. . . I digress
the culture vulture » How to go to Art Galleries.
I was a bit bored this morning and couldn’t muster the concentration to do what I was supposed to be doing so I did something silly instead. Looking forward to Northern Art Prize tonight though.
Unhappy with the toilets?
What struck me most wasn’t the appalling punctuation - random commas and a spattering of apostrophes seem to be the NHS house style, and this wasn’t the worst example I found - but the unctuous tone of the thing.
It wasn’t my civic duty to politely bring to the attention of the people responsible for the cleanliness of the public loos the fact that something was amiss. Not any more. Now it’s about my “unhappiness”, a personal, private sentiment that may or may not have anything to do with the objective amount of Jiff I can smell in the toilets. I am regarded as a being that emotes, a helpless thing swayed by squirts of internal juices, at the mercy of fleeting subjective assessments of my private state of felicity, and not as a rational grown up who can tell if a toilet is not up to scratch and has the capacity to communicate responsibly to the cleaning staff - oh, sorry, the Patient Environment Team.
As it happens the place was spotless, just as it should be. But I still left unhappy. I wonder if there is a Patient Language Team to whom I can report my melancholy.
Thankfully, it was only a dream.
Time to disappear.
I twisted the handle gently leaving the keys dangling in the lock, went down the stairs and creaked open the big front door. The high, bright street lamps picked out every object in the street with a cold clarity the inverse of daylight. Every window frame, every crack in every brick, every latch on every gate, stood out as if traced with a highlight pen. Even the dust seemed particular.
Then I startle. Next door I hear a sort of shuffling noise. Jim, my neighbour, was halfway along his garden path just standing there, like a man who’s lost a dog that he knows will never come home. Then I notice the new guy over the road - we’d never so much as nodded acquaintance - facing me, his right arm twisted strangely behind him, as if he didn’t quite want to let go of the door handle.
Two doors up, concealed by a cluster of bins, there was Samuel, bent over fiddling with something on the floor. And further along the street other guys had emerged into the night. One of them had a flaccid rucksack slung over his shoulder. Another was carrying a small tv, still in its packaging.
Gradually we are realising we are not alone. We catch each others eyes, nod that Northern nod that’s barely negligible. Caught out; we can’t just back away, cough a minuscule cough, pretend we weren’t here, that it never happened. We have seen. We have been seen. We don’t know what to do next. Don’t know how to behave.
In that petrified moment we all, each of us singly and separately, were forced to face a stark realisation. We are seeing something in each other that we have dodged, denied and dismissed in every cheery passing minute we’ve dealt with each other, our routine “How’s things, mate?”
“Brilliant, ta.”
“Never been better”
“Great.”
“Fine.”
“Not so bad.”
“Can’t complain.”
“Yerself?”
“And you?”
How many times must we have exchanged empty verbal formulas on our doorsteps then gone indoors to fight, to weep, to hurt and be hurt? All smiles in the street but inside we are hateful, we are melancholy, we are tormented by our partners and frustrated at work, we are unpredictably spiteful, we are deliberately uncooperative. We are no good.
Now, how will we face each other in the morning and repeat the worn out words, “Great, mate!” “Wonderful,” “Mustn’t grumble”?
It is a terrifying, fascinating moment as we all stand, rivetted, gazing at each other in the sheer white glow of the street lamps, and I wonder if we will all gather in the middle of Barton View, tangle our arms around each others shoulders, and tramp the dirt down as we slowly circle the vacant heart of our individual dread, howling our woes like we had lost the power of language, and go back to our beds trembling with a relief that surpasses understanding.
But someone breaks the spell; “Fuck, you all heard that too?”
His question seems to linger in the silent night air before we all burst with a babble of speculation and expletives.
“Yeah, sounded like a bike backfiring.”
“Quad bike!”
“Shit.”
“What the fuck!”
“Gave me a right start.”
“Thought I saw a flash too.”
“It was the bang woke me up.”
“Yes, definitely a flash.”
“A Crash?”
“Christ! Fucking Beeston!”
We all shake our heads with inner city astonishment at the mysteries of the universe and the perversity of some people, wish each other goodnight, and turn back to our homes, so we can lay down once more, and wait for the morning.
My #hometourist bender; a day of booze, bollocks, and blaggards..
Some days you don’t end up where you should. Shit happens. Which doesn’t necessarily mean that what happens is shit - though in my case life does have turdish tendencies - just that plans, preparations, promises and all those assorted ways we have of predicting the near future are just so much poo.
