Memory's...

I used to play the violin.

And when I tell you that I used to play the violin, I mean I could still play the violin now, if I had a violin.

And a bow.

If I had a violin and bow right now I could make that violin make a noise. Without a bow I could pluck it, or even strum it, but in order to play it 'properly' I would need a bow. And possibly some resin. In the past I could have played it 'properly'. I used to be able to make a violin make a recognisable noise. Sounds, if you will. In the past I could make it 'sing' like a bird. All lilting and harmless and, dare I say, beautiful. Right now I could probably make it sing like someone who didn't want to do bird. All whiny and anxious and, dare I say, shit.

Because that was thirty years ago.

I had violin lessons at junior school. I must ask my Mum, "Why?", one day. It wasn't as if the school had an orchestra. Do you know what I mean?

I mean I could understand it if the school had an orchestra. When I went to secondary school I learned to play the French horn. At least, for a while. The school wrote to my parents suggesting that I was showing an aptitude for music, and that my specific musical skills - so far as they could tell - might lend themselves to me being a successful French horn player (is there any other kind?). Nothing to do with the fact that the school orchestra was running a bit low on numbers in this particular role. I'm not sure exactly what skills I was demonstrating at this juncture, other than "being able to carry a ludicrously shaped musical instrument on and off a coach twice a week in a ludicrously shaped case".

My shins have never been the same since.

Now I can imagine that just being a junior school teacher isn't necessarily enough for most if not some junior school teachers. In exactly the same way as someone who works in an office probably doesn't need to buy another manilla envelope ever again, even the apparent vocational nature of teaching would dictate that there have to be some perks. I've come to realise - in hindsight - that I accidentally witnessed one of these.

My violin lessons used to take place in the school staff room. I've no idea why. It was a small school and had a commensurate staff room. It always felt strangely voyeuristic being in there. Being somewhere only adults should be or have been, when you're less than ten years old, can make you feel vaguely pompous. But my bubble was well and truly burst one day when I glanced up at the wall during one of my violin lessons. Because there, on light green A3 cartridge paper, was the following:

Quote of the Week

"The planes raced off along the wrong way."

I wrote that once.

It's amazing the things you remember. I remember playing football in 1986 like it wasn't 25 years ago.

I remember the name of the team we were playing, and our team losing the game 4-3. I remember the three goals I scored, and I remember, before then, seeing Birmingham versus Nottingham Forest, and the same result. I remember Ian Wallace scoring a hat-trick and ending up on the losing side, and I remember how I imagine he must have felt. I remember half-time in our game. Distinctly. One of the lads - I remember his name - had a new watch. The watch had a stopwatch. And with that stopwatch he had calculated that the centre-back for the opposition was spitting, on average, every 27 seconds. Now I don't want to have to remember this. But it seems like it's one of my go-to memories. One of those things that no matter how long I live, I'll never forget. I might forget birthdays and anniversaries and car tax and car keys, but I'll never forget Richard Coombes. As much as I might want to try to forget - and it's equally and utterly amazing the things you forget - I never will. And when I'm old and senile and I'm clinging onto the very last true memories I have, I'll recall the tale of the spitting boy, and you can imagine the reaction I might get.

I started writing this piece in May 2011 and had nearly finished it at the start of October. Unfortunately I was admitted to hospital on the 19th of October and not discharged until the 18th of November.

The truth is that I don't quite remember where it was going.

I'll be back again sooner.

ROW

nothing heartbreaking hurtful truthful childish crucial momentary liberating
exhilarating reckless ridiculous rebellious hateful spontaneous insolent
desperate abominable forgivable unforgivable unforgettable trying
paradoxical pertinent poignant landmark dark
necessary false provocative positive
everything trivial painful
unloving unrepeatable
unifying

#musicdiaryproject

I am indebted to N. Southall Of Dawlish - a man whose passion for music is only outweighed by his inability to laugh like a human - for challenging his wife and the world to listen to music with their ears, and use their minds and fingers to record their experiences on the Internet.

His challenge can be found here.

Not only has he provided me with the inspiration to return to my blog, he has also inspired others.

He is a hepcatalyst.

A New Low

I had my first comment in ages and it was from a spambot.

Maybe it's time to give up...

Lovestrokehate

It's a fact that you're never very far from hating the people that you used to think you loved the most, and the people you're capable of making feel the happiest are the same people you're capable of making feel the most miserable.

