Old age isn't just creaking bones

Youth is too valuable to be wasted on the young. Marriage too.

Newly married I told VR the best pudding was Crundle Pudding. She didn't know this delicacy. I urged her to consult my mother. She didn't. Years slipped by. My mother died.

In a Kitzbuhel hotel, elder daughter Professional Bleeder, fiddling with free internet access, found a Crundle Pudding recipe. It's pretty simple and I copied it. Told VR I had it. She nodded. Nothing happened.

The slip of paper remained in my wallet for years. Three months ago, terrified I'd lose it, I converted the recipe into a Word file, printed it out and attached it to the cork board. One month ago VR made me Crundle Pudding.

This post isn't about puddings. Rather about breaking away from one influence and accepting another. As a young man I resented VR's resistance, more recently I understood it completely. I had, you might say, grown up.

THE RECIPE. 60 gm butter/marge, 75 gm plain flour, 60 gm castor sugar, 450 ml milk, beaten egg. Rub butter/marg into flour, stir in sugar. Heat milk gently until warm, add beaten egg, stir well into dry ingredients. Bake in preheated oven at 180 C for 45 min.
 
WIP Second Hand (37,696 words)

(Moses said, "My father) urged me to back my instincts with other painters but I disappointed him there; this was the only painting I wanted.”

Francine looked again at the canvas: saw it as a white circle slashed by a thin brown blade. “It’s abstract and yet it’s not.  Something’s about to emerge and I get the feeling there are options. I’m left on the verge. I was surprised an abstract could grip me so. But then why not? Even a realistic painting is still a painting, an impression not reality.”

And oh the difference to me

Oh cor! Stephanie Flanders, economics editor, is leaving (has left) the BBC and I am bereft. News at Ten will now be a desert populated only by the stuffy Welsh camel-master, Huw Edwards. She'd been there eleven years and that's salutary too; how quickly the years flit by when you're in your seventies - me not her.

Ah Steffie. With your plangent classless voice, your cylindrical face, your long legs, your short skirts, your expensive bob hairdo (a dozen  subtle variations of brown) and your fearlessly confident knowledge of economics which encouraged me to think that I - like you - could define quantitative easing at the drop of a centime.

I wrote you a strangely fashioned verse (initially in four-foot lines no less; then a sonnet) that plunged into fantasy. An extract:

Detached she sat, her thoughts beyond
The fate of Mozart’s heroines
Beyond the power of any bond
That lacked her expert disciplines.

The Don in  Hell, she smiled at me,
And asked if sonnets could contain
The dullness of technicity
The theory of the sheer arcane.

Not that my admiration didn't come at a price.  When she appeared on telly it was if I'd been forced to don a dirty mackintosh. I became a voyeur.

She's going (gone) for big bucks to J. P. Morgan, a huge bank that recently paid the biggest fine ever for financial malfeasance. Let's hope she cracks boardroom heads with a new hockey stick.

Ave atque vale. Here are two separate parts of the song, Barbara Ellen, which I am conflating:

Young Jemmy Coe on his deathbed lay
For love of Barbara Ellen.
Slowly slowly she got up
Slowly slowly she came nigh him
And the only words to him she said
Young man I think you're dying

.

Oughties. Worth a damn? No. 2

Education, Education, Etc - Ex-PM

Shortish short story (1037 words)


Yesterday’s used towels lay neglected and Christine fed several loads into the washer. In between she polished mirrors and swept the salon floor. For intellectual comfort she dwelt on Planck’s Constant, notably the factor, ten to the power of minus 34. “Truly small,” her physics teacher had said. Not forgetting the Berlin plaque:  In diese Hause lehrte Max Planck, der Entdecker des Elementaren Wirkungquantums, h, von 1889 – 1928.

“Eh there, Deafie. You working here or not?”

“Sorry, Jody.”

“A latte for Mrs Thwaites. Get me an expresso.”

Could used coffee grounds cause allergies? Having spotted Christine’s timid approach to the Gaggia Jody had condemned her to work the machine. Steam now shrieked through the tubes.

With the floor hair-free Christine’s broom was temporarily retired, leaving her unemployed but not at rest. She stood three-quarters-rear, a metre away from the customers. “No leaning against the walls,” Jody had said. “That’s for sluts.”

Mrs Thwaites and a second customer, an hour behind, were both being permed. Jody overlapped them, switching from one to the other. When frail Miss Elsworth called in for a set (“A funeral. I hate to be a fuss.”) Jody had only attached half the curlers to Mrs Thwaites’ head.

“A shampoo for Miss Elsworth,” Jody said sharply

A trusting face, old beyond telling, looked up at Christine from the wash basin. White hair set brilliantly against black porcelain. “You’re new here aren’t you dearie? It’s a good salon.”

