Inertia: A warning from history

There is very strong language from the start, it’s generally gratuitous but worse even, it‘s unnecessary, thank goodness then there is no violence. My teeth, buttocks and fists have all led peacefully unclenched lives, a little outrage sometimes without much rage, firmly stoppered but still always evaporating away, in a bottle of sulky indignation. Not then, the stuff revolutionaries are made of, maybe that’s why I admire dissenters so much, I’m not sure if I would have the pent-up belligerence or insurgency to even make an effigy let alone burn one.

Through leading a wholly cosseted life there are only small things left to be annoying and even those far more so in the past, proper personalised outrage today requires too much concentration and self-importance. Mildly chagrined then is the best I can muster and then only if it’s something meaningful, something of massive importance that gets as they say, with probably more relevance for a Taureg bloke, my actual goat.

Over the years I have probably cooked and eaten quite a few fried eggs, would-be flocks of them, and up to a few years ago almost one in three would deposit it’s lovely runny yolk into the frying pan from it’s bottom, giving birth to a litter of tiny instant omelettes as it was gently, so gently lifted by slice to travel to it’s penultimate resting place; to lie in state on a plinth of toast. I was disappointed, peeved, saddened, frustrated and perpetually bemused with this outcome, nice as white is, without the centrepiece of the yellow domed bubo it is just a gelatinous support system. Essential in highlighting and providing a rubbery counterpoint to the viscid smooth warmth of yoke, but that really is all it can ever be, something of a wrapping foil to it‘s superordinate.

This confounding anti-climax has largely disappeared, whether eggs have grown stronger bottoms or my slice handling has improved or it’s yet another virtue of olive oil, whatever or whichever it hardly ever happens now. A ratio of probably less than one egg in twenty sags yokeless on leaving their oily bath, which naturally is still distressing, painful, and brutally harrowing when it does happen but in comparison to even just five years ago, generally thought to be an acceptable casualty rate.

I also rarely feel personally offended. I can feel exceedingly offended on behalf of other people and frequently do so, and sometimes by objects like cameras that shut their eye when you try to take a snappy of the moment picture by pressing the wrong button, and then you’re forced to watch them while they go through their getting-up ritual. “No I won’t be hurried, if I miss this bit my whole day is just ’wrong’.”

That I find a little irritating too, the whole business of ‘my day’, my own, that must never be tainted with even a slightly sour note, day. If people would stop constantly asking themselves how they felt, they might feel better, the ceaseless inner monologue must become tediously repetitive after a while.

In a way, a continuation, sequel and prequel to this, probably best looked at first though it might not make any difference.
 
There is always going to be the opportunity, if you recognise and take heed of being slapped repeatedly round your metaphor to question yourself about the person you’re with, if they are the ‘right’ person or more pertinently are you the ‘right’ person for them to be with. I have had this feeling, instinct and dreaded eventual realisation far more than once or twice, and despite recognising the truth in a truthful answer, have done nothing to redress it and on the contrary, have actually made it worse.
 
It must be rare to have at the same time, the opportunity to be prodded, and not so gently that it tickles, with sharp quip-sticks by a cabal of self-congratulant shiny-haired jog-monkeys. Nevertheless that’s precisely what happened when Michelle and I joined a ’great bunch’ of her work-friends for an evening of wine, nibbles on plates, nibbles in divided glass dishes and social misgivings. These planned accidents are invariably conducted in a set-seated position, which leaves no escape from the stubbornly murmuring poly-babble, where two or more conversations form dissecting paths across a space. I expect you’ve also found yourself in the soiree situation where you are trapped in an endlessly vacuous listen and nod with someone reliving, like a drugged vision, their yoga class while you sit right beside another person, invariably bloke-like who is arguing the aesthetics of the Esprit over the Elite, and you can’t do a thing about it, as you chew over the finer points of the Lotus position.

Having met none of these people before, I had no idea if there was going to be much common ground between us, but I am always ready to forage semi-relentlessly until we discover something. No matter how tenuous, something that can make us nod simultaneously, smile knowing that it‘s just us this time, point at each other and say: “No, you and me both, I haven’t worn my Lederhosen outside since the Lisbon Treaty ratification either mate.”  

