2018 Without Notes

This was the year during which I learned to paint oil on canvas. I'd had a couple of stabs at it before, once back in the eighties and then again a couple of years ago. Neither attempt was particularly successful due to my having assumed it would probably be just like working with acrylics, only to find out that it wasn't. Anyway, this year I got the hang of it, roughly speaking - thanks in no small measure to the advice of Sean Keating and Chris Hunt.

Sean Keating and Jamie, his younger brother, were the two American kids at our school, Ilmington Junior and Infants in the heart of rural England, a stone's throw from Stratford-upon-Avon. Their father was an actor of some renown who was, at the time, appearing in something or other at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford, although I only discovered this recently when encountering Sean - now an artist - through social media. I also discovered that Sean's father had played the villain in a long-running American television series and was as such one of my mother-in-law's favourite actors.

It's all connected.

The Royal Shakespeare Theatre was managed by David Brierley. His son, Crispin, was my best friend at Ilmington Junior and Infants. Many years later and over a hundred miles south as I lived and worked as a postman in London, I found myself about to deliver a letter to a pompous theatrical turd residing in Glengarry Road. I don't remember his name, but he had appeared in the Guardian colour supplement as most promising something or other. His wife, also in the theatrical profession, was much nicer, and I used to talk to her from time to time. One day she turned up in an episode of The Bill, the popular television police drama. Next day I happened to encounter the pompous theatrical turd in the street so I said to pass on my congratulations to his wife. He made a sniffing noise, the sneer of a man who considers himself above watching anything so base as an episode of The Bill, which is why I came to think of him as a  pompous theatrical turd.

Anyway, the letter I found myself about to deliver to him on this occasion was from David Brierley, manager of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre. This was too much of a coincidence for me, so I knocked and the pompous theatrical turd came to the door.

'Look,' I said pointing to the name and return address on the back of the envelope. 'That's my best friend's dad from junior school! Isn't that incredible?'

The pompous theatrical turd took the letter, made the same noise he had made when I'd met him in the street on the morning after his wife's appearance on national television, and closed the door. Apparently he didn't think it was that incredible.

At the age of fifty-three I have come to routinely expect improbable coincidences, so I don't suppose I truly regard any of it as necessarily incredible, not any more.

I knew Chris Hunt through fanzine and tape culture back in the eighties, which would be another substantial digression, but the point is that himself and Sean Keating got me started on the oils, introducing me to techniques quite unlike those I knew from working with acrylic paint. So, 2018 was the year I began to paint on canvas, working from life rather than photographs - as has been my preference up until recently - because the medium seems more conducive to working from life rather than from photographs.

I went back to England for a couple of weeks back in the June of 2018, and during this time I visited Dave Hirons, my former teacher from the art foundation course in Leamington Spa. He asked why I had opted for such a fundamentalist approach to painting, and may even have described my work as a rejection of modernism, or at least as being back to basics with the kind of emphasis which summoned unfortunate memories of Margaret Thatcher. I had no answer, and still don't, because the question seemed to require a needlessly polarised justification for why one thing is not something else.

This is tea, not coffee.

Why do you hate coffee?

I paint what I enjoy painting and this year I've also been trying to sell the things, which is a first for me. It's easy enough to keep acrylic paintings in a folder down the side of the bed, but canvases take up more space, plus I need money to buy comic books and all the vinyl records I never got around to buying at the time. I've painted twenty-three canvases this year, with two of those still being works currently in progress. I've sold four of them from which I've made $200, which is probably not amazing, but is better than a kick up the arse. Strangest of all, of the four I've sold, three I hadn't regarded as being anything special and I'd assumed they probably wouldn't sell. I guess I'm not the best judge of my own work.

Also this year, I started buying back all those X-Men comic books I got rid of back in the nineties, simultaneous to filling in all the gaps in my record collection - seeing as it's now become feasible to buy vinyl again. This is what I'm doing in lieu of the traditional mid-life crisis. It's probably the same thing but is more fun for me and less of a pain in the arse for everyone else. Sales of canvas paintings probably cover, at a rough estimate, about thirty back issues of Uncanny X-Men plus holes plugged within the respective back catalogues of the Stranglers, Wreckless Eric, and Eddie & the Hot Rods.

Additionally, I cycled a couple of thousand miles.

We acquired even more cats.

I wrote many, many words. I also painted some book covers and probably had something or other published.

Donald Trump continued to make America great again.

The Earth went around the sun.

I read 93 books, according to Goodreads.

There will have been other stuff too.

So some of that was 2018.

The End of a Fair

We have yet another craft fair booked at Mission Plaza - Bess and myself - although this one is a slightly bigger deal than that to which we're accustomed. Higher attendance is anticipated due to it having been tied in with some cycling event, and there will be a live band. This means we have to leave earlier than usual to set up. Ordinarily this would bother me, but for once I've managed to get my ass into gear and we loaded the car up last night, so amazingly we're there before nine. It's a nice day too, clear blue sky and just warm enough to be pleasant. Without having really kept count, we think this is probably our eighth or ninth stint at Mission Plaza. It feels strange to have become old hands at something we only began this year, and so much so that we can set up without having to think about it.

We put up the canopy, stake it into the soil; out with the table and camping chairs; Bess spreads out her rocks and painted things whilst I bolt together the frames upon which I display my canvases; and soon we're done, ready for the rush - which is usually two or three people every twenty minutes or so. We're situated between the food bank and the Mexican guy who sells cacti. Because it's some sort of special occasion, today the food bank is a whole truck loaded with refrigerators and the like, so they take up twice the normal space. It's a mobile market stall for vegetables mostly grown by volunteers, and they accept food stamps. Last time we were here they gave us some stuff to take home as thanks for our help with their own canopy - butternut squash, potatoes, a massive onion, and a sweet potato I still haven't got around to using.

There are a lot more canopies than usual, and a big huddle of them over the far side of the field. This is something to do with cycling, specifically an organisation called FrankenBike.

The entire field doubles up as a drive-in movie theatre, because I've now reached the point of my acclimation at which it feels strange to refer to it as a cinema. The screen is a huge concrete wall to our right, curved and painted turquoise, excepting the white rectangle upon which the works of Michael J. Fox are projected. At its base is a raised platform which serves as stage when the occasion demands, as it will today. There are doors in the screen, presumably leading to inner rooms and storage spaces. It's a structure unlike any I have previously encountered. Usually someone trails a mains extension out from within the screen to a speaker sat alone at the front of the stage and we spend the morning with a soundtrack of peculiarly unpredictable composition - salsa, tejano, country rock, hits of the sixties, hits of the twenties, and occasional bewildering excursions into dubstep, trance or drum and bass. We're yet to hit the Swedish death metal playlist, but it can only be a matter of weeks. Normally I might find this annoying, but the music has thus far been okay and has in any case kept itself to the background.

By ten we've already had a few nosing around, and Bess has already sold a couple of rocks. A few people have told me they like my paintings, which is nice, and which is what happens instead of me actually selling any of the fuckers; but I don't mind. I know we're in the wrong part of town to sell a painting for sixty dollars. My prices are based on what I myself wouldn't mind paying, and on the fact that I'm not even sure I want to sell at least a few of them so the price has to be one which feels worth my while, and on prices I've seen charged by others. I've noticed very few people asking less than a hundred for an oil painting, excepting the only notionally talented who tend to paint lop-sided pictures of Batman, the Joker, and Harley Quinn, the Joker's girlfriend. I therefore feel confident that sixty dollars is a reasonable price for a proper painting produced by someone who can actually paint, namely myself; and luckily - I suppose - I don't really mind them not selling. I've come to think of our stall as a temporary gallery with knobs on, and it's a nice day out.

Also by ten, we're both inexplicably hungry. There's no sign of Chinga su Madre!, the taco truck which is usually here parked just behind the woman selling home made cookies; and yes, the guy really does trade as Chinga su Madre!, which is doubtless hilarious in neighbourhoods where no-one speaks Spanish. I therefore cross the highway to Nicha's, which sports a banner claiming itself to have been voted San Antonio's best Mexican restaurant. I've a feeling I've seen the same banner outside plenty of other places, but Nicha's is nevertheless decent. Nicha is short for Dionisia, and we've already made all the jokes about how if you gaze long enough into the salsa verde, the salsa verde will gaze back into you.

Happily, there's no sign of Snooki, who usually takes my order. She earned the name through an unfortunate resemblance to Snooki from Jersey Shore and because she always seems to find the taking of my order to be a colossal pain in the ass.

