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Grumpy Old Boys

21/12/2015

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There's that old saying isn't there, that people come to look like their dogs. To be honest, I've always had a lot of time for it. I think it's because Andy, one of my friends at school, had centre-parted blonde hair and fringe that made him look like a cross between his old English sheepdog and all four members of Bucks Fizz.

Certainly, when we first got Bobby I hoped I might magically come to look as sleek and athletic as he was, that I'd be miraculously pulled back through time to the outrageous beauty of my college years (there should be a statue). Or, at least I hoped the opposite wouldn't happen, that he'd grow fat and slothful like me. And thankfully the latter hasn't occurred. Aged 8, he still looks fit and well.

But he does seem to have mirrored my behaviour or, as I prefer to have it, that of my father-in-law, aka Biscuitman, for he has become a right old grumpy git. If any dog wanders over to say hello to him, even one he likes, he first ignores them, then gives them a haughty sniff, then lifts his upper left lip in a disdainful sneer. (There was a girl in the front row of a first year English class in Bermondsey nigh on thirty years ago, who would treat me to that very same sneer whenever I looked at her, usually just before she threw a chair at me, or stabbed someone. It's actually taken me this long to forget her name, which is progress.)

I can't help but feel he's caught it from us, this grumpiness. In fact, we often pass Marley down the lane. Marley is a beautiful dog, also aged 8, but still full of love and life and enthusiasm. Whenever we see her, her equally lovely owner always says “Come along Marley, Bobby doesn't want to stop and play with you...” when she could just as easily be saying – in fact I think she is saying - “Come along Marley, Gary doesn't want to stop and chat with us...”


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Got it for a Song...

17/12/2015

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Hanging on the Telephone
 
Night owls have more fun, don't we? Free souls, not to be tamed, slipping through the shadows, beyond the daily grind. It is 4:30am and Alex is thinking this to himself whilst waiting for his 24 hour telephone banking service to wake up and answer the bloody phone.  
 
Drunken fools dribbling down the line, wanting a loan so they could blow it on an all-night on-line poker tournament. Wasters, the dispossessed, stealing through the night, up to no good. It is twenty minutes later and Alex is still in a queue, his mood darkening.
 
The bank used to play classical music, which they interrupted every twenty seconds to tell you how much they valued their custom – not enough to pay anyone to help you, apparently. But lately they'd moved to pop music, middle of the road, happy stuff, presumably to lighten the mood.
 
“You've left me waiting too long/When you come back I'll be gone...”
 
Oh, now you're shitting me, Alex groans out loud. They are playing his song. Literally. He wrote it way back in 1983. Thirty years ago. It was a big hit, and so was he and his band, for their fifteen minutes anyway. Those times are long gone, but the hit remains. As does some of the money. He might even be able to access some of it, if someone would just answer the flipping phone.
 
“Hello, welcome to the Commercial Bank, Jessica speaking, may I take your account number?”
 
“Finally” says Alex, more to himself than her, but Jessica ignores him anyway. He gives his number, and his date of birth and the first line of his address.
 
“And your occupation?” asks Jessica.
 
“Musician” he replies.
 
“Cool. And how can I help you this evening, Mr Little?”
 
“I transferred a rather large sum of money from an investment account a couple of days ago and I was just checking it had cleared before I spend some of it.”
 
“OK, bear with me and let me see.” This feels like it could take a while. Alex settles back in his chair and looks out through the large picture windows of his first floor living room; looks out over the city. Bristol in all its glory greets him, edging towards the dawn.
 
“I'm sorry sir, I can't see anything on the account. Let me look in our subsidiary system to see if it's still pending. It'll take a while I'm afraid. Tell me, what music do you play?”
 
Oh God, thinks Alex. “Oh, you know, this and that. There's a car advert running at the moment, some DJ stuff, bits and bobs.” There's a silence and he finds himself filling it, a lifelong curse. “In fact my song was just playing on the loop when I was waiting in the phone queue.” He kicks himself. What did I say that for? Still needy after all these years? Jerk.
 
“Wow, what song?”
 
“Oh. 'Waiting Too Long'. It's very old.”
 
“Oh, god I love that.” Jessica actually sings the chorus. Until she runs out of words anyway, which is mercifully soon. “My mum loves it too. She loved you. What were you called, um, let me think, …......”
 
“The Drumlins."
 
“Yes, that's right. God, she was such a fan. Ha, I can't wait to tell her. Hang on though, Alex? Who was called Alex in the band? Let's see, there was Noel West and Eddie Brean. Oh, and who could forget Lawrence Weston. I can't remember the rest. Certainly not an Alex though. That wouldn't make sense. No, definitely no Alex Little at all.” She is now suspicious.
 