Friday Night

I am in the presence of confident and decent and attractive young men. They run nightclubs for hundreds of people. They drink. They dance. They do it all with consummate ease. They probably don't know their limits but they are comfortable and, for a second, or a minute, or a few hours, they don't care. Or, at least, nothing seems to matter to them because they are happy. They know all the songs and the words and the tunes. They can touch each other or anyone else, in more ways than one. The world is more than their oyster and the paint they carry is every shade of red. And they make me want to cry because they remind me of absolutely every single thing I miss about every single thing.

I must be getting old.

A Chapter In My Life

I've just come back from Camp Bestival where I told the following tale as part of the early morning open mic slot in the Literary Tent. I wasn't going to post it on here - since about half of it is "old" - but on my way out of the festival, someone - a stranger - stopped me and congratulated me on my performance from earlier in the day. Which was nice...

______________________________________________________

My favourite book is The Catcher In The Rye.

A story probably needs a better first line than this. A chapter can just about get away with it. As long as it's not the first chapter. But a story probably does need a better first line, even if it's only "Once upon a time..."

So yeah, suffice to say that already, even now, even at this comparatively foetal stage in the proceedings, even when it might look like I have absolutely no idea where either I or this tale is going, that I am, effectively, beating around a bush which definitely hadn't been introduced, you were unaware existed, and therefore can't possibly feel any empathy for, I've already spent more time dwelling on this line than is either literally necessary or healthy. So you'll have to forgive the route the rest of this chapter takes.

And that is absolutely not a request, not that it's an order. I'm not rude. It's just the truth.

If I'm honest - and on this occasion I am being honest - I'm not even comfortable calling it a chapter. Calling it a chapter makes it seem somehow more insignificant or, at the very least, less significant. Like it's only a passing moment, like there was a time before it and there will be a time after it. And although I know there was, and although I know there almost certainly will be, that doesn't detract from the fact that the whole of my life, or at least the last three to thirty-five years, have, undeniably, effectively, and ultimately been building up to this point: this sentence: these words: this word, and all I'm asking you to do, if you wouldn't mind, is to cut me some collective slack. So with your permission I'm not going to call it a chapter, I'm going to call it a story. And since I've already mentioned the bush, now I want to tell you about the river and the flying crow.

Because you'll be overjoyed to hear that whilst it would no doubt be easier if this story was a flying crow, this story is actually a river.

In an ideal world all stories would be flying crows - a straight line in any direction it might choose to travel. That's how a river would flow in the same world. The reality is that worlds, as we all know, are rarely ideal, and water, as we all also know, finds the easiest route, and stories, as we also all know too, do something broadly similar. So as much as you or I would love this story to be a flying crow, it's not. It's a river. And whilst it could have started straight or might straighten up at certain points, it's largely a series of meanders with the occasional oxbow lake of irrelevance. This is why it will only sometimes appear to make sense.

I'm of the opinion that the best stories are better read out than read. Only a good book can make me think the opposite. I'm also of the opinion that it's better to be too cold rather than too hot. I remember when it was dead hot. Horrible sticky heat. Hot as in over twenty degrees. And I still miss the centigrade scale.

People annoy me.

I'm a Winter person. I like wearing lots of clothes. If wearing too many layers of clothes was a hanging offence then I'd be dead now. I'd have been hanged years ago. I'd have been dead for years. Hung.

And so you know. This story is largely about the weather. And the fact that there's nothing wrong with starting or finishing a sentence with the word and.

People annoy me when they complain that it's too cold. And I'm not talking about your pensioner who can't afford to put the heating on. In general they don't anyway. They're up to their armpits in shawls and blankets, up to their heads in balaclavas. They haven't got time to be bitter about the bitter weather. They're using their complaint gland to complain about the cost of heating. The people who complain about it being too cold can generally afford another jumper. They generally own gloves. They are generally the same people who complain when the weather's too hot. The weather isn't given a chance. It can't win.

I like extremes of temperature. When you're cold you can always wear more clothes, if you're hot and naked you have problems. Or at least, you know, you might have problems. Some of the time. It depends on other stuff.

I don't mind when it's hot. I still get accused of wearing too many layers of clothes, luckily I can't be formally charged. When it's hot there are hosepipe bans. When it's hot for more than two days it becomes a heatwave. Look it up if you don't believe me. Anyway, it had been dead hot recently and I was on the bus when it started. I don't mind the rain but when it's quite heavy you need a hat or an umbrella.

I'd bought a coat, before the hot spell.

I had needed a coat.

I'd looked for one for quite a while but, try as I might, I couldn't find one which fitted my brief.

It had to be:

1. Cheap
2. Warm
3. Any colour - even brown and
4. Waterproof

I looked everywhere, even in shops which didn't sell coats, all to no avail. I eventually found one which suited me down to the tops of my thighs. I thought twice about buying it straight away because of the label I found stuck to the inside pocket. Instead of not buying the coat I just ripped the label off, and everything was okay. Can you guess what the label said? It said, "NOT TO BE WORN IN THE RAIN".