'Chicken fajitas on corn,' I will ask.

'How many?'

'I don't know. Just chicken fajitas on corn. I want however many there is in one order of chicken fajitas on corn?'

'How many do you want?'

'I want however many you gave me the last time I ordered chicken fajitas on corn without having to specify how many I wanted. They're for my wife.'

She'll sigh and narrow her eyes. 'You need to tell me whether you want one or two.'

'I don't know. Two, I suppose. My wife eats them. Usually I'm also eating rather than sitting there counting how many fajitas you've given her.'

'Two chicken fajitas on corn, and what else?'

'Street tacos.' I don't have to specify the required number of street tacos because they always come four to a serving, although I resent having to call them street tacos which sounds suspiciously like hipster terminology. I just adore Mexican street food, I recall a person of my vague acquaintance from Portland once screeching in reference to what is simply known as food in Mexico.

Snooki is nowhere to be seen, and even more exciting is that I saw a help wanted sign on the door. Snooki's replacement seems nicer and is able to take my order without extraneous negotiation. She also likes my accent and tells me that her boyfriend is from France. I tell her that I like the French and I try to remember whether I've been to his bit of the country.

Back at the craft fair, we're half way through Goldilocks and the Three Bears on the stage, as performed for the benefit of an audience of maybe fifteen, but those watching at least seem appreciative. I watch for a couple of minutes. This version of the tale has been given a local spin with the bears making a big deal out of how much chilli they've added to the porridge before going out on their walk. I can't tell if this works or not, but the little kids seem to get a kick out of it.

For the sake of something to do, I embark upon a new painting, having brought my paints, easel, and a canvas. Having taken up oils I'm concentrating on painting directly from life, simply for the sake of stretching my artistic horizons. I paint the tree behind our stall, and because there's a red truck parked next to the tree, I paint the back end of the truck, which seems to make sense in terms of the composition as a whole.

A band starts up on the stage, three middle-aged guys playing the sort of thing middle-aged guys tend to play. Writing about this one week later, it will have become impossible to recall quite what they were doing - but probably generically competent country rock, something of that sort.

Woo hoo.

We sell some more, or Bess sells some more and everybody tells me how much they like my paintings. One woman definitely has her eye on two of them, and will bring money next time we're at the Mission Plaza, which will be March.

'What?' I ask Bess. 'March?'

'Yes, this is the last fair of the year.'

'Really?'

'Afraid so.'

'Damn.'

I now realise this explains the big send off with performance and the FrankenBikes and everything else. A guy sat with our cactus retailing neighbour walks over and gets in the red truck. I feel suddenly awkward.

'I'm going to miss this.'

'I know. Me too,' Bess sighs.

More time passes.

I can't tell if I like the painting of the truck and the tree, and I can't tell whether or not I've finished it. Just in case I have, I cross the field to the public bogs to wash my hands which have begun to feel greasy from the linseed oil with which I thin the paints.

When I return, Bess tells me that the guy who owns the truck came over to examine my work. He liked it.

I mosey over to the cactus stall. 'Hey there. Hope you don't mind me painting your truck. It just seemed to fit the picture.'

I'm surprised at how happy he seems. 'You have a lot of talent,' he says. 'I wondered what you were doing at first.'

'Yeah. I didn't realise it was your truck. That time when you got in, I thought, oh fuck - he's going to drive off and I haven't finished.'

We both laugh, then I go back to the painting. I think I'm starting to like it, although I'm not yet sure that it's finished.

Our friend who sells cacti comes over to see. 'You know he loves that truck. He is very happy to see you have done this.' He points at a large sticker in the rear window. 'He is very proud of that too.'

I squint but I can't quite read it - something to do with the military, so the guy is clearly a veteran.

The stage is now host to a performance by some kind of local tejano class - guitarist and drummer accompanying a string of little kids playing accordions. Some of the kids are significantly smaller than their instruments. Tejano is what happened when the Spanish music of post-conquest Mexico joined up with the oompah bands which German settlers brought to Texas. The ability of the kids, some of whom look to be about seven-years old at best, is astonishing - wheezing ninety mile an hour accordion trills with not a bum note or missed cue to be heard. It's not entirely my thing but it beats the blandly competent country rock we had earlier. The grand finale has all of the kids playing at the same time, seven or eight accordions blasting away on stage; and I come to the strange realisation that one accordion sounds the same as seven or eight played in series.

I finish the painting, hypothetically speaking.

'How much do you want?' the owner of the red truck asks. It hadn't even occurred to me that he might want to buy it, and I hope he doesn't think I painted it in expectation of his coughing up the readies. I feel a bit guilty, so I say twenty because he seems like a decent guy and his obvious enthusiasm makes up at least some of the difference.

It has been a really good day, and as I said, I'll miss this place over the coming months.

Art School Re-onion

The first one had been great against all expectation, but then it was all last moment with phone calls and people who also just happened to be in the vicinity. We met in some pub in Forest Hill - Adam, Gail, Mark, and two Carls respectively spelled with a K and a C. The pub was loud and brash as pubs tend to be, full of the traditional braying Saturday night wankers, but adversity sometimes forges magic of a kind. We all got hilariously pissed. I realised that I'd barely exchanged a word with Adam during the entire three years of the course we both attended at Maidstone College of Art, and thirty years later it proved impossible to work out why - just another one of those stupid things. Similarly it turned out that Carl and Mark had never actually had a conversation prior to that evening. Gail was still funny with a pleasingly dry wit but a different accent to the one I recall, and the other Karl was still massively entertaining. He didn't seem to remember having once made a codpiece of a red plastic utensil drainer nabbed from the kitchen sink for a performance of Cameo's Word Up, but never mind. We ended the evening stood outside freezing our bits off, swaying gently from side to side. It was a great night, and it really didn't seem like it had all been so long ago.

The second one results from a more intensive application of choreography, and my name has been announced on a facebook page as having come all the way from Texas, which I have. It's at some place called the Harp in Covent Garden, or roughly around that way. Central London wouldn't have been my choice, but it's easily accessible to all of the people who have said they will be coming. Carl and I walk across the city because one of the stations is out, although it feels a little like one of Carl's long walks, cheerily innocuous proposals which end up being thirty fucking miles. It feels like one of Carl's long walks most likely because I'm still limping. I arrived in London yesterday, walking from Victoria Station to my friend Rob's place at the rear of New Oxford Street because I'd reasoned that it probably wasn't that far on foot.

I turned up at Carl's place around midday and by six I have begun to suffer from conversational overload, being an otherwise fairly solitary sort of person. We walk across London - or limp in my case - and I feel pissy, whilst simultaneously resenting my own lack of endurance because how often do I actually see any of these people these days? How often do I see anyone?

They aren't upstairs at the Harp, whoever they are or will be. We check downstairs and they aren't there either. Carl and I buy beer and wait upstairs having found a table in a room with a bunch of rugby enthusiasts busily honking and hooting at each other as they do. Happily it's the room in which we are destined to meet the others. Upstairs at the Harp were the actual directions, and there's only this one room. We wait until nine and decide no-one is coming - two hours. On the way out, we find them crowded around the door, out on the pavement. Someone looked upstairs, poked their head into the room in which we'd agreed to meet and failed to recognise either Carl or myself. I'm wearing a stetson and a shirt of material in the pattern of the Lone Star flag, which you would think might have helped identify a person who had come all the way from Texas, as advertised on facebook.

We buy more drinks and go back upstairs, all seven of us this time. There's Sue and Kirsten, then three blokes I don't know. They look familiar in the same way as someone on a TV show can occasionally look familiar, but that's it.

I sit next to Sue. 'So how have you been?'

'Fine.' She regards me as a complete stranger; or worse than a complete stranger. It's that look of fear or even distrust in anticipation of the next question making everything horrible and awkward. Had I asked hey baby, what star-sign are you? her reaction probably wouldn't have been much different.

'You don't remember me, do you?'

'I'm afraid I don't.'

'I don't even look a little familiar?'

'Sorry.'

Sue is the person whom I was looking forward to seeing, knowing she would almost certainly be in attendance. We had been friends, and if not actually buddy-buddy, certainly more than merely acquainted.

'I used to live at the Square in Leeds village.'

'Right.'

'You remember Jane, your best friend for at least a year?'

'I remember Jane.'

'You used to come over to see us. I cooked a couple of times, or tried to cook. You sent me postcards from the Lake District that one summer.'

'I remember the Square in Leeds, but I don't remember you living there.' She pauses, uncomfortable. 'So what are you doing these days?'

