It exists therefore it stays

Things we cannot bear to throw away always have a story attached. And the story may reveal what sort of person we are.

Here’s a can of Red Bull energy drink which was bought in France. Its slogans have more charm than if they were in English: Formule Taurine (The Bullish Recipe or, more digestibly, The Bullish “Way”) and Vivifie le corps et l’esprit (hardly needs translating). The sell-by date is July 7 2011.

Why, you will ask it, did I buy it? Well, the journey from our part of England (confusingly called The Welsh Marches) to our regular French holiday area (Languedoc) is a long one and I share the driving with younger daughter, Occasional Speeder. The French autoroutes warn about driving when tired and we decided to test a collection of energy drinks prophylactically. Excellent idea. That is, until we started tasting and quickly decided a vacuum flask of black coffee would be preferable. I don’t think we got as far as the Red Bull.

Why don’t I throw it away? Well, it’s full and still unopened. Also it was brewed in Austria and foreign stuff often costs an arm and a leg in France; I can’t bear the waste.

But nor can I handily store it. Non-alcoholic drinks (for guests, of course) are kept in the garage on racking surmounted by free-standing pyramids of cans. Red Bull’s can is narrow and would slip through the racking slots. It is also too long to form a stable element in one of the pyramids.

One may add liquor to an energy drink which seems like a double whammy: diluting the booze and undermining the energy drink’s health claims.

I can’t give it away because of the sell-by date. So it presently acts as a paperweight. Time passes.

Blest be the ties that bind

Skype is technology (Yawn!), it's all to do with
computers (Boreeng!), it's a cheap way of making
telephone calls (Hey, I'm a skinflint, tell me more.)
Skype puts you where you want to be and is magic

Three times a week the Robinsons foregather virtually, via Skype. Not every member, ‘tis true, but the absentees’ reasons are understood and have our communal blessing. The family is no less a family.

The distances are puny compared with the USA. Newent, Gloucestershire, is only 25 miles from Hereford where VR and I live. Luton, Bedfordshire, on the other side of the country, 64 miles, and Tavistock, way down the south-western peninsula, 207 miles. Anything other than our electronic umbrella would be impractical.

The Tuesday and Thursday Skypes start at 5 pm and may be comparatively short with meals to prepare. But Saturday, at 6 pm, is special, given that drinks are not only allowed but encouraged. Even more so now, since a Grand Project is afoot, of which I may not yet speak.

Skype demands etiquette. When one Skyper talks over another, the system semi-strangles one or both of the voices and I search the sub-screens nervously for signs of a noose. To speak one must first examine other mouths to check whether words are about to burst forth.

VR and I (Little Grannie and Big Grandpa) remain stationary, fixed to our PC’s monitor. Others, freed by the mobility of their smartphones, ramble freely round their residences, as if in the Titanic as it sinks.

The atmosphere is febrile. Gusts of laughter mingle with half-heard insults. Gossip is endemic, though not pandemic. Those who have facts to dispense have a hard time being coherent. All of us hate the present government and near-obscenities are shouted out, never to be heard in layer upon layer of sound.

The affection is always in what we do, rarely in what we say. Family feeling must be implicit not stated. We are separate yet united, invisibly. It is our way.

Self-infliction

I haven’t had a real hangover in years. I mean the real thing: upchucking imminent, acid gurgling, head restricted by a childsize battle helmet. And not because I drink less; more, if anything, but divided into smaller amounts.

Thus I read The Guardian’s Best Cures – by Pub Landlords quite smugly. Some prescriptions involved food (buttered crumpets, fried haggis, honey/banana/ten leaves of spinach), some were liquid (sparkling shiraz, Campari and espresso).

When I drank for a living (ie, as a journalist) only one thing worked: as much water as possible before bed. However there are two problems: (a) being mentally competent enough to remember and submit to this “pre-cure”, (b) overcoming the human’s seemingly finite capacity for water; after the third glassful the throat contracts and the water takes on the nature of a solid; it refuses to go down. Keep on swallowing, man.

Inevitably a memory arises. An overnight press visit to Stuttgart, fuelled by a terrible red wine that “didn’t travel well” – that is, from the bottle to the glass. Foolishly I challenged one of the party to an early-morning swim in the hotel pool. Even more foolishly, I flopped into bed without the water treatment.

All the symptoms were there the next morning. As I made sure my legs entered the appropriate orifices of my cozzie I told myself I would profit from the exercise. I didn’t. Poolside my head merely throbbed. Immersed it felt like a depth charge, assuming depth charges have feelings.

My so-called competitor was worse. Too crocked to even imagine swimming. Some people have all the luck.

One further suggestion from The Guardian: homemade chicken stock, miso paste, shitake mushrooms, crispy seaweed, kombu kelp, spring onions, shredded rotisserie chicken, egg noodle, a soft boiled egg. Not forgetting a helping of Dutch courage.

Uh uh, technology again

Thursday, April 26, 2012: The Blogger’s Retreat. The Aldwych, London. (Plutarch).

Theoretically this is a social event: we meet, drink champagne, eat curry washed down by Kingfisher beer, walk across Waterloo Bridge, drink more beer at the pub on Roupell Street.

And talk. I’d like to think the talk is wide-ranging but I’m not sure it is. Some reminiscence (we worked on the same magazine between 1963 and 1965 and between 1972 and 1975, on related magazines between 1975 and 1978), guidance with my novel writing, guidance on poetry, wine (probably), Plutarch’s hats, blogging. Often we invite acquiescent others to join in. We avoid the weather and the disintegrations of old age. The talk is virtually continuous and initially incoherent as we start and break off subjects until a true give-and-take line is established. On the fast train from South Wales to Paddington I sometimes make notes about points I want to raise for neither of us is inclined to waste time on silence.

That agenda worked when I did Works Well. Now I’ve switched to Tone Deaf music is also discussed since Plutarch reveals a much wider interest than I suspected and is willing to talk about music’s abstractions.

But music requires a change in what was previously a simple modus operandi. Music requires musical references. A mouth organ (played quietly) might help but is a poor way of rendering orchestral themes. Neither of us has a congenial voice. The logical solution is an MP3 player with two sets of earphones to overcome the hygiene problem of earwax. But now I foresee some problems. Silence will reign as the MP3 player is used. Passing the player backwards and forwards hints disagreeably at the shared hubble-bubble. We will be depending on batteries and I for one am a battery-phobe. Aid please.