Monday, March 04, 2024

Subframe issue

When we lived in Ryton - before the children - I read a Guardian article about gymless exercise. It featured a book called 'Combat Conditioning ' by the brilliantly named Matt Furey. I thought this sounded like a manual for my married life, so I bought the book. I did the exercises, used a punchbag and started running along the bank of the river on which my daughters now row. I was as fit as a flea.

I saw a video on YouTube a couple of months ago that brought back memories of that time. Some South Asian wrestlers were doing hindu pushups - the dand - as part of their training routine. The dand features prominently in 'Combat Conditioning' and I took this as a sign that I should give them another go. Also, my car had developed a fatal subframe issue* that meant it had been scrapped and I couldn't get to the gym.

A routine of 30-35 dands a day strengthened my subframe remarkably and saw me through the winter. Our friends Jim and Wendy called round for cocktails when my enthusiasm for 'Combat Conditioning ' was at its peak. Jim's text afterwards captured the evening's mood:

"Thank you for having us, your company was quite intoxicating. I particularly enjoyed the repressive Handmaid's Tale stories from Maude’s youth, which explain a lot, and, of course John’s startling Asian press ups."

I'm only just returning to the company of surly teenagers and middle-aged bigots at the gym.

*I wouldn't dream of suggesting that Maude occasionally commuting over speedbumps to Sunderland with her substantial carshare buddy hastened the decline in roadworthiness of my relatively low mileage Toyota Aygo.

Friday, January 19, 2024

Slipping in














A good story is always worth a second telling- a reworking, a recalibration for a new audience. I always find it saddening, however, when a friendship reaches the point at which a friend starts to repeat his or her best stories - especially if those stories were quite mediocre in the first place. It is often as though, when all avenues of new conversation have been exhausted, the default story is aired again. 

This phenomenon reminds me of the behaviour of 'Hal', the computer in 2001: a space odyssey. The first thing Hal was programmed with was 'Mary had a little lamb' and that's what Hal recites as he eventually begins to shut down. When a friend regresses like this I believe that they are no longer enjoying new experiences - or, at least, they are no longer absorbing anything novel or recountable. They are beginning to 'shut down.'

We had some slightly older married friends for a while - whose default story resolved around driving into a moose while on holiday in Canada some twenty years before we knew them. We knew this couple for about four years before they moved to a new town a couple of hours away and we lost touch. During those years of acquaintance I'm sure I heard the moose story at least three times, in its entirety, and it wasn't snappy. The husband, to his credit, did develop the story with each telling. 

I eventually realised why the moose story was their default story of choice - it was safe territory. I realised this on a night when a fateful extra bottle of red wine was opened. As the husband left the room to find a book he had been recommending over dinner, his wife thought she'd launch into a new story to, as she put it: 'mix things up a bit'. 

The new story took us back to her Tyneside childhood. She was in the habit of calling in to see her grandparents on her way home from school. A glass of milk and a biscuit was the norm as she recounted the events of her day to the seniors and played with their lovable mongrel Trixie. 

"So, on this particular day, my nan had popped to the corner shop to get some milk. She knew I'd come in and have a glassful and not leave enough for them to have a cup of tea. Kids are like that, aren't they? Selfish."

'It’s in here somewhere. Won't be a minute,' called our host from the next room.

A minute was all his wife needed to tell us why the 'particular day' of this story was significant. 

"They had an old-fashioned latch on their back door - it was more like something you'd see on a garden gate now. People were very trusting then and didn't go in for high-security. It didn't make much of a noise either - just a tiny rattle."

Her eyes really had that far-away look of a raconteur who had totally  transported themselves back to a time and place long ago. Our presence had, I'm sure, been forgotten.

"That was the fun bit. Slipping in and surprising them. 'Is that you slipping in again, you cheeky monkey!' my nan would say."

She paused and we could hear her husband closing the door of the adjacent room.