Like you give a shit, I think, you don't even fucking know who I am. I mumble something which is reciprocated with a brief summary of her own life as a vaguely successful printmaker, and I am reminded of how little I ever had in common with most of those people at art college, people who stand in one room high street art galleries describing something or other as very interesting, people who go all misty-eyed over the shipping forecast on Radio 4, people who met this really amazing old guy on the side of a mountain in Baja California…

By the same token, I have no memory of the three middle-aged blokes on the other side of me. It turns out they were in the year below me and the painting department. I never really had much to do with anyone in the painting department.

Then there's Kirsten who remembers me well, which is gratifying because I remember her well. She's very funny, very dry, and a couple of the more sarcastic one liners and zingers in my arsenal probably came from her. It's a joy to see her again, as I suspected it would be. It doesn't really seem like a whole lot of time has passed. Inevitably we talk about Charlie, because he and Kirsten shared a house, and I seem to be the only one of us who kept in touch with him.

'He was the only student I ever met who turned up on the day he moved in with an ironing board - bless him.' She's laughing but it's an affectionate laugh.

'Who was this?' Sue asks.

'Charlie Adlard,' three of us chorus.

The name rings no bell, and of course she hasn't heard of the Walking Dead. Someone explains it to her, and why Charlie is now more famous than the rest of us put together, including Traci Emin, another Maidstone graduate.

Sue zips off to catch a train back to the south coast, and I begin to feel less irritable. The rest of us talk and drink for another hour, mostly like strangers who've only just met because that's mostly what we are. I manage to squeeze out another hour of conversation about our having shared the same geographical coordinates some three decades ago, and then I limp back to the tube station with Carl. The past couple of hours seem to have reproduced my experience of art college in microcosm with surprising fidelity.

Lone Hollow

Junior has attended summer camp since he was about eleven. Summer camp is one of those characteristically American institutions I don't quite understand, having no equivalent in my own childhood. I suspect I would have hated the idea of going to one, but I suppose I would have adapted; and our kid seems to think summer camp is amazing so he gets the last word, seeing as how he has the actual experience.

It's November, cold, wet, and we're taking the boy to some sort of off season reunion held at a local high school, specifically one of the knobby ones. We sit in the car, waiting at the gate. The security guard comes out of his bunker.

'Is this a military base?' I ask.

'No. It's a school.'

My wife talks to the guard. He returns to his bunker and the gate slides back. We drive through the grounds. About a minute passes before we see buildings.

'Is this one of those schools where they have their own generator so they can sit out the apocalypse when it happens?'

The boy laughs at my joke, which is gratifying. We're looking for building number forty-one. We can see thirty-nine and forty-two.

'We should park and look around. It must be up here somewhere.'

Some other people wander across the way, but with neither the numbers nor urgency one would expect for something describing itself as a reunion. Still, we follow them and find a site map screwed to a wall. Within another minute we have found our building. There's a temporary sign on a board set up outside, manned by a couple of summer camp types in Lone Hollow t-shirts and evangelical smiles.

'Hey, it's Josh,' observes our boy, or maybe not Josh, but some name in that general ballpark. Josh recognises our boy and somehow manages to grin even harder. I thought he was already at full capacity but apparently not.

We enter the lecture theatre. We sign our names.

'Would you like a sticker?' the woman asks happily.

'A sticker?'

'You can write your name on it so we know who you are.'

'No, you're all right there.' I smile in diplomatic fashion and move on.

They give us publicity material and a DVD, a visual record of the most recent summer at the camp; and suddenly we're walking out.

'Wait,' I say. 'Was that it?'

'No, there will probably be more.'

'Are you leaving?' asks Josh, or whatever he's called.

'We're just going for a walk,' my wife says.

We head for the car.

'Did you want to stay?' Bess asks the kid.

'I don't know. What else was there going to be?'

'I don't know.'

'Shouldn't we go back,' I suggest. 'I don't mind but this seems kind of rude.'

We wander around the grounds for a couple more minutes, then we go back. We find seats high up at the back of the lecture theatre, which isn't difficult. There are a few parents but I count about ten kids.

'How many kids were at the camp? It was more than just ten surely?'

'There were a lot,' the boy says, with the usual emphasis on the quantifier, as though he's hoping to blow my mind, as though I wouldn't believe how many millions of kids there were at the summer camp. 'But they were from all over. There were even some kids from New York,' he says as though this were impossible, and yet he'd seen it with his own eyes.

'Wow,' I concede. 'Do you know any of these?'

'I know Josh. I don't know the others.'

We sit. Bess gives me a bingo card on the grounds of my being good at that sort of thing - sixteen squares of pictograms referring to things they get up to at summer camp - a bow and arrow, a football, a wigwam and so on. Still images of rural activities flash across the screen at the front of the hall and I notice one of the pictograms superimposed in a lower corner. Bess gives me a pencil and I start to cross them out as I see them. It's something to do. 'I wonder what we win.'

The presentation begins. Summer camp people outnumber the rest of us two to one in their cheery blue t-shirts, but then it's a cold, wet Sunday in the nether regions of Texas. The first speaker tells us a load of things about teaching kids to do stuff. It feels oddly like a sales pitch, or something which will conclude with the handling of poisonous snakes.

We watch a film, presumably the one we've been given on DVD - kids in boats, canoes, sliding down zip lines, swimming, running, making art, and quite clearly having a fantastic time. The music is the sort of populist autotuned emo you would expect, aspirational songs about having fun. More than anything, America is about team, about being true to your school, about cheerleaders and loyalty; but I suppose you get used to it.

The film ends and we discreetly leave.

So that happened.

Englishmen (pl.) in Texas

When I first got here, my wife feared that, deprived of the companionship of my own countrymen, I might wither on the vine. Whenever she heard of some English guy in the vicinity she would joke about setting up a playdate so we could meet and talk about Coronation Street and figgy pudding, or something. This was how I met Clive, whom Bess encountered through Toastmasters. Toastmasters was a lunchtime club at her place of work to which she found herself volunteered. It sounded a little like a writers group, but a writers group specialising in after dinner speeches, motivational or otherwise, and as such an unfortunately significant draw for those who enjoy the sound of their own voice without necessarily having much to say. On one occasion of my being away in England, Bess went to some Toastmasters weekend in Houston for the sake of something to do, and there she met Clive.

'He's English,' she told me, clearly energised by the discovery, 'and he lives in San Antonio!'

Clive and I met at La Madeleine, the French style bakery and cafe. It turned out that he was originally from Eastwood, the town in which D.H. Lawrence grew up. He had childhood memories of a few more ancient neighbours scowling about how that young David Herbert had been a rum bugger and no mistake. As an admirer of D.H. Lawrence, I found this quite exciting. Clive was in San Antonio because, like me, he'd married an American. He'd recently bought a disused diner which he was planning to reopen as a hot dog restaurant.

That's all I can recall of Clive. He seemed like a nice guy, but I'm just not very sociable and we didn't stay in touch, possibly because there was never any strong reason to do so. His diner remains vacant. Each time Bess and I drive past, we wonder what happened, and then why anyone would consider a hot dog restaurant a good idea.

There have been others, but once we've established our shared point of origin, there hasn't usually been much else to be said; possibly excepting Chris, another person my wife met through her job. Chris was from Catford in south-east London, specifically from an address to which I almost certainly delivered mail at some point during the early nineties, so that was funny. Chris is all right, but he's about ten years younger than I am with very different priorities.

The celebrated writer Michael Moorcock spends some of the year at his American home in Bastrop county, which is about an hour's drive. I've read and enjoyed plenty of his novels, and we communicate on facebook, but otherwise I'm a bit too starstruck to introduce myself directly; besides which I'm told he tends to avoid the company of expatriate English people. I'm beginning to see why.

Malcolm is Brook's long-distance boyfriend. They met on the internet and now he's flown all this way to visit her, so we simply have to meet - as everyone keeps telling us. Our first exchange is on facebook, through Brook. I tell him Newcastle Brown Ale can be purchased from HEB, our local supermarket chain. I tell him this because American beer is undrinkable, and it's the sort of information I would appreciate were I in his shoes.

Newcastle Brown Ale is even worse than American beer, he tells me with what I imagine to be a sneer. He prefers Pabst.

This places me in the position of fearing that I have become a real ale bore whilst resenting what felt like Malcolm telling me to stick my friendly advice up my arse, whilst additionally resenting the retort on the grounds that Pabst is fucking awful, the 8-Ace of the Americas.

'I haven't even met the bloke,' I grumble to Bess, 'and I already think he's a dick.'