Anyway, back on the bus, I was wearing my coat at the time, after all, it's never too hot for a coat, but the hood on it doesn't reach my head properly and if I have to put it up my shoulders somehow disappear. And I'm not a big fan of hats. The problem with hats is I don't have the neck for them. Ownership of a head is not actually a prerequisite for carrying off a hat - not in an aesthetic sense at least. You have to have the neck for hats. So I got off the bus and went to buy an umbrella. The thing was I only had a fiver on me and decent ones cost about twice as much. Or at least if anyone asked me how much a decent umbrella costs I'd tell them about a tenner. Not that anyone ever has, or probably ever will, but I think it's just as well to be prepared. I went straight into Debenhams, looking like the Atlantic, found an umbrella that fell within my budget, paid for it, and left.

It was only when I got outside that I realised my mistake. It was a girls one. I had paid five pounds for what was, in effect, a crap parasol. My walk to work only heightened my angst. There were umbrella sales going on everywhere. Decent ones. For less than a tenner. Even in Halfords. I might as well have held a five pound note over my head for all the use my new umbrella was. To be honest it was more of a psychological crutch. In fact it probably would have made a better crutch than an umbrella because the first gust of wind that came my way turned the umbrella inside out and ripped it apart. My umbrella left as a canvasless umbrella corpse. Lying in a bin. Spokes akimbo.

Incidentally, I saw a rainbow the other day and went looking for the crock of gold. When I found them they were complaining about the cost of heating.

So anyway, once upon a time my favourite book was "The Catcher In The Rye", and it still is. I'm loath to get involved discussions about favourites. Favourite book, favourite song, favourite colour, favourite envelope, favourite dental procedure, favourite celebrity whose initials run consecutively in the alphabet, favourite son or favourite daughter - all seemingly random favourites, you might think - still I could give you an answer for them all. It's likely that it's more that I'm not a fan of the word favourite than the idea of choosing a favourite. The irony never escapes me. My favourite book is just a book that I've yet to tire of reading. I'm sure it's a lot of people's favourite book. It's a good book. In fact a google search of the exact phrase, "My favourite book is The Catcher In The Rye" reveals 21,700 matches. In nought point one six seconds. So I know I'm not alone.

And I also know I'm not alone because I have family. A family which, until recently, didn't seem able to produce boys. Since my Dad was born, my family had produced only one boy. Me. Two sisters with three daughters each, and two daughters of my own - all within the last ten years. Plenty of nieces to love to pieces, and daughters to love like I oughta, but the traditionalist in me always wanted a son. I've pretty much always clung to the hackneyed pretension of perpetuating not only my genetic future, but also my surname. Maybe moreso since my Dad died. Don't ask me why, I'm aware how irrational the premise is. And I'm normally quite savvy. Seriously. The statistician in me thought that it might happen one day - and I was quite prepared to keep trying - so long as my partner wanted the same statistician in her.

Eventually dawn broke on that day. And all eleven and a half pounds of that bouncing baby boy made me feel simultaneously shocked, amazed, and unswervingly happy. And for every hour of every waking moment since, every ounce of that child has made me feel even happier and humbled and privileged. And whilst it goes against my natural instincts to publicly declare certain information, if there were ever a moment where I might have neglected to thank my wife for that moment and every moment since, then I do so now.

I'm grateful for this opportunity, and you should be grateful for the opportunity to say whatever you want to say and whatever you have to say. You should hate being edited or censored. You should abhor being banned or silenced. You can't always be responsible for how people react to what you say, and you can't always be held responsible. You put your thoughts out there. They're who you are, your very essence. And once those words are out there, for everyone to read, those words are there to be interpreted however anyone sees fit.

You don't need to back down from them if you know you're right.

You don't have to compromise. There's no such thing as compromise, someone has to give in.

Because if you can't defend your words then you have absolutely nothing worth saying.

And none of this is particularly new, or at least I don't think it is. And none of what you'll read or hear is especially radical or controversial. It's just stuff that has happened. But I don't want to waffle on about it too much. As someone once said, "Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do you start missing everybody."

And if you think about that, it's true.

One giant leap for boykind...

OYO

Hello ladies.

Marriage/Tattoo

Marriages and weddings are a lot like tattoos.

You should never get married on a whim. You should plan when and where it's going to be. You should consider how much it's going to cost. And you should definitely anticipate an element of pain being involved.

Good times.