"In I skipped and there he was, grandad, giving Trixie one from behind - 'doggy-style' I suppose you'd have to say."

In the long, long pause that followed, I could see her husband's silhouetted figure framed and frozen in the doorway. I watched particles of household dust hover in the air as the man eventually entered the room, charged everyone's glasses, plumped up the cushions and said:

'You would not believe how much damage a moose can do to your bodywork - even when you're only in second gear!'


Friday, September 09, 2022

‘A Jesus with a light’













I was horrified: ‘You weren’t meant to find that bag!’

Bernie was on her way downstairs with a carrier bag containing many old paper wallets of family photos. The wallets covered trips to Ireland, the Costa del Sol and Majorca.

‘Well, your girls want to see the pictures of you when you had hair. Don’t shoot the messenger.’

Maude curated the contents of the bag and a daughter peered over each of her shoulders. Here, indeed, was the evidence that I once had a big curly head of hair and skin tight stonewashed jeans and a face so innocent and optimistic that it almost brought me to tears.

The bag also contained pictures of my father looking similarly innocent and optimistic circa 1955.

Aurora took pictures of the pictures on her phone and there was much amusement around shots of me in a Fuengirola hotel room in my pants.

‘You know that old chess set of yours is in the cupboard on the stairs as well’, said Bernie.

I hadn’t realised that quite so much of my youth was in ‘the cupboard on the stairs’. It was always the place where family history was haphazardly archived. I remember finding an old suitcase of Dad’s in there. It was the kind of cheap, almost cardboard, case that many ‘Paddys’ came to England with – usually reinforced by some form of strap or belt. Dad’s case contained a cache of letters from an old girlfriend and a paperback of ‘Juliette’ by the Marquis de Sade. My guess was it was a novel with saucy bits – but I never got around to checking.

Bernie joined me at the cupboard and rummaged for a while.

‘There’s the board – under that stuff.’

We moved the pile of ‘stuff’ and revealed what was quite an ornate chess board with Tudor roses on the black squares. I remembered then that the pieces were Tudor figures – with Henry VIII as king. Jocasta later pointed out that having Henry VIII as black and white king was ‘surely a continuity error.’

‘There’s a carrier bag in there with the chess pieces in. Mum said, ‘to the right as you open the door’. My guess, then, is far left.’

Bernie laughed and started to offer me some of the Catholic icons stored at the back of the cupboard. An image of Jesus with lambs at his feet appeared.

‘Do you want a Jesus?’

She carried on rummaging and found the old family 'Sacred Heart' picture:

‘Do you want a Jesus with a light?’

The Sacred Heart used to hang in the living room when I was a child. The light signified the presence of Jesus in the house – protecting us. Indoctrinated as I was as a child, I would panic that Jesus had forsaken us and that I was destined for Limbo when mum hadn’t fed the meter with coins and Jesus and his bright red heart were dimmed.

Aurora’s bedroom is a well thought out teenage grotto of film posters and icons from pop culture and Manga comics.

‘I’ll have a Jesus with a light. It’ll look great my room.’

‘You will not,’ said Bernie. ‘It’s a proper religious thing for, you know, devotion. Anyway, your dad said it might be worth a few quid one day.’ 

Tuesday, July 12, 2022

'pray and be patience'

For the last few weeks, I have been viewing the Irish passport service website daily. I have my passport, but the rest of the family have been waiting for theirs since the beginning of March.

The webchat panel is nearly always greyed out - they're too busy to help me. If you hang on there and refresh the page upwards of a hundred times, it goes green for a second. You have to be quick and paste your details in before it greys out again and they are, once again, too busy to help me. This has turned into a challenge, a daily game and a way for me to break up the monotony of working from home. 

When you do get through to have an actual webchat, the responses can be pretty brusque. I tell myself that they are, after all, very busy disappointing as many people as possible every day and I can't reasonably expect politeness. They are probably working to targets which ensure that they disappoint as many people as they possibly can before they log off. I was, given this context, very surprised with the advice I received from the webchat agent 'helping' me yesterday. As you can see from the transcript below, he thought it appropriate when I asked if he thought the passports would be processed in time for our travel date, to suggest that I pray for them. 