Nevertheless we meet, and much to my relief he seems okay. He works in the oil business and travels the world as part of his job. He's visited the United States many times before, so I can see my attempted friendly advice may have seemed condescending. He's from the north-east and therefore speaks with one of my all-time favourite regional accents. He has none of the abrasive quality I had begun to anticipate.

On the other hand, he begins a sentence with the words, 'one thing your Mr. Trump has got right…'

I have two bikes so I invite him to come over and join me for my daily twenty miles. He's clearly into exercise and agrees because it will be fun.

The morning comes and he's at my house at the agreed time, having jogged three or four miles from where Brook lives. Clearly I don't have to worry about whether he'll be able to keep up.

I make him a cup of tea - something I don't get to do very often - and we talk; or rather Malcolm talks. I don't even know how he got onto the subject, but it's something about long distance relationships. He once had one with another American, someone in the north-east. She told him she would be seeing other people in between his visits.

'That's how women are,' he tells me. 'They're all like that. I don't care what anyone says.'

'Okay,' I submit, before abruptly changing the subject.

He picks the mountain bike and we head out. He doesn't seem to experience any confusion regarding which side of the road we should take, which is a relief. We cycle a mile or so to Holbrook, then onto the Tobin Trail, leaving the traffic behind. He cycles at my side and talks. I realise there's been no point during which he's shut up since he arrived thirty minutes ago. He's been talking all this time. I'm not even sure what about.

His work takes him all over the world.

He's been to Mexico several times, specifically to Tampico. He was reluctant to sample much of the night life due to the visible presence of the drug cartel, something beginning with s, whatever they're called...

'The Sinaloa Cartel,' I suggest.

'That's the fellah.'

We cycle to Los Patios, then on to Morningstar Boardwalk. He says hello to everyone we pass. Some respond. Some don't. I recall how I too greeted almost everyone I met when I first came here.

We're off the boardwalk, heading for the bridge at Wetmore, then up the hill, and all the while he's been talking. He never fucking shuts up. Yap yap yap the whole bleeding time.

We come to McAllister Park, and we're back to sharing the thoroughfare with the occasional truck. I realise - as just such a vehicle approaches - that I've been in the middle of the road, politely attending to Malcolm's never ending monologue.

Blah blah blah…

I pull back and slip to the side of the road to get out of the way, but as I do so, Malcolm inexplicably turns right. My front wheel grinds into the gear assembly of the mountain bike he's riding and I'm off.

'Oh fucking hell,' I scream.

I land on a knee and an elbow and roll onto my back in the grit. He's shouting oh no and I'm so sorry.

We gather ourselves together in a daze. The gears on the mountain bike look fucked, but the wheel is good so we should be okay; except my front tire is somehow flat, which makes no fucking sense at all.

I fitted both bikes with brand new tires and tubes about two weekends back. We push the bikes over to the picnic area. I invert mine and make ready with the puncture repair kit.

'I'm so sorry, Lawrence.'

'Yeah.'

I try to pump up the tire but it's not having it, and I realise the valve has somehow torn itself away from the tube during the collision. 'How the fuck does that even happen?'

'Do you have a spare inner tube?'

'No. I'll have to call Bess, get her to pick us up.'

There's a station wagon parked across the way. The guy comes over. Just what we need.

'You need help.'

'No, you're all right, mate.'

'You're not from around here?'

'No,' we both answer.

'Where you from? Australia?'

'England,' Malcolm tells him.

I'm saying nothing because I'm not having this fucking conversation again given that I actually live here, and anyway I'm trying to call Bess.

'What's up?'

'We've had an accident.'

'Oh no!'

'Can you—'

'I can't. You know I have that thing.'

'Shit.' I'd forgotten. 'Maybe—'

'Let me call Byron. He owes me.'

She calls Byron, then Byron calls me, and I try to describe our location. Malcolm is still talking to the driver of the station wagon. I just want the guy to fuck off and leave us alone.

'Byron's going to come and get us.'

'Okay.'

'I have to take Gary to the vet at about three, so I need to get back.'

'I'm so sorry about this, Lawrence. I feel terrible.'

'Don't worry,' I say. 'It's just one of those things. I shouldn't have been so close behind you.'

'I didn't realise that we were going straight on, so I turned.'

'I'm just collecting wood,' the guy from the station wagon announces. He has half a tree in the back of his truck and a branch held in one hand, recently chosen from the ground nearby. He's clearly having a whale of a time. I wish I were at home, having an ordinary day.

There's a huge crater in my arm, just below the elbow, and yet there's no pain beyond a little soreness. I compare it with the other elbow and realise something is very wrong. A few more minutes of flexing leads Malcolm and myself to conclude that it's simply a bruise. The crater is actually the illusion of a dip formed by the side of lump such as you would ordinarily see on the head of the teacher in the Bash Street Kids after Plug, Danny or one of the others has dropped a housebrick on him from a great height; except it's on my elbow.

Byron turns up after about twenty minutes. My directions were not the best. We lift the bikes into the back of his truck and he drives us back into town. Byron's company comes as unusually welcome. He talks, but not constantly, and I at least feel I understand him. He's a known quantity. Malcolm sits mostly silent in the rear seat.

He feels terrible about the accident, and I'm still not convinced it was particularly his fault, but all I can recall is the constant fucking yap yap yap yap blah blah blah…

Byron drops us off at my place. Malcolm leaves after another few minutes. He's not a bad guy, but it will be nice to not have to think about him for a while.

Life During Rainfall

It doesn't seem to rain much in Texas, so when it does rain it seems all the more dramatic. It's been raining for three days solid. There have been breaks during which I've zipped out on the bike and ridden the usual twenty miles. I kept the waterproof jacket and trousers which came with the job at Royal Mail, and they're enough to make the ride bearable under conditions of light to moderate rainfall.

Life has gone on as normal for everyone except the cats. Where most of them go out to attend to cat business during the hours of darkness, they've been stuck inside these past few nights. I am greeted first thing by a front room full of irritable felines, and usually a couple of protest turds strategically laid at the traditional locations. Nibbler is the worst, marching up and down, hissing and swiping at everyone and everything as though a couple of hours in the company of other cats has been too much for him; so I let him out, although it's not like he's going anywhere given that it's still raining.

Our internet connection fizzles out on the third day, just as it always does. Rainfall destroys our internet every time, and I still don't understand why. We jump through the same hoops over and over, and it's always due to some junction box a few blocks away. My theory is that our internet is beamed directly to this junction box, and that the signal is quickly baked into tiny pies by magic pixies so small as to be effectively invisible. The pixies then convey these pies across a small lake the size of a penny, to a receiver. The pies are fed into the receiver, and from that point on the internet comes directly to our house, enabling us to watch Wheel of Fortune without it resembling a Nine Inch Nails video. When it rains, either conditions on the small lake become so treacherous as to prevent the magic pixies crossing, or else causing the pie crusts to dissolve in transit.

Nevertheless, we phone the help desk.

'You need to turn the modem off and then back on again,' the lady suggests.

'Why not?' I say. 'We've already done that three or four times, but maybe the fourth will be the one which effects a magical transformation.'

'She can hear you,' Bess hisses, indicating that she has her smartphone set to speaker.

'I know,' I smile. 'That's why I said it.'

We turn the modem off, and then back on again. We remain without internet, and I imagine losing a limb to a chainsaw, phoning the hospital in agony.

Before I submit the ticket, could you first try walking around the room for me?

Then, did that fix the problem?

They're going to send someone out tomorrow morning. There will be a phone call first thing asking me to confirm that the internet hasn't just grown back of its own accord, and that I still require assistance.

No Wheel of Fortune for us tonight.

We watch a couple of episodes of Kenneth Clark's Civilisation on DVD. It's interesting, but two hours of Kenneth Clark is more than enough for one night, and besides neither Bess nor myself fully agree with his definition of what constitutes civilisation. Also, I'm disappointed at the free pass he's given to certain fucking awful examples of overly sentimental eighteenth century painting, given the opprobrium he heaped upon significantly less offensive works in the previous episode.

I look through cupboards full of DVDs and notice Mamma Mia! 'How about this?' I ask.

'I hate that movie,' Bess tells me.

'I know. We could watch it and take the piss. I've never seen it.'

'Well, I guess…'

We wait for the thing to load.

Her first husband gave my wife the DVD for Christmas, despite her having told him that she had hated the film. He also gave a copy to his friend Karen Eliot* that same Christmas, so it was probably some kind of two for the price of one deal. It later emerged that he'd been knobbing Karen Eliot on the quiet, all of which partially accounts for why he is no longer married to my wife.

