I am going away!!!

On holiday.

I shall be back at the end of next week. Thank you for your patience and continued interest.

We go to the Hospital.

This is because they need to scan periodically to check that the baby is still in the LTLP, rather than because I am ill, e.g. with the lurgee. Although I have been coughing and sniffling over the past few days.

I think I might have had that avian flu thing, or maybe the 1918 Spanish version that they recently re-created in an American Government laboratory, despite security fears that it might be stolen and fall into the hands of fundamentalists and warmongers (note sophisticated political satire, truly I am the Peter Cook of my generation). Mothers-to-be glare at me and cover their bumps as I spread infection and phlegm round the waiting room.

The Stenographer Lady works at her black and white screen, cheerful as always, although I would be as well if my job was just like sitting down and playing 1980′s arcade game ‘Asteroids’ all day, but for free and with women undressing. She does lots of measuring. Then she turns to us and breaks the news.

My baby has a big head!!!

Whereas the child itself is developed as is normal for (x) weeks, his/her head is of the dimensions that is normal for (x+1) weeks!!! I stagger back at the revelation.

It has already been demonstrated, very early in this body of writing, that I – its father – do not have a big head. Yet here is this woman – a professional – demonstrating large headdom in my infant.

I steal a glance at the LTLP. She does not look guilty and unfaithful. But if she has been secretly having affairs with large-headed men behind my back then I will be cross.

I ponder this on the way home, all sorts of thoughts going round my (normal sized) mind.

I cooked an oxtail.

Being, as I am, an extraordinarily new new-man, I have always prided myself on the scrumptious fare that awaits the LTLP on her return from work. However, one thing that has transpired over the past year or so is that I have forgotten how to cook.

Circumstances, you see. For weeks on end, she wanted nothing but bacon and tomatoes on toast. Then I found myself on crutches and unable to glide round the kitchen with my usual fernbrittanness. Then I got really busy and didn’t have time. Plus I really, really like takeaways.

So I cooked an oxtail. I did this because a) it’s apparently quite trendy these days; b) it caught my eye in the shop; and c) I’ve never done it before and one should try new things. Which sound like sound and reasonable enough reasons, until you realise that they’re the sort of tempting arguments that can lead to a) growing a goatee; b) buying ‘Zoo’ magazine; and c) being arrested in the playground.

And so it was that five hours later I was scraping a plate furiously into the bin and ringing the Chinese Pub to source emergency rations.

There are several pointers one can examine to decide whether a meal is worth eating. One is that you should not be able to turn your plate one hundred and eighty degrees vertically so that it is completely upside-down, without your dinner accordingly obeying the force of gravity. As it was, a combination of gelatine and sci-fi strength surface tension conspired to offer an unappetising V-sign to the laws of physics.

A second is this. If one tries a bit of the gravy during the cooking process, and swills it round the mouth thoughtfully, thinking: “gosh that reminds me of something!” then five minutes later the revelation should not be: “oh yes, a Fray Bentos pie”.

I yield to no man in my admiration of the great chefs who have put traditional English cooking on the map recently: Fearnley-Whittingstall, Henderson, Harriot. But the fact is that people ate peasant food in the past because they were peasants. Boiled pig’s cock and the like were the only options available for the poor downtrodden masses in Walpole’s Britain, and reviving it as gourmet is the affectation of an idiot.

Continued from yesterday…

Chigga Chigga

Chig Chig Chig Chig Chig

I swayed slightly. “It’ll have to be the Proclaimers one,” I hiss. The Chipper Barman, who has just finished work and is therefore very sober, gives me a Look.

To recap. A normal evening in the village. I am at a party, being thrown by the Drumming Barman for his friends. Having agreed to back the Drumming Barman in some musical entertainment, he disappears to take a phone call and I find myself glassy-eyed, standing in front of a crowd of people I don’t know, one of whom I have already accidentally exposed myself to, playing the introduction to one of the only two songs I can remember when drunk: ‘I will be (500 Miles)’ by The Proclaimers.

Chig Chig Chig Chig Chig Chig Chig

The Chipper Barman joins in on bass. Bom Bom Bom Bom

I remember something important.

“Are there any people from Scotland here?” I mumble in to the microphone.

No response. A few bemused shakes of the head. This is good. If one is going to sing a Proclaimers song, one has to affect a broad Scottish accent. It is not quite the same as blacking up to sing ‘What’s Going On’, but the principle is broadly similar.

“Oh good,” I affirm.

Chig Chig Chig Cha-Cha Chig Chig Chig

I steal a glance behind me. The Drumming Barman has disappeared completely. We have been Chigging for a good two minutes now, and there is no sign of any miracle escape. There is nothing for it.

I sing the first verse of ‘I will be (500 Miles)’ by The Proclaimers.

I then sing the chorus.

Two things transpire from this. Firstly, when I say ‘I know the song’, it turns out that I kind of know the chorus and the dadilee-ada bit, and the fact that the first verse is something about waking up, but that is really the extent of my lyrical knowledge. I improvise.

The second thing is that the chorus really does draw its power from two magnificent voices in close harmony. In the original.

I sing the dadilee-ada bit. Some people sing ‘dadilee-ada’ back at me, which is encouraging. I sing it again and it happens again. The first bit is over.

Chig Chig Chig Cha-Cha Chig Chig Chig

I steal a look at the Chipper Barman, who gives me a shrug and melts further back into the shadows. Another desperate glance over my shoulder. I can see the Drumming Barman outside, on the phone. He is clearly involved in a long conversation.

I sort of extend the bit between the verses with some more Chigs. The problem is, it’s not one of those songs that you can pad out. There isn’t a guitar solo, or an improvisey bit, or anything like that. It’s too tight. I look into the crowd. People are clearly growing restless with my Chigs.