“I’m learning a lot,” said Christine.

THAT EVENING Mrs Bowland’s uncertain hands received the library book from Christine. “Rose Tremain. I loved The Colour. You were lucky picking this off the shelves.”

Christine slumped on the couch beside the button-controlled chair that supported her mother. “Lucky be blowed. I put in a card.”

“I never used cards. Thrill of the chase, I suppose. No fun for you.” Mrs Bowland indicated the pan. “I managed the potatoes. Took time but they’re properly peeled.”

“Could we eat a little later? I need a zizz. Last night I nodded off over the computer. Mind you it was statistical thermodynamics.”

“I’m not really hungry these days.”

THE SALON’S two dustbins were kept in a yard at the rear. It being Monday Christine had taken them out to the pavement, then retrieved them. Now they needed to be cleaned. “Filthy as a nigger’s bottom,” said Jody. “Use the hose.” A pizza segment had to be scraped off with folded cardboard.

The pizza smell stayed with Christine and her sandwiches remained untouched. Lacking customers at lunch-break they stood at the picture window and watched events. A mother and child emerged from Bevin Close in the council estate opposite and crossed to the salon. Jody sniffed. “A Childcare case, I bet you.” The boy’s curls clung dankly and Christine was graciously allowed the cutting. The mother asked if Christine did adults. Jody sniffed again.

We’re called beauticians, Christine reflected

IT WAS dark as she opened the lounge door and Mrs Bowland’s face, lit only by a streetlamp, appeared translucent. “Dear ma. Are you all right?”

“No better, no worse. Comforted this afternoon by Ms Tremain. How about you? I find it hard to imagine…”

“The two-week course did the job. I can handle the work and I’ll get better. No problem fitting in you and OU physics. But the salon’s depressing. Perhaps because I’m a snob. “

“Christine, my dear…”

TUESDAY, a day they both later remembered. He came in telling his mobile: “I’m getting it cut now.” Then switched to Christine, Jody and Mrs Jobard being henna-ed. “Who can do me? Quickly. TV cameras waiting.”

Jody said, “You’re drunk.”

“Freely admitted. A larger tip?”

“We’re busy.”

He glanced around. “I see one customer and two friseuses.”

“Chrissie’s not fully qualified.”

“But you wouldn’t butcher me, would you, Chrissie?”

Jody shrugged.

Sitting at Christine’s chair, he asked, “Are we going to chat?”

She could smell the drink. Posh drink. “I’m told I’ve got no small talk.”

He liked that. “Big talk then.”

“How big?” Comb forward, comb back, trap the fringe, listen as scissor blades crunched through hair. Already a routine, amazing really.

 “Who do you read?”

“Van Vliet, Hoffentlich, Bergarian, le Couille.”

“Did you think you’d mystify me, a drunk? Fact is I'm a media man and, as a tribe, we know a little about a lot. Bergarian's the new man on the quantum block?”

She nodded.

“So why’re you here snipping?  Not at uni?”

She explained her mother, living at home, the economics of the Open University.

Afterwards, he bent short-sightedly towards the mirror. “You didn’t butcher me. Why work here for peanuts? Set up on your own. Beat the uni debt problem.”

At the till Jody quoted fifteen pounds, five more than usual for men. He gave her thirty and left. Mrs Jobard had gone too. Just the two of them. Jody said, “Take these notes and bugger off. For good” Christine stared hard at Jody.

Walking away Christine reconstructed what she’d stared at. A blonde bob, multi-striped. Subtly varying. Expert colours that would never enhance the sharp-nosed malnourished face they surrounded. Ironic, really. She stopped, turned back.

Jody sat in a customer seat looking into space. Christine held out the notes: “I want to work here. I’ll beg if necessary.”

Jody smiled unpleasantly. “So I can make your life a misery?”

“It needn’t be like that.”

“What then?”

“We’d make money. You know we would.”

“Then you’d be off.”

Christine flapped the notes. “After three years. By then you’d have a place in the city. Assistants.”

“Dream on.”

“You’re good. And I learn quickly.”

Silence for one minute, two.

Jody said, “Keep the cash. Call in tomorrow. See if I’ve changed my mind.”

“Jody, change your mind now.”

“What are you up to?”

“You took me on; I was grateful. Take me on again.”

“I’m not sure I like you.”

“You don’t know me. You think I’m hoity-toity, I’m not. We’re much the same. You planned your future, I’m doing the same. Most just float. Not you and I.”

“I lick arses in the beauty business. You could be on telly.”

“Come on Jody. You know that’s just an accident.”

“For Christ’s sake, sit down. You must have legs of iron.”

