The Fall and Rise of 'Irrepressible Don'

So it was this morning that we awaited our first Christmas card ever from Miles.

I suggested that we should brace ourselves for something lewd – given his track record. Maude told me that I was being unkind and that she expected something quite tasteful – in the light of Miles’ recent company record-breaking earnings in commission.

Indeed Miles has proved to be quite a hit with his new employers. His silky South Shields tones are much in demand to close double-glazing deals across Wiltshire and North Somerset. He proudly told us that he had been highlighted as ‘Salesman of the Month’ in the company magazine.

‘They called me Irrepressible!’

‘I couldn’t agree more,’ said Maude.

‘Unfortunately…’ he continued, ‘they got my name wrong and called me ‘Don’, but that was just a mix-up’.

The ‘card’ duly arrived. It was a picture of a naked Miles running into the sea, signed ‘Don x’.

I didn’t gloat. I just pegged it to the string of more conventional Christmas cards which stretch up the banister.

Aurora now insists on a range of toys and nick nacks before she will go up the wooden hill to bed:
'Piggy!' (cuddly toy)
'Baby!' (spooky, battered doll)
'Cards!' (an already incomplete set of miniature playing cards from a Christmas cracker)
along with her collection of monster figures:
‘Green Monster’
‘Blue Monster!’
‘One-Eye!’

Daddy acts as beast of burden for all of the above.
As we ascended the stairs tonight Aurora stopped midway and began to grimace. I thought that I had forgotten something.

‘What is it darling? Has Daddy forgotten something?’

‘Give me monsters Daddy, now!’

I considered the request and decided that she could be trusted to carry her own monster figures without tumbling down the stairs. She reached out and collected green, blue and one-eye. She didn’t, however, continue straight up to bed. Instead Aurora paused by the image of ‘Don’. Poppet looked through her handful of monsters and decided that ‘one-eye’ was the man for the job. Assuming the stance of a priest exorcising a malevolent spirit, she held 'one-eye' at arm's length in front of the image and shouted:

‘Sea Monster, go home!’

A Star for Daddy

We realised last week that Aurora had reached a difficult stage in her development. Maude did some research and discovered that it was quite a common development for 2 year old children and was generally referred to as ‘negativism’.

‘Do you want to put your coat on?

‘No’

Do you want to go to the park?’

‘No. Don’t want to go park!’

And so on.

Further research suggested that a reward system was the way forward. Small toddler treats were placed in a jar and a star-chart placed on the fridge door. Maude used a flipchart to demonstrate how the system worked:

Behave well
Get star
Collect 5 stars
Get pretty thing from jar

The system soon paid dividends. Aurora got dressed without complaint and stopped hitting Daddy over the head with the heaviest storybook she could find – all for the promise of a star.

Imagine my lack of surprise when I came down to breakfast earlier this week to a new star chart on the fridge. No, Maude was not making very early preparations for our next child (due in the new year). The new reward sheet was entitled ‘Daddy’:

Agree with Mummy/make tea/don’t tarry on way home
Get star
Collect 10 stars
Have one pint (no crisps) with Benny

Old Dog

Miles called again this morning.

'Did you get my Christmas card yet?’

I explained that we hadn’t had the post, but looked forward to getting the card about which he had called several times.

‘It’s because he has turned over a new leaf this year and sending us a Christmas card is highly symbolic.’

Maude always respects the turning over of new leaves.

Miles did recently change career. Being a drug liaison worker in the West Country had lost its allure and he made the natural switch to the selling of double-glazing.

His drug liaison colleagues had judged him harshly after a misunderstanding involving a digital camera at a civil partnership ceremony. Miles had been using his girlfriend’s camera for the day. After what he thought was a particularly handsome shot of the happy couple, Miles passed the camera to the new partners to review his efforts. Unfortunately he had forgotten that the camera contained some intimate documentary footage of his relationship with Gloria. The groom and groom held the camera together, flanked by their mothers and genuinely moved by Miles’ interest in their big day (the unkind office consensus persisted that Miles was an unreconstructed Geordie who had 'fallen into' social work).

It is so easy to scroll the wrong way through someone else’s memories if one is unfamiliar with a given camera.

‘It wasn’t my fault,’ Miles told me later. ‘The picture I wanted them to see was on the screen when I handed the bloody camera over. They had no business hitting the back button. I did feel bad, though, about the ambulance n’that for Justin’s mam. I could tell all day that she’d been struggling with the idea of her only son marrying another bloke. I think the sight of me knocking one out pushed her over the edge.’

