Beano

There were eleven of us, myself included, and we met up at the Crystal Palace Tavern - Kingsley, Andre, Don, Sav, Big Dan, Rodney, Tuns, Steve Mozzella, Alan the manager, and some bloke seemingly known to everyone except myself. He was some mate of Alan the manager, probably a postman from up Mandela Way and unknown to me because I tended to avoid overtime where possible. Eight hours of that shit each day, plus four at weekends was in itself quite sufficient.

It was Saturday afternoon, just enough time for everyone to have had a quick shower and a change of clothes after work. A van had been hired and we were going on a beano to Southend-on-Sea.

I'd customarily avoided this sort of thing in the past, but I was approaching forty and I'd begun to ask myself what was the worst that could happen. I liked a drink and I liked to get drunk, and I'd even begun to enjoy the company of other postmen. Even Tuns, my former enemy, seemed to have got over whatever problem he'd had with me when I started at East Dulwich. We weren't buddies, but at least he was no longer sneering at me from the other side of the sorting office whilst rhetorically asking who the fuck I thought I was because I'd just chuckled at a joke cracked by someone from one of his other inordinately complex mental lists.

On the other hand, Alan the manager was an unalloyed tosser, and unfortunately the reason that Nadim had decided against joining us; although Nadim also had some problem with Rodney, something about the changing rooms after some football match and how Rodney had sprayed Ralgex on his finger and then stuck it up some young kid's arse. It sounded a bit unlikely to me, but it also sounded like the sort of disagreement for which there wouldn't be much to gain from taking sides; and personally I liked Rodney. He was one of the funniest people I'd ever met and had at least never tried to stick a  Ralgexy finger up my arse.

Steve was a bit of a wild card and was usually to be found at the centre of an actual shop floor fist fight at least once a week. I never really understood why as he seemed fairly amiable whenever I spoke to him. My guess is that he lacked the ability to rise above the sort of shite people habitually come out with at work.

I used to drink with the Catford postmen, not all the time because that bunch would drink until they couldn't stand, but mostly they were fun. The Dulwich bunch didn't really socialise in the same way, probably because so few of them actually lived in Dulwich, so the beano seemed to be a means of redressing the balance, or something along those lines, but with the disadvantage of it being fairly difficult to stagger home from Southend-on-Sea once I'd had enough.

Wikipedia thus describes the etymology of the term beano:

A bean-feast was an informal term for a celebratory meal or party, especially an annual summer dinner given by an employer to his or her employees, probably derived from a tradition in the Low Countries at Twelfth Night. By extension, colloquially, it describes any festive occasion with a meal and perhaps an outing. The word, and its shorter form beano, are fairly common in Britain, less known in the United States.

So the comic which brought us Dennis the Menace and the Bash Street Kids is therefore named after a works piss-up.

We piled into the van and set off. I managed to seat myself amongst Kingsley, Don, and Andre, and significantly as far as possible from Alan the manager, but not so far as to be unable to hear him trying hard to balance his efforts to be one of the lads whilst maintaining command presence. Curiously for a black man, he didn't seem to particularly like black people, which looked one hell of a lot as though he was trying to prove something to white managers - see, I don't play favourites, I'm not like them, I'm like you. He routinely pulled Kingsley up about stuff he probably wouldn't have noticed had it been some white dude.

Yet even here, as just a bunch of cunts in a van with not a uniform in sight, the hierarchy remained. Alan haw haw hawed with the overtime boys, the docket bashers, those for whom getting off your tits with the boss was apparently strategic; and the rest of us - the losers and tag-alongs - kept to the back of the van.

It was a couple of hours to Southend, going via the Blackwall Tunnel, with just one stop at an industrial estate somewhere in Essex so that Don and Andre could urinate in broad daylight against a chain link fence.