“I was Eddie Brean. I mean I am Eddie Brean. I mean that was my stage name.”
 
“Really. Actually I always wondered about that. Those names, someone told me they were all based around Bristol weren't they? Puns. All except yours. So why Eddie Brean? I never got it.”
 
Alex was about to explain for the thousandth time, when Jessica put her telephone head back on.
 
“I'm sorry Eddie, I mean Alex, I mean Mr Little….sir, there's no money in your account or pending. In fact you're a few hundred overdrawn.“
 
“That's impossible. It's a major transfer. And I do mean major.”
 
“And where is the transfer from.”
 
“Clearway Holdings. Terence Maguire, maybe, but Clearway Holdings.”
 
“No, nothing, oh no hang on, I do have something from Clearway Holdings. Yesterday, a transfer in.”
 
“Yes, that's it. Thank God. You had me worried there for a minute.”
 
“Yes a transfer for £200 pounds. Is that it sir? Sir?...Sir?....Alex?...Eddie?”
 
Alex is sweating. A creeping fear has caught up with him. Something that has been lying dormant for years. A confirmation of a deep hunch he's always had but has studiously ignored. It's easy to fool the gullible. Easier still to grift the greedy. And he was the fool. And he'd been greedy. Curtains opened, mists lifted, metaphors crashed all around him. That £200 pounds was supposed to be two hundred thousand pounds. And was all he had.
 
And he had been had. 

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Them Old Dreams are Only in Your Head...

7/12/2015

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I dreamt I was walking into World War Three.
I went to the doctor the very next day
to see what kind of words he'd say
he said it was bad dream.
'I wouldn't worry about it none though,
Them old dreams are only in your head'

(Bob Dylan) 

I love dreaming but I hate dreams. By which, of course, I really mean I love my own dreams but hate listening to other people's dreams. Anne often tells me hers. I tune out within a sentence. It's my dead-zone equivalent to her disregard for my poetry. Excepting, of course, my humble words have been wrestled from the sweat of a fevered existential brow and turned into beauty and truth whilst she just went to sleep and thought of stabby long things entering warm moist rooms and nonsuch. Or something. 


It's like the scene in When Harry Met Sally (above):

Sally: Well, basically it's the same dream I've been having since I was twelve.
Harry: Which is?
Sally: Okay, there's this guy...
Harry: What does he look like?
Sally: I don't know, he's just sort of faceless.
Harry: Faceless guy, okay.
Sally: He RIPS off my clothes.
[pause]
Harry: And?
Sally: That's it.
Harry: That's it? Some faceless guy rips off all your clothes, and THAT'S the sex fantasy you've been having since you were twelve?
Sally: Well sometimes I vary it a little.
Harry: Which part?
Sally: What I'm wearing.


Still, I had a dream last night of such screamingness I'm actually scared to go to sleep tonight. What it's about I'll leave to others. Obviously it's a conflation of things I've had on my mind - Syria, The Walking Dead and badger-culling, for starters. I'm just grateful I hadn't watched David Attenborough's The Hunt.
And obviously I apologise for sharing it.  

The Dream:

I came to a field near town. There was a new low fence around it. Inside was a flock of sheep, huge badger setts, polar bears and a tiger. I asked someone who I couldn't see what was happening. He said that the tiger and polar bears were going to work together to kill the badgers, though he didn't specify how. They needed the sheep for food in the meantime, and as he said this I saw a polar bear swipe a sheep down. The sheep lay on its back spatch-cocked like a chicken. I said but they're going to get out. That fence is hopeless. I'm scared. We can't stand here. But he insisted everything would be all right. That this was what had to be done. The right thing to do. And then I said, ok, even if the fences hold, and they won't, but even so, what if people go into the field – then they will all be killed. But the man said no – there were signs up, it was perfectly safe.


I pointed to a gate on the other side of the field. What about there I said, anyone could come over there. We need to stop people getting into the field. We need to stop animals getting out of the field. Too late, he laughed. I looked up above me and in the trees was a family of badgers, trying and failing to escape a tiger, who had climbed up after them and was knocking them all down as though he was picking coconuts. They fell at my feet and all around me. Suddenly a polar bear came up behind me until I was cowering under his front legs, in the valley of the shadow of death. I screamed and screamed the silent screams of those condemned by sleep to be unable to move. But actually he was protecting me from the tiger. The polar bear stood over me for ages. Like a good guy. Like a samartian. I awoke with a snort and a gulp and shudder. And then he ate me.






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