Jeremy Clarke

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.

We parked the car and spent a carefree hour on the beach, Oscar and I. The beach was a crescent of pebbles three miles long, and we were the only people on it. A recent easterly gale had driven the tide much further up the beach than usual, leaving behind it a pebble ridge, ideal for granddads and two-year-old boys to fling themselves off, or roll down roly-poly fashion, which we did until granddad was exhausted. Next we searched for suitable pieces for the driftwood bookcase granddad is making, and found a frayed and salted plank of eight by two. Just the job. Nearby, a stranded dogfish lay stinking among the tide-line debris.

A week into the New Year I drove to town early to do a spot of shopping. The sun was shining, I felt well again, and I marched up the high street with a spring in my step. The still-thriving high street is predominantly Georgian, with here and there a few remaining Tudor merchants’ houses. The foundations and old stone walls are medieval, and the narrow street runs steeply upwards between the ancient river bridge at the bottom and a textbook motte-and-bailey castle at the top. You can either park at the top and walk down, or park at the bottom and walk up. It depends how you feel.   I hadn’t got far up the high street when I met Luke coming down. In streets as narrow as this one, you tend to look people in the face who are coming towards you.

I was woken by my phone ringing. My boy. ‘What time is it?’ I said. ‘Ten past one,’ he said. ‘How are you feeling?’ This was said with a very obvious and unkind touch of schadenfreude. ‘Terrible,’ I said. I felt as though I might be dying, and the sooner the better. ‘Where are you?’ he said. That I did know. ‘I’m in the bar manager of the Merry Fiddler’s bed,’ I said. ‘Oh, yes?’ he said, pretending heightened interest. Feebly, I checked under the duvet. ‘But she’s not here,’ I said. ‘And I’m still wearing my suit and overcoat.’ He rang off and I sank back into oblivion. When I woke next the house was still quiet.

‘Come with me,’ said the barmaid, ‘to a party.’ It was around three and she was trying to close the pub and get everyone out. She seemed to be the one person in a hundred who was maintaining a degree of sanity. The other barmaid, for example, could hardly stand up. The sensible barmaid organised a carry-out of bottled lager for me — she’d had enough for one night and couldn’t get out of there quickly enough — and we went to the party. I’d spent most of the evening in a pub down the road where everyone was partying on drugs as well as being alcohol drunk. You could tell by the way the pandemonium had a soft edge.

I was standing on the pavement outside the Lahore Kebab House, Hendon, after a three-hour lunch, waiting for a minicab. Fifty of us had sat down at a flower-laden table to samosas and champagne, kebabs and Valpolicella. Amid a convivial uproar, our host had stood, tapped his water glass with his spoon, and made a speech of thanks and welcome. Last year, to our host’s transparent consternation, his speech was hijacked by Lord Charles, the ventriloquist’s dummy, who’d made obscene remarks about some of the guests. Today his speech was again persistently interrupted, this time by Sooty on the one hand, and by Sweep on the other, whispering irrelevant comments in his ear.

Royal Mail bosses have suggested to postmen that they should not accept a Christmas tip if it’s £30 or more. This is because under the terms of the new Bribery Act that sort of money could conceivably constitute a bribe. I’ve never been a postman, sadly, let alone a postman at Christmas. I don’t know how much a postman expects to make from Christmas tips. But I was seven years a dustman and for us Christmas was always a cash bonanza of mind-boggling proportions. I have lots of happy memories of stepping down from the dustcart on Christmas Eve, already tight as a tick, and heading straight for the pub, my trouser pockets bulging with wedges of cash several inches thick. It wasn’t just cash we were given.

‘A race through the subways and streets of Paris anuses.’ Startled, I reread the sentence. Surely that couldn’t be right. To pass the time I was flicking through a programme of December’s films at the local art-house cinema. The sentence came in a synopsis of a French crime thriller. Then I realised it was a misprint and should have read, ‘A race through the subways and streets of Paris ensues’. I was about to jab my friend with an elbow and point out the misprint to him, when his surname was called. Five minutes before, he and I had taken the only two available seats in the hospital waiting area, among a crowd of maybe 50 or 60 other outpatients. As we sat, that Bible verse came to mind about tarrying at Jericho until your beards be grown.