Time Flies

Loves Of My Life

April

February - February + March - owls + nappies = April

February

I missed February. I was busy. I was distracted by owls and shit. I'll tell you why later.

Yes, you.

Is It Safe?

A recent telephone conversation made me question the number of people who might have died in the dentist's chair. What is the likelihood of me dying at the dentist, and would I be willing to pay £16 a month so that my dependants could benefit from a lump sum payment in such an event? In all of my 37 years I've never heard of such a thing happening. I mean I've watched Marathon Man, but Dustin Hoffman didn't die. And with this half-life of knowledge I feel fairly confident in saying I wouldn't have thought it was such a widespread occurrence that it warranted someone trying to convince me that it could, one day, happen to me.

The chance of me dying at the dentist is pretty slim since, apart from anything else, I've only probably been to the dentist once in the last, maybe, twenty years. I know that's not a very good record, and it's not a claim to fame, or a boast, or an endorsement, or a recommendation, or a condonance. It's just a vague fact. But I've never had a filling in my whole life: I've always been pretty lucky with my teeth.

Apart from twice.

The time I had to have my four front teeth pulled out...

I must have been about seven or eight years old: at junior school, and our class had 'games'. As the class assembled outside, and before the teacher got there, all the boys in the class decided to have a race. Because that's what boys do. We were probably told not to by our teacher. Because that's what teachers do. So starting from the wall we had to run to the logs and back. First one to touch the wall wins. Because that's what boys do.

Cigarettes and alcohol have long since rendered such a contest almost impossible. Two gippy knees too. But back in the day I was a nippy little shit, so I fancied my chances. Only Christopher Pearce stood in my way. And, in fact, stand in my way he did, because having raced to the logs and heading back to the wall stride for stride, our legs somehow became entangled and I plunged teeth first into the wall.

My teeth weren't actually knocked out straight away, more 'knocked back' into my mouth. Half hanging there, half not. Prematurely useless. Clinging onto my gums. Haphazard. I can still remember the crunch of each tooth as the dentist pulled them out, one by bloody one.

The time I chewed a pen...

Roughly twenty years later I'm back. Nothing of any real note had occurred to my teeth before The Wall Incident, and very little since. Unfortunately I'd cracked a tooth on a pen a week or so beforehand, and a week of tooth pain - easily the most painful pain in the world with the possible exception of childbirth, waking up during a hip replacement operation, and standing bare foot on an upturned plug - was enough to send me back to the chair.

The dentist suggested some sort of root canal treatment, but I'd already been warned of the expense/pain/fruitlessness of such a procedure and was to immediately ask for less urinesque extraction. I paid £14 for the privilege of having one of my teeth pulled out which remains, to this day, among the best pounds I've ever spent. You might be able to imagine my amazement when one week later I received a letter from the 'practice' informing me that they had undercharged me for removing my tooth, and would I mind paying them thirteen more pounds as it should have, you know, been £27?

What were they going to do? Put it back???


So that's it.

That's a brief history of my mouth.

All those words and all that nonsense, just because I thought I heard someone say AXA Dental Death Plan.

The Twelve Days Of Christmas (Again)

I saw another Nativity Play last week, and this reminded me of this...

I saw my two daughters in their first Nativity Play this week. It was a heart-warming and surreal affair. Singing donkeys playing xylophones and stuff, you know how it is. It reminded me of the unswerving and overwhelming love I have for my children, and it reminded me of Christmas. And when I thought about love and about Christmas it brought to mind the song The Twelve Days of Christmas, a song I don't think I've ever heard sung properly.

I mean I've heard it attempted. Everyone at least gets it right up until five gold rings. In fact the whole song revolves around five gold rings. If you've forgotten how many pipers are piping, or lords are a-leaping you can rest assured that on the fifth day it was DEFINITELY five gold rings that my true love gave to me. And if you sing it with enough gusto the rest of the song hardly matters. Everything between five gold rings and a partridge in a pear tree is sung as the longest word that has ever appeared in a song.

"Fourcallingbirdsthreefrenchhenstwoturtledoves, AND A PARTRIDGE IN A PEAR TREEEEEE."

Anyway. The thing is, I'm reckoning that this "true love" person was one hell of a rich mother-fucker, and obviously I'm having to make a few assumptions.

Firstly there's the packaging issue. Most of the stuff is alive, so we're not in bubble-wrap territory. And what's the deal with all the live creatures anyway? What is the method behind the madness? Why a pear tree? Was it just the alliteration?

Whatever.

