Low life

I was already braking before I realised that it was Tom standing by the side of the road with his thumb out. Tom loves me. He got in and leant across and wordlessly clasped me to his bosom. He’s one of those small guys whom God made small because He is a compassionate God and He wanted to limit the damage. Small but hard, Tom is, and with huge hands. In a clinch he feels as if he’s made of steel plate. He stank of Stella. His stubbly chin on my neck felt like 80 grain sandpaper. ‘Where to, chief?’ I said. He was hitchhiking over to his ex-wife’s new place to see her and the kids and give them all a treat on Father’s Day, he said virtuously. Maybe he’d do a bit of tiling in the bathroom while he was there, he added.

At midday, what must have been more or less the entire village gathered around the steps of the village hall (1952) to raise a flute of champagne to Her Majesty, give three ragged cheers, and sing the National Anthem. Then we were herded into the adjacent parish church car park for the parish Diamond Jubilee commemorative photograph.

Our Scottish visitors, man and wife, came bearing lavish gifts: a beribboned fruit cake in a Union Jack cake tin; a bottle of Bollinger; a bottle of Bailie Nicol Jarvie old Scotch Whisky (their favourite tipple); a bottle of nubile white Burgundy; four ‘Katie Morag’ children’s books; The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson, which made them both laugh in bed; a heavy, 19in high relief sculpture of Eos, Titan goddess of the dawn (she of the rosy fingers); a circular plaster plaque featuring a bust, in relief, of their jaw-droppingly beautiful middle daughter Sophie, clad in a toga, her head informally decorated with thistles, olives and olive leaves. And for me a T-shirt. White cotton. He designed it himself, said the man.

After a party the night before, those who had stayed the night were staggering around among the debris in a state of shock and disbelief trying to piece together what had happened. The headline news was that someone had driven his Land-Rover through a fence and abandoned it teetering on the edge of a cliff. The herd of bullocks being contained by the fence had all hoofed it and the farmer was displeased, apparently. The other news was that the beautiful young mother of the two beautiful little girls was still semi-paralysed and throwing up in the garden, and the Low life correspondent of The Spectator had been sick in a permeable wickerwork wastepaper basket.

Listening to the BBC news and current affairs programmes, you’d think that Britain is a socialist republic. Which is odd because my entire extended family, on both my mother’s side (smallholders) and on my father’s (urban lower-middle class), is without exception monarchist conservative. From time to time there are rumours that somebody or other has cast their vote for the LibDems, or is thinking about doing so, but we laugh and put this down to an excess of sublimated sexuality rather than political conviction. We have a short branch of the family which is staunch Hitlerite Nazi, but no party’s manifesto, certainly not the BNP’s, ever comes anywhere close to expressing their exciting vision for Britain, so presumably they don’t bother to vote.

The day after her 96th birthday, and three days before she died, my next-door neighbour told me she wanted Jimmy killed and put in her coffin with her. She knew then she hadn’t long to go. The only thing I could do for her, she said, was put fresh milk in Jimmy’s saucer, making sure that the milk was fresh. She was very anxious about this. She’d hate Jimmy to be offered milk that had gone off. I was jubilant. Her wanting Jimmy put down was the best news I’d heard for ages. I’d have offered to do it myself with my bare hands if there was even half a chance she’d be amenable to the idea.

I arrived at the hilltop crematorium an hour early. The car park was empty and there wasn’t a soul about. Behind the low crematorium building the sky was black and threatening. I found the door to the gents’ lavatory to be unlocked, however, and the water in the tap above the hand basin unexpectedly hot. I used the facilities and as I washed my hands I leaned forward and stared at my face in the mirror. I’d been to a party the night before. It was one of those depressing parties where the illegal drugs are taken secretly by a select few in a bedroom, and to be invited in is like being offered a seat in the House of Lords by a committee. I wasn’t invited in. My staple all night was lager.

