Decking the Halls

Have you done your Christmas decorations yet?  We’re normally amongst the last in our vicinity to do this, but this year we’re somewhat ahead of the game.  We’ve discovered that leaving it to the last weekend before Christmas is not acceptable when you have a 3 year old (going on 4) grandson making regular visits.  A bit more enthusiasm is, apparently, required.

The outcome of all this was that last Sunday I was attempting to do practical things.  This is never a good idea where I’m concerned.  I’m excused all things practical.  Nevertheless, on a bitterly cold afternoon, with the grey light fading rapidly, I could be found teetering on the top of a three-step stepladder, attempting to fix some lights to our car port in what might be laughingly called, an artistic fashion.  When I had dropped a cable clip for the twelfth time and had climbed down to pick it up again, the air surrounding me had changed to subtle shade of blue.  Little expletives, like ‘oh heck’, had matured and grown into something considerably more robust and Anglo-Saxon.  Essentially, my demeanour was that of someone being placed under considerable strain by some malign force.  I kept asking why, whatever it was, was choosing to do this to me.

In this respect, I realise that I’ve become very like my dad.  Father had little or no patience for any practical activity.  If he was nagged into doing something, we all shrank back and waited for the growing volume of put-upon expletives and the inevitable outburst of temper and frustration.  Dad, like me, had no proper tools of any sort, largely because neither I nor he would have had any clue as to what to do with them and so we’re marginally safer without.  What we did have were a motley collection of screwdrivers , along with a bunch of assorted spanners mostly emanating from bicycles past and present.  Anything that didn’t fit with any of these would be tackled with the nearest equivalent from the cutlery drawer.

Father’s wail of anguish would usually begin with an ‘Oh God!’, often before he had actually attempted anything and was merely in the contemplative stage.  This would then be repeated at regular intervals in a rising crescendo of frustration.  “I’m chokker” (which I imagine had it origins in choc-a-bloc, but basically means ‘I’m fed up’) would be a constant chorus, usually leading to a final outburst of “Oh for….” which usually closely preceded everything being thrown down and dad heading off to the pub in high dudgeon.

I wonder if the origins of all this might be found in an incident that took place before I was born?  Apparently, as they approached their first Christmas as a married couple, mother suggested to father that he might make himself useful by putting up the Christmas decorations.  This was in the days when it was the done thing to have paper streamers draped across the room.  Mum had apparently been delayed at a pre-Christmas drinks thing at the Depot where she worked on Burton Road, Branston and, unusually for her, had perhaps indulged a little too freely.  Therefore, when she got home, full of the joys of Christmas, she encountered my dad teetering on a chair (they never had a set of steps in their married life) attempting to attach a paper streamer to a wall and not in the best of humours.  It was just at this point that the drawing pin he was using must have come into contact with a barely concealed mains electric wire.  Apparently there was a flash and a bang, and dad was dumped on his derriere on the other side of the room.  All of which would have been bad enough but one of mum’s most endearing characteristics, which stayed with her all of her life, was that if she found something funny she would abandon herself to laughter, which she did on this occasion.  So, as father checked his limbs and extremities to ensure he still had the requisite amount, mum could be found dissolved into a heap of hysterical laughter on the sofa.

Whenever this story was recounted over the years (which was many), mum still found the incident hysterically funny and dad usually glowered and muttered darkly about the dangers he had braved without being appreciated.

Apparently (and I’m sorry about this) their first Christmas began with a bang and not with a streamer!

Fabulous Friday!

Had a really great Friday, 28th November, 2014 because the Derby Telegraph published not one, but two of my pieces.  If you missed these, there is my usual monthly Bygones article:

Pub coach outing still has me waking and screaming

about a family who decided upon an original method of returning to the motorway car park

and a Christmas short story, which you might well enjoy:

You'd Better Watch Out!

about Wayne, the Anti-Santa!