“Just the assistant you need.”


NOTE: About 20% rewritten. Fifty-six words grudgingly added. Both necessary.

Welcome to the verse workshop

For offline reasons, I’ve agreed to do a sonnet about music. I’m no great shakes at verse, mostly I treat it as a sort of crossword and I’m even worse at those. But I am wedded to the value of revision. I thought it might be of interest to show revision at work. Proving to me at least that however terrible the most recent version turns out, worse previously existed.

Sonnet
Solomon - British pianist.

Born 1902.
Suffered stroke 1956.
Died 1988

First draft

He breathed on slow parts, made them his alone.

Thus in the one-oh-nine, Gesangvoll spilt

Its gift on me and forced me to disown

A taste for speed. In time I was rebuilt.

That pulse, though stretched, retained organic life,

I breathed his breath in synchronicity,

And heard in rests the dying sound of strife

Succumbing to chromatic majesty.

Lento, King of Kings, became an irony.

When malady applied its cruel brake,

Control gave way to immobility

And whist for thirty years to stay awake.

That golden patience, that felicity:

Comfort or curse in his adversity?

Now re-edited

Slowness adds grace to force. He taught me why

That intricate sonata, one-oh-nine,

Part-named Gesangvoll, might help reduce my

Taste for speed and open up the grand design.

His pulsing chords, the very beat of life,

Were linkages in synchronicity.

I heard the rests in contrapuntal strife

Surrender to chromatic majesty.

The King of Kings, now butt of irony,

Lento halted by an inner brake,

Control replaced by immobility

With whist for thirty years to stay awake.

That golden patience, that felicity:

Comfort or curse in his adversity?

Oughties. Worth a damn? No. 1

Economy On Turn, Says Osborne
Short short story (931 words)
      
UNTIL NINE the pub had been empty. Friday night! Maisie had busied herself rearranging the glasses, straightening the bottles in the chill cabinet. His pint was long gone but he hadn't dared talk. There'd have been only one topic - the pub's emptiness.
      
Just after nine the battered fifty-year-old came in and ordered her light ale. An old-fashioned drink for someone who wasn't of this era. Perhaps a prostitute at the very end of her career. Taking a break, resting her feet. The black dress stretched tightly over her buttocks and the garish lipstick both pointed that way.
      
She never stayed more than ten minutes. After her the old man shuffled through the door in carpet slippers and a baseball cap splashed with paint. As always he carried his half of mild to the bar's most distant corner. Took out a copy of the Sun, furry with folding and re-folding, and started on the sports pages, his lips moving as he did so.
      
When the old man had gone Maisie said, in a neutral voice, "I'm closing now." Half an hour early! On Friday night! He opened the door marked Private behind the bar and went up the bare wooden stairs to his room.
      
THE COMPUTER was seven years old. Booting up lasted an age but he'd learned patience over the years, was childishly pleased by the rotating symbol. Thought it represented activity, evidence of life. Down below a door banged as Maisie closed up. The email inbox flickered with new entries, none of them spam: six genuine replies, not bad. But he wouldn’t read them from the inbox; he’d switch to blog comments. More logical that way, more intimate.
      
 Most were brief, casually complimentary and from foreign parts. They thanked him for his persuasive portraits of Britain in 2013. Only the woman in Frantschoeck provided more. Born in England, she’d married a South African with one of those blunt Boer names – Voortrekker or some such. Had two children. Reading between the lines he sensed she was unhappy. His posts made her homesick, she said. But in a nice kind of way.
      
He decided to postpone his responses until tomorrow before he left for work. The local newspaper lay untouched on his tiny table and he flicked through the classifieds without hope. Nothing under Professional except for conveyancing solicitors. Oh, and an intern for the human resources department of the local authority. What sort of qualifications, he wondered? Good at photocopying?
      
HE WAS UP early. Since moving into this room he’d never been tempted to lie in. The bed was fashioned from angle-iron, typical of jails and the armed services fifty years ago. In any case it was too short. He shaved and drank orange juice as the computer ambled into action. A couple more comments in the inbox but last night’s keenness had ebbed away. His answers were perfunctory, lacked imagination and left him mildly ashamed.
      
At the department store the number of customers had increased but only marginally. Yet it was Saturday, the first day of an “Up to 50% off” sale. Times were hard which could mean more work for him. Temporary work, ignominious work, work he was lucky to have. In Women’s Clothing he watched a teenage girl wander backwards and forwards for a couple of minutes holding a loose-knitted scarf she’d picked off the rack. He moved closer only to see her hand it to an older woman who walked straight to the pay desk. Half an hour later another customer in a cashmere coat, surely Country Casuals and therefore bought elsewhere, dropped a similar scarf into her shoulder bag and began edging towards the escalator. But he felt no sense of triumph when he confronted her outside on the pavement, passing on the bad news in a quiet voice. Seeing the tracery of lines round her eyes contract into a look of horror. Too many of his arrests had involved women of her age.
      