About once every six months I drive to a house to pick up a box of six sealed tubs of aloe vera juice. These tubs are not, I hasten to add, for your do or die low life correspondent. No doubt I have lost enough credibility already with last week’s cake forks. If I confessed to trying to prolong my low life by taking top spec aloe vera juice, it would probably and rightly be the end. For this is what the advertising pamphlets of this pyramid selling company brand hints at. Without actually coming out and wildly promising it, the subtle impression created by the PR firm responsible for these pamphlets is that drinking the stuff will energise and lengthen your life. It will also grant you serenity of mind.

The weatherman had forecast a cold front arriving speedily from the east during the course of the day. As soon as our two guests arrived we eagerly debated this with them. It seemed incredible. The sea was sparkling under a cloudless sky and the sun was getting hotter by the minute. The lovely settled weather we’d been enjoying looked set fair to continue. Had we heard right, we wondered? But our guests had heard the same forecast, and the weatherman had sounded as unequivocal to them as he’d sounded to us. The proprietor of the hotel they were staying at, clearly a man with his guests’ best interests at heart, had heard it, too, and he’d taken the trouble to warn them about the predicted change in the weather during breakfast.

Keith the bailiff could tell at a glance, surely, that demanding £204 on the spot from a poverty-stricken household such as this one was hopeless. When he pulled up in his Sahara Gold Citroën Berlingo and saw us all sitting around the paddling pool in the front garden, the state of the children’s shoes alone would have told him that nobody had any money. And as my boy’s partner led him inside the house to negotiate, surely he would have noticed, too, that there was no carpet on the stairs, no seat on the lavatory and no living-room carpet; that the enormous old telly was recycled, as were most of the children’s toys; that there was no X-Box, laptop, washing machine or music centre; that some of the light sockets were without bulbs.

I was sunbathing in a deckchair outside my boy and his partner’s house. They don’t have a back garden, but they have a six-feet square unfenced plot of grass and mud between their front door, the wheelie bins and the road, and that’s where they stand and smoke and occasionally sit and socialise. That side of the house is a remarkable suntrap. Unfortunately the grass plot is overlooked on three sides by blocks of the tiniest, shoddiest council flats imaginable, the kind of flats the council reserves for desperate cases. Until I got used to the idea, it felt a bit public, like sunbathing on a roundabout. But it was too lovely out to be stuck indoors. My boy’s partner had spread an old curtain over the mud and grass, and she and the baby were sitting on that.

A mixture of mallards, coots, shelducks and moorhens were milling about at the water’s edge; some standing in the shallows, some lightly afloat, others toddling about on dry land. Also two bloody great mute swans, possibly dangerous, swelling, hissing, bridling, and generally threatening anyone silly enough to presume that a handful of bread was enough to earn their gratitude and trust. Beside these graceful thugs, the practical little coots, treading purposefully on clown-sized feet, had the greater perspective, and more wit. My grandson, Oscar, and I sat down on one of the four benches provided by the parish council. The freshwater lake stretched away before us: cloudless blue sky above.

‘Did I tell you about our Japanese au pair, Hideko? A lovely girl, speaks excellent English, but sometimes we have the most ludicrous misunderstandings. At breakfast one morning she started talking about the proms, you know, the promenade concerts. And my wife and I thought she was talking about the plums — we’ve got this fantastically productive plum tree in our garden. So dear old Hideko was saying it was her life’s ambition to see one of these proms. And the wife and I were saying things like: “Oh yes, they were truly wonderful last year. A bit early, but amazingly juicy. Attracted the wasps, though.” And poor Hideko looked at us as though we were both mad.’ This anecdote was related to me in a bar in the Guinness village at about 10.

It’s that time of year again. The Cheltenham festival. And I’m not talking about books.  Once again I am a guest at the legendary racing tipster Colonel Pinstripe’s week-long country house party, and during the day at his racecourse hospitality chalet, where we might have an occasional small sherry or two. It is my eighth consecutive festival. Packing a suitcase for Cheltenham has become a landmark event of the calendar year, signifying primrose time, the retreat of winter, and falling off the Lenten wagon.   My suitcase was open on the bed and I was layering in my outfits. Lounge suit and gaudy tie for the evenings; tweed suit, country check shirt and sober tie for the racecourse; black tie for the journey home.