My Writing Space

The desk was imported from my previous life as a fey young man in Manchester. The green exercise books visible to the left of the laptop belong to ‘Bottom Set, Year 9’ pupils. Maude has a range of delaying excuses for not marking work and returning it – they should expect her opinion on what they did on their holidays some time approaching Christmas. I used to resent this colonisation of my writing space, but the covers of the books display some pithy and inspiring observations.

Blake Morrison keeps his father’s pacemaker on his writing desk. I have followed suit in my own fashion. The wire you can see Blutacked to the top of the laptop screen has nothing to do with a webcam. It is, in fact, my father’s hearing aid. I speak into it as I write and imagine that he is being entertained. I really thought that he would have asked for it back by now, but I suspect that not being able to hear my mother properly has its advantages.

On the wall above the desk (just out of view) hang two collections of images: ‘Titans’ to the left and ‘Herberts’ to the right.

The ‘Titans’ know the pain I am going through. Their images also exude a certain insouciant style:

Larkin
Morrissey
Niven
Les Dawson

The ‘Herberts’ (under wraps for legal reasons) are stimuli for occasions on which authentic vitriol is required, or when a particularly unpleasant character needs to be drawn in all its vile detail. Dickens used to grimace into a mirror, I unveil the ‘Herberts’. Images of the leading lights from the local arts community dominate. Some have spent time on the punchbag, but now commune with fellow Herberts. Others on display are a little obvious, but ‘Herberts’ with the power to rile nonetheless:

James May
a generic image of a pharmacist in a white coat coming on like a trained doctor
Eric who lives across the road
(that last one is a sketch, as I didn’t want to risk being caught taking his picture).

There is a pile of books just out of view to the right of the laptop which relates to my research on the pit ponies of North East England. I am especially interested in the ponies once used in the undersea mines off Seaham. Aurora saw some of the pictures and donated her own pony to this tableau. The poor blighters of Seaham were taken down as foals and lived an entirely subterranean existence. When the pit closed, they were deemed too fat to come back up and were left down there to die.

I’m sure that my screenplay ‘Revenge of the Zombie Killer Pit Ponies’ will attract serious development funding any day now.

No Notion

I am rarely transfixed during a meeting. It usually takes me all my time to stay alert.

I was once put on report in a sixth form Politics class for falling asleep during a dull monologue by a teacher with wispy, nicotine-coloured hair. I thought the punishment was unfair and suggested that many members of the House of Lords nod off with impunity during debates – that gained nothing but an additional detention. Ever since that formal caution and the ignominy/infamy created by the pool of drool beside my face on the desk, I have been able to find something to focus on to maintain my attention. Usually a detail of someone’s dress is enough or, perhaps, some eye-catching nasal hair. If there is nothing of visual note I occupy my mind with a test of mental agility – usually with a theme from popular culture.

At a meeting recently I managed to simultaneously look interested in what was being said while listing possible words to use in a word replacement game invented by Sandy some years ago during a game of poker. Sandy had trouble maintaining anything approaching a ‘poker face’ and preferred instead to try and distract his opponents. He usually only succeeded in distracting himself. His most memorable distraction attempt featured Smiths songs and the word ‘anus’:

‘This Night has opened my anus’ or

‘This anus has opened my eyes’

‘How soon is anus?’

‘This charming anus’ etc….

I was surprised then the other day to find what was actually being said to be of interest.

Not the content – there wasn’t any.

It was the shameless repetition of a single word that struck me and I even began a five bar gate record of how many times it was used by the same person. The meeting was only an hour long and I counted 6 uses of the same word (a colleague claimed that she clocked 7). 

The favourite word of the person without an idea to speak of was: ‘notion’.  

Ticking my boxes

I love working for an organisation with an identity crisis – it makes me feel relatively secure in myself.

However, the assaults on my identity since I arrived here have been legion. My desk was bare – I had to ask for a phone. When the phone arrived I had to blow the dust from it before I could risk making a call.

Part of the extensive welcome induction I never received covered the need to sign in on arrival. Norman, the Operations Manager, pointed out this need to me 4 weeks after my first arrival. I then found the signing-in book and showed willing. I pointed out that my name wasn’t on the current staff list.

‘Oh, just add yourself by hand at the bottom.’

Last week Norman booked me in for a Health & Safety induction. He had been threatening this for several weeks.

‘How about just after lunch for your Health & Safety induction? Sorry it hasn’t happened sooner….’

‘That’s fine,’ I replied,’I’ll be extra careful until then.’

I watched his lips move and nodded regularly as Norman went through the various perils of working at The National Clay Pipe Centre. Many of them didn’t apply to a non-craftsman like myself – so he breezed through them. I had a quick look at his checklist and noticed that he’d missed a couple of his bullet-points out. One of them read ‘Personal Hygiene’.