Wednesday evening I should have been sauntering the streets of Leeds with the lovely people from Exposure, snapping the sights of this most fair yet understated, gritty but surpassingly beautiful city. For an hour at least - that’s about all the sight of it I can stand. Then I really should have been at the Leeds Savage Club Bi-annual meeting over at The Pack Horse. I’d read the agenda and everything! When I say read I mean printed off, stapled and placed in a plastic folder - agendas have a soporific effect on me, so I tend to save them as a last resort for those evenings when sleep is at its most skittish and standoffish, ready to scarper if I even consider enumerating the initial ovine. Under my bed there must be a couple of hundred of the buggers, a fair selection of meetings I’ve slumbered through over the past few years.
I more than half hinted that I’d be joining a friend for dinner, and I’m pretty sure I also said I’d meet someone for a late pint in The Midnight Bell. If you are that someone, consider this an apology. Shit happened.
The day started fairly well. My mum has wanted her laptop fixed for a while - something about ungoogling the thing and putting in some windows. I said I’d best come over. Mum is not one for explaining over the phone. Even in person she makes scant sense when it comes to technology. Dad picked me up at twelve and by one I’d pinned Word to the start menu - which I think is what she wanted - and connected the new printer. I’m not sure what the heck the printer is for. Or why indeed she bought a laptop with facial recogniton; seems like a very skillful salesman in PC World saw her coming. Facial recognition, can’t do without it madam - I mean, a laptop that forgets the colour of your eyes or can’t remember if you’re blonde or brunette! … though she still can’t tell me how to turn the bloody thing on, or indeed who’s face she is worried about. I believe she thinks the computer is some kind of alzheimer aid for the times when she forgets who has come to visit - she’ll just tap the thing, nod in the general direction, and ask “who’s that then?”
She seemed happy enough that I’d helped her master the off switch and enlightened her about copy and paste. Can’t do enough copy and pasting when you’re housebound in a tiny flat in Thorpe. Copy and paste would be the highlight of my day if I lived anywhere in the WF postal region.
I had intended to get the bus back. The 443 was every hour, from the stop on the corner of the street. By now though the rain had started. A downpour that was positively biblical. Mum’s new dog, Sally, a three month old bounding black Lab - yes, just the perfect choice for elderly parents, I know - cowered under the computer table and started chewing the bottom of my jeans. When the thunder was overhead she jumped on my knee and curled up, dribbling. Dad said he’d give me a lift, and a lift usually means a detour via the Hare and Hounds. I shooed Sally away, dabbed at the dark patch of puppy slaver just above my knee, and grabbed my phone. “I’ll be over next week just to check on the laptop,” I said to mum. She beamed. I knew she’d be on the phone to me later to ask where the complaint letter she’d just typed into Word had disappeared to. Explaining the notion of downloading and hard drive would have to wait till another day.
The road to Rothwell was treacherous. It had only been raining quarter of an hour, but with such ferocity that there were deep puddles wherever the road dipped and great gushing torrents along both sides where the drains couldn’t cope. As we turned right towards Wakefield Road we saw a couple of cars come to a standstill as the drivers contemplated the gathering sea before them - Middleton had been cut off from civilisation (would they even notice, I wondered?) The water swilling around the outskirts of Rothwell was curiously brown - obviously some poor rhubarb forcer had just lost an inch of topsoil and a months fertiliser. When we pulled into the car park next to the Methodist Church the rain was easing off but dad was all for “giving it a minute,” so we sat in the car listening to the rain clatter off the roof.
Ten minutes making polite climate based conversation was enough to make us risk a soaking. We mutually agreed that the rain had sufficiently bated - though the evidence was undetectable - and colluded in a little confidence trick; “We wain’t melt,” dad said. I heartily concurred. The pub was only 30 yards away, for heaven’s sake.
Dad made a joke about sitting outside. The pub has just been refurbished after a freak incendiary incident at Christmas - there are too many conflicting tales about that to bother making a preference that I’d feel happy calling the truth - and one of the new embellishments is a set of pine garden furniture under a flimsy retractable awning. I assume this contraption was designed to provide a slight shade from the evening sun; it did not confer any protection from the more rambunctious elements. Why anybody would choose to sit outside next to a main road even on a dry and pleasant day puzzles me anyway.