This time no yoga, federalism or cars and it doesn’t help when they all work together and insist rudely in chortling solely over the minutiae of everyday colleague interface hilarity. Which meant, mainly taking the piss out of the sales manager Derek, distinguished by his glass eye, a limp and a comb-over, I found my higher-self putting a chummy and unthreatening arm round his shoulder and gently leading him away, telling him: “It’s not you they’re talking about, it’s just transference, they are really holding a mirror up to their own inadequacies. Now Derek, have you thought about having your hair cu…..”

I was drawn back in from contented social exclusion with an innocent sounding question thrown right at my perceptibly borderline-obese and patently unfit for purpose face.

”Do you run Nactus?”

“Well no, actually I don’t.”

“He wouldn’t run if my life depended on it.” Three guesses who said that.

“He might run the other way Mitch.” Laughter, cruel and mocking.

“He’s never done any running, I don’t think you can run, can you?”

“He looks a bit run down” Diagnostic laughter before I can reply.

“That’s only because his nose is running.” Nasal laughter.

“As long as he hasn’t got the runs as well.” Not sympathetic laughter.

“I reckon he’s giving you the run-around Mitch.” Accusatorial laughter.

“Has he run out of excuses then?” Quizzical rolling-eyed laughter.

“This is turning into a running joke.” Laughter of itself, laughter.

“Unlike Nactus, this could run forever.” Laughter of the prophetic.

“He’s just another run of the mill non-runner.” Extra plaudits for the double.

“You can’t run but you can hide.” Pause to appreciate, then appreciative laughter.

“He’s running…his cup runneth…..he’s…” Subsiding stuttering dying laughter as they reach for Pringles.

“ He won’t play squash either.” She’d started it again, I couldn’t believe she would do that, like a Roman Emperor amusing himself, calling for more lions.

“What about ping-pong Nac?” Stunned, I just shook my head.

“He’s more pong than ping.” Laughter, irrational laughter.

“Phew yeah, you’re right there.” Simple, good old-fashioned derisive laughter.

And so it continued, through all sorts of sports and physical exercise until they sat back smiling, shaking their heads and looking dreamily into the distance, musing on their wit, pack reaffirmation, rude health and athletic superiority. Before Michelle could open her cupped and nurturing hands to display another of my scorn-worthy shortcomings to the assembled toned comedians, hostess and, I like to think, compassionate objector Tina, stepped authoritatively between us and suggested: “Mitch, you and Nactus should go to Venice, it’s so romantic.”

Later, what seemed a lifetime later, in my car outside her house.

“I told you they were a great bunch didn’t I?”

“Yes you did.”

“So?”

“So?”

“So what did you think of them?”

“I didn’t really.”

“What though?”

“Not much really.”

“What not much, though?”

“I didn’t think much of them.”

“Alright then, why didn’t you?”

“They just seemed like…well, I don‘t know them really.”

“What? Seemed like what? What did they seem like really?”

“Really? A bunch of complete wankers.”

“Oh for God‘s sake, just because they were having a joke, you’re so sensitive and you’ve got no sense of humour have you? You take everything so personally and why do you always think everything’s about you, all the time, these are people I work with, they’re my friends for God‘s sake, I care about them a lot. Why can’t you join in like everyone else? Oh …suit yourself. God, sometimes you‘re as bad as Derek.”
 
The car door slammed shut behind her retreating form in the darkness. I had upset her by not being what she wanted or I suppose who she hoped against all the evidence, me to be. How could she have been so uncaring I thought, that she knew so little about me after a whole year, I wasn’t complicated I was and remain simple, as simple as an egg. I only ever expected a smear of politeness, consideration, kindness and humanity and maybe hopefully a smudge of some sort of loyalty but she hadn’t it seemed taken the trouble to notice even that. I felt slightly offended then by her being offended, but still continued with hardly any regard to what was fairly obviously with hindsight, an impetuously fool-hardy and rash, of biblical proportions, decision.

