Schlock of ages

 Why no Tiger Rolls?
Short story: 1148 words

The supermarket was low and long, an overblown ranch. In Mexico a hacienda, perhaps, home to a Hollywood stereotype, pudgy, bald but with pendulous sideburns, clad in an embroidered satin waistcoat, nicknamed El Gordo, given to pointless murder and, when finally gunned down, dying with a lurid passage from the Mass on his lips.

If you want stereotypes they’re on sale here, he thought: the chops juicy, the spinach fresh, the wine supple and the customers variegated. I am an old man of course and may eventually fall down dead on this worn linoleum. But nobody should expect

Gratias agimus tibi
propter magnam gloriam tuam

since God’s glory is not to be found in Dairy Products or Wine and Spirits. Glory is manifest in an ability to buy all we need in one self-shriving act and then, absolved, return home and re-commit the same sin of running out of supplies. Here we are forgiven, supplicants at the Church of Supply And Demand.

His wife, presently having her perm re-permed, had written out a shopping list, items gathered into groups which would track his geographical progress from Newspapers/Magazines to impulse Tic-Tac at the check-out. Easy-peasy when it came to fruit and vegetables set out in the grubby area immediately ahead, or his lunchtime pain au raisin on healthful wooden shelves just beyond. But even she, his wife, mistress of all recondite skills in retailing, could not say with certainty where crushed chili paste might be found or whether table napkins were cloistered with paper towels or somewhere else completely unexpected. But then she had no need; she would ask an employee. He, a man, believed asking for advice showed lack of moral fibre and was prepared to waste angry minutes shuffling down aisles.

Due to inexplicable marketing ebb and flow, there were no satsumas and he had to make do with unspecific Easy Peelers, citrus yes, but members of what genre? More particularly: with or without pips? Once he had sighed noisily at this and a shelf-stacker wearing a green fleece labelled Fruit & Veg had turned to him

“Looking for sats?” F&V asked.

“Why do they just disappear?”

“Never understood that myself. I like ‘em best.” Then, as if it explained everything, added, “They always have ‘em for Christmas.”

To occupy the toe of the Christmas stocking, he supposed. F&V had been much younger and he had enjoyed this brief moment of male communion.

The Tiger Rolls slot on the wooden shelving was empty. He’d only discovered Tiger Rolls a month or two ago; liked their cheesy flavour and their chewiness which didn’t, however, threaten his loosely mounted canines. Behind the shelving men moved back and forward in the bakery with detached professionalism. All wore white trilbies, adding to their formality. There was no way he would interrupt their liturgical procedures.

Glancing again at his list he was irritated to find he’d jumped the sequence, should have started in the pharmacy. He paused before a sort of horizontal library of toothpaste cartons, trying to control a sudden outburst of horror. He’d often sworn to himself he wouldn’t do this, wouldn’t compare present-day prices with those of his youth, it was a sign of feeble old age. All the same, a fiver for toothpaste...! He’d worked for four years before his pay packet topped that. His grandfather, who’d relished such comparisons, had said toothpaste was a luxury; soot did the job. He shuddered at the memory.

He passed by Meat, careful not to notice even more extreme prices. They needed a small joint for the weekend but this fell outside his remit. His wife trusted him only so far; certainly not enough to allow him free rein for this most specialised form of purchasing. She would pop in, direct from the salon.

Tinned, processed marrowfat peas weren’t anywhere close to the shelves of baked beans – a long shot he’d guessed at, based on similarities of shape. And being tinned. Hurrying round the aisle end he bumped (gently) into Vera whom he had not noticed and would, desperately, have tried to avoid. Vera was said to be of great age (though probably no older than him), willowy, with hair so brilliantly white it looked artificial.  Nothing wrong with Vera who was demonstrably pretty and talked pleasantly. The trouble was she had also started to talk vaguely and he, superstitiously, now looked on Alzheimers as infectious.