We watch about twenty minutes.

It's basically Four Weddings and a Funeral with more exotic locations, all floppy haired Englishmen exclaiming gosh and laying on the self-deprecation with a silver-plated trowel. It's the story of a girl whose father could be any one of four mysterious photogenic men - Colin Firth and Piers Brosnan amongst them - seemingly implying that her mother was pulling a train at the time of conception; and every couple of minutes they all foghorn and bluster through a song by Abba so as to illustrate some point or other.

I've never felt particularly protective of Abba, but I liked them when I was a kid.

'This is awful,' I announce. 'I don't think I can watch any more.'

We switch to Kath & Kim DVDs and I let another cat out, this time Kirby who pads onto the back porch and concludes that yes, it is indeed still fucking raining. She looks back at me.

'I don't know what you think I can do,' I tell her. 'My powers are limited.'

Every time I open the door I hear the white noise of rain and the constant drip as it sluices from the roof into puddles. It's been three days and it's getting a bit much.

Next morning, I'm still at home. I can't ride the bike even though it isn't raining.

The guy turns up at eleven, fiddles around for a while, then concludes that the problem is indeed with the junction box and those magic pixies - or however it works. He's going to call the people who fixed the same problem last time, and the umpteen times before, and they'll get it done just as soon as they can. It should take an hour.

Four hours later, we still have no internet connection.

I walk to the supermarket to pick up some cat food. I've been using my Sony Walkman again, now that I have all of my cassette tapes back. I'm listening to something Andrew taped for me back in the late nineties, a mix of Dinosaur Jr., Tad, Eleventh Dream Day, Pavement - all of those American guitar bands he used to like so much. Andrew died in 2009, and here I am listening to his tape of American music whilst actually in America. Not for the first time, it feels as though I'm in a film, and the sun is out at long last.

*: Name changed so as to protect the not even remotely innocent.

Spring

The drive to Houston is about three and a half hours, so we've brought a talking book to pass the time; we being myself and my wife rather than the royal we, and the talking book is the autobiography of the DEA agent who arrested el Chapo, but neither of us finds it engaging. The guy reading the book so that we don't have to sounds like Alastair Cooke, who used to narrate his own weekly Letter from America on BBC Radio 4. He sounds old, stately, well spoken, and a poor fit for the testimony of one of those good little soldiers who became a cop because he wanted to make a difference, someone who has buddies and compadres and occasionally likes to cut loose with a few brewskis. Also, the narrator's Spanish is difficult to take seriously, and we've found - to our surprise - that we don't like to hear people speaking ill of el Chapo because, for all his faults, we're no longer convinced that the guy was significantly worse than any of the politicians currently blocking the Washington S-bend. We have a hunch that he may actually be preferable in certain respects. We listen to about an hour and then turn it off in frustration.

We're heading to a convention in Spring, a town about five miles north of Houston. The convention is for people who make and collect a certain kind of spinning top finely-crafted from wood, metal, resin, and whatever else can be turned on a lathe. We went to one of these things last year, and I noticed a fair few of the guests seemed to be hardcore bikers, hardcore in this instance meaning people with their own workshops in which they've hand-tooled their own bike parts. If you know your way around a lathe, I don't suppose curling off a spinning top is much different to the head of a piston. Accordingly the convention has something of a biker vibe and is to be held at Rudy's, which is a barbecue joint, one of those places with rusty bits of farm machinery customarily hanging from the beams.

Neither Bess nor myself are particularly into spinning tops, but I drew the design which they've used for the Topcon 2018 promotional t-shirt. This means we get a free table at the convention. Bess will attempt to sell her painted stones, and I'm going to have some of my canvases on display. I'd say I'm selling, except I have no faith in anyone buying; but fuck it - it's a day out.

This is what I've been telling myself since this morning, when I woke from a hopelessly literal nightmare wherein I found myself obliged to travel to a place I didn't want to go.

'I don't really want to go,' I told Bess. 'I couldn't care less about spinning tops, and we'll only spend the time worrying about the cats.'

We have a number of cats. We don't like to leave them on their own, but have reasoned that one night in Houston won't hurt, and we can set off early on Sunday, arriving home by mid-morning. Obviously they're not going to starve being as there will be no significant disruption to their routine in terms of meal times, but I still don't like to think of them worrying over where we've got to.

We arrive around noon, two-hundred miles from home. It's a while since I've been to Houston, and I'm struck by how unlike San Antonio it is. The countryside is flatter and wetter with more rainfall coming in off the gulf of Mexico. It's more humid and accordingly feels hotter, more tropical, and the countryside looks peculiarly English to my eyes, which is something to do with the trees.

Rudy's is a big old shack full of people stuffing their faces with pulled pork and the like. However, it's nothing like so big as the photo on their website somehow managed to suggest. There is no large, roomy convention hall, just myself and Bess having to squeeze sideways between tables crammed with spinning top enthusiasts.

'What the fuck are we doing here?,' I ask in rhetorical spirit as we are invited to squeeze onto a table from which we will attempt to sell our wares.

Bess has the wheeled carry case in which she ferries her painted stones. She whips out a black table cloth and arranges a couple of rocks upon it, plus one of the vinyl albums she's painted.

'I'm not going to bother,' I grumble. 'There's no room, and there's no point.'

Bess gives me the look, a sort of pleading disappointment with a soupçon of dude, make an effort.

'Seriously, where am I going to put anything?'

I could prop a single painting up against the wall at the rear of the table, but that's about it. I've bought twelve canvases with me, along with the free standing wooden frame upon which I usually display them. This has been a waste of time even before it's started, but then as we've established, no-one is going to want to buy my canvases anyway. Most are paintings of cacti and animal skulls, and not a single spinning top among them.

Bess wanders off in search of the bogs, and a waitress tells me we can't use the table, and that our setting up shop - such as it is - on this particular table constitutes Topcon 2018 extending beyond its agreed allocation of tables to intrude upon the more spacious dining areas reserved for those who've simply turned up for the pulled pork

'Right,' I sigh.

Being half way through my roughly annual smoking jag, I nip outside for a fag, past caring about how that sounds here in Texas.

When I return, we've been moved to the back room, which is less populous. I realise I just about have space for one of my display frames on the table. I go out to the car and bolt the frame together in the parking lot, then carry it inside and secure six canvases to the two horizontal beams by means of g-clamps. Bess arranges her rocks, records, and Christmas tree decorations on the table top and we settle down for the afternoon.

The guy behind us is telling a fellow enthusiast about his best spin time, which happens to be twenty-four minutes and ten seconds.

I get up and go to the bar. While Texas barbecue is invariably delicious, it sits heavy in my gut and leaves me feeling as though I've been pumped full of cavity wall insulation foam. I've promised myself never again, so I'm just going to have a beer. Happily they have Corona, which is Mexican and therefore drinkable.

I drink from the bottle at our table.

Bess has somehow already shifted fifty dollars worth of stuff, and downplays her commercial superiority by telling me that lots of people have said how much they admire my paintings. Regrettably the bar doesn't seem to recognise admiration as a form of currency.

'Okay, I'm bored,' I announce. 'I'm going to paint my beer.'

I've brought my easel, a couple of canvases, oil paints and so on. It takes about ten minutes to squeeze myself into the space between tables and next to the window. I've drunk about two thirds of the bottle, which I now spend a couple of minutes moving around on the table cloth, trying to get it to look interesting.

The next couple of hours pass quickly as I paint a still life with beer and the jar of thinner in which I stand my brushes. I'm cleaning brushes with an old pair of underpants, but no-one seems to notice. Women come and go, chatting with my wife, some buying a stone or telling me that they love my paintings. One of them is from Baltimore. She doesn't seem to like the place much.

'We've seen The Wire,' I tell her.

'That's how it is,' she confirms.

Another fag break is interrupted when my wife brings Phil outside to see me. He too thinks my paintings are really something and wanted to meet the artist. Phil is Australian.

'We're the ones you lot got rid of,' he jokes.

'Not at all,' I say. 'Sometimes I get the feeling we sent you our best people.'

'Everyone thinks he's Australian,' Bess explains, meaning me.

'I guess our accents sound the same to this lot,' I say, and we ask Phil where he's from, like it makes any difference to us.

'Perth,' he says. 'That's on the west coast.'

'My cousin Dawn lives over that way,' I begin.

'He's going to ask if you know her,' Bess laughs.

I wasn't, but now I'm wrapped up trying to remember the name of the town where Dawn lives. I know it's kind of remote, or at least I have that impression, a mining town.