I must thank my diary and therein myself for rekindling these wonderful memories, and she was wrong, I was actually not as bad as Derek, I was worse. I’m pretty sure, while standing on some no-name bridge over an Italian canal looking at her perfectly too beautiful face and holding her soft slim hands in his a few weeks later, he would never have asked her to marry him. He would instead, have rightly asked himself, “What am I doing? I don’t mean this, any of it, I haven‘t thought about it anywhere near long enough. What the fuck in a bag of mushrooms am I doing?”  

And in a perfect world filled with uplifting notes, that must exist somewhere, she would have answered my plighted troth not with a whispered and almost tearfully smiling yes, but with an indignant, haughty and this time contemptuously laughing: “Are you joking? No way, you sedentary unsociable fool, I’d rather marry Derek for God’s sake, and spend the rest of my life running around Grimsby eating fried egg whites. For God‘s sake,what made you even ask?”

Who the hell do you think you are?

My elderly parents particularly on my father’s side have spent a substantial part of his life ‘clearing out’ his paternal loft and last Sunday handed me a cardboard box that had once held a gross of ‘Privet’s Sternest Surgical Supports’. He thought I might find the contents interesting. Interesting tends to mean ‘take this home and dispose of it in your loft‘, for at least twenty years this generational passing the baton piecemeal has been going on regularly and relentlessly.

On Tuesday, I had a rummage through before depositing it in the attic and thus continuing the forgotten familial collective memory with an instinctual genetic imperative. My father’s latest assault on his roof-void proved to be a partial victory of sorts, the box contained several dog-eared photographs of old pets long gone, some volumes from the innocently named ‘How To’ series of books and a bundle or rack of magazines. These periodicals, dating from September 1935 to July 1939 seemed to be of only passing interest initially; perhaps a smile and puzzle at bygone quirks and a puzzle and frown at the prevailing climate of attitude in those halcyon inter-war dancing years. However, I found pressed and neatly nestling between some of the pages were a few drawings by my great-grandmother Effie Stimp, and on closer inspection her name also appeared in print. At last a possibly mildly famous antecedent, I felt like soon Dame surely, if not already, Joanna, for goodness‘ sake Lumley.

Long before I was born, Effie had tragically passed away when the side-car of my great-grandfather’s Triumph motorcycle had become sadly and suspiciously detached and she had overtaken two Morris Minors and a horse before coming to grief at the stanchion of a bridge on the A10. Having never known her I have only ever had a vague impression of who she really was, my elderly parents being reticent to the point of huffy on the subject. However, here in this box was at last something tangible that can’t just be simply not-talked about, no more of the shushing and waving dismissals or conveniently interrupted interrogation with faked asthma attacks or an irresistible Midsomer Murders esuriency. At the next opportunity, I may well pose some uncomfortably penetrative questions. It seems Effie Stimp regularly drew cartoons for various magazines and I have scanned in one that appeared in the March 1936 edition of Good Housekeeping.

When I get time, I’ll scan some more, and if possible find out why this wife, woman and possible victim of great-grannycide became so un-talked about even in a preternaturally taciturn family.

Terry, if indeed Terry it is or ever was, has been delayed and his arrival and imminence of or not has lost the interest of the office-guys, who are now optimistically juggling World Cup fantasies, fears and covoluted permutations of possible outcomes, all of which conclude with England winning the whole thing. A rare chance, and one to be grabbed for the quadrennial Zeitgeist of flag waving around the world.

Waiting for Terry.

A large open-plan office, empty but for four people each staring at their respective monitor, they speak laconically and sporadically and one of them types feverishly. Forty-seven minutes later these notes prove invaluable.

Trev: So when does he start?

Me: I’m not sure.

Trev: I thought you said tomorrow.

Me: Well, I said it could be. It could be tomorrow.

Trev: Well didn’t they say?

Me: They said it might be, you know what they’re like, I don’t know if they even know.

Trev: They don’t even know?

Barry: Where has he come from?

Trev: I don’t think anyone knows, do they?

Me: We’ll ask him when he gets here.

Karen: What does he look like?

Barry: Have you seen him then Nactus?

Me: I’m not sure, I thought it might be him.

Karen: Weren’t you at the interview?

Me: I was at some. I think there was a Terry, there were quite a few.

Barry: But you must remember him, were there many there?

Karen: How many were there?

Me: I don’t remember, ten maybe, there might have been more that I didn‘t see.

Karen: So tomorrow then.