Can I suggest to anybody associated with the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs that some virtual rosary beads be incorporated into the passport website for this purpose. Perhaps an icon or two could be added also - there are some expanses of blank screen you could play with. A solemn decade or two would pass the time nicely while a passport applicant waits for the short window of opportunity when the webchat panel turns green. 

2022-07-11 12:45:59 | John Patrick McGagh: Thank you. Does that mean they will be processed in time?

2022-07-11 12:47:45 | Agent: hopefully this time of the year you can pray and be patience. once the checks are done it will speed up.

2022-07-11 12:48:01 | Agent:  As you   may appreciate, we have unprecedented high volumes of first\-time applications

2022-07-11 12:48:17 | John Patrick McGagh: OK, thanks for your help

2022-07-11 12:48:33 | Agent: we are trying our best to process them quickly

2022-07-11 12:48:40 | Agent:  Thank you for contacting the Passport Service, have a lovely day

2022-07-11 12:48:58 | System: The agent has ended this chat.

Tuesday, July 27, 2021

‘And the strange dust lands on your hands and on your face‘





















My daughters have developed an interest in funeral customs.

‘Is the open coffin thing an Irish tradition Dad. Do you want one?’

‘I think they do it in lots of cultures’, I guessed, ‘but I’ve seen a few in my time.’

‘Didn’t your mum once take you to someone’s house when they were dead?’

‘Indeed she did, yes. She said we were going to Tess’s house to pay our respects. She didn’t warn me that Tess was lying in her coffin in the front room and no, I don’t want one’.

‘Were you frightened Dad?’

‘No, but it was one of the more memorable house calls I made with my mother.’

‘What about the circus cannon? Do you still want to have your ashes fired from a circus cannon Dad?’

‘I’ve been considering that wish and I think I am going to give you girls 3 options to mark my passing:

  1. Indeed, the circus cannon. I think the firing of my ashes mixed with glitter from a very loud circus cannon at a moment of peak excitement in the circus programme would be just splendid. I’d like to think that ‘I’ would shower down on to happy smiling faces and if there was enough glitter involved they would never suspect that the strange dust was six parts old guy cremains. My atomised self would then be carried on clothing and shoes into the living rooms of elated Blaydon families returning home full of tales of the circus. I would happily mingle with their house dust and dog hairs and end up (still glittering a little) in their Dysons.


  2. I would also not be the least bit averse to having my ashes flung with absolutely no ceremony or a second thought from the bridge at the foot of the hill in Cloonaghgarve, County Galway. As previously mentioned this bridge was blown up twice by my great grandfather in his campaign of sabotage against the British colonialists. My great-grandfather died an old man of natural causes, by the way.


  3. Egg timer. This is a new one, but would repurpose my ashes and put them to good household use. Put my ashes in a plain, but tasteful, egg-timer to sit on a kitchen shelf. The new 'me' would be wipe clean, very useful and wouldn’t look out of place on Instagram.’

‘Wouldn’t it need to be really big, Dad, to take all of your ashes?’

‘Not necessarily. You could just use the finer ashes for the egg-timer and design it so that it timed a pizza in the crazy hot bottom oven. About 8 minutes I reckon. The coarser cremains could be added to some brightly coloured maracas and these could be shaken while you/your friends/your children/their children (eventually) have a sing-song while they wait for the pizzas.’