It took her over an hour to do her shopping, she said; she regularly forgot which aisles she’d visited. “So I put another packet of Rich Teas into my trolley and find there’s one already nestling. I feel such a fool.”

Just the sort of information he didn’t need; behaviour that carried proof of mental decay.

“Rich Teas? Do they still sell them?” he asked, and that was another vow he’d broken; assuming things he’d eaten as a child would no longer be available. That they’d be too old-fashioned.

Vera smiled flirtatiously. “Of course they sell them. What else would old biddies like me nibble with their morning cuppa?”

It was remarkable that pretty Vera still had confidence enough to refer to herself as an old biddy. He stared at her slender aristocratic nose and felt tiny stirrings. Officially he pretended to be “past all that” but secretly he was glad it could still happen. Here too, in the most discouraging of environments, young people pushing past, older, fatter people supporting themselves with their trolleys.

It seemed pretty Vera wasn’t vague about everything. “Don’t you ever have a bickie with your tea?” Her voice carried a hint of longing; her husband had died horribly of bowel cancer a decade ago.

“I’m a coffee man,” he said and immediately regretted his bluntness.

“Ah,” she said with commendable grace. “Too expensive for me.”

Feeling crass, even ugly, he wanted to amend what he’d said. To say she looked well perhaps even pretty. But he lacked the vocabulary and the necessary phrases, especially the lightness of tone. His goodbye was clumsy and fell away into silence.

At the check-out he inserted his credit-card upside down into the slot, a frequent blunder. The youth operating the till opened his mouth to tell him, then, instead, reached across, took out the card, and re-inserted it. At that moment he felt just as lonely as pretty Vera.

Outside, at the far end of the car park, he turned to look back at the supermarket. Much too large for a hacienda. But then these days, El Gordo whose peons had no doubt made him rich by rustling horses would no longer be Mexican, would live in an armed fortress in the jungles of Colombia and would carry a Glock rather than a Colt 45. Horses would have been a logistical challenge, drugs were mere industry.

Aging, ancient. Changing but only retrogressively. A host of disinclinations. His arm ached at a carrier bag heavier than he would have liked. His soul ached with embarrassment and futility at his inability to be nicer to Vera.

You knew him well, Horatio

Let's see, in roughly chronological order:

Laurence Olivier, Christopher Plummer (radio), John Gielgud (radio), a clever sixth-former at my old school, Derek Jacobi, Kenneth Branagh, Ethan Hawke, Mel Gibson (I can't be sure), Maxine Peake and, last Saturday, Benedict Cumberbatch. There may be others because I've always grabbed the chance and now regret refusing, laughingly, to book a well-regarded version in Russian at the British Film Institute. I'd see it now in a flash if I had the opportunity; perhaps there's a DVD,

Hamlet, of course, for what else could withstand so much repetition? Only music, and both Cosi and Figaro must be creeping up to parity with the crazy Dane.

Poncy, you say. Showing off. Well then, what's new? You've always known I'm a ponce and a show-off. TD has lost readers because of it.

The best Hamlet? The radio versions, both four hours, followed by Kenneth Branagh, also full. Train schedules and baby-sitters mean we rarely see the full play. And that’s a shame. To qualify for "the best" Hamlet must, first and foremost, be complete. It wasn't written to be cut. Hamlet himself explains:

The play's the thing.

I don’t know it word for word nor can I resolve its contradictions. I often dwell on what I haven't seen. Cumberbatch passes through a Polish army camp (referring to the soldiers as Polacks) and I wondered whether I'd previously seen that.

Polonius is often the litmus paper. Sometimes he’s dismissed as a fussy bumbler but it’s only familiarity that makes us slide over:

This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.

It’s not even wholly true. But Hamlet’s a play not an encyclopedia and the lines stick.