I sing the first verse again, followed by the chorus. Then the dadilee-ada bit. I get some dadilee-adas back. For safety reasons, I sing the dadilee-ada bit a few more times. Unfortunately dadilee-adas seem to be subject to a law of diminishing returns and before too long we are all back to the Chig Chig bits. The Chig Chig bits never really had any cachet to begin with, but they allow me to pause and collect my thoughts.

The Chipper Barman stands there, impassively. Bom Bom Bom Ba Ba Bom Bom Bom. There is still no sign of the Drumming Barman, and his guests are starting to question the value of the entertainment on offer. The wine has really hit me now, but despite it all, I have a brainwave.

I sing the first verse of ‘I will be (500 Miles)’ by The Proclaimers.

I am providing the only noise in the room at all. The chorus, again, goes badly until the very end, when there is a little cheer. I knew I would win them over in the end!!! But it is not for me – the Drumming Barman has reappeared through the patio doors behind me.

Just in time for the dadilee-adas. He is such a glory boy. We finish on a crescendo and there is a smattering of applause.

“Sorry chaps,” says the Drumming Barman. “Right. Shall we do a song?”

The guests at the Drumming Barman’s leaving party gathered round, expectantly.

I fiddled with a guitar lead, somewhat nervously. I’d envisaged slightly different scenarios for the Village Pub Band’s debut gig.

As it was, that expectation threw me. When one is slightly unprepared, one looks for familiar faces in the room who will like you because they’re your friend, rather than because you are brilliant. Aside from Short Tony and Big A, there was nobody I knew. All strangers, mates of the Drumming Barman, waiting to be impressed by his musician buddies. Beside me, the Chipper Barman tuned his bass guitar, similarly on his own in the room.

It would be up to the Drumming Barman to carry this one.

Thinking back, the phrase ‘slightly unprepared’ might have been understatement. We hadn’t rehearsed at all. Or met beforehand. Or talked about what songs we knew. Small matters, I know, but ones which most competent pop groups would have had sorted before the house lights went down.

As noted on Monday, I was also quite drunk, having downed several pints, several more glasses of wine and exposed myself to a blonde female lawyer.

I have a bit of a problem with drinking and playing the guitar. That is – and I am sure this is the sole reason why my pop career never took off – when I’m drunk I can only ever remember two songs. This would be limiting enough as it was. The fact that my two songs are ‘Ain’t No Pleasing You’ by Chas ‘n’ Dave and ‘I will be (500 Miles)’ by the Proclaimers, does tend to restrict me to niche audiences.

“What are we going to play?” hissed the Chipper Barman.

I dropped my guitar pick and scrabbled around on the floor whilst the Drumming Barman worked the crowd. He’s a popular chap. With myself and the Chipper Barman as his backing band, we could possibly carry things off with the force of his personality. I started playing a chord. Chigga Chigga. Chigga Chigga. Some applause. The room focused on the Drumming Barman, oozles of goodwill coming from all his friends.

Chigga Chigga. Chigga Chigga.

“Phone call for the Drumming Barman,” somebody announced.

“Won’t be a second, chaps,” he promised, and disappeared from the room.

Chigga Chigga.

The crowd turned to us. Expectation. A couple of them folded their arms. I exchanged a glance with the Chipper Barman. Silence.

Chigga Chigga.

Continued tomorrow.

I could see that she was impressed by my sophistication.

We stood in the kitchen at the Drumming Barman’s leaving party, chatting. I was doing most of the chatting, anyway. I do like a good listener.

Despite being quite shy, I am actually very witty and urbane in real life, and in fact get more witty and more urbane with each glass of wine I drink, until I am so witty and so urbane that I just get overcome and have to have a lie down.

The foxy blonde lawyer laughed uproariously at one of my jokes. Actually, she laughed quite quietly and understatedly, being too classy to really roar like most people do when I say something witty. Her eyes darted round the room nervously, probably due to worry that she was making it too obvious that she was interested in me.

I metaphorically adjusted my tie. It is unusual that I find someone like me to talk to who oozes class and breeding. Short Tony and Big A swigged beer like the peasants that they are. I sipped my Blossom Hill with suavity.

All this made the later misunderstanding so much more annoying. Clearly it was not my fault that I broke the toilet door, nor was it down to me that the locky bit was a bit rubbish in the first place. The fact that my stomach had got a bit dodgy was down to the forces of nature, and one can blame a lack of communication for the ‘if the door’s shut, don’t go in’ protocol not to have been spread and adopted by all.

“Oh God, I’m really, so, so, sorry,” she stammered.

I gazed up at her glassily, swaying slightly from side to side, wondering what to say, my pants round my ankles.

She backed away and pulled the door to.

We didn’t speak again that evening.

This small story tails off here, but I had to write it anyway for one reason.

I have always wanted to use the phrase ‘my pants around my ankles’ without having to follow it with ‘(actually that was a joke)’.

In fact that was my one remaining ambition in life.

Where do I go now?

2005: Blogged. As advertised on the right hand side. Now available to pre-order from Amazon.

Edited by Tim, who has occasionally said very nice things about this small body of work, it’s a sort of anthology on the main events of the past year and what blog people wrote about them. Well that’s how I understand it, anyway. I haven’t actually read it yet.

Its specific ‘in the news’ subject matter means that its main contributors will (I guess) tend to be those people that mainly write about national current affairs and events etc., rather than mainly about their own lives and relationships. There is possibly a sister volume to be written on that front that would be at least as interesting.

Anyway, I have a bit in it, probably as some light relief. A bit like when Shakespeare brought on the thicko idiot characters to lighten the mood a bit when the heroine was faced with execution. It’s not new material (you can read it for free here (what a great salesman I am)) but it’s on proper paper and stuff.