We hit Southend, the seafront, and straight into a pub, and I immediately realised that this had been a fucking terrible idea. I'd imagined all eleven of us, maybe even Alan, quietly sinking into pleasant alcoholic haze over the next nine or ten hours, sinking into our chairs, talking shite, and all differences reduced to raw material for jokes and comic digs. Instead, Southend was swarming with arseholes all looking to get pissed and laid, or looking for something which might at least be obtained by exerting downward force upon everyone else. It was loud and chaotic, and the reason we had all gone into the pub was for as quick a pint as possible while getting our bearings and working out which arcade we were going to hit first. It was going to be an afternoon of pings and flashing lights, and even the act of getting drunk seemed to have taken lesser priority.

'What the hell are we doing?' I asked in rhetorical spirit.

'I really don't know.' Andre's answer seemed similarly dour, much to my surprise. Everyone else was getting into the swing of it, off to some pub, agreeing to meet later, announcing preferences for such and such an arcade game. Even Kingsley had been absorbed into the beano gestalt, contrary to his ordinarily temperate disposition.

I suddenly knew I absolutely could not spend the next eight or nine hours in the company of these people. It was nothing personal but the fact of being stranded here and obligated to engage in someone else's idea of fun until the van took us back to south-east London around nine in the evening was like some massive concrete block I simply couldn't get around. I'd anticipated some social event, but these people didn't want to talk. They wanted to get pissed and play arcade games. They wanted fun activities.

'Fuck this,' I said, seizing the moment. 'I'm going home.'

Only Don, Kingsley and Andre had heard me. The rest were in different bars or battling illuminated aliens or stuffing burgers into their faces.

'I'll come too,' said Andre, looking slightly ill.

We followed signs for the railway station, making our way against the tide of people piling onto the seafront in search of fun. We passed some goths, not the sort I'd grown up with, but the new generation, the ones who were into Marilyn Manson. They were the first of this batch I'd seen, and this was the first time I felt old.

They looked like children. They wore black clothes so clean and tailored as to seem fresh from the box, ridiculous flared trousers and silver spikes in stupid places. They looked like products, like things which came in sets, as though they had all been designed and marketed according to specific guidelines.

Andre and I took the train back to Liverpool Street, sharing a compartment in silence because he was genuinely ill - something he had eaten before setting off that morning.

I, on the other hand, had no such excuse, just the usual error of judgement.

Simon

It hasn't been a great week. It's been cold and I don't do well with the cold, which was one factor that eased my relocation to Texas. Christmas approaches with all the obligations of time spent in the company of persons whose company can be problematic. My wife is being messed about at her place of work. Carol died earlier in the week, and if I hadn't seen her in a couple of decades, it still felt rough even at such distance. Our neighbour has been whining about the cats again with his usual passive-aggressive charm, seemingly expecting me to tell him God knows what - maybe that I'd happily have them all put down rather than suffer another stray turd to be laid upon his beloved driveway; and Simon Morris is dead.

Simon was the vocalist and driving force of a group called the Ceramic Hobs. I first heard them at the tail end of the eighties, or possibly very early nineties - a couple of tracks someone had stuck on the end of a tape for me, and all I can remember was that they sounded like a bit of a racket. My initial impression wasn't great.

Around 1999, he sent a copy of Psychiatric Underground, the Ceramic Hobs first album, to the Sound Projector magazine with the words please feel free to give our CD a good slagging - we can handle it! I was writing reviews for the magazine at the time and Ed Pinsent, the editor, passed it on to me, suggesting that it seemed to be my sort of thing. I thought it sounded like a bit of a racket, but tried to write something positive:

It's certainly one of the more incoherent CDs I've come across. Tape collages are splattered across its twenty-eight tracks with all the ferocity of the pattern in the toilet bowl after a bout of swallie induced pebble-dashery. All mashed up with the tapes and a few techno inspired remixes is an assortment of occasionally tuneful punky numbers complete with gargled vocals, a drumkit being demolished, and a family of chimps at the mixing desk. They must've got through some PG Tips whilst this album was being made. Psychiatric Underground is like one of those kid's drawings of a circus where everything happens simultaneously, an interpretation which, if true to life, would mean that most circuses would last about five minutes.