Winter magic

As autumn slides into winter music takes a tighter hold. Two concerts in Birmingham to which we travel by smallish bus, still in daylight, through Herefordshire's theatrically beautiful countryside. Yes, we miss the fizz of being close to London but there's peace here and an expectation we'll live longer. Already have.

Rachmaninov's third piano concerto (well liked by VR, more austere than the famous second) and how difficult it must be to play; for a time Old Man Sergei was the only chap who could. Plus Nielsen's fourth symphony, the slightly risibly named Inextinguishable, long, noisy, a huge orchestra, but it finally hung together for me (the result of hearing it in a hall instead of on CD).

More recently, Mozart's most satisfying piano concerto, played with casual skill as if it was the fifth rather than the twenty-fifth. Followed by Brahms' German Requiem, with the CBSO choir in thunderous good form, even if we were distracted by a kerfuffle involving one of the sopranos.

Last night sad apprehension as BBC4 devoted an hour-and-a-half to an examination of the five Beethoven piano concertos by the Norwegian pianist, Leif Ove Andsnes. Sad because BBC4, clearly a TV channel for elitists, will be a likely casualty following endless ideological sniping by the present Tory government and Rupert Murdoch's commercial desire to see the BBC, in its entirety, disappear.

Glorious anyway in that the first and second concertos, sometimes downgraded when compared with the later, giant trio, are not only wonderful (we knew that) but for virtuosos.

Non-musical note. One of my verses is to be published in a collection, of which more later. This week the collection's contributors received a collective email starting: “Dear Poets”. Mum, Mum, I’ve made it! At eighty!

SAD sufferers of the world arise!

 And here's another lousy thing about getting old - you're more vulnerable to SAD (seasonally affected disorder). A medically identified condition whereby one tends to be depressed by winter. Augmented in my case by rising at 06.25 into a dark world.

Last night I had two rotten dreams: an acquaintance of mine was taking ages to kill a chicken and I was somehow involved in the commercial collapse of the last magazine I edited (it did actually happen but long after I left). I lay in the dark embattled and morose and, as you see, am presently taking therapy.

Here are two spoonfuls of SAD Specific.

(1) Hancock's Half Hour was a popular BBC radio programme in the fifties and sixties. Two of the characters were Sid (Quick-witted Cockney chancer) and Bill (Pathologically stupid).

Bill: Whatcha doing Sid?

Sid: Whatcha think I'm doing? I gotta book in front of my face. I'm reading.

Bill: Oh. (Long pause). Sid, what's it like... reading?

Sid: It's... all right, I suppose. Nothing to write home about.

(2) Tangled up with a novel-writing problem I clicked rather hopelessly on Joe Hyam's blog, Now's The Time, abruptly cut short on March 9 2014 a day or two before Joe died.

Tristan had left a comment: "Am going for a drink (at the pub) in Roupell Street on Saturday 3rd October... 2015."

Joe and I've drunk - and got drunk - many times at that pub. Left a sentimental response; felt slightly better.

Where I hang my hat

IN HEREFORDSHIRE, my present county, people are thin on the ground – 85 to every square kilometre. Even thinner in rural parts outside the city of Hereford which accommodates a third of the total. You want crowded? Try Surrey where I used to live: 683/sq km. Or the London suburb of Islington: 14,000/sq km.

This under-population is both a good thing and a bad thing. It’s still possible to “go for a drive” on uncrowded roads, on the other hand there isn’t really enough council tax income to administer quite a large area. Much of Herefordshire’s character has disappeared or is under threat.

I wonder how much longer Lock, Stock & Barrel will survive. It specialises in brass bits and pieces and it’s difficult to pass down its jam-packed aisles. The owner’s attitude is, shall we say, idiosyncratic; perhaps rude. He doesn’t clean his windows and his crowded displays are comical. A rubber tap nozzle exposed to the sun for several years has perished. But at least LS&B is not McDonalds or JD Sports.








