I’m going to let my fingers range almost randomly across the keys. They tell you to do that to beat writer’s
block. I’m trying to remember 'one better day'.
Time has little meaning when you aren’t working. Each day morphs into another. It might be Tuesday, it might be
Belgium. It’s spring, because I can see
daffodils. The sky is uniformly grey and
a cold wind seems to be in permanent residence.
“It’s a quiet street, isn’t it?” my new Spanish neighbour said when she came round to borrow an egg to make hamburgers. I thought you bought hamburgers ready made and I didn’t know they had eggs in them. Perhaps she just wanted to see the inside of the house.
“Comatose”, I replied.
“Zat music you are playing, eet’s very nice. I recognise eet.” It was an LP called ‘Watermark’ by an Irish lady called Enya. I was in that sort of mood. My neighbour looked at the décor, shook her head – she might have even said ‘Caramba’ under her breath, and left with an organic egg laid by an organic chicken.
I went back to my book. It was ‘The Angry Mountain’ by Hammond Innes – a ridiculous pot-boiler that relied not only on the total suspension of disbelief that Mount Vesuvius had erupted again but also the notion that you could take a mule onto a small aeroplane and subsequently dispose of the baddie by having the mule conveniently kick him in the head. I looked at the date of publication – 1950. Things have moved on since then. You couldn’t take a mule on a plane because of Health and Safety.
I was at the beach with the dog this morning. The wind was so strong my eyes leaked like a punctured hose. I was looking for the dog’s lead that fell out of my pocket onto the sand two days ago. It wasn’t there. Instead, I saw what looked like a dead fish lying on the tideline. The gulls had had its eyes and most of its face but it was no fish. It had a beak. It was a baby dolphin. I’d never seen a dolphin before. You wouldn’t expect to, not in Longniddry.
Yesterday I was in Gullane, getting my tennis racquet re-strung.
“What tension do you want?” the sports lady asked.
“Tension?” I must have looked foolish because she clucked disapprovingly.
“Are you a power player?”
I regarded her in disbelief. “I’m 63.”
“Do you break strings often?” she enquired.
“The last time was 1982,” I replied.
“You’ll be wanting low tension, then,” she said.
I went for a walk whilst she set the re-stringing machine in motion. The wind almost knocked me off my feet as I climbed towards the summit of a sharp hill towards the golf course. The whole of the Firth of Forth lay before me, in pale sunshine, with the Fife coast as clear as glass. I walked back past the posh houses. The end one was for sale. It was built in Flamenco style in white stucco and had seven bedrooms on four floors. I looked the place up on the internet later – offers over £1.9 million.
“Affordable” I said to the sports lady.
When I got my tennis racquet back, I found I could push the strings back about half an inch. It was as if they were fashioned from elastic. That might do my game some good. I’ll hit the ball, but because of the lack of tension in the strings, it will be five seconds before it leaves the racquet which ought to confuse my opponent into playing his shot too early. At my age, I need all the help I can get. One thing I can do now that I am unemployed is watch comedy on daytime television. I watched M.A.S.H. the other night. It was a 40-year-old episode and there was one quite hilarious scene. Corporal ‘Radar’ O’Reilly was very keen on a studious, bookish nurse who was fond of poetry. He borrowed a book of poems by Rupert Brooke from Max Klinger and, on some pretext, went to the bonny nurse's tent to read some of the poems to her. She asked him what the poetry was about.
“It’s by a chap called Ruptured Brook and it’s red-hot," said Radar. "There’s references to slaking and everything.” As usual, the naïf Radar had misinterpreted the verb. It turned out that the nurse was, amazingly, very keen on Radar. He staggered into the operating theatre some time later, shirt open, cap awry, face covered in lipstick.
“What happened, Radar? asked Hawkeye Pierce.
“I think I’ve been slaked,” gasped the Corporal.
“It’s a quiet street, isn’t it?” my new Spanish neighbour said when she came round to borrow an egg to make hamburgers. I thought you bought hamburgers ready made and I didn’t know they had eggs in them. Perhaps she just wanted to see the inside of the house.
“Comatose”, I replied.
“Zat music you are playing, eet’s very nice. I recognise eet.” It was an LP called ‘Watermark’ by an Irish lady called Enya. I was in that sort of mood. My neighbour looked at the décor, shook her head – she might have even said ‘Caramba’ under her breath, and left with an organic egg laid by an organic chicken.
I went back to my book. It was ‘The Angry Mountain’ by Hammond Innes – a ridiculous pot-boiler that relied not only on the total suspension of disbelief that Mount Vesuvius had erupted again but also the notion that you could take a mule onto a small aeroplane and subsequently dispose of the baddie by having the mule conveniently kick him in the head. I looked at the date of publication – 1950. Things have moved on since then. You couldn’t take a mule on a plane because of Health and Safety.
I was at the beach with the dog this morning. The wind was so strong my eyes leaked like a punctured hose. I was looking for the dog’s lead that fell out of my pocket onto the sand two days ago. It wasn’t there. Instead, I saw what looked like a dead fish lying on the tideline. The gulls had had its eyes and most of its face but it was no fish. It had a beak. It was a baby dolphin. I’d never seen a dolphin before. You wouldn’t expect to, not in Longniddry.
Yesterday I was in Gullane, getting my tennis racquet re-strung.
“What tension do you want?” the sports lady asked.
“Tension?” I must have looked foolish because she clucked disapprovingly.
“Are you a power player?”
I regarded her in disbelief. “I’m 63.”
“Do you break strings often?” she enquired.
“The last time was 1982,” I replied.
“You’ll be wanting low tension, then,” she said.
I went for a walk whilst she set the re-stringing machine in motion. The wind almost knocked me off my feet as I climbed towards the summit of a sharp hill towards the golf course. The whole of the Firth of Forth lay before me, in pale sunshine, with the Fife coast as clear as glass. I walked back past the posh houses. The end one was for sale. It was built in Flamenco style in white stucco and had seven bedrooms on four floors. I looked the place up on the internet later – offers over £1.9 million.
“Affordable” I said to the sports lady.
When I got my tennis racquet back, I found I could push the strings back about half an inch. It was as if they were fashioned from elastic. That might do my game some good. I’ll hit the ball, but because of the lack of tension in the strings, it will be five seconds before it leaves the racquet which ought to confuse my opponent into playing his shot too early. At my age, I need all the help I can get. One thing I can do now that I am unemployed is watch comedy on daytime television. I watched M.A.S.H. the other night. It was a 40-year-old episode and there was one quite hilarious scene. Corporal ‘Radar’ O’Reilly was very keen on a studious, bookish nurse who was fond of poetry. He borrowed a book of poems by Rupert Brooke from Max Klinger and, on some pretext, went to the bonny nurse's tent to read some of the poems to her. She asked him what the poetry was about.
“It’s by a chap called Ruptured Brook and it’s red-hot," said Radar. "There’s references to slaking and everything.” As usual, the naïf Radar had misinterpreted the verb. It turned out that the nurse was, amazingly, very keen on Radar. He staggered into the operating theatre some time later, shirt open, cap awry, face covered in lipstick.
“What happened, Radar? asked Hawkeye Pierce.
“I think I’ve been slaked,” gasped the Corporal.
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