Another stumbling block had been the association with Pumf Records, whom I recalled from the eighties back when I too had been involved in the whole DIY weirdy tapes by mail scene. To be fair, I hadn't actually heard any of their works, but had become jaded through a million flyers for Pumf products spilling from everything which came in the mail for a period of about a year. It had begun to feel like telemarketing; but then, I reasoned, there almost certainly would have been persons out there similarly weary of my own shittily photocopied self promotion. I swallowed my pride and struck up a correspondence with Stan of Pumf, and then also the Ceramic Hobs guitarist, reasoning that veterans of whatever it was that we both seemed to be veterans of should probably stick together.

Next came Straight Outta Rampton, the second Ceramic Hobs album, and the one where I finally felt I understood what the hell they were trying to do. The above description still applied, but somehow the random patterns had formed something weird and beautiful; and I suddenly felt guilty about having given Psychiatric Underground away and sent for a second copy; at which point Simon wrote to me to say thanks for the write up, but also:

It's weird to be writing to you really. In about 1983 when I was fourteen I used to correspond with Larry Peterson, and I distinctly remember a Do Easy flyer that he sent - that was you, wasn't it?

It was, and he told me that my writing was the best stuff in the Sound Projector - even though it clearly wasn't - which was nice, and we became pals. Musically speaking, I'd been working on the launch of my ill advised rap career, and it had occurred to me that it might be interesting were the impending CD to include a few voices other than my own. I'd heard Simon rap on tapes he'd recorded with Stan as Judge Mental and the Heavy Dread Beat - amongst other ludicrous names - and while his rapping was basic as fuck, it was also funny and made up for the shortfall with sheer anger. I sent him an instrumental and he sent me a vocal which I striped onto the four-track master without too much difficulty. Then I performed with the Ceramic Hobs when they played at the Garage in Islington, first time jumping on stage on the spur of the moment, and on the second occasion with more preparation. I think I may actually have thrown up on him on one of these two occasions, which is always a bonding experience. I doubt our collaboration made any difference to anyone's life, but they were fun, and we loosely kept in touch from that point on - despite my momentary emesis - through my moving to Texas, through the Ceramic Hobs splitting and then reforming in different configurations.

He suffered from schizophrenic episodes and mostly seemed to have it under control, but was mad by some definition - a term he embraced with punky enthusiasm - and was as such a square peg in a round hole world, as the best people tend to be. He was also fiercely intelligent and I found we agreed on most of the important stuff.

It's like he doesn't get the idea that all this arty music is just another form of showbiz, it's all product. I'm convinced of this so when people seem to swallow the false high/low culture divide it bugs me. The Ramones say more to me as art than Aphex Squarepusher laptop powerbook wank anyway.

As fellow graduates of a certain poorly defined thing, we knew a lot of the same people, same points of reference. When Robert Dellar, the Mad Pride activist who had arranged for the Ceramic Hobs to play at the Garage died at the end of 2016, I took it upon myself to produce some sort of anthology as either a tribute or an epitaph. The book was called Kiss of Life, and Simon's contribution was a letter explaining why he couldn't contribute.

My book from last year and the one out soon are full of death and obituaries. I feel like a fucking undertaker or something. I just can't face writing more stuff like that, not about Robert. Apologies again. You can use this paragraph if you like as an explanation of why I can't contribute - I am still much too upset basically.

I know the feeling.

More recently he urged me to get in touch with Philip Best of Consumer Electronics on the grounds of his having moved to Austin, just down the road from me, and arguably being another veteran of whatever the hell it had been when we were all much younger. Philip had been a member of Whitehouse so I was slightly terrified by the idea, but through Simon's persistent nagging I made the effort; and I'm glad I did because, as I now realise, Philip is one of the nicer - or at least less cunty - people I've met through association with noisy music, and he now runs Amphetamine Sulphate publishing which has been responsible for at least a couple of the greatest short novels I've ever read.