I'm not particularly concerned with the events leading up to the twelve days of Christmas, and I'm not overly worried about understanding the psyche behind the purchases. I'm more interested in using as much hapless rhetoric and assumptive absurdity as possible. I'm thinking the deliveries were made in person, by the "True Love". Most of the information I have on prices is going to have to be pretty sketchy. I'm figuring that the whole lot is going to be pretty expensive, so in the absence of fact there'll be a bit of educated guesswork along the way.

For the purposes of this exercise, "My True Love" is a he/him/boyfriend, and "Me" is a she/her/girlfriend. And if you've got a problem with that, stop reading now.

Ready?


___________________________________________________________

Ok. So. Day one. The first day of Christmas. A partridge in a pear tree.

Now a pear tree, depending on the type of pear, is going to set you back about £17. The thing is, where the cost of this whole twelve days of Christmas thing starts to mount up, is the fact that each of the gifts is duplicated on each of the remaining days. So a partridge in a pear tree is given on the first day and each of the remaining eleven days.

Yes, I know, it's complicated.

Partridge meat costs about £7 per kilogram and the average weight of a partridge is about 500 grams, so that's about £3.50 per partridge. But how do you compare the cost of a dead partridge to a live one? I could compare the price of a pig to the price of bacon and work out some sort of dead:alive cost ratio index but, to be honest, I don't think there's a lot of point comparing a pig to a partridge. Turkey seems more festive, and more apt. I don't know if turkey prices go up at Christmas, necessarily. It's been a while since I studied supply and demand and now I'm looking into this, it's apparent that I may have bitten off more than I can chew.

Ok, major assumptions. You're going to have to run with me on this.

You can pick up a box of 10 dead partridge(s) for £47. Call it a fiver per partridge. Now, thinking out loud here, but thinking slowly... a... live... partridge... must... cost... less... than... a... dead... one. Right?

I mean, if you're going to sell ten dead partridge in a box, there has to be some sort of mark-up, unless you've raised them since they were eggs, or whatever. I can't imagine that you'd get a lot of waste product from a dead partridge. Do they use their feathers on shuttlecocks or anything? Not sure. Then there are economies of scale. If you buy in bulk the price per partridge has to be less than buying individual partridge. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that a live partridge is probably going to cost about three quid. This will fall nicely in line with the £17 pear tree and make things easier to work out when the time comes.

There's no point in making it more complicated than it has to be, yeah?

Moving on. Turtle doves.

Day one was sweet. Granted that perfume might have been a more suitable choice, but the partridge and pear tree were a lovely thought. It probably would have been a bit of a surprise to get another partridge and another pear tree on day two, but the two turtle doves would have been a pleasant distraction. Fluttering away. Being turtle doves.

Now my basic knowledge of turtle doves is pretty slim as, coincidentally, is my knowledge of turtles and, indeed, doves. I'm more of a "know a little about a lot" kind of bloke. That's me.

Turtle doves are, essentially, free. They "occur" naturally. Although so do partridges and pear trees, and that didn't stop me putting a price on them. By my reckoning turtle doves are posh doves, and doves are posh pigeons. And racing pigeons are also posh pigeons. So by that rationale I'm thinking that a turtle dove would cost about the same as a posh racing pigeon. Which is about fifty quid. Two ponies. A tenth of a monkey.

On day three the alarm bells will have started ringing. They might be barely audible, like someone breaking into a butcher's around the corner from your house, but they're definitely there. Another partridge in a pear tree - the novelty is beginning to wear a bit thin. Two more turtle doves - blimey, they must have set you back about £100. And now three French hens.

It's a double whammy. The bird fixation, and the arithmetic progression. I'm guessing that if you call a hen French, that makes it a French hen. It won't cluck with an accent and it's not likely to get up when the La Marseillaise starts playing any more than a jar of French mustard would. On this basis a hen costs about a fiver.

At this point she asks him how long this is all going to last. And he tells her.

Day four. The alarm bell is next door. She's already made space in the garden for the fourth pear tree and the partridge have never looked so at home. They're roosting with the turtle doves.

Coo.

Three French hens become six French hens, like some sort of hackneyed meiosis, and fuck me if it's not more fucking birds. Four calling birds or, to be more accurate, four collie birds.

Don't panic though. In the same way as turtle doves ARE NOT some sort of crazy seaweed sprig carrying ocean-dwellers of peace, collie birds have nothing to do with sheepdogs. The word collie or "colly" actually comes from an old word meaning coal or "coal". Thus a collie bird, now more familiarly referred to as a calling bird, is actually a blackbird. And if you've done the maths already, you're right. At the end of the twelfth day there will be enough to make one and a half dainty dishes to set before the king.