NEW INVENTION is in Shropshire, north of Herefordshire, and consists of four houses on a cross-roads. Why the name? A farrier is thought to have attached horse-shoes backwards way round to confuse people. Or possibly the horses.

AS AN anniversary present I bought VR a silk pillow stuffed with silk gubbins. It cost a fortune and replaces an earlier silk pillow she much favoured. I think the pic conveys her enthusiasm.

ALL PIX courtesy of Sir Hugh, my younger brother, who lives in Arnside a swanky townlet south of the Lake District. He’s available for commissions.

Intimations of the NHS

Eighty And Beyond

Just take your time and draw breath down those moist
Pink freeways, access to that chemistry,
That Canaan in your lungs, where air not wine
Becomes the life-sustaining stimulant.

Yes, do it now, experience again
That well-won ease, that swelling benefit,
That key to zestful continuity
Which conjugates the living present tense.

Once in my health, those lost uncaring days,
I woke in bed, mad with an urge to stand,
For lying rhymes with dying and I’d not
Book passage in a horizontal plane.

Air was in short supply. No, that’s not true,
I was denied its superfluity.
It seemed my inner pipes were shrinking down,
To pinholes through my physiology.

And in this state I found that more meant less,
When I breathed hard, less went to where it ought,
And harder still brought nothing in return
Except the prospect of oblivion.

Panic and patience, rarely neighbourly,
Were forced to get along. And I was forced
To take my air in meanly measured sips
Despite my need for more encouragement.

Sips became gulps of freely flowing air:
Relief, but clouded with predictive gloom.
Was this the open door through which I’d pass,
Fighting the closures in a losing war?

Yet gloom can be a spur, I shrugged and sniffed.
It is the door; I can’t be different.
All those who pass have simply qualified,
And death is breath that never made the tide.

Drummed out of Wisley

Adam’s Despair
Short story: 1863 words

IT WAS that time of year. Neighbours left plants, weedy in pots, on his doorstep. Kindly meant, of course, but plants needed planting; they could not simply disappear as did their bags of tomatoes and courgettes (priapic singletons), some eaten, some dropped discreetly into the dustbin. Meanwhile there was cricket on telly.

More burdensome, the plants were gifts from wives rather than husbands since wives tended towards horticultural management: planning the flowering sequence, rearranging the terracotta pots and distributing the surplus. The doorstep donations acting as prelude to legitimate if interrogatory chat.

“The euphorbia was a wee bit forward,” said Tessa. “I realised you’d need to dig deeper and that can be hard work on this estate. All that builder’s rubble just below the surface.”

“I’ve found a narrower spade answers,” Frank said, proud he’d chosen the spade and could talk the talk, depressed at having to appear enthusiastic.

“Oooh, stainless steel! That must have been pricey. I hope it wasn’t from Outlands. They’re sky high.”

It was from Outlands but the right response was to hand: “It was on offer.”

“Ahhh.”

The euphorbia was now embedded and conversation was dying. “You did remember the two inches of potting compost, Frank?”

“I did.”

Tessa stood on one foot and then the other. “No other news... I suppose?”

“I’m not expecting any really. Under the circumstances.”

Under the circumstances. Because the dinette was visible through the side window he laid out teapot and milk jug on the table then stood back and poured Scotch into an opaque Melamine tumbler. The test match had paused for lunch; he slumped on the couch and picked up a 600-page tome, The Role of the Imams. Not his fodder but when life became fictional non-fiction was a comfort.

NOW he could rise as early as he liked. Even shower. Drink two strong cups of instant coffee without becoming an obstacle in the kitchen.

On the driveway condensation masked the car windows turning the sporty V6 into a conveyance for dead bodies. Normally he borrowed humdrum models to show solidarity with the majority of customers but these days routine didn’t appeal; the V6 had been a leap in the dark but it roared uninhibitedly, probably disturbing the neighbours. He’d swap it for the standard 1.6 litre some time this week.