In addition to compiling the astonishing Black Pool Legacy, the double album which at last makes sense of the Ceramic Hobs sprawling body of work, Best also published three books by Simon, and I gather Simon had become a valued gate keeper and collaborator as editor of titles by Meg McCarville and others.

Then, just six months ago, while it would be absurd to suggest that we fell out, he pissed me off on facebook - although that hardly makes him unique. I made some comment about his beloved Electric Light Orchestra and he told me, get over yourself. I wouldn't have minded but the comment had been me taking the piss out of my own long-standing hatred of Jeff Lynne and all his infernal works, a joke amounting to here I am being a dick yet again; but he didn't seem to see the funny side and perhaps assumed I was simply being an actual dick. He suggested I would need to familiarise myself with one of their horrible songs in particular because I would be reading about it in Watching the Wheels, his forthcoming book from Amphetamine Sulphate.

That rather depends, I thought to myself, on whether I choose to buy your forthcoming book from Amphetamine Sulphate.

He'd also taken to posting status updates on what it's like to write books, what books should be, and so on, which I found a bit irritating. I unfollowed him and went off to think about that Nocturnal Emissions album I'd sent him as a freebie because I'd ended up with two copies. We hadn't fallen out, but it's always good to take a break, and I'd reconnect in a few months once he'd moved past delivering edicts and I'd grudgingly read Watching the Wheels, as we both knew I would. It was probably silly, but so is existence.

I vaguely followed his goings on through others. He came to read in Los Angeles at an Amphetamine Sulphate evening, and it was nice to know he was doing well and already had another book in the works.

Then about two weeks ago, all of those mutual friends were suddenly worried at his having gone missing from his home in Blackpool. He'd vanished below the radar on a couple of previous occasions, deactivating social media accounts whilst getting his head together, and I assumed this would be the same; although it was a little worrying that the police were now involved in looking for him.

He'd show up.

He'd turn up and there would be some new novel spun from this latest psychological turnpike.

Just this morning my wife came in from her morning run and told me his body had been found.

Simon is no longer with us.

Gone.

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised.

I wonder at the folly of falling out - or at least going silent running - over Jeff bloody Lynne, but not for long. It wouldn't have made much difference to anything, I don't think.

I dig out his old letters and postcards. I listen to Black Pool Legacy and realise we really have lost one of the good 'uns, which likewise doesn't come as a surprise. I always knew it.

He was one of those people who made things interesting, who caused good things to happen, whose art - even with the bleakest and blackest of subjects under the microscope - could not help but sound optimistic, hopeful, even funny by some mechanism I couldn't even begin to understand. He struggled but he always seemed to come through. He made things better.

I will miss him.

Some English Bloke 2020

Unfortunately I am unable to stand for the office of president, but although I'm not familiar with the full legality of my situation, I don't see that this necessarily needs to be a hindrance. After all, much like those dinosaurs in Jurassic Park, Donald usually finds a way. So maybe if you all write me in we can make this happen; and if you choose me to be the fourty-fifth president of the United States of America, I promise that I will probably do some of the following, depending on how it all works out and providing I'm not super busy or whatever.