I'm not sure how much blackbirds cost, and neither does the internet, so the blackbirds didn't cost anything, okay? He caught them. At the park or somewhere. And put them into cages. Until the pear trees were available.

You'd be forgiven, if you were her, for thinking that enough was enough. By the end of day four she's looking at four pear trees populated by four partridges, eight turtle doves, and four calling birds. And she's had to build a coop for the six French hens. There's already enough room for eight more pear trees, so the fifth one isnt a problem.

The rest of the birds are unloaded from the van (which is the same van as the previous day) and he shuts the doors and walks towards her - she's standing in the porch. There are no obvious signs of other life shoved up or down his sweater. No twittering, chirping, squawking, or tweeting eminates from his slacks. He's got five of something, she's certain, but five of what? What will she have to house forty of in the not too distant future? He reaches into his pocket. His pocket Mind! And takes out five gold rings.

Argos. Ten pound a pop. Sorted.

The phew from her lips could be heard within a ten mile radius. The gasp the following day, twelve. Buttered up by a day's worth of jewellery, he saw a window of opportunity and, after arriving before dawn broke, in a slightly larger van, began unloading his feather orientated cargo.

Six geese-a-laying enter the fray.

Now at this point she's clearly upset, she's having nightmares about being ravaged by a dozen dodos in half a dozen days time, and is about to tell him that enough is enough. So he makes a promise. No more birds after tomorrow. And he'd stop sooner but they're on order. And look, you've got ten gold rings. So she says okay, as he's promised, and wonders if five gold rings on each finger will still allow her to knit.

A decent goose is going to set you back about £120, whether it's a-laying or not. The a-laying bit is something of a red herring. You could probably get a deal by buying them in bulk. Say six for £600. That's if you knew someone who sold geese in bulk.

You could haggle for a gaggle.

That's pure gold.

So she knew they were coming and that they'd have feathers. She knew there would be seven of them. Shit. That meant within a week there would be forty-two of them. Fuck. Whilst his avian MO would have stopped, that would still leave her having to look after 184 birds, and that's not counting any hatched geese (a-laying my arse). But she was ready for anything, pretty much, or she thought she was.

Her suspicions were aroused when he insisted on having a pond landscaped into her back garden (he called in a favour). It was a big pond, you could probably fit... oooooooh... forty-two swans in that (£300 each). To be honest, having swans swimming in a pond in your back garden would be pretty cool and, for a split second, she almost regretted enforcing his bird-gift embargo. But only for a split second. He had the opportunity to redeem himself over the next few days and she had the opportunity to develop Dove Fancier's Lung.

The eighth day and a new dawn, ushered in with the sort of racket you might associate with the sound that nearly seventy birds make. And hark? Is that the sound of cow-bells coming from the large truck that has pulled into the driveway? Forming not so much a queue of presents, more the failed auditions from some sort of demented Noah film, the possibly soon-to-be ex-boyfriend proudly parades the next stage in his attempted woo.

Eight maids-a-milking.

On the plus side she now had eight people who could help her gather eggs, scatter seed, and clean the bird shit off her windows. There would be an endless supply of milk, which could domino into cheese, butter, and pear yogurt production. And they downside? IN FOUR DAYS TIME THERE WOULD BE FORTY COWS IN HER FUCKING GARDEN.

At this point a wry smile crawls across his face. Although because it's only a joke that he's aware of, and because she is about to stove his skull in with a pail, it quickly crawls off again. He explains that seven of the cows are going back, and she'll only be left with one cow, and the maids will have to take it in turns a-milking it. Her face defines the antithesis of sidesplitting.

Anyhow, cows cost a grand, exactly. And maids cost...

Hmmmnnn...

Here's the possible flaw in my interpretation of The Twelve Days Of Christmas. I'm wanting to go down the Human Ownership route. Not so much because I have a penchant for slavery, but more that I've gone so far down this absurd road, it would be a shame to have to turn back. But where can you buy human life on the internet?

You have to love rhetoric.

It won't work though. I've got to consider pipers piping and drummers drumming. Ladies dancing I can change to something more noughties, like lapdancing (£20/dance). And everyone knows that Lords are a snip at £2,000, or at least that's how much they think people can be bought for. I'm going to have to tar maids, pipers and drummers with the same metaphorical minimum wage brush, and base their cost on a 35 hour working week. It would mean an ongoing wage-bill after The Twelve Days Of Christmas were over... but that could always be offset by selling goose eggs and dairy produce... although with only one cow and 40 maids to pay... except their wages wouldn't be her problem... maybe he'd have to draw up some sort of pre-nuptial agreement... I'm rambling.

In any case, who cares what happened after?