'We've been watching Wentworth,' I hear my wife tell Phil.

I finish the painting. I think I'm quite pleased with it, although I'll know better in a couple of days. It reminds me of Goya, the artist rather than the refried beans.

'Shall we fuck off?'

Everyone else seems to be packing up, so we do the same as it's nearly six. We drive several anticlockwise miles in a vague circle to our hotel, which is fifty yards from Rudy's in the other direction. We can see the same water park out back from our hotel window. We eat at a Cheddar's Scratch Kitchen, drive through the old part of Spring in the name of sightseeing, then fail to sleep in the hotel bed. Somehow we're both too hot and too cold for most of the night, which is weird - the quantum superposition of discomfort. The hotel is okay but it's a hotel, and it seems like everything is the least they could get away with. Breakfast is bread toasted on one side with a sort of hockey puck made of egg.

'Where is baked bean?' I demand gruffly, but no-one answers.

The drive back home is another three hours or so, but without some cop casting aspersions on the character of el Chapo. As we arrive back at the house, cats suddenly appear, the full roster bouncing out of the bushes all at the same time, tails aloft and clearly very happy to see us. It's the single greatest moment of the whole weekend.

Where I'm From

People notice the accent and ask where I'm from. Some assume I'm Australian. I've never quite settled on an answer, but have recently taken to saying Stratford-upon-Avon. Everyone's heard of Stratford-upon-Avon because of Shakespeare, and that was the nearest large town when I was growing up. Since then I've spent five years in Kent, about three in Coventry, and nearly twenty in south-east London - pacing around the country like I was trying to get out. 

I'm no longer certain of the dates - late nineties and maybe some small change, but no later than 2002. It's seven in the morning at Royal Mail. Some days I'll take the unofficial ten minute grace break, but not today. I have too much work. We have a workload amounting to about nine hours of work which we have to fit into an eight hour day, so breaks tend to go out the window. If this week's acting governor is an arsehole and any mail is left undelivered because someone bothered to take the break to which they're entitled, it could mean an entirely unethical first stage warning for delaying the mail. No-one has the time or energy to argue.

I usually spend the grace break - if I take it - talking to Carmen. She's the woman who runs our canteen. She works for a catering contractor rather than Royal Mail, and has been assigned to our place. We're about the same age, but she's from a Caribbean background. She's coffee coloured with a smile that warms my heart, and - to commit what may well be racial stereotyping - a soft, lilting voice which sounds almost as though she's singing. We are both lost souls of some description. She asks about my possibly ludicrous attempts to write a novel, and I tell her about Lawrence Miles, my favourite author. She says that he sounds interesting. She lives in Plaistow, miles away in East London, and attends a reading group once a week. She's even read some Philip K. Dick. I like her because she seems to like me, and because she's interested in things. There's more to her than tea and toast.

'It's not Philip K. Dick, but it's probably better than Jeffrey Archer,' I joke, having lumbered her with a stack of pages from my cranky novel, printed from my PC last night.

'You shouldn't laugh at him,' she says, not unkindly. 'He's sold a lot of books.'

But today I work through the break to a soundtrack of Jackie swearing in the next bay along from mine, mostly cursing those to whom she delivers mail for either getting too much of it, or for it being mostly junk. I can never tell whether she's genuinely outraged or just passing time. She seems neither happy nor unhappy, just world weary.

Ted passes and jokes, 'Do you know who the father is yet, Jack? Must be one of this lot innit?' He grins and casts his gaze around the sorting office so as to imply that any one of the thirty or so males present could be the father of Jackie's impending child.

'Yeah,' she sighs, playing along. 'I'll probably just name him SE22.' This is the postcode covered by our sorting office.

'Wasn't you was it, Oscar?' Ted now asks me. 'You didn't get our Jack up the duff, did you?'

'Sorry, Ted. Not guilty.'

'It weren't Lawrence,' Jackie confirms. 'I'm sure I would have remembered.'

On the subject of mysteries, I still haven't pinned down why Ted took to calling me Oscar. Some days it seems to be a reference to Oscar the Grouch from Sesame Street, others it's after Oscar Wilde - which may be an obscure play on words referencing how wild I apparently seem when I'm pissed off.

'I'll have something for you later,' Ted tells me in a more furtive tone, which reminds me that I have Sue's record. I have it in my bag. I take it out and go around to the next aisle of sorting frames.

'Here you go,' I hand it over. It's Blade's The Lion Goes From Strength To Strength, double white vinyl, very rare these days.

'Did you like it?'

'Fantastic - reminds me a bit of Public Enemy. You know, that kind of full on sound, very dense.'

'Yeah - it's good. Did you make a copy?'

'Yes. I'll burn you the CDR tonight if that's all right. It came out really well.'

It was quite a surprise when I found out Sue was into rap in a big way. She used to be one of those teenagers with a hoodie and a spray can forever breaking into train yards, or whatever it is they do. She's tall and skinny, kind of smiley. But for a slight Kentish twang she seems more like someone who has adventures in a children's book than a reformed b-girl.

Eventually I have all of the mail in the sorting frame, so I'm working my way through the redirections. The information is printed on a series of yellow cards kept in clear plastic wallets, one for each address. I work through the cards, pulling mail from the frame to check it isn't addressed to whoever has moved away. In instances where it is addressed to someone who has moved away and has accordingly paid for the service, I take a sticker for the new address from the rear of the plastic wallet and slap it on the envelope, covering the old address. After about twenty minutes I have a stack of thirty or so letters and magazines destined to be forwarded to other parts of the country. I head for the other side of the office, to the outward sorting frame to which we sort mail headed for Scotland, the Midlands, Cornwall and so on.

I encounter Alan, the fake Rasta, as I turn the corner of the frame. He's our acting governor this week and he's an arsehole. I think of him as the fake Rasta after Nadim gave him the name.

'I saw that fake Rasta last week,' Nadim told me. 'I was just walking along, you know.'

'Yeah?'

'He slowed down like he was going to chat shit. He had this big fuckin' smile, man.' Nadim made the noise, sucking air between his two front teeth. 'I looked down and there was this brick just on the road, so I picked it up and looked right at him, like weighing it up in my hand, yeah?'

'Seriously?' I began to laugh, relishing the thought of Alan terrorised by a former employee.

'Yeah, man. He didn't look too happy about that. He wasn't smiling no more, you know what I'm sayin'?'

'What? He drove off?'

'Yeah. He put his foot down, man. I'm tellin' you.'

Anyway, right now I'm headed directly for the outward sorting. There's no other place I could possibly be going given that I'm on this side of the office. I'm holding a big stack of mail in front of me, redirection stickers plainly visible. My purpose is fucking obvious.

'Lawrence,' Alan says.

'Huh?'

He wags a finger as he strides past. 'Don't let me find any redirections on your frame. Take them to the outward sorting otherwise I'll be giving you a first stage warning.'

'Okay.' I think of Nadim stood at the side of the road, screw faced with a brick in his hand. I liked Nadim, but he was given the heave ho, for reasons which seemed unconvincing to just about everyone. Black guys seem to have a tough time in this job, particularly if there's a black manager who feels he needs to prove something. They actively look for failings, pouncing on minor irregularities about which no-one gives a shit if you're white. The white supremacist contingent always chuckle to themselves about the bad attitude of black workers, but it's bullshit. Mostly the supposed bad attitude seems more like a justifiable reluctance to lay back and take it whilst being fucked over by upper management, which is unfortunately how the job works.

Call me Ben Elton, but this is why I generally prefer working with black people. They know when to tell the governor to fuck off. They're attuned to detecting when they're being diddled from above.

I'm on the sorting with Jimmy Axton - whom Carmen calls Jimmy Ackleston, unless I'm thinking of Lucy. It's just the two of us because it's Saturday and we're on late duties. Jim fancies a fag but doesn't want to light up in case Frank, the acting governor, is still hanging around. I first met Frank when he was acting governor at Catford, and vividly recall him locking himself inside his office as Robbie Finley tried to smash the glass with a broom, bellowing, 'Come out and face me, you cunt!' Robbie lost his job but was later briefly eulogised in song, something adapted from a number which had become popular at football matches.

Robbie Finley, he's our mate.
He's our mate. He's our mate.
Robbie Finley, he's our mate.
He smacks governors!

The song transposes both the name and the violent action of the original - smacks governors for kills coppers - and isn't strictly accurate in so much as that Frank remained safe in his office, which I suppose was for the best given that Robbie's objection was not entirely without foundation.