• Creation of a walled sin bin state for resettlement of all the white supremacists, hardcore Christians, anyone who ever used the term liberal as a pejorative, and general shitbags who refuse to get along with the rest of us. I'm not sure where this will be, but somewhere with hardly any existing population, maybe West Texas or Wyoming. They won't be allowed electricity, technology, outside aid or anything much at all, but will instead be free to demonstrate how much better they are than the rest of us by growing their own food and re-inventing fire. It should be noted that this isn't actually a prison but rather should be viewed as an exciting opportunity given that those forcibly committed won't actually have to have done anything wrong by existing laws, aside from pissing me off.
• Free socialised health care for all excepting residents of the aforementioned sin bin state, who probably wouldn't want it anyway. Speaking of the sin bin state, it will need a name. I'm thinking along the lines of Freedomia or Patriotica, something which will help the inmates feel good about living there.
• Cops, including those presently serving, will be required to undertake more rigorous training for a period no shorter than two years so as to root out all the wrong 'uns. Law enforcement's current recruitment process seems to be limited to asking some rando if he wants a gun, then just giving him one when he says yes; so obviously that has to change.
• Gay and transgender persons to be able to buy a cake where and when the fuck ever they like, up to and including banging on your door at three in the morning and demanding immediate macaroons.
• Trophy hunting laws to be adjusted so as to allow only for the hunting, killing, and subsequent stuffing (or conversion to sausages) of fellow trophy hunters and their immediate relatives.
• Cosplay will be banned along with all references to the same, and use of the term bingeworthy television show.
• Massive tax on trucks driven within city limits or on highways without documentation proving the vehicle to be integral to the running of one's business, or window mounted documentation detailing the length and girth of one's penis to be displayed at all times. That should clear the fucking roads a bit.
• Cycle lanes everywhere. General ban on lycra.
• Instatement of a royal family, seeing as that's clearly what everyone really wants, if the last two-hundred years of portentous speeches and Ionic columns are any indication. Obviously it will need to be run along different lines to that of the British royal family so as to prevent the occurrence of the sort of beastliness which has befallen the same at least since we found out that one of them wanted to be a tampon. As in England, the proposed American line of hereditary supreme beings will have the constitutional right - and duty - to kick the government's ass when occasion demands, and I shall begin interviews as soon as I'm in office. At the moment I'm thinking either Amy Sedaris, Neil deGrasse Tyson, or Octavia Spencer, but we'll see.
• Pedestrian walkways on every urban street, road or thoroughfare and a general ban on electric scooter rentals so as to encourage exercise and generally not being a useless lump of shit.
• Unilateral ban on the music of ELO, possibly excepting material recorded in collaboration with Olivia Newton John which shall henceforth be exclusively regarded as part of Olivia Newton John's body of work.
• Comically massive fines on litter crimes because there's really no excuse, penalties possibly up to and including on the spot execution like in Judge Dredd, or at least permanent exile to Freedomia, Patriotica, or whatever we decide to call the place.
• Close Guantanamo Bay and any other institution engaged in the sort of practices we routinely condemn when someone else does them. While it's tempting to have members of the current administration spend a couple of years down there having substances pumped up their bottoms just to see how much they like it, we need to get out of the habit of expecting an eye for an eye.
• Spanish to become official principal language of the United States. Let's make America Mexico again.
• Political campaigning to be exclusively state funded with each candidate given equal time, so as to hopefully reduce the occurrence of political offices being limited to useless arseholes with too much fucking money, not mentioning no names or nuffink.
• Raise Pat Sajak's wages. The man is a national treasure.
• Shut down Disneyland because it's really not doing anyone any good in the long term. In fact close down Disney and call it a day.
• General ban on film or television relating to Doctor Who, Harry Potter, Big Bang Theory, any other comedy wherein three persons occupy a sofa as a fourth enters the room to a round of either laughter or applause without having had to do anything funny. Also, no more shitty superhero shows. The films can stay, at least the Marvel ones, but there's no point hanging onto any of the rest.
• Massive increases in Native American rights, the precise nature of which will be deduced by actually talking to them and asking where they see room for improvement. Conservatives getting all pissed off shall not be an impediment to the implementation or expansion of any of the rights involved.
• Television and cable broadcasts to be limited to the hours of six in the evening until midnight. No-one needs breakfast television, or to be sat on their arse all afternoon watching seventy consecutive episodes of anything involving a futuristic spaceship. Read a fucking book, you lazy twats.
• Unilateral rationalisation of corporate culture with particular emphasis on anything which sounds a little too much like it came out of a self-help book. You're there to do a job, not to come up with fun fancy dress options for Friday's meeting of the taco club.
• Socialism to be taught as a subject in schools, at least so as to cut down on internet turds ranting on about it without having the first clue what it means beyond being something that some bigger boys don't seem to like very much.
• All sports broadcasts, without exception, to be limited to a single television channel. It isn't news and the rest of us don't care.
• Banned words and phrases to include swag, life hack, any other form of hack, any form of hack being described as unlocked, bling where not referring directly to the work of Louisiana based rap artists, political correctness as reason given for your supposedly not being allowed to say something stupid, and awesome. Also anything obviously derived from self help literature.
• General decriminalisation of narcotics, because the cure seems to be worse than whatever condition it was supposed to treat.
• Huge cut backs in the armed forces. I suppose we have to keep some, although I'm open to debate on that score, but I don't see how we need enough as to be able to invade other countries. We're supposed to be better than that, after all.
• Replace Deena on Jersey Shore. She really isn't bringing anything to the table.
• References to the Bauhaus to be removed from art history textbooks. Those people just weren't that interesting.
• Patriotism will be reclassified so that it's no longer viewed as either a talent or a qualification any more than enjoying the music of Bruce Springsteen is either a talent or a qualification. Toxic Patriotism to be reclassified as a psychological condition requiring treatment, symptoms being recognised as anything upwards of the phrase thank you for your service used more than three times in the same week.
• High ranking government positions to be filled by rappers, WC, Brotha Lynch Hung, E40, C-Bo, Ice Cube, MC Eiht, Spice 1 and so on, providing they're available. I'm not sure what they would do, but I've no doubt they could come up with something interesting.
• Massive reinvestment in manual labour as an industry so as to get people working and to cut down on the surplus of automated shite we don't need.
• Taking climate science seriously on the grounds of it being science and therefore not really something with multiple choice options. Those who don't understand this have the opportunity of going back to school until they do. It's not hard.
• No more National Enquirer or any of that kind of thing. Reportage of anything qualifying as opinion rather than news will be strictly regulated. You should have better things to do with your time than fill your head up with junk. If you're bored, go for a fucking walk or something.
• Claims made on Prince Buster records to count as legal precedent.
• National anthem to be something or other by Kiss, possibly either Do You Love Me or I Love It Loud, or failing that, the theme tune from Hancock's Half Hour.
• Freedom for el Chapo along with the dropping of all charges against same. Possibly also see if he wants a job. Maybe we could make him the first King.
• References to Bauhaus to be removed from musical history textbooks. Having recorded one decent single does not render them any more interesting than it does the five-million other bands who never quite managed to write a second song.
• Stupidity to resume its standing as an undesirable disadvantage rather than a qualification.