As always, any comments, shares, tweets or screams of delight would be very much appreciated

;-)

Autumn

I was walking my daughter's chocolate labrador yesterday morning and it occurred to me that this was a perfect autumn day. Water dripping from every branch and twig, wood smoke hanging in the air, the squelch of leaves and long-collected conker cases under your feet and a weak and indifferent sun nuzzling at the clouds. That's all. Normal curmudgeonliness will be resumed as soon as possible 

Abroad Thoughts From Home

When it comes to writing, I'm afraid that I tend toward lethargy.  I have plenty of good ideas, but putting these down on paper is invariably a job for tomorrow.  One way I have found to overcome this procrastination problem is to write something, anything, and see what happens.

Clearing out my office today (I promised my wife that I would do this now I've retired), I came across this example of 'writing and seeing what happens' from 2007.

It is half past two, November 17th, 2007.  We're chasing the sun around the pool next to my aunt and uncle's villa in Marxaquera, Spain.  The blue water of the pool ripples invitingly as the pump mechanism cleans and filters the water, but it is far too cold to risk a swim.  Up in the villa, my aunt and uncle, now old hands at this 'Spanish winter' thing, having been here for over 20 years, sit in front of a roaring log fire and watch English T.V.  Whereas we, grateful for the chance to break free from the eternal greyness of the U.K., resolutely squeeze every drop of sunshine from the day in a way that would never occur to us back in England, even in the height of summer.  Right now we too would be huddled in front of a roaring central heating system, as likely as not watching T.V.

Today we are reading.  This is something that we're always threatening to do at home but never seem to find the time.  In the same way that the sophisticated keyboard, bought for my birthday some years ago, languishes in the wardrobe and will be played (I tell myself)when we have some time (by which point either it, or I, will probably be defunct).

Last night we 'went for a Chinese', which seems a peculiar thing to do in Spain but, on reflection, Chinese cuisine has become an international guarantor of certain standards of quality, reliability and edibility.  I have eaten and enjoyed Chinese(ish) food in New York, Amsterdam and Moscow, so why not Spain?  In any case, I had a good idea of what I was going to get, and I was not disappointed.  Chinese food has the same comforting quality of a well-known international brand, like McDonalds' I suppose, although I wouldn't seek out a Big Mac anywhere unless I was truly desperate. 

The interesting (arguably) thing about the visit to a Chinese was that, although we were there from 9 p.m. to midnight, the restaurant was filled with families and groups of young people just having their evening meal quietly and without fuss.  There was no invasion of drunks from the nearest pub, no atmosphere of intimidation and no yobbish behaviour.  In other words, there were no British, apart from ourselves.

Contrast this with our flight here from Manchester.  All around us were a group of twelve middle-aged men on a long weekend trip to Benidorm.  A few rows forward were a similar group of ladies, presumably bound for a vacation of fairly identical content.  I had seen these groups when I entered the airport, dug in at the nearest bar buying gargantuan rounds of drinks and talking loudly.  By the time of the flight, their volume had increased in direct proportion to their alcoholic intake.  Although they were, by no means, belligerent, they dominated the atmosphere of the 'plane.  In many ways it was like being transported back to school.  Suddenly, farting had become a source of constant amusement as had visits to the toilet and slightly risqué lyrics to popular songs.  Eventually, and not unexpectedly, they had to be 'told off' by the flight attendant for not adhering to the 'Fasten Your Seatbelt' sign.  Somehow, there was a sense of completion to all this, as if boundaries had been tested to the limit and now, having been established, the competition was over.

How the heck we ever ended up with an empire, I'll never know!

You can find a lot more stuff, usually better prepared than this, at Phil Whiteland's Amazon Author Page

Bring Out Your Dead - a Josiah and Archibald tale

I'm currently drafting a longer story about my two hapless undertakers.  As I draft each section, I'm posting them on Wattpad and inviting comments.  I would be really interested to hear what you think.  If I don't lose heart (or inspiration) this might turn into a novel :-)

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Make Love, Not War?