I’d bargained for one pint, two at a push. The pub was full of men in pastel shorts and short-sleeved, cream-coloured shirts. A nicely laundered bunch. There were at least two toupes and several guys with no apparent separation between head and shoulder. I recognised my sister’s boyfriends dad, John. Not surprisingly, he recognised us. “Ey up, fa’tha,” dad said, putting his pint of John Smith’s Smooth on John’s table. “Wo’kin’?”
“Fuck off,” John said, his usual affable greeting. He’d been shopping at Morrisons. I noticed a massive Victoria sponge, the size of a cushion, and a box of Findus crispy pancakes had spilled from his carrier bag. For the next couple of hours he subjected us to a masterclass of master race bigotry; every oppressed group known to humanity was mocked, insulted, trivialised, and tormented in an orgy of foul-mouthed bitterness that I couldn’t bear to repeat. Stomach turning but weirdly mesmerising. I learned long ago not to argue back. John is a verbal black belt, a ninja rhetorician; he’s totally fearless, and the bigger you are, the cleverer you are, the harder he will make you fall. He feeds off the well-meaning, the public-spirited, the do-gooder, ingests their sweetness and light, and spews it back in their faces as articulate acid. Perhaps not surprisingly, he’s not a tall person …
The only way I can contemplate John without wanting to kill him is through the bottom of a pint glass.
Five pint glasses to be precise. John Smiths Smooth, sadly. Needs must.
Dad was on the shandies. He offered me a lift home. It was gone half past three.
Back in the flat I thought it best to have a bit of a lie down. I wouldn’t say I slept but I didn’t get off the couch till after five, a bit dishevelled and somewhat sluggish. On the way to town I got a call from Harvi, did I want to meet for a quick drink, he had to be back at work by seven, just needed a bit of a break from the inspection - I didn’t see why not. I’d already arranged to meet Robert after work, and the initial plan was that we’d wander with the psychogeographers and amateur photographers then sneak off for a bottle of wine, after which I had plans.
None of us are exactly flush at the moment so Wetherspoons seemed the sensible option - not the finest wine available to humanity, but you can get a tolerable white for just over a fiver. I was in no state to be choosy.
By 6:15 Robert and I had demolished the best of a bottle. Harvi bought more. Conversation trundled on along no particular track until for some reason Robert became animated about the subject of the summer brolly - that’s a major flaw in British culture, he expatiated, that we do not understand the proper use and function of the summer brolly. Harvi agreed; I demurred. Robert went on at length about climate, appropriate dress sense, responsible accessorizing, and the correct combination of sun block and brolly to accommodate our changeable weather patterns, which can, he rightly argued, swing from brilliant sunshine to heavy showers and back again several times on an average English summers day. In the end I had to admit he was right. I’m only glad we weren’t overheard having this conversation in The Hare and Hounds.
When Harvi left I had the choice between another drink or facing up to my responsibilities. “Tescos?” Robert asked, insinuating that we should take advantage of the half price wine deals, get a french stick and some hummus, and go sit in the sun like we were doing Le Dejeuner Sur L’herbe (and if only Tescos did the one thing missing in that scenario the world would be much more to my liking!) “Owt but Chardonnay,” I tried to argue. “You are in no position to be a snob, Phil,” Robert gently chided me, “you’ll have what is the best offer, and like it” he said, upending our wine glasses, shaking out the dregs, and slipping the vessels into his man bag. He’s nothing if not forward thinking is Robert.
After an ideological tussle in the alcohol aisle we emerged from Tescos with two bottles of Chardonnay, 30 inches of crusty loaf, and enough claggy dip to line our stomachs. Robert was unkind enough to suggest I may fall down if I drank much more, but I dismissed his foolish suggestion with a tut and a reference to my Irish genes (as if Celtic chromosomes make any damned difference to alcohol consumption! Surely that’s a myth?)
City Square seemed a fair destination. We chose a spot on the grass with our back to the Grand Hotel. Some student had placed a traffic cone on the nearest nymph - I assume it was a student, who else would make the effort? Robert was amused. I assumed the drink was getting to him. We ate, we drank, we talked, and about 8:15 we decided to make a dash for somewhere dry as a downpour had disturbed our little Arcadian idyll. “Bus shelter?” Robert pointed. “Are we tramps!” I snorted, “we may be poor, but we are in the great European tradition of the flaneur! We shall not be debasing ourselves in a public transport hovel … look, that restaurant, there’s an umbrella free … a summer brolly! How fitting.”
The terrace of Loch Fyne had emptied rapidly at the first spot of rain. Our brolly looked inviting. We had two full glasses and a whole bottle of wine left … this was civilised.
Our conversation, however, was not. Neither was it quiet. Our fellow revellers were treated to a comedy of pure filth, a decadent, drunken, debauched Derek and Clive for the C21st. I’m certainly not going to reveal the specifics of the dialogue, just remind Robert how much he laughed at the phrase, “It’s not the morality, just the mechanics …” and move swiftly on.
After an hour of raucous laughter we were approached by one of the staff. Thankfully, someone we knew - though we didn’t know she worked there - who ended up sharing a sneaky glass of wine with us after her shift. Robert slipped into flirting mode, which I’m not sure was entirely appropriate as we were drunk and her mood was obviously not in synch. No harm was done though. I hope. Haven’t seen her since.
About half past ten the booze was gone, our audience had drifted off, and we decided to vacate the brolly. The rain had stopped. The bus was due. Time to be sensible and head home. A fun day. Didn’t get anything done I was supposed to do … shit happened.
First thoughts on my new Kindle.
“Where is Twickenham Gardens?” he asked, holding up the first inky sheet.
Obviously we were a bunch of charmless adolescent boys. And we had geographers amongst us. “Is it in Kent, sir?”
Mr Cockerill did not jest about literature. “Where is the poem!” he said, without even making so much as glancing eye contact with my class mate. “Where IS the poem?” he ontologised.
Someone behind me shuffled some paper; “Is this it?”
Mr Cockerill waved his own copy in a meditative fashion; “Then what’s this? … eh?”
“That’s the poem too, sir” we all chimed, thinking we’d got it now, feeling flushed with relief and revelation.
Mr Cockerill scrunched the sheet into a tidy ball and lobbed it over his head, scoring a direct hit in the green paper basket in the corner. Rumour was he once played cricket for Yorkshire. “So, boys, where is it now?”
“Bin!” a couple of us shouted gleefully.
“Hmm,” Mr Cockerill paused and surveyed each eager face in the class, “so you’re telling me that John Donne’s poem, Twickenham Gardens, is in the rubbish bin! This exceptional high point of the literature of our once great country ended up in a metal bucket in room 6AC, Parkside High School?” His tone of voice was enough to let us know that this could not be correct.
“Well, sir, no sir … you threw your copy in the bin sir.” We sniggered. That was in fact the truth.
“Aha!” said Mr Cockerill.
By now I reckoned I had cottoned on to the gag and wanted to cement my position as clever dick of the class; “Obviously” I said, in my best caught-the-teacher-out voice, “we’ve all still got Twickenham Gardens; you gave us it this morning,” tapping the stack of sheets in front of me like a prosecution lawyer making a decisive summing up speech.
“Yeah, we all got copies,” the lad behind me chimed in. He was always a prat.
Mr Cockerill was having fun. “Well now, do you have the poem, or just a copy of the poem?” I thought I could answer that one easily enough, but he was on a roll; “Where is it? In the first edition in the University library? What about the handwritten version in Donne’s notebook, or is that just Donne’s private copy? I came to class today to teach you about metaphysical poetry, and you presumably came here to learn, yet none of us seem to know where the stuff really is!”
I was gobsmacked. Twickenham Gardens wasn’t worth the paper it was printed on, wasn’t in the bin, wasn’t in John Donne’s head or even in the British Museum Library … but we still managed to be reading it, talking about it, throwing it about the place.
Mr Cockerill carried on. “If every copy were lost, what about that?” That seemed a thought too big to swallow right then, I mean, there were a lot of books around “Or what if the last person on earth had it memorized, and they died?”
My thoughts ran aground on the idea of some kind of literary afterworld. I thought it best to keep my vision of a poetry Valhalla to myself. Teenage boys specialise in the mortification of sensitive souls.
Mr Cockerill had a quizzical look. “How can we study Twickenham Gardens if we don’t know where it is?” He asked. “If you lose, erase, shred “Twickenham Gardens” or the Magna Carta or Lady Chatterley’s Lover, what exactly have you destroyed? Something? Nothing? Civilisation as we know it? Your very soul?”
I looked toward the green bin for illumination. My brain churned. When was Mr Cockerill going to explain about “perverse sex” and the bit about not being able to judge a woman’s thoughts by tears any more than you could “tell by her shadow what she wears.” I went to an all boys school, that would have been useful information to pass on. But the bell rang and it was time for history.
I wish Mr Cockerill had lived to own a Kindle. It would have made those English lessons a hell of a lot easier.
Beeston Street Life.