There you are. There's probably more but we can talk about the rest once I'm in office and running the show, or at least you can listen while I explain. See you next November, citizens.

Prophecies of Doom and Gloom

A man walks into a dentist's surgery, as the joke would begin. I am that man, and it's actually the hygienist's surgery, and I'm unlikely to be cracking any jokes because my customary October slump has turned up a month late. My mother is in hospital on a different continent, every day brings an increased awareness of just how many fatheads are at large in the world, Donald Trump still hasn't been loaded into a cannon and fired into the sun, it's pissing with rain, and I'm at the dentist.

I've anticipated a repeat of the cowboy hat comment, which has additionally dimmed my mood. Last time I came, she beckoned me into the surgery and said, 'That's quite a look you have going there. You have your cowboy hat. You have your check shirt…'

It isn't a fucking look. These are simply clothes I wear, and the Stetson is practical because it keeps off both scorching sun and pouring rain; plus we're in fucking Texas and the hat is therefore hardly worth commenting upon unless you're a moron; but I know she's just making conversation.

'Leave your hat on the side,' she says without further discussion of the same, much to my surprise. 'So, have you been doing anything fun?'

I climb into the chair. 'Not really. My mother has been in hospital so it's been a pretty tough six months.'

'Oh no. Is she okay?'

'I hope so but I don't know. It's very frustrating. I mean I went back to England in September, but there's not much I can do. It's her hip. She's had it replaced.'

'Still - she'll have the best healthcare money can buy.'

I'm momentarily bewildered by this comment. 'Not really. It's England.'

'Well, they can always fly someone in.'