Monday, December 30, 2019

Hard paper round













‘How old do you think I am?’
This struck me as an interesting departure from the usual: 
‘Going anywhere nice on your holidays?’
To which I inevitably answer:
‘No…...I’m going to Northern Ireland (sad face)’
I looked at my new barber in the mirror.
The salon owner is my usual barber. The salon has a big TV permanently tuned to MTV. There is also an alcove in which a very large bird cage houses half a dozen canaries. The canaries seem to sing along to the music on the TV. When there is a gap between music videos the birds seize the chance to entertain the customers on their own.
The owner is Omar and he is not much over five feet tall. He calls me over to a chair and avoids standing anywhere near me. Omar is in the habit of giving me manly tips: a very convincing hair transplant in Poland for only £200 or a happy finish at the massage parlour over the road (fee negotiable).
‘I’m single – always horny innit,’ he said in his defence.
Omar was chuckling as I pondered how old his apprentice was. I suspected that this was a routine designed to break up the barbers’ day and that it was very probably a trick question.
‘I’m not a good guesser of ages,’ I said, ‘I tend to cause offence.’
He was smiling and told me to go ahead – he wouldn’t be offended. He was stocky, hirsute and what can only be described as very ‘Turkish’ in appearance. 
He looked at least 30, so I thought it best to shave a few years off (excuse the pun). 
‘I’d say about 26…’
Omar laughed wholeheartedly. This joke clearly never got tired. The junior barber laughed also.
‘I’m sixteen,’ he said. ‘I know I look much older. I’m a boxer you see. I box when I finish in here.’
He paused and assumed a south-paw stance.
‘To get anything in life, you have to fight and work (left jab) hard! (right upper-cut).’
I could see that he was looking me in the eye (in the mirror) – waiting for some kind of reaction. I felt slightly uncomfortable being given life advice by a 16 year old - even if he did look much older. I could see that he was sincere, though, and he certainly had a point.
I just smiled my best smile of admiration for his youthful bravado. He then guessed at my age and prudently went for 44. 
‘I’ll take that’, I said and then told him I was 53. 
‘I’ll make you look 48,’ he exclaimed and the very brief glow I had been feeling quickly subsided.

Tuesday, December 17, 2019

Charity Case










As a teenager I would get the bus into Manchester city centre on a Saturday and return with some ill-advised 'fashionable' clothes and some records.
I would buy at least two vinyl LP's a week – based on recommendations in the NME - which arrived through my letterbox every Thursday morning.
On moving to the north east I would buy records and cd's in Newcastle in much the same way – but a little less frequently to allow for social expenses. I even remember pre-ordering the first Daft Punk single for collection on release date. Who did I think I was? Maude hated it and would say ‘please don’t play Daft Cunt again.’ 
Now I buy second-hand cd’s from the charity shop across the road from work - as my Honda 'people carrier' has a cd player. They cost £1 per cd and occasionally I find a gem: the first Arctic Monkeys album for instance. Last week I bought a Bob Dylan box set for £3 (3 discs and I was honest about that when the elderly volunteer asked). I then found it new online for £80. It’s been knocking about the car now though – so it’ll not go on ebay.
The cd’s in the charity shop seem to arrive in clearly discernible batches.
Harry Secombe albums and collections of marching band music say ‘house clearance’ and ‘dead senior’.
A dozen or so indie albums from the 90’s will often appear in one go – usually on a Monday, after a weekend donation. A batch like that makes me think that a spurned woman has found petty revenge on the boyfriend or husband of 20 years who has suddenly told her that he needs some space. Things have come to a head over the course of a weekend. His return to their flat to pick up the ‘last of his stuff’ would be fruitless. The lock would be changed and the voice from the letterbox would offer the following advice:
‘Try the fucking charity shop!’  
Or perhaps a widow can’t bear the sight of her prematurely dead husband’s cd’s anymore and has plucked up the courage to donate them to the hospice charity which did, after all, look after him as he ‘lost his brave battle’.
There is also the possibility that a forty something guy or woman has decided to Marie Kondo or ‘Queereye’ themselves and clear away all physical media they own. ‘Haven’t you heard of streaming!’ one of the Queer Eye guys exclaimed recently as they boxed up all of the dvd’s and cd’s which had dominated a slovenly middle-aged man’s trailer home.
I realised I was becoming a shop regular when I didn’t have the £1 required to pay for my single cd selection last Monday. I couldn’t pay on a card, as it was below the shop limit for cards. The nice volunteer lady just said:
‘Don’t worry, just pay next time you’re in.’