‘You’ve missed that one out Norman.’ I reached over to his clipboard and tapped the sheet with my pencil.

‘Oh that one. That’s there because – between you and me – we’ve had a few bad experiences with whiffy volunteers.’

Norman touched his nose when he intimated this.There was an awkward pause and Norman smiled weakly.

‘Well,’ I said,’do keep me right if I let my standards slip.’

Tent of Blue

The National Clay Pipe Centre is an example of post-industrial industrial architecture – in keeping with the site’s former function as a shipyard. The main colour is grey – chosen I think to best show off the splatters of seagull guano.

The ‘workings’ of the centre are exposed: piping, ducts, wiring. All can be seen as you walk through the concrete corridors to reach various large boxy spaces. The experience of travelling the corridors of the centre evokes life on a space station, but with added tedium. The toilets are just above the boiler room. The incessant hum around that sector creates the charming air of an ageing car ferry. This ambience is heightened when the timed cubicle light goes out part way through your efforts.

The building is shaped into the riverside and it is entered, as it were, from the rear. The steel and glass facade looks out onto the majesty of the river Wear and, on a clear day, beyond to the North Sea.

The designers chose to expose all the machinery, but conceal the staff. The main office for the administration of all matters clay pipe is hidden in the core of the building: the windows do not open and the view takes in the loading bay and 2 overflowing skips. Some daylight is filtered through a tent of blue provided by a section of glass roofing. I think the young Dickens probably had a better view from the tanning factory.

Lastly, nearly every door in the building has a keypad with a different alpha-numeric code. I now keep a list in my wallet. There are prisoners at ‘D-cat’ institutions with more freedom than NCPC staff.

Archie lives!

It’s a sign of the times. Poor, desperate men loiter on city street corners. They stand and smoke roll-up cigarettes. They look furtively up and down the street – as though on the lookout for creditors. I was on the fringes of Newcastle’s Chinatown – walking past a cluster of ‘bohemian’ pubs. At the end of the block I could see one of the desperate, slumped beside a pub door and puffing on what was possibly a found cigarette end. I rarely give money to people on the street, but I was moved to pity by this sad figure although the man was not obviously demanding money from passers-by.

As I drew closer, I realised that the figure was portly and bearded. The sandal and shoe ensemble in the middle of winter was a giveaway and I was shaken to my very core to see little Archie in such straitened circumstances.

‘Hiya!’

It would have been impossible to ignore his greeting and heartless to walk on. I hurriedly put away my loose change and shook the little chap’s hand. He extinguished his cigarette on the door jamb of the pub supporting him and put the miniscule remainder into his pocket. I worried about the combustible nature of his crumpled jacket.

‘Is that wise Arch? You could set yourself alight…..’

Archie smiled and beckoned me to look into his sagging pocket. It was filled with sand.

‘I got the idea from one of those old-fashioned fire buckets I saw in the village hall. Leap put some extra stitching in.’

I smiled at Archie’s ‘ingenuity’. He was taking the smoking ban in his tiny stride. I accidentally continued to stare into Archie’s built-in ashtray and created an awkward pause.

'This is, er….awkward.’ Archie’s smile was a little strained and I could see a few strands of tobacco protruding from his teeth.

‘I’m sorry’, I said, ‘Why don’t we go in and have a drink for old time’s sake?’

‘Brilliant. I’m already in a round, mind. I’ve been out since work with Other Archie.’

Archie and Other Archie first met when they were gay bachelors sharing a static caravan on the allotments in Newcastle’s West End. They have maintained a friendship ever since – although Other Archie’s wife, Mona, prefers not to let Archie into her house. The old friends make do with after work drinks.

I asked Archie for his news and he told me that he had acted as a ‘best man’s assistant.’ I told him that I had never heard of such a thing. Apparently Sandy had jetted back into town to perform as best man at Lucien’s wedding. Not one to do things according to convention, Sandy spotted the chance to create a piece of performance art. The format of his speech was based, surprisingly, on the Radio 4 show ‘Just a Minute’. Archie was equipped with a miniature bicycle horn and had to sound it whenever Sandy was guilty of hesitation, deviation or repetition. I was a little surprised that Lucien agreed to this – his life is governed by a slavish adherence to an austere aesthetic which allows only for purely abstract visual art and avant-garde German electronic music.

‘It was really funny...’, said Archie, but his enthusiasm for the story trailed off a little,’...at first’.

I could only imagine that Lucien had trusted Sandy to come up with something appropriate and did not get the time to check beforehand.

Archie continued.

‘Then people seemed to lose interest and I could hear some of them sighing. Oh, and Lucien started to cry.’