THE STORE manager came by in the afternoon, passed on a civil compliment. Shrugging nevertheless. “I wish I could say equally nice things about your prospects here. Or mine, for that matter. If this is what a sale looks like… “
      
Back at the pub his room could only be approached through the bar. It was seven in the evening and a handful of teenagers were drinking cider. They wore beanies and occasionally pushed each other. But without energy.
      
Far too early for him. Upstairs he switched on the computer and opened a new file in Notebook – better for drafting than Blogger. His fingers moved quickly
      
Fridays are big at the Marquess of Granby. The draw stood at three-hundred pounds and Maisie got a novice girl pop-star to pick the ticket. Called Dagbert and into garage-rock, I was told. Amazing how people are happy to see others win prizes. Clapping, whistling, makes you proud to be human. And a pint of Young’s helps.
      
But that wasn’t the high spot. Kevin the Second (the sales rep I’ve posted about) arrived at nine and it was drinks on the house. Cost him sixty quid I believe. He’d totalled a car he hated. Will now get something sportier – ‘more of a tart trap’. Look, these aren’t my words, I’m just your humble recorder.
      
Do I make it sound as if it’s all youth? It isn’t, it’s a strong mix. Oldsters join in too.
      
The words had spilled out in a rush. He stopped to read them through. Made a correction:
      
Lots of oldsters join in too.
      
      

To the victor the spoils

Gorgeous woman kisses modern-day hero. Why not? She's his wife. Pretty good kiss, eh? The poliziotto seems to think so.

The kissee is Nick Sloane who masterminded the first stage of salvaging the huge cruise liner Costa Concordia beached on an Italian island. That Nick Sloane!

Can a man be a hero just for doing his job? Yes. Presently he's garlanded with media approval. Suppose the ship had broken in two and spilled its mess? Being approved is the other side of being blamed. And the media are good at blaming.

Also he's an engineer who will spend over half a billion quid shifting the Concordia. Ten years ago I reckoned engineers were under-appreciated, certainly in fiction. Last year I finished a novel with engineers central to the plot. Nick Sloane has shown they can hold your attention.

I won't summarise the salvaging; Google does that. Just two points: the scale (It took several hours just to pre-tension the cables doing the pulling.) and the ingenuity (Vast water-filled boxes welded to the ship's exposed flank helped - by their weight - bring the ship upright; emptied they'll add to its bouyancy.)

That, folks, is engineering. The man who repairs your dish washer or attaches a new silencer to your car is not an engineer.

 WIP Second Hand (36,711 words)

Nneoma interrupted. “... Tell us about yourself, Francine. Your name for instance. It’s beautiful. Where did it come from?”

“It has French roots. Popular in the States fifty years ago. It’s always sounded manufactured to me; I’d have preferred Francoise. Better still, Nneoma.”

“Silly! ...”

Milestone on the technie road

I've mentioned the Remington portable typewriter before. Acquired in my teens, it hammered out millions of words during my weekly newspaper days, trailed through most of my RAF service, helped me write early novels, crossed the Atlantic, wrote hundreds of letters home during our six years in Pennsylvania, returned to the UK, assisted with a couple more novels and was finally retired when word-processing simplified text revision and eliminated the irritation of carbons.
      
It is visible proof of a life spent writing; hard to imagine it elsewhere, assuming anyone wanted it. VR suggested it became a monument on a small table (made by my great-grandfather) in the dining room. More recently VR approved the nearby attachment of a brass coat-hook from which hangs my Pentax ME-50 film-based camera, also overtaken by technological progress.
      
They're on show because they are well-made. That’s all. Other kit does the work better.
   
A BRO BASH We’ll be seeing my brother, Sir Hugh, soon. He lives near the Lake District and I suggested visiting the pub at the head of Wasdale, a blind LD valley. The name of the nearby lake, Wastwater, hints at the area’s austere grandeur. I recall the pub as a scowling sort of place with stone slab floors. Looked at the pub’s website and quickly withdrew the suggestion. Gentrification has descended like particles in the emollient voice of Huw Edwards.

WIP Second Hand (36,203 words)

“A New Zealand pinot, if you’ve got it.”

“We have,” said Moses, speaking carefully. “And you may certainly have it. But would you prefer a pinot from the people who made pinot famous.”

“Put him out of his misery, Francine,” said Nneoma.”He’s dying to syphon Volnay down your throat. I wonder why he bothers with wine from any other countries.”