I don't know if it is an outcome of being retired (see Shy of Retiring but I seem to have developed some rather unusual reading habits.  My normal practice is to find an author I like and then read everything they have ever produced (or will produce), which is why I have bookshelves groaning with Wodehouse, Pratchett, Bryson and McCall-Smith, interspersed with little clutches of slightly less prolific authors such as Eric Malpass and Garrison Keillor.  Lately however I have been branching out somewhat, and I'm not sure if its a good thing, or not?

It all started with a visit to a charity book store.  They had an offer of any three books on the table for 50p.  There was one book that I really wanted and I should really just have bought that, but being parsimonious in the extreme, I was determined to get my money's worth and picked up two more, one of which was Clive Ponting's '1940: Myth and Reality'.  I'm not normally one for revisiting the last unpleasantness, I had more than enough of that as a child when every Sunday afternoon had a film in which John Mills, Noel Coward or Jack Hawkins stoically endured appalling hardships whilst saving the Free World.  However, I gave it a try and was surprised to find out how much I didn't know about the origins of the war and how close we came to losing it.  Actually 'we' is a bit of a stretch as I wasn't even born then, so I can neither take credit nor criticism.  This is a well researched book which gives some real insights into the reality of the UK position - which was basically that we were broke and could only hope to hang on grimly and wait for the U.S. to join in the fun.  Obviously it is necessary to be aware of the particular political slant that all historians apply to their research but this is an interesting, if not exactly uplifting, book.

Somewhat depressed, courtesy of Mr. Ponting, I decided that I needed something a little more light-hearted, and I found it in Sue Welfare's 'Just Desserts'.  I'm not sure how I came across this but I think it was on offer.  I read the blurb and the reviews and then read a sample, and was hooked.  In fact, this is the first book in a very long time that I have read twice, back to back, because I enjoyed it so much and didn't want it to end.  The disturbing part is that this is definitely 'chick-lit' writ large.  Men are either handsome and humorous (in a self-deprecating fashion) or child-like adulterers who deserve all they get.  Women are resourceful, hard working and yet to realise their full potential or scheming gold-diggers.  Nevertheless, this was great fun and certainly dispelled the gathering gloom from Mr. Ponting's effort.

The problem is that this has now established a bit of a reading pattern with me.  I find myself (which can be disconcerting if you weren't looking for yourself at the time) alternating between horrors of WWII and 'chick-lit', which can't really be healthy.

Having finished Ms. Welfare's tome for the second time, I decided that it might be useful to take a look at the other end of WWII, the bit where we won it!  Accordingly, as it was on offer, I downloaded Max Hasting's 'Armageddon: The Battle for Germany 1944-1945'.  Now I know, from the title, that I shouldn't have expected this to be particularly cheery reading, but it plunged new depths for me.  The story is cleverly told from the perspectives of each of the warring nations but the lurch from one atrocity to another is quite demoralising.  The Russian advance was particularly grim - I never thought I would find myself feeling sympathetic toward the Nazi defenders, but I did in these chapters.

Thoroughly depressed, I turned to Ms. Welfare for comfort and found it in 'Cooking Up a Storm', another improbable but hugely enjoyable tale of a wronged wife who finds a new life for her and her children in a cottage on an estate run by the handsome but feckless Lord of the Manor.  Great fun and a huge relief after the fall of Berlin.

Unable to resist the siren call of further atrocities, and eager to know the background to the Soviet psyche with regard to WWII, I downloaded (in my defence, it was on offer again) 'Leningrad: Tragedy of a City under Siege, 1941-1944'.  If you're ever in need of feeling totally depressed and hopeless, this is the book for you.  Caught between the incompetence, brutality and corruption of Soviet-era Communism and the sadistic desire of the Nazis to see what would happen if you starved x million people to death, the people of Leningrad endured unimaginable horrors in order to survive.  This is a story cleverly told from the perspectives and first-hand accounts of the participants, and is clearly very well researched.  It certainly helped me to understand the Russian determination to spare no-one in their fight back.  I particularly liked the way in which officialdom coined a quasi-medical term for 'dying of hunger' without actually saying it - 'dystrophic'.