It was still early in the showroom and browsers didn’t start to trickle in until ten. Debbie stared out of the picture window her hands linked behind her, above her nicely shaped bum. Frank beckoned her into his office.

“What’s one week taught you?” he asked.

“Most customers are tentative.”

A rare word at this dealership.  But then Debbie was fresh out of uni and had been taken on experimentally, the first ever woman saleswoman at Clancy’s.

“How do you handle that?”

“Gently.”

Frank changed tack. Posed questions about fuel economy, leasing and extended warranties to test her more severely. But she was fluent in everything.

“Any suggestions?” he asked.

“The lobelias are starting to wither. Or someone’s not watering them.”

Until then he’d been relaxed, roving her expertly made-up face, wondering idly if a woman as attractive as this (albeit older) would ever figure in his life. But lobelias caught him at the back of his throat. Drove the puff out of him.

“You know about lobelias, then?” Speaking so suggestively that Debbie stared, confused.

“The leaves go brown; it’s a sign they’re drying up. Common sense.”

“You’re not... addicted to lobelias?”

“Addicted?”

“Some women are.”

“And at Clancy’s that’s bad karma?”

Abruptly Frank switched his attention back to the real world: his office, the Salesman of the Year certificates, Glass’s Guide, pendant ball bearings to calm his troubles; with Debbie’s troubled face on the far side of his desk. He coughed, “My mind was wandering. I’ve always been weird about flowers.” Debbie’s face slackened a little. “They’ve never been my thing; cars have left me narrow-minded.” Now she smiled faintly.

The incident haunted him throughout the day. Back home he filled the Melamine tumbler with Scotch and sat down on a patio chair, still in his working suit, sipping regularly and staring at the garden.  Ticking off the jobs, knowing they would be followed by other jobs, then others, a cycle that never ended. That he had inherited.

The tumbler was still half full when he set it aside on the patio table, went indoors and emerged in paint-stained overalls and Berghaus Explorers, bought for a Brecon Beacons walking holiday that never moved out of a Builth Wells pub.  As he cut back the elder bush every third snip accidentally engaged the lock on his secateurs, forcing him to thumb it back so the blades would re-open. A defect that had irritated him for four years; but he’d examined other secateurs and found they were not only expensive but all had a similar blade-lock. Later the severed elder branches proved to be too long for the garden waste bag and had to be cut in two. More thumbing.

But now he could resume the patio chair and finish the Scotch, trying not to sip too quickly.

Falling asleep that evening, two more large Scotches to the bad, he remembered he’d run out of plastic blades for the hover mower.

The following morning Debbie beckoned him out of the showroom and on to the forecourt. “Sorry about the le Carré stuff,” she said, “but your ex waylaid me outside my flat. Accused me of having an affair with you.”

Frank sighed, felt his shoulders sag. “I suppose it’s a sort of compliment. I’m Speedy Gonzales and you’ve been here only seven working days. I’m sorry, truly sorry. But she is – as you pointed out – my ex and I’m not sure I’m still responsible.”

“I was quite flattered, I always fancied being thought louche. And she’s a real looker.”

“Oh, she’s that all right. Were there any other oddities?”

“Veiled references to a dibber.  I didn’t understand.” Debbie said, frowning.

“Jesus Christ!”

“So what’s a dibber?”

“God, I must seem like an old idiot. Would you do me a favour, Debbie? Would you look it up on Google? I’m too embarrassed to explain.”

Max, the dealership proprietor, a satyr renowned over three counties, came in and asked for the keys of the V6. “I’m taking the new girl – Hattie, is it? – to lunch. Time she got used to our little ways here at Clancy’s.”

Frank handed over the keys. “The car’s a bit noisy.”

“So am I,” said Max wolfishly.

Escorted out of the showroom by Max, Debbie whispered, broke away and hurried over to Frank’s office. “I looked up dibber; I guess it explains your weirdness with flowers. But you mustn’t worry, Frank, I’m not offended. I’m a big girl now and I went to Leicester not Oxbridge.”

