suffering, all wearing worn overcoats probably bought pre-war. You memorised their faces and counted them off as they responded to the doctor’s buzzer. But 24 faces are a lot to remember. And don’t forget, latecomers were replacing those who had gone before.

Nervous tension was palpable. Did the trembling woman in widow’s weeds, carrying a basket, arrive ahead of you? What happened if you accidentally jumped the queue? Tranquillisers hadn’t then been invented but the English were inventing themselves.

Drawing a veil

Folks: let’s forget what just happened here in the UK. Here’s a post I prepared earlier.
                   
Great art is not necessarily beautiful although a tortured argument may be advanced to say this must be the case. But just think: The Scream is not beautiful, nor is Crime and Punishment, nor Pound's A Pact, nor Grosse Fuge. All are arguably great.
                    
This point presently exercises me, blotting out other graver matters. Beauty is, of course, subjective but we must start somewhere and today I'm in charge. Let’s consider great art that is beautiful.
      
Take painting: Hogarth is famous for somewhat unbeautiful satirical drawings but how about his Shrimp Girl (below)?

               
As to prose here’s the ending of Joyce's short story, The Dead.
                    
(Snow) was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.
                    
Poetry? These lines are from Thomas's Over St John's Hill.
                    
Of the led-astray birds whom God, for their breast of whistles,
Have Mercy on,
God in his whirlwind silence save, who marks the sparrows hail,
For their souls' song.
                    
Music? Schubert's Abschied, sung by Christian Gerhaher
                    
CLICK HERE  (Wait out all the long silences.)                  
              
No doubt you’ve rumbled me. Yes, this is a conspiracy – albeit truthful - to edge you towards the Schubert. But then Abschied offers a bonus; you can sing it badly (to yourself) and it remains beautiful. I know, from personal experience. Abschied’s great too but that’s up to others.

Painful politics - Part 3The still small voice stilled?

Listen up, especially UK expatriates and UK-sympathetic foreigners.

Rupert Murdoch owns the pay-to-view TV conglomerate Sky. In the UK his main competitor is the BBC which users pay for in one annual lump sum that is a tiny fraction of what Sky costs. For years Murdoch has sought to close down the BBC.

Because the BBC does not fit the conventional idea of market forces, the Tories have sought to modify (ie, castrate) the BBC for ideological reasons.

The new Tory minister of culture is an MP who has campaigned against the BBC.

Verb. sap.

The pain of acknowledgement

World War One still chokes me. As I get older, the sensation intensifies. All those deaths - accepted and borne for so long.

Television, the home of shallow reaction, last night faced an un-televisable event - a national enactment of Lord Grey's comment at the beginning of the war: lamps going out all over Europe. Television depends on light and needed to communicate its own brief extinction. How do you depict the dark?

I recalled a Guardian reporter who had sat in a café in Mons in Belgium, watching the world go by, chatting to customers. For decades Belgium has been the butt of jokes about the country's presumed unimportance. Yet Belgians, some of them great grandchildren to the WW1 generation, said the same thing: they would never forget the sacrifices made by British troops (later other nationalities) in coming to Belgium's help a hundred years ago.

One café customer was Belgium's prime minister. On his own, chatting, reflecting.

I am no monarchist yet two smallish details stand out. The Queen took no part in the Westminster Abbey event, preferring to meditate in (I think) a small Scottish church. A rare occasion when non-participation proved to be the greater tribute

Prince Harry read out a letter from Pte Michael Lennon sent to his brother Frank in 1915. Harsh bare words about the likelihood of death; gruffly pushing this idea to one side. Inevitably Michael Lennon died two days later at Gallipoli.

As I said, the sensation is one of being choked. As if old events were reaching out, determined I should share some of the pain. And so I should.

To be or, definitely, not to be

Missie, OS's 12-year-old Cairn, is staying with us while her mistress frolics in Glastonbury mud. Missie lacks aspiration.

Food is her only real impulse; as I prepare my brunch each step I take (there are many) is duplicated by Missie. Quickly followed by a step backwards when I change direction. Dance patterns are repeated across the kitchen floor, each terminated by a beseeching stare (see pic). Occasionally my foot accidentally gongs her head.

If the kitchen/hall door is open she sidles upstairs and audibly jumps on our bed. A short call retrieves her. If another dog passes the front door, she barks. And that's it.

She no longer begs to be taken for a walk. When we read or watch telly, she sleeps. When we sleep she sleeps. For long periods she is utterly forgotten. She's not much trouble but I worry about the meaning of her life and her lack of impingement. Also Missie is not even pretty.

JOE'S NUDGE
Drawing a bow at venture:

Oh! if to dance all night, and dress all day,
Charm'd the small-pox, or chas'd old age away;
Who would not scorn what housewife's cares produce,
Or who would learn one earthly thing of use.

That third line suggests the poet is male, except few males "dress all day". The quatrain is epigrammatic and not all epigrams are poetry, but "charm'd the small-pox" is poetry. We're expected to take a broader view than that defined by these two benefits - to sign up for wasting time, a non-activity beloved by those who write. Plumbers may not agree. The cry is by no means universal, in fact it's special pleading. But never mind, do you agree?

Alexander Pope (1688 - 1744)

Oughties. Worth a damn? No. 8

Full English
Short story (948 words)

Only those without mobiles used the phone booth on the corner. Usually she was in and out quickly, beating the cold. Not tonight. He looked about twelve, whining as well he might. “Some bastard stole it,” he said. “Out uv mi hand. On the bus.”

There was more about clubbing on Friday night although he hardly seemed old enough. June hugged her anorak round her shoulders; winced as he slammed down the handset.