Friday, May 06, 2016

'I can remember when all this was sex shops....'

















'Did you know they've demolished your old primary school?'

I did know. My old classmate was busy organising a reunion and thought she'd prepare me for the shock if I were to come back for the event. I felt sad that I wouldn't be able to glance at the school as I passed it on my way home. My old landmarks steadily disappear. Manchester refuses to maintain the landscape I scampered around in a range of outfits from short trousers, through dishevelled school uniform, to secondhand clothes from Affleck's Palace.  

An old friend recently joined me in lamenting these changes and, in particular, the gentrification of the seedy Tibb Street area. It is now all fancy artisan cheese makers and aparthotels.

'I can remember when all this was sex shops,' she said with a nostalgic glint in her eye.   

On one scamper through Moss Side, I watched as a friend was knocked down by a car. Reports said that Johnny was 'run over', but he wasn't. He was 'knocked down'

It was a Hillman Hunter, the car. We had just come through a Moss Side alley beside a shop once owned by Anthony Burgess’s family. Johnny and I were eager to cross the road and get back to ‘The Big Alec’ for a game of pool and some stolen crisps.

The ‘Big Alec’ was a large Victorian pub, officially called The Alexandra, but aggrandised to distinguish it from two other smaller local pubs bearing the same name. Johnny's father was the landlord and the family lived in a spacious flat on the first floor. The first floor also housed a disused ballroom - in which we played football and fired air pistols (not usually at the same time).

So, Johnny didn’t 'viddy' the Hillman Hunter. The car hit his right leg and broke it in three places. He then rolled along the car wing like something out of 'The Professionals'. Unlike anything seen in ‘The Professionals' he let out a high-pitched squeal and neglected to shout ‘Cover Me!’

I remember that a classmate had quizzed me about Johnny's accident – hoping for gory detail. She’d never really spoken to me before. She lived in a cul-de-sac in Chorlton-cum-Hardy (postcode M21) and thought that we lived much more exciting lives on the other side of the tracks (postcode M14).

‘Oh, you know, there was a load of fuss and I had to get Johnny's mum and she was really really crying and we all went in the ambulance and it had its lights flashing and its siren on and Johnny was screaming and asking if he was going to die and we went about 90 miles an hour and we shot through all the red lights.’ 

I was reporting in a flat tone, like it was just one of those everyday happenings in the ‘hood’.

‘When we got to the hospital they just burst in through the doors and people jumped out of the way until they got Johnny in to the 'Total Emergency Ward' and I went home in a police car.....again.'

Her eyes were wide and she was hungry for more detail, so I thought it only right to feed her some.

‘And the driver must have been really really dodgy…’

‘Why?’ she leaned forward and I caught the scent of shampoo from her hair..

‘Well, he got out of his big sports car and just, like, RAN! 
Quite an old guy, at least thirty. But he couldn’t half move….
and, yeah, I’m sure he threw something while he was running....
Think it might have been a gun….’

At this point, I got up and walked away with my best approximation of an inner city swagger.

Johnny came back to school on crutches with the biggest plaster-cast any of us had ever seen. I rehearsed him on my enhanced version of the story and we were the talk of the yard - for about a week. 

Everybody signed his cast - even some of the teachers.  Some of our teachers were nuns. I don't think any of the nuns signed the cast. That was a shame. That would have created a photo opportunity worthy of a quirky 'Get Well Soon' card.

I think Johnny got a taste for the attention. I remember he suffered at least two more broken limbs while at school - one of which was an arm broken in the still spinning drum of a spin drier. I still don't quite understand how he achieved that, but the girls didn't ask too many questions - they just queued up to sign his cast.