Because I'm feeling generous the maids get five pounds an hour for a seven hour day. End of.

Thus eight maids-a-milking begets nine-ladies dancing begets ten lords-a-leaping begets eleven pipers piping begets twelve drummers drumming.

This is how you end an incredibly tedious story.

By the end of the twelfth day of Christmas her garden comprises 12 pear trees and 12 partridges, 22 turtle doves, 30 French hens, 36 calling birds, 42 geese, and 42 swans. That's 184 birds plus sundry goslings, and one cow. 140 people variously milk, dance, leap, pipe and drum at her house every day, and despite the fact that she is also the owner of 40 gold rings, her life is actually a living hell.

And the value of these gifts? Well, if my calculations are correct, the total value of the gifts, as at the end of the twelfth day of Christmas, is £87,265.

The Twelve Days of Christmas actually start on Boxing day and finish on Epiphany. If you want to you can treat this as ironic. My guess is he forgot to buy her something for Christmas and was trying to make it up to her. I wonder who had the epiphany?

Cheap C(o)unts

I've been meaning to write this blog for some time. It's something which has been bubbling away in my psyche for a while and was finally prompted by me hearing the phrase, "obviously I'm going to go for the cheapest."

It's a bit like a three course meal. But the menu will be written in the form of a meandering line. The thrust of it is a straight line - running from the top to the bottom (if you want to picture it in that way). But it's a faint straight line, and probably dotted. The meander is in bold. This is why it will only sometimes seem to make any sense. None of it is particularly new, or at least I don't think it is. None of what you'll read is especially radical or controversial. It's just ideas I've had. Things that I've thought. Stuff that has happened. Shit like that.

This blog is essentially about thrift. It's about being cheap. Penny pinching. Or at least it is eventually.

For my sins I work in the insurance industry. It's not a sexy industry, but then a lot of industries aren't sexy: the majority. When I left school, back in 1989, I worked temporarily for a market research company (yeah, I know, I can really pick 'em, eh?) and the market research was carried out over the phone. The main campaign involved calling consultant cardiologists and asking them a series of questions about the treatment of myocardial infarction (heart attacks). And despite the fact that it was very nearly twenty years ago, I still remember that APSAC stands for Anisoylated Plasminogen Streptokinase Activator Complex.

Whilst the point I imagined I might be trying to make just now escapes me, the subsequent point is that the job only lasted for six months - the term of the contract - and I found myself unemployed.

By 1996 I'd been working in the insurance industry for seven years. I wasn't entirely sure how this had happened. I mean I'm familiar with the passing of time, look, but I was more surprised that I'd managed to remain in employment during this time. This period in my life coincided with its supreme moments of irresponsibility, exactly as it should have done. I was young, I was mainly single, I was living away from home for the first time, I had very little concept of the value of money - other than the knowledge that I didn't have much of it and definitely needed more of it - yet it was my overriding senses of immortality and optimism which must have kept me going. It was a dangerous and expensive cocktail.

The insurance industry is one which you can only truly end up in by accident. An endearing memory from those first seven years was the schadenfreude I always took in explaining this fact to work-experiencing A-Level students who had "always wanted to work in insurance".

"No."

"You haven't."

"You're wrong."

"Sorry about that."


Just so you know, this is all leading to something.


I moved from an insurance company to an insurance broker to improve my career chances and was made redundant three months later. Whoops.

I temped for a year working for BT in a call centre. Ace.

I coupled my insurance and telephone experience and started working for Direct Line. For six years.

I got married and had two beautiful daughters.

In the space of one week in April 2004 I got divorced, moved house, and spoke at my Dad's funeral.

Divorce
Moving house
Death of a relative
Public speaking

These four events feature fairly regularly in lists of life's Top Ten stressful events. Two years later I was fired from my job.

I was unemployed for ten months.

I worked for Sainsbury's as a delivery driver for five months.

For the last year I've been working in insurance again.

And all of this, this CV, and every event in every year of my adult life, has moulded me into the person I am today. Every month of every year has made me believe that I understand what I want. Every day of every month has helped me realise what I believe is right and wrong. Not without exception or consideration, or irrespective of anything, and not necessarily in black and white. Just right and wrong.

Anyway, that's the beef of the story, and here's mine.

Some people are becoming cheap.

The industry I work in is rife with these people.

I can almost understand why people want to save money. I'm familiar with the sentiment that if you look after the pennies the pounds will look after themselves. That it all adds up. Believe me. I know. But at the same time I'm consumed by the overwhelming notion that the only thing you can actually do with money is spend it. This and the fact, The Fact, that we'll all be in the same place one hundred years from now.