Dave the ex was prompt. “Bad news for you. Sheila and I got that flat in Sparkbrook.”

“Sparkbrook! Three bus rides for me.”

“Alex will have his own room. His own telly.”

“How will I ever see him?”

Dave grunted.

Back in her room over the bookie’s she opened her mini-fridge and touched the repaired plastic shelf. It held. She slid in a tin of Value baked beans. Still it held. Slid in another and heard a shocking crack. Super glue, she thought; but it costs. I need the fridge space; with no shelf there's only half the capacity. Piled food gets messed. Especially steak pies, cut into quarters and spun out over four days.

The television had been mute for months. She listened to a Radio Four adaptation of Joanna Trollope’s novel about village lesbians. Dreaming up faces for the voices but resenting the posh tones. Twin-set women. The story held her interest but cold tightened round her hips. Wrapping herself in the duvet she knew it was too late; there wasn’t enough heat in her body to retain. Bed was the only option. Breaking the late night rule she tried transferring heat by washing her hands and face. Then to bed.

Dark and freezing when she woke. At five-thirty, wearing four layers of clothes, including pyjamas, she entered the newsagent’s by the back door, sorted  papers and walked silent streets pushing copies of the Daily Mail against hard-sprung letterbox flaps. Janusz was waiting by the bus-stop, the SUV breathing white vapour from its exhaust, the trailer crusted with frost.

Driving to the layby Janusz, who rarely spoke, glanced and said. “You ill, Missie.”

“Cold. Sleepy.”

“No, no. Brown, under eyes. Pale. You not eat.”

Her fingers had been too clumsy for the toaster. She said, “Two slices of bread and I-Can’t-Believe. Too early to eat.”

“You lose your looks.”

“Looks! You’re shitting me.”

“You OK lady. If you wash your hair.”

“The court gave custody of the kid to my ex. Said I was irresponsible. Why not act the part?”

Lorry drivers waited in the layby, stamping, impatient. Janusz fried eggs and piles of streaky bacon on the trailer’s hob; heated tinned tomatoes in the microwave. June took orders, handed out change; soon Janusz’s English would be good enough and, she supposed, he’d drop her. Warmth from the gas hob reached between her shoulder-blades.

Two-ish, ten minutes after the last Mondeo, Janusz turned off the gas and started cleaning the hob. June walked the layby picking up paper napkins and polystyrene trays smeared with ketchup. Just after three Janusz pulled up in the centre of town by an easel sign: The Great English, Six AM to Ten PM.

“Eat, Missie, eat,” he said.

“If there’s time.”

Mrs Pickerill, at the till, spoke quietly to avoid being overheard. “I’ve got to be fair. This time you sweep up, Sharon serves.” June nodded. No doubt Sharon had complained about being given the broom too often. Sharon liked to engage diners but not everyone enjoyed her chat.

Mid-afternoon, the trickle of customers was shepherded to one end of the dining room while the other was swept. The ends were then reversed. Not ideal, especially since Sharon worked noisily, but the health inspector had spoken.

Sharon sauntered over. “He’s not here today, you know.”

He was Brett from Australia with the surfer’s hair and the logistics skills of a worker bee. Once he’d created seventeen full English breakfasts, with fried bread, all on the tables within ninety seconds serving time.

June nodded. “His first day off for two weeks.”

Sharon hadn’t known that; flounced away.

Later, with Sharon in the store room, Mrs Pickerill said, “She didn’t tell you. Sharon I mean.”

June said, “Tell me?”

“Brett said call him. About now.”

“Call him?”

“Here’s his mobile number. Use the office phone.” Mrs Pickerill frowned. “That Sharon!”

In the corridor outside the office June stopped. Looked at the slip of paper, pondered, rolled it into a ball and put it into her pocket. Walked back to the dining room.

By five-thirty the fried leftovers for the staff break were black and unidentifiable.  June ate three unsullied tomatoes, drank half a mug of tepid coffee and went into the alleyway for a cigarette. Wearied, leaning against the wall, she was joined by Brett, tall, gilded and perplexed.

“You didn’t call.”

“Did I have to?”

He laughed. “Serves me right. Uppity Oz.”

She liked that. “This morning another foreign male told me I looked ill, didn’t wash.”

“Heck, most Poms look ill to me. Pom hygiene? I’ve learned to live with it. Perhaps I’m just not picky.”

Liked that too.

He added, “You want to eat tonight?”

She nodded.

“Why the delay? Why didn’t you call? I could have booked the Chink place. Stays open late.”

She sighed. “You may not understand.”

“Try me.” His voice softened. “I like you. Mucky hair and all.”

Perhaps he would understand. “I guessed it was a meal. But calling you meant I had to make the decision. I’m starving. But I didn’t want that to be the reason.”

“Me asking you? That made it OK?”

“Stupid, eh?”

“Oh yeah, very stupid. Any other tests I need to take? I don’t mind. Straight.”

Let there be light

 I know what you're going to say - only God can make a tree, but any fule can arrange to have it chopped down. My neighbours and I all agonised but it should never have been planted there in the first place. Its roots were reaching down into our sewage outlets and very shortly we would all have been in big trouble. A year ago I had similar problems with a much smaller tree and found myself having to dispose of the corpses of three drowned rats trapped in what they imagined was an underground short-cut.

Suddenly VR - reading as usual - found herself exposed to natural light. No doubt our solar panels are profiting.

Yes, I'm an unfeeling brute, a nature-hater, the sort you'd hate your daughter to marry. Never mind me; another neighbour who connived in this vandalism is a deacon with Hereford Baptist Church. Double click pic and look into our bedroom: see, we've got curtains