I walk up to the hatch of the PHG cage to see if Frank is hanging around within, as is sometimes the case. He isn't, but Sav is in there with the others. They're watching porn. The woman on the screen wears stockings and is on her back. She has quite a nice arse, and I don't think I've seen this one. I'm sure I would have remembered.

'Blimey, Sav,' I observe.

'Lawrie,' he exclaims, and we both make the established noise of greeting - uuuuuuuh, like a moose.

'Whose video is this?,' I ask. 'Is this one of Ted's?'

Enter Mel.

'What the fuck do you want?'

'Is this your video?, I ask. 'Can I borrow it?'

'I don't know whose it is.'

'Video?' Sav snorts derision. 'This is on the telly!'

'Live & Kicking has changed a lot.'

A brief silence ensues as we all watch appreciatively.

'If I was in charge,' I propose, 'I would make it illegal for women to be not wearing suspenders at all times.'

Mel scowls. 'Say that again?'

'I said it wrong. What I meant was that if I was in charge I would pass a law requiring that they wear stockings and suspenders at all times.'

Sav chuckles. 'What? Men as well?'

'No. For men it would be on a purely voluntary basis.'

'Oh yes?' Sue asks, coming in from the other room, amused by our sudden discomfort. 'What's all this?'

'No, honestly,' I stutter in response to the accusation I've imagined. 'I was looking for Frank and I got distracted.'

I flash a glance at the television set. Someone with lightning reflexes has turned it off. Sav stares from the window as though he has something on his mind. Mel leaves the room shaking his head.

It's Saturday evening, September 2002 but probably not the same Saturday. We're meeting at the Crystal Palace Tavern, but I'm the only one who has turned up. I have a drink with Snowy who is sat in the saloon bar, as is probably usual. He's bigger than ever. He's put on a lot of weight since taking extended leave, and it doesn't look like he's  coming back. It's wonderful to see him and it's been a while. He's one of the funniest people I've met but has had a few setbacks of late what with the death of his dad and his own declining health. He's still a handsome bastard though, even with all those chins which somehow give him an aristocratic appearance, and the full head of snow white hair swept back with a bit of a duck's arse at the front.

We chat shit for a while, how are things back at the sorting office and which useless arseholes have been left in charge, how bad it's getting; but his breathing seems laboured and there's no longer quite such a twinkle in his eye. I get the feeling that this will be the last time I see him, which will eventually turn out to have been unfortunately prescient of me. He's a survivor of better days in the job, of life in general. He will be missed when he's gone.

Paul turns up, and it's just the two of us, which is unfortunate because he can be hard work. He got the boot a few months ago, and now he's full of conspiracy theories about why he was sacked and how he's going to blow the roof off that place using secret cameras and exposés, the results of which will be broadcast on Channel 4. He has delusions of cinematic aptitude, and has been pushing his autobiographical motion picture which is named My Heart is Broken. He talks it well, but only two of us have seen the single videotape which is slowly making its way around the office. Terry's verdict, for one example, was that it was very good, very professional, but he'd expected it to be longer than fifteen minutes. The story of the film is based on Paul's own childhood, which sounds less than idyllic. We all have the promotional postcards he's been giving out featuring a still of the boy who plays Paul as a kid.

'I used to smear myself with my own shit and hide in the cupboard,' he tells me. 'That was so he wouldn't hit me any more.'

'I know,' I say, having heard the story many times. The thing with Paul is that it's impossible to tell how much is made up, and it's frustrating because there's clearly some awful truth in there; plus he's not a bad bloke, just a bit manic.

Carmen arrives at eight, all the way from Plaistow, which is a massive relief. I wonder what it says about her personal life that she's chosen to hang out with us sad sacks on this warm September evening. Unfortunately our combined presence is not enough to get Paul off the subject of himself and how a lot of people are going to be very sorry.

Sue arrives half an hour later with some friend from outside work. The drink was Sue's idea, but never mind. Her friend seems okay, bit shrill, nothing much to say of any great interest seeing as she doesn't know us or any of our colleagues whom we're now busily slagging off behind their backs, but her presence is at least sufficient to dilute Paul's mania.

Kingsley arrives after nine, and that's it. There are just six of us out of the whole office, three of whom either no longer work there or never worked there. Kingsley takes a shine to Sue's friend and somehow transforms into a more slimline Barry White. I hear him asking about her star sign with a big smile, and he's lost to us for the rest of the evening.

We drink, and Paul resumes his ranting and raving, and I think about how Carmen has travelled across London for this.

'I must go,' she sighs, and no-one questions because we all appreciate she has a long trip back. It still seems early.

'I'll walk you to the bus-stop,' I say.

We talk as we stroll down Whateley Road towards Lordship Lane, nothing amazing, just writing and the stuff we talk about on the rare occasions when I take a grace break. She tells me in passing that she once went to North Africa on a roots thing and was surprised to find that Africans came in all shapes, shades, and sizes. She's always interesting.

I know it wouldn't ever work between us, but sometimes it's nice to pretend that it would; and it's nice just to enjoy her company without feeling any sort of pressure to impress or perform.

There's almost a moment when the bus comes. I kiss her on the cheek, and that's that.

I walk up the hill, back to my flat in the basement of a four story house. There doesn't seem to be much point in going back to the pub. I'm lonely, but I'm used to it. I don't recall any other state of being. The financial powers which rule the city are doing their best to gouge me out of my present security, to oblige me to pay more for less, even though I'm already pretty much reduced to a utility because they haven't yet invented a robot which will do it cheaper.

I have my doner kebab and something disgusting borrowed from Ted, and I'm under no illusions about anything.

On the other hand, I'm cautiously settled. If I can just hang on until I eventually die, I'll be happy. I have no-one, and probably never will for reasons I don't yet understand, but that's okay. I no longer have the desire to move on because I'm not sure there's anywhere left to go. One day I'll look back on all of this and see things in a very different light, but for now this is where I am, so this is where I'm from; and it's the closest I will ever come to a definitive answer.

One Episode Was Enough

The Alienist. Unfortunately nothing to do with the people upstairs, but rather the term refers to a Victorian era psychologist or something of the sort, based on the notion that mad people were alienated from their true selves. Being set in America - specifically New York - I still don't quite see how this sort of thing qualifies as Victorian, but never mind. I suppose it works better than Clevelandian, which would reference President Grover Cleveland, whom I've only actually heard of through having looked him up just now. Anyway, our Alienist seems to be an exception within the psychological practice of his day in so much as that he attempts analysis by trying to understand his patients rather than just flogging them or locking them up like everyone else. Personally I find this unconvincing, even if it allows for greater scope in terms of the story - not that they take advantage of the fact, and it might have been a little more entertaining had he just spent the full forty-three minutes trying to flog the truth out of the rest of the cast. The problem is that they seem to have spunked away all the money on making the whole thing look like some tedious steampunk console game, leaving just a few bucks in the kitty to pay for a script. You get what you pay for, is therefore the lesson we should take from this one.

Crazyhead. I'm not sure why it's called Crazyhead, so maybe that's explained in a later episode. Maybe the girls end up recruited to one of those secretive government organisations which squirrels away all the stuff that falls off flying saucers, and the organisation is named Crazyhead, for some reason. Anyway, this is about two twenty-something women who fight demons whilst cracking jokes, and was as such probably pitched as Buffy the Vampire Slayer meets Pramface. It's watchable because Susie Wokoma is in it, and she's always wonderful, but otherwise the general quality of the show divides the scenes into those featuring Susie Wokoma and those during which you're mostly just waiting for Susie Wokoma to reappear; beyond which it's all bargain bucket CGI, flaps gags, and young dubiously employed people who somehow live in those London Dockland apartments which not even your average brain surgeon can afford, or which are kept empty as an investment by unscrupulous foreign landlords.

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency. I've never been entirely convinced by Douglas Adams, and his books tend to read like an endless series of snappy retorts with linking material, at least to me. I loved Hitchhiker's Guide when it was on the telly, and I enjoyed the novels when they first appeared, at least the first two. I tried reading Dirk Gently, and whilst I have fond memories of that first page about a truck driver who is actually a rain God, for some reason I never got any further with the book. Similarly I don't remember a lot about this first episode of the television adaptation, except that there was a Hobbit in it, and I found it irritating for all the reasons I expected to find it irritating.