My brother, a big, tough, rugby-playing, judo-grappling, incorruptible police sergeant, was whimpering down the phone. His back had gone again, he said, this time completely. He was lying on his side on his bedroom floor, he said, the only place and position which afforded him the slightest relief. ‘Ah! Oh! Ee!’ he said. I’d never heard my brother whimper like that. Sounds bad, I said. When he could speak coherently again, he said it was cramp in the leg that had rendered him speechless that time, not his bad back. He’d been lying in that position since last night, he said. (It was now nine o’clock in the morning.) He was passing the time by making a minute study of one of the brass handles on the chest of drawers. What could I do for him, I said?

At the moment we’re very interested in spiders, my grandson and I. If we see one we catch it and put it in a clear plastic pot with a lid that doubles as a powerful magnifying glass, and we examine it. Last week we caught a monstrous one. It filled the pot. It was intelligent enough to quickly realise that escape was impossible and sat there looking thwarted. We took it in turns to squint at it through the magnifying lid. Oscar has no aesthetic sense as yet, and his powers of expression are very limited, yet he was visibly disconcerted by what he saw. About once a week I take him on an outing. Lately we’ve gone somewhere and back on a bus because he loves buses with a passion. Suggested alternative outings are rejected out of hand. ‘Train or bus?’ I say.

On Valentine’s Day I took a young lady out on a date. She was so young that the forms of address that she used in the brief flurry of emails leading up to the big day were entirely new to me and I had to Google them to find out what she meant. She called me ‘biatch’, for example, which I now know is the latest all-purpose variant of the African-American slang word ‘bitch’ — a term of endearment for one’s girlfriend. I was very excited and even a little nervous as I hadn’t been out with a young lady for a long time. Fortunately, the swollen half of my face, the visible result of an infected root canal, was starting to subside, thanks to the 500 mg amoxicillin capsules thrice daily prescribed by the emergency dentist.

Eight o’clock on a cold and frosty Sunday morning and my boy is driving me to the NHS emergency dentist. My boy’s seven-seater Toyota Previa cost him £300 and it’s turned out to be a reliable and comfortable old bus, though ‘very thirsty’ as he puts it. He’s proud of it, and seems pleased to be of service to his old man in his hour of need, in spite of the early start. These days the only opportunity we have to talk is like this, in the car, when he’s running me somewhere. At his home, with five kids under eight charging around, the racket and the chaos make conversation impossible. All we can do there is shout short, panic-stricken sentences to one another like soldiers on a battlefield overrun by the enemy.

If there’s a hotter, smellier and more cramped men’s changing room in Britain than the one at our gym, then I’d like to hear about it. It’s next door to the sauna and connected to it by an air vent. My glasses steam up the moment I walk in. After a workout, I shower, towel off, and before I’m dressed I’m soaking wet again with perspiration. There’s room, just about, for up to four people at a time. Sometimes there are six or seven in there showering, robing or disrobing. Intimate is the word. You have to negotiate your personal space with your neighbour and watch where you put your hands when attempting larger, more sweeping movements. Everyone is forever apologising to everyone else for accidental space violations or knocks and buffets.

Exeter airport. Check in. I’m booked on a domestic flight to Glasgow International and I’m travelling with hand luggage only. It’s a small, cheap rucksack. It contains a phone charger, a toothbrush, a plastic bottle of Head and Shoulders, a copy of the Sun, two tubs of Devonshire clotted cream, a pound of Devon cheese and three books. The books are: a paperback biography of Robert Burns; a 1903 cloth-bound collection of Schopenhauer’s essays; and a Norton edition paperback anthology of English poetry. The Burns biography and the Schopenhauer are gifts for my hosts in Paisley, one of whom is a Schopenhauer devotee. The poetry anthology is for me to select a suitable poem to read aloud at their Burns Night supper. (I chose ‘The English Are So Nice’ by D.