Inevitably, I ran from these horrors back into the welcoming arms of Ms. Welfare again.  In this case, 'Off the Record' was my book of choice.  This is a cleverly done but frustrating tale in which the two main protagonists are kept apart by a stupid misunderstanding early in the book and their twin stories are cunningly interwoven until fate takes a hand and all is made right.  Another tale of adulterous husbands, handsome would-be heroes and women finally reaching their potential in their careers and life-choices.  Well written as always and deeply satisfying (everything turns out right in the end).

So you can see my dilemma.  I'm stuck in a pattern of reading that can't be healthy for me.  There's much more in this vein, which I'll tell you about next time.  I wonder if there's a helpline I could call?

Despite Philip's rather odd reading tastes, you may well find his writing just what you're looking for.  Take a look at his Amazon Author Page.

Long Train Running - Part 2

In Part 1 of this post, you left me somewhat inebriated (me, not you dear reader) on a beach in Ryde, Isle of Wight, in the summer of 1973.  Those with a good memory may well recall that I was on a pub outing train trip with the Cooper’s Arms in Anglesey Road, Burton.

After a sunny Sunday afternoon sleeping off the excesses consumed during the train trip to Portsmouth, Kev and I made our way back to the ferry and rejoined the rest of our party heading back to the railway station.  I must admit to having only hazy memories of this bit of the day, but that’s hardly surprising given our previous consumption and that generally foggy feeling that persists when you have been ‘sleeping it off’ in the afternoon.  Anyway, we must have found our way back to the station somehow and settled back in our seats for the long journey home.  Naturally, the beer started flowing as soon as the train set off again.

We can’t have been very far out of Portsmouth when someone noticed that the toilet nearest to our carriage wasn’t flushing any more.  This was a bit of a bind, as frequent trips to the toilet were about the only exercise that any of us were getting on this trip, but it wasn’t the end of the world as it was a very long train with many carriages and, therefore, many toilets.  So we transferred our allegiance to a convenience a few carriages along, until that too ceased functioning.  Slowly, one by one, all of the toilets on the train stopped flushing.  The rumour went about, and I don’t know how true it was, that some fool had failed to replenish the water supply on the train whilst it was in Portsmouth and we were now seeing the result.  Whatever the cause, it was clear that the problem was going to be acute before very long, and we still had quite a way to travel.

Logic would dictate that, when travelling on a train without any toilet arrangements, the sensible thing to do would be to stop drinking alcohol.  However, since when did logic play any part in pub outings?  Things carried on just as before, the only difference was the increasingly unpleasant state of the toilets as the input increased exponentially and the output ceased altogether.  After a while, you had to be either very brave or extremely desperate to go anywhere near any of them.  The train had essentially become a very long, mobile cess pit.  As time went by, people seemed to be adopting a tense, determined posture as they willed away the miles and pinned their hopes on Burton station.

We arrived at Burton station in the early hours of the morning.  It was pretty well deserted, but that situation didn’t last for long.  The stampede from the train was something to be seen as everyone sought refuge from the appalling smell which pervaded every carriage and homed in on the nearest functioning toilets.  I must admit that I have never seen such a long queue for the Gents before or since.  I suppose it was a mark of our British reserve that there wasn’t a mad scramble, just an orderly queue that stretched the length of the platform, composed of many people in varying degrees of discomfort and desperation.  Thus ended my last pub outing train trip, not with a bang but with the whimpers of a queue of hunched and very introspective blokes. 

I don’t know if these train trips still happen, although I would very much doubt it.  I think this type of mammoth outing, partaken by most of the pubs in the town, was a bit of a throwback to the great railway excursions of the previous century, when a day out like this was probably the only holiday many people ever had or could hope to have.  However, pub outings didn’t come to an end with that queue on Burton station for me – oh no,  I took to the buses, as I’ll tell you in the next exciting episode.

You can find a lot more of this sort of nonsense in the latest compilation of 'nostalgedy' stories 'A Kick at the Pantry Door'