11.22.63. This is an event series according to the promotional material. I appreciate that no television production company is ever going to attract viewers with here's this show we made, it's a bit shit to be honest but some of you might get a kick out of it, but describing 11.22.63 as an event series still seems a bit much, unless the implication is that it was produced through a series of events - Stephen King writing a book, the cameraman turning up for work as usual, some actor remembering his lines and so on. Otherwise, I'd say it's more of an occurrence series in so much as that it has occurred, because it's basically Quantum Leap with moderate sexual swearwords. The premise is that some guy discovers a magical land at the back of his closet, just like in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, but the magical land is the year 1960 rather than Narnia. Our man decides to change history by saving Kennedy from assassination in the hope of making the present day amazing, but snuffs it before he can finish the job, so he enlists a school teacher to finish it for him, specifically an English teacher. We know he's an English teacher because we first see him as he's teaching a class about writing. He stands in front of a blackboard upon which is named the next book to be read by his class - The Lurker at the Threshold by H.P. Lovecraft and August Derleth. This was the point at which I was unable to continue with the suspension of my disbelief because The Lurker at the Threshold is awful, a work which August Derleth expanded to novel length from a couple of pages scribbled by Herbert Philips before he shuffled off to that great gambrel roofed drawing room in the sky. Sir may as well have had his class reading Sven Hassel or Jeffrey Archer. The rest of 11.22.63 was pretty much as you'd expect, all pristine cars with ludicrous tail fins and not a single smudge of dirt on one of them, girls with pointy knockers, kids who say gee willickers, and waiters helpfully mentioning that it's still 1960. I expect Dean Stockwell turns up in part two.

Inhumans. I read some of the comic when I was a kid, and it impressed me enough to have left a lingering sense of nostalgia; and re-reading it as an adult sort of works because the whole premise of the Inhumans is just weird enough to be interesting; so of course they had to make a TV show, because when will we see an end to this terrible shortage of caped telly?

The effects are wonderful, as you would expect of something which apparently used up such a proportion of the budget as to leave about five cents with which to pay whoever wrote the script, most of which was the sort of portentous horseshit that worked in a comic because if you were reading the comic then you were probably about eight-years old.

Unlike the comic book, Black Bolt wears no mask with a piano tuner stuck on the top because I expect some genius decreed that it would look ridiculous, and yet we nevertheless have ridiculous elements which weren't even in the comic book, but which have been added because that's how we make television these days, and oh look - another fucking fight scene which needlessly slips into slow motion every couple of seconds, because I haven't seen that one since at least Tuesday. More off-putting still is that the bloke who plays Black Bolt seems to be the singer from Death in June.

I don't know why they made this.

iZombie. It's hilarious, I was told by a man who patently found it so hilarious that he could barely speak, because just talking about it brought back memories of its hilarity. The premise is that some blandly good-looking young woman is bitten by a zombie and so becomes a zombie, or a sort of zombie in so much as that she gets to keep her personality - which is used mainly in the dispensation of wry observations and knowing asides - and resembles a photogenic goth rather than an actual living corpse, conditional to a steady supply of human brains upon which she can feed. By happy coincidence she seems to work in the pathology lab of a cop show and therefore has regular access to stiffs. Also, it transpires that when she eats a brain, she is able to relive some of the memories of the deceased and thusly is she also able to solve crimes, like who murdered them, for one obvious example; so it's basically Angel with a hot zombie chick. That is the thing that it was. The thing that it wasn't is hilarious.

Once Upon a Time. Just imagine if all of our most beloved fairy tales were real, and they all happened within the same continuity, and if that wondrous realm were somehow connected to our world; and if anyone is still awake after reading that sentence, then Once Upon a Time is probably the show for you. My guess would be that it came about upon one enchanted eve of the magical chance encounter of a marketing executive who just happened to notice that Game of Thrones was big bucks, with another marketing executive who had a vision, specifically a vision about it still being worth giving the Harry Potter cow another squeeze. Thus didst they weaveth a tale about the magic of stories with CGI effects rendering everything like unto an animate Thomas Kinkade painting and a script of such weft that even a line so crappy as you don't have to do this seemed not so unusually far from home. Plinky-plonky piano starts up whenever anyone feels a bit sad, everyone is kind of good looking, Robert Carlyle's career slips a little further down the pole than where it came to rest during his stint on Stargate, and I also noticed some use of that accent which Americans do when they're pretending to be Oirish, so I did to be sure. Once Upon a Time is so good it could almost have been written by Warren Ellis.

Santa Clarita Diet. Bland suburban whiteys who happen to be estate agents find their world turned upside down when mom turns out to be a zombie, and as such demands a constant supply of fresh human meat - with hilarious consequences. It's probably just me who doesn't consider the very concept of Santa Clarita Diet - if we're going to even call it a concept - inherently hilarious, but even so, they almost did a pretty good job with this one. The script is sort of witty and the cast are mostly great and with a decent sense of comic timing, and it could have been a total pile of shite, yet somehow isn't; but there's no getting around Drew Barrymore. I don't know what it is about the woman, but I just can't watch her. I can't tell if she's overacting, or if she's a great actor simply playing an excruciatingly annoying character to perfection, but whichever it is, the results amount to the same thing. She seems incapable of delivering a single line without boggling her eyes, pouting in needlessly exaggerated fashion, or else pulling some variation on the face which says, you don't have to be crazy to work here, but it helps! It's as though she's on stage trying to convey every last nuance of her lines to those in the cheap seats, a mile and a half up in the sky, or she's playing the villain in a silent film of the twenties. Maybe she tones it down in later episodes, and we get to enjoy the show on its own merits, but unfortunately there's just no way of knowing.

Skins. I'm probably a bit behind the curve with this one, but at least now I understand why this should be the first time I've seen it, given that I can't imagine the trailers would have piqued my interest had one caught my attention. The strangest realisation, at least for me, is that this is what most English television now looks like from where I'm sat, and have been sat since 2011. I realise most American sitcoms are three people on a sofa, with a fourth walking in the door and asking how's it hanging? as the laugh track goes ballistic; but I think I'd rather have even that than yet more teenagers cracking rape jokes in front of a shaky camera with Arctic fucking Monkeys on the soundtrack. At least American sofa comedy is honest about being a corporate entertainment product and doesn't try to pass itself off as the Sex Pistols. The entire internet seems to have thought Skins was great, with some even claiming it provides an uncannily accurate mirror to their own lives. Maybe teenagers have changed, because in my day they were mostly socially inept spotty twats bearing no resemblance to these wisecracking post-ironic sophisticates busily arranging to have each other's cherries casually popped in between viola lessons and twocking cars. Of course, we was yer actual working class, give or take some small change, although apparently so are this lot. You can tell the kids from Skins are working class because they go to what is amusingly identified as a posh party in the first episode, meaning that they themselves ain't posh - I guess - and admittedly most kids of my generation and milieu generally started our day auditioning for the city chamber choir at a private girls' school. You can also tell that the kids from Skins are working class because they use street credibility words and commonly greet each other with a chirpy call of shit your bollocks out of my titting cock you wanking fucking cunty knob, which as you know is how working class kids on the street tend to speak. Skins falls somewhere between being J.K. Rowling's Trainspotting and the Inbetweeners taken seriously, and is as such unwatchable. At the risk of appearing judgemental, if you enjoy Skins then you're a fucking idiot. Sorry.

Vikings. It's like The Sopranos with longships, they said. The first episode looked more like CSI: Götaland due to an excessively digitised image speeding up, slowing down and pulling all those jerky little moves which make everything look like a Nine Inch Nails video - the stuff which suggests a game presumably in the hope of conning a few teenagers into watching. Maybe it comes to resemble The Sopranos as the series goes on, or maybe whoever said that was simply watching The Sopranos in the mistaken belief of it being a later instalment of the same story set in modern New Jersey. My knowledge of Viking culture is only marginally smaller than my enthusiasm for the same, so I don't know how authentic this was - apparently the story of a Viking who discovers America, or who discovers something across the sea which his Viking CEO has forbidden him to discover. The fact of it being produced by the History Channel doesn't bode any better than the fact of the first episode comprising a sequence of scenes I've seen a million times before.

Oh look, our hero is off on business, and here's a couple of ruffians calling on his feisty Viking wife intent on having their wicked way, and bugger me - she's just beaten both of them up and sent them packing due to her characteristic feistiness. Who could possibly have seen that coming?

The dialogue was about what you'd expect. No-one actually said talk to the hand or ain't nobody got time for that in this episode, but it wouldn't have made much difference. Most of the script has been written in the Marvel comics version of Shakespeare with a vaguely Scandinavian accent, and the bloke who built the boat was Keith Flint whom older boys and girls will remember from the Prodigy.