Why on earth at the moment does there seem to be this futile desire for people to want to sacrifice peace of mind or pleasure or need or their future, all in the pursuit of cheapness? It's because television advertisement breaks are saturated with evidence of this cheapness. And these adverts propagate the idea that the cheapest version of an homogenous product must automatically be the best.

I'm sure that part of the reason I think like this is because I sell something that people have to buy. They have a legal obligation to buy it, and it's something they never want to have to use. Like buying a coffin. Also the perception of the consumer is that despite there being literally hundreds of companies offering a similar type of product, the misconception is that the products are identical. There is, no doubt, an element of truth in this, but only in the same way that a television set lets you watch the same channels. In all other ways there could be a wealth of differences. I could understand it if the thing I was selling was wholely useless, but it isn't. And yet people continue to want to s(h)ave inconsequential sums of money at the expense of quality.

£365 is one pound a day. £50 is less than one pound a week. Some people spend that much on satellite or cable TV every month. Since when did securing your livelihood have to be forfeited at the expense of what's on television?

Please don't answer that.

People like to think that they have found a bargain. They're proud of the fact that they can save money, even better if they can save more money than you. But people lie as well. All the time. They lie about how much they earn, how much their children sleep at night, and how much they pay for their car insurance.

The internet is also blameworthy.

I use the internet. True. But I'd never use the internet to buy insurance. It's far too complicated and there's no-one to blame if you click the wrong link, or leave the right box unticked, it takes too long to sort out and that's time you'll never get back. Ever.

And that's me. That's me with years of insurance and internet experience. I'll use the internet to buy a CD. I know the name of the artist, I know the name of the album, I know it has ten tracks on it, it's a no-brainer. But that's only on the occasion that I'm prepared to wait. If I want to find out how long I need to roast a joint of beef so it's well done there's any number of places on the internet I can garner that information. But I have to know where to draw the line. And that line is common sense. It's knowing my limits. This is why, with the aid of the internet, I might be able to self-diagnose coeliac disease, but I'm not about to conduct my own biopsy, no matter how good the diagrams are.

Today a reduction in the rate of VAT was announced. On the radio this morning, before the announcement, I heard an interview with A Man. He was asked whether or not he thought this reduction would prompt him into buying, for example, a digital camera - the example being a saving of about £3 on a £120 camera. The Man said that it wouldn't. In fact beyond that he said only a five or possibly ten percent saving would encourage him to spend his hard-earned money on such a thing.

He is a fucking moron.

If you want to buy a digital camera, you buy one. If you need a digital camera, you definitely buy one.

Whatever you want or need, you pay what you're happy to pay and what you can afford to pay for the best you can afford. I mean whatever it is, that's all you need to consider, isn't it?

Because Christmas is one month away, and unless I missed a meeting it's still a time for giving not receiving.

So use your time to consider the people you love and spend as much or as little as you like on them. Because love isn't sensible. Love doesn't need to have a budget. And love doesn't ask you for the receipt.

Foetuswatch (20 weeks)

1 x head - check
10 x fingers - check
1 x heart - check
2 x ventricles - check
1 x bladder - check
2 x knees - check
2 x backs of the knees - check
2 x femurs - check
1 x spine - check
1 x umbilical cord - check
1 x mouth - check
1 x brain - check
2 x excited parents-to-be - check



March 17th 2009

Credit Crunchie

I really love Crunchie.

I remembered this when I ate one yesterday.

Chocolate is fantastic in its own right. One could argue that chocolate combined with any foodstuff is potentially 50% fantastic. Chocolate and orange, chocolate and toffee, chocolate and caramel, chocolate and coffee, chocolate and mint, chocolate and lamb, chocolate and nut, chocolate and et cetera. Chocolate and honeycomb is a great combination in exactly the same way that porridge and lamb probably isn't.

Honeycomb in particular reminds me of a bygone age. When my Dad worked for the brewery and used to visit Fry's Chocolate Factory every once in a while. Because among the best things about Fry's (and there were many, given its Chocolate Factory Status) was the fact that you could buy bags of broken honeycomb there. And my Dad never let us down.

Anyway, like I said, I had a Crunchie yesterday and it tasted good. I couldn't remember the last time I'd had a Crunchie prior to yesterday, and although I have no intention of keeping some sort of chocolate diary, I rationalised that I should always endeavour to remember My Last Crunchie. Not, I hasten to add, the last Crunchie I'll ever eat, but rather the tableau of my most recent Crunchie eating. It's something that we should all recall.

I think, for a limited period, that Cadbury should rename Crunchie as Credit Crunchie. And maybe knock 5p off the price.

NOT all my own work...