Frank nodded, spoke awkwardly. “You’re having lunch with Max. I should warn you...”

“That he’s an old goat?” Debbie laughed. “I know that. Don’t forget he interviewed me for this so-called job. I’ll keep my legs crossed.”

A so-called job; Frank checked an invoice, ticked the box labelled Sales Manager, picked up another invoice.

With Max away Frank held the fort during lunchtime. An eighteen-year-old in jeans slouched in, shuffled round the shimmering cars on display and asked Frank which model was claimed to be the tart-trap. Frank grinned complicitly as he imagined a teenager might grin: “Not the word I’d use on the premises, sir, but you probably have the V6 in mind.”

“None o’ these, I’d say.”

“Our only V6 is out for the moment.

“Road tested or tart tested?”

How hard it was to hold back from standing on the young oaf’s foot. Gave him a brochure instead.

The tart-trap arrived late afternoon and Max went straight upstairs without comment to the executive suite. Debbie resumed her sales patrol, but out on the forecourt. As if they were both observing a sort of etiquette, Frank thought. From now on he would limit conversations with Debbie; that way he’d stop himself day-dreaming. And in any case she didn’t need his help.

SUNDAY was easily the worst day of the week. For years he’d spent the morning with The Sunday Times, toast and marmalade, and cups of coffee. Now his pyjamas came off and on went the paint-spattered overalls. The Explorers were waiting for him in the back porch, brushed clean of mud.

Rain had flowed under one of the patio paving slabs and had washed away part of the bed of sand. The discrepancy in the paved surface was hardly noticeable but he couldn’t afford to let it be. The slab weighed twelve kilos and tore at his finger nails as he lifted it up and replaced it, over and over, adding more sand then taking sand away, trying to get it level. As the pain in his abraded finger-tips increased he put on garden gloves but they made his hands clumsier.

Inevitably she arrived just as he finished and there was nothing to see. He attempted to explain but she shrugged. “Men can always find some fool work to keep them away from what matters. Never mind this nonsense, the acer out front is clearly pot-bound. You face a decision: a larger pot or replanting in the bed. And I’d say you’ve only got two weeks left.”

She began to tour the back garden; he, as acolyte, two steps behind. Suddenly she turned, her lovely face furious. “What’s this wretched euphorbia doing here? You know how I hate them. As usual you haven’t thought it through. As they get older they become orange. How will that sit among the cosmos stems?”

Knowing he was on a hiding to nothing he explained – haltingly – about neighbourly gifts. Her voice rose, “Simply chuck it on the compost.”

“But I live here. With these people.”

Now her voice fell to low menace. “You’ve also got obligations.”

There was more of this as they inspected the front garden, made worse by the presence of a large BMW parked two houses away, his replacement lolling at the wheel reading a newspaper. Probably The Sunday Times.

Finally she was into her final phase, more in sorrow than in anger. “Look Frank do you want the garden to go to rack and ruin? It was you who took it on.”

He nodded, he’d heard this many times.

“All right, I left you,” she said. “That’s agreed. I was prepared to disappear, right out of your life. It was you who suggested this arrangement, that I come by and offer advice.” She smiled as only she could smile. “That tickled my fancy. I am something of a garden enthusiast.”

More like an obsessional.

“But if you’re not prepared to put in the work...”

Ah, that elegant frown, those full lips. “I’ll do better, Phil.”

“Well, then.”

Frank hesitated. “But you were a bit rough on Debbie. And none of it true.”

“For your own sake, Frank. I passed by the showroom and knew she’d be a distraction. Taking you from all this.”

This was Phil at her worst, the mistress of false concern. But as he buried himself – imaginatively – in her deep copper hair, looked into those piercing blue eyes, he realised... what? How ordinary Debbie looked. And a saleswoman.