Again I'm bewildered but I carry on. 'Well they've operated, so hopefully she will be home soon.'

'How old is she now? Ninety-four?'

I have no memory of ever having told this woman anything about my mother. 'What? Did Bess talk to you? You must be thinking of her grandmother. Anyway, no - she isn't ninety-four.'

'Bess?'

'My wife.' I tell her my mother's age.

'Your mother?'

'Yes, my mother, the one who went in for an operation, the one who phoned me and said I don't want you to worry but I think I've had a stroke.'

She laughs, but it's an awkward laugh. 'I thought you were talking about the Queen!'

She gibbers an apology, and I realise that everything which came from my mouth since she asked whether I'd been doing anything fun may as well have been blinky blonkey blimey, Mary Poppins! She finks I bin talking about the jolly old Queen 'cause I is a British from England innit! Wot else would I of bin talking about if not 'er Royal 'ighness. Stroike a loite!

The day just became even more depressing, which isn't entirely unexpected.

She works on my teeth for about thirty minutes, maybe forty. I am in excruciating discomfort because she can't numb me during cleaning for reasons she explained last time and which I didn't understand; and she has to use the sonic cleaning implement in preference to the manual one which didn't used to hurt so much. Every so often she stops and asks if I'm in pain. I tell her yes and she carries on. Maybe she thinks that the general impression of her concern will have a mild anaesthetic effect. It feels as though someone is stabbing needles into my gums with force, which probably isn't too far off what's happening.

The other dentist drops in and studies my x-ray. 'This one is going to have to come out. Is it painful?'

'No, and it's been absolutely fine. If anything that particular tooth seems less mobile than it was this time last year.'

'Well, it isn't going to be fine forever.'

'Thanks. I already know that. If it's okay with you, I'd prefer to have it taken out when it starts giving me trouble, rather than now while it's still fine.'

Rebecca, my regular hygienist, has retired. I liked Rebecca. Somehow she was able to clean my teeth beneath the gum line without it being agony, and without assuming I'd be using those same teeth to scoff some jolly old fish and chips like the bloke that I am. Rebecca had been around Europe and was interesting, with photos of her family and places to which they had travelled lining her office. Her replacement has just a picture of herself and her husband, who looks like your bog standard truck-driving shithead.

My regular dentist has also become an infrequent visitor these days, leaving me with these two and their prophecies of doom and gloom delivered as though I've been living under the illusion of having the teeth of an Osmond brother. My regular dentist - the guy who actually did the work and saved what teeth I had left - used to tell me how well I was doing, and how he wished he'd taken photographs of my mouth prior to treatment so as to showboat at dental conferences with the before and after shots.

Eventually the pain stops.

She finishes and makes me another appointment, now giving me a special mouthwash to use. Apparently it will do something to reduce the pain of her stabbing away at my gums even further, but I know that she may as well be giving me a scented candle for all the difference it will make.

It's now raining even harder.

Face Off in the Parking Lot

We pull up to the fence and get out of the car. It's a chain link fence with a steep grass bank on the other side and we can see into the gardens of houses on Sumner far below. Five or six cats are running up the bank to greet us, tails aloft. We still can't get near them, but I guess they've come to recognise us. Bess fills the two plastic water bowls and I leave a couple of piles of dried food in the usual places. We walk back to the car and watch everyone chow down.

'Look,' I say pointing, 'there's the fluffy one. I haven't seen him in a while.'

He trots across the Walmart parking lot to join the others. The others are a tabby whom Bess has provisionally named Tree Cat, two black and white with markings which give them the appearance of Adolf Hitler - mother and son, by our estimation - a black cat, and a sleek grey who closely resembles our own Grace.

We do this every Tuesday evening on behalf of the Feral Cat Coalition, feeding the strays here and over behind Advance Auto Parts; because there will always be stray cats, so it's better to encourage healthy, stable colonies which can be more easily trapped, neutered, and then returned.