Trev: Maybe possibly tomorrow.

Karen: If you think you saw him, what was he like then?

Me: I’m going to say he had a goatee and a squint, how’s that?

Trev: Did he?

Me: No, I’m just saying I don’t know, he might have.

Karen: I’ve never liked beards, no offence Mike, oh he’s not here. No, my first husband was a beardy, it was an awful thing.

Trev: Is he up to speed, where has he come from?

Me: Can’t remember.

Karen: Oh, hope it wasn’t my old place, I don’t remember a Terry, was he tallish?

Barry: Is that his name then?

Me: She wasn’t absolutely certain, maybe. Kate didn’t have the file in the corridor.

Trev: Ah, so it might be somebody else?

Me: No, it will be him alright, just maybe not Terry.

Barry: Who then?

Karen: Which one is Kate?

Trev: Short, brown hair.

Barry: Not that short.

Karen: Short brown hair about forty? I know who you mean.

Trev: Long hair about thirty, you’ve seen her. Quite short.

Barry: She must have been at your interview, or wasn’t she?

Karen: Oh her, mousy hair, quite long.

Trev: Yes, her.

Barry: How does Kate not know?

Trev: Who knows.

Karen: But she knew he was called Terry?

Me: No, she thought he might be, she couldn’t be sure.

Trev: Well, we’ll find out tomorrow.

Barry: Is it definitely tomorrow?

Me: Not definitely.

Karen: Not definitely you think?

Me: I don‘t think so, no.

Trev: Who knows.

I’d like to say a smiling, efficiently well-built and tightly uniformed nurse then entered from stage left, pushing a trolley wobbling with a water-filled jug and four small translucent plastic beakers each trapping a mosaic of brightly coloured pills. But I’m sorry to say there was no nurse and no trolley, and there probably won’t be one tomorrow night either, probably but not definitely.

The road is long, there are mountains in our way.

The first combination plane I bought was a Stanley 50 with two sets of cutters, this, as most of you will know is a perversion. Not quite in the same league as an oyster and leek frittata but all the same still a perversion of the normal ratio of two planes to every set of cutters.

The Stanley 50 is a disappointment in so many ways, until I wrenched it from it’s obscurity in the cold gloom of the tool cupboard to take this photo, I’d forgotten just how disappointing, with it’s twisted adjusting lever and un-drilled narrow fence. That’s it for the Stanley 50.

Sometimes the mildest words can be brimming with significance, in the final summing-up I was a disappointment to Michelle, she told me so and I wrote it in my diary.

Long before this awful judgement, whenever I looked at her, which was as often as possible without actually staring like a car-park attendant at a windscreen, I thought she was the best woman I’d ever met. I was into my fourth week of reeling from perfect Sarah’s abandonment, trying unsuccessfully to feel even a pout of dislike for her despite being left so obtrusively waving on the dock, when I met Michelle in a supermarket in a so well-named checkout queue. A queue of two. Both of our trolleys were indelibly stained with thin patches of aloneness and rejection, there was no bulk for groaning laughter-surrounded tables here; these were the carriers for rheumy-eyed old men’s half-sized tins and full-sized bottles. We waited with all our evidence neatly displayed on the conveyor belt, separated by a dark blue ’next girlfriend’ triangular sign, with starkly black rubberised space left for a real couple to start piling on their hods of tofu bricks and bushels of sausages.

From this apparent bleakness sprang  unexpected, double clubcard points.

She turned to face me as we paused for a serendipitous till-roll change to be completed, and we both quietly tutted and jerked our faces upwards a fraction, I know at that moment we were both thinking, probably for the last time, the same thoughts because we mutually massaged our egos with it’s later retelling. Umm, not too bad, and quite small amounts of everything on show, faulty fridge or single? Actually, I was thinking, 'wow you‘re nice, you just flicked your hair back in a slightly nervous gesture, Sarah used to do that when we first met, oh dear, Sarah, Brussels; for the fourteenth time that week, how could you?'

Distractingly, Michelle started chatting while she waited for me to fumblingly finish, bag and reload my trolley in all it’s inglorious sparseness, and continued talking as we pushed our wire chariots of shame across the car-park. In the time it took to reach my boot-lid we had tutted indignantly about not even being asked by the assistant if we wanted help with packing and laughed together twice, but mostly we had bemoaned the futility of cooking for one, and arranged to avoid two further instances of contemplating our respective skeletal draining-racks, by going out for dinner the next evening. We parted with mutual smiling admiration and possibly a cheery wave as I left the car park and went round to my elderly parent’s house for dinner as I had done for the last four weeks. There are times when nothing succeeds so well as failure, or it seems, incessant tutting.

Missing out a big chunk here, it became a very serious relationship indeed and we’d spent a week in Venice, so we were engaged, engaged to be married. Venice, by the way, isn’t romantic at all. It’s crowded, noisy and filled with couples thinking ‘this is so romantic‘. Grimsby is the place for proposals, no distractions, the overpowering smell of fish and plenty of time to reconsider what you are about to say.

As we were engaged, engaged to be married, she decided to move in, from weekends to permanently in. It was shock at first sight, as if suddenly she had spontaneously appeared like a magician’s pigeon, flapping nervously in a haze of hairspray, cuddled toys, table lamps and other nick-nackery, uncomplicated underwear and complicated sex. But Michelle was much more than any of these things, and everything really couldn’t have been better, for a while she was the everything.

Thinking about it, she was a truly gorgeous looking girl and I have always associated her with a car I had at the time, an equally gorgeous Jensen Interceptor, if you’ve had one you’ll know, like Michelle, they would occasionally overheat and have some other little niggles. These little problems were as nothing compared to the feral growl of it’s 6 litre V8, and it could out-drag any hot-hatch many years it’s junior, just with sheer litres and torque. It was a visceral experience every time I drove it, and I don’t think much more can be asked from a car, I’ve got the modern equivalent at the moment, it’s a great car but just lacks a little of that animalistic primal malevolence. When given some welly, the Jensen could have a strange effect on the feminine nipple, and I wished at times that I didn’t have one.

A simple and happy state of affairs with Michelle continued for about another year until she lost her job in a frenzy of downsizing. For some reason this redundancy triggered a sudden compulsion in her to get married, if I thought about that correlation now I might think it was a classic mutually catalytic compensatory response, and if I had only voiced that opinion then, she might have said: “Yes, you‘re right, lets forget it, this skirt isn’t too short is it?” But I know she really wouldn’t have, she never forgot anything, ever.

If you’re engaged, engaged to be married, and you’ve buried that fact deep in your sub-conscious, suddenly a partner can wave a certain finger at you at any time with a confident flourish, "Look what I have here, yes that’s right, your solemn promise to marry me, now, what about it then?" Looking aghast and crying out too loudly and forcefully, "What, now?" may have been just a jaw-jerk reaction, but it didn’t come across very well, leading to some questioning type frowning. You can only say that you ‘just don’t feel ready at the moment’ and ‘aren’t we okay as we are’ or even in desperation, that ‘your dad hasn’t come up with those six goats yet’, so many times before they begin to sound hollow and look a bit worn-thin.

Even when I knew what the outcome was likely to be, I still couldn’t, as illustrated, bring myself to make the final leap. I never did take enough notice of her ultimatums, even the ones I knew about. I felt I was being drawn into the unknown, a permanent and irreversible unknown, the key word there is shoved. Despite trying to convince myself otherwise, I knew it was never going to happen, eventually that thief procrastination stole the day, and she left, resolutely disappointed in me.

Not for the first time, I wondered where the girl I had met in the supermarket queue had gone, while she was undoubtedly questioning what had become of all those declarations of blind Venetian-induced love.

But I am incorrigibly romantic and sentimental, and in quiet moments of reflection like now, I still sometimes think longingly of her and the good times we shared, and there were good times, like leaving Chelmsford at dusk on an August evening, in all her gleaming burgundy with cream vinyl-roofed, Italian-styled, hand-built magnificence. Burbling along behind a few dawdlers, anticipating the moment, waiting, then floor the pedal for the kick-down at the first straight, smiling at the roar from the exhausts, louder than Bruce Springsteen, as the surge of adrenalin and acceleration pinned me back in the seat. Before long, I realised everyone had been left far behind, out of sight and forgotten.