Sometimes we show up and there will be some guy sat in his car. Occasionally it will be some guy who lives in his car. Such is the economy. We leave them alone and they leave us alone, but tonight it's just us and the cats.

It's cold so we get back into the car and sit for a few more minutes, just watching the gang.

Another vehicle pulls up, a red Chevrolet. The door opens dispensing a massive dog, an English bull terrier which runs around the grass, wagging its tail and barking happily.

'Oh fuck,' I say.

'Are you kidding me?' Bess asks rhetorically.

The dog lays a turd, then another one. It doesn't seem to have noticed the cats.

'It isn't er… doing anything,' I suggest, hopefully.

'Let's wait and see.'

The dog, which is fairly large and muscular, suddenly barks and runs to the fence, after the cats.

'Oh hell no!' Bess leaps from the car. I get out too.

There's a woman sat in the other vehicle, window down, playing with her phone. She hears us talking and gets out. She's Hispanic with hair dyed different colours, maybe thirty. Her clothes look cheap and feature glittering panels. I'm about to say something about keeping the dog on a leash but I hear my wife's voice rise up like an angry guest on Jerry Springer. 'You better control your dog, bitch!'

Without looking I can almost sense my wife's head doing the cobra thing, side to side. I'm slightly shocked and even a little depressed that the term bitch has already entered the negotiation process. I don't think I'm going to be able to get the lid back on this one.

'Who the fuck are you calling bitch?' the woman demands, not without some justification, I feel.

I raise my hands in the air like a school teacher. 'There are plenty of dog parks. You can't just let your dog run around here.'

'She needed the toilet. She was crying!'

'Sure, but we're here to feed the cats, and your dog should really be on a leash.'

'There are leash laws in this city, bitch,' my wife proposes, or something along those lines.

'Maybe if we could just not call each other bitch for a moment,' I suggest, but no-one hears me.

There follows some more hooting and hollering and then we're back in our car, driving away with no idea of what just happened beyond knowing that the situation wasn't going to get any better. My wife had a lousy day at work and wasn't in the mood for bullshit. She doesn't often get angry, but when she does it's quite impressive.

'The cats will have run away,' I tell her, hoping that I'm right.

We drive down towards Lowes where we see a cop. Bess took a photo of the red Chevrolet on her phone, so we have the license plate, and you don't just let your dog out to shit everywhere, no leash and with no intention of cleaning it up.

We turn around and drive back up to Walmart. The red Chevrolet is still there, but no dog so she must have called it back. This is a relief because taking it to a cop would have felt a bit too much like the actions of one of those twitchy fuckers who posts on Next Door about strangers seen calling at houses in the neighbourhood.

We go home.

Temperature Rising

I'm back in England, and as usual I haven't been particularly looking forward to it or to the disruption of my daily Texan existence. Also as usual, it turns out that the thing I haven't been particularly looking forward to is the flight, not so much being in the air, but the bullshit and misdirection of airports, the stressful automated transactions which always inevitably go wrong for my discomfort and inconvenience, and spending up to twenty-four hours of my life in constant motion; but aside from these aspects, it's mostly okay - as I always seem to forget.

I'm at Heathrow with just a single National Express coach left to catch, the final leg of my Tolkienesque quest. As usual, the first thing I've done is to purchase tobacco. I don't ordinarily smoke and have accordingly developed a superpower by which, should I be driven to do so by anything stressful, I can smoke my way through a twenty-five gram pouch of tobacco then simply quit without having to think about smoking again until the next time, assuming there'll be a next time. Practically this means that I smoke, on average, for about three weeks of the year and don't miss it for any of the remaining forty-nine; and two of those three weeks usually occur in England because I don't like flying and I don't like waiting around, which I have to do a great deal when catching planes or coaches.

I pop into the WHSmith kiosk situated in Terminal Three, as usual. Strangely this has become a routine. The pouch of tobacco costs me £34 but I pay up because I really, really need a fag.

'Has it gone up in price?' I ask the small boy working the till, trying hard not to seem like some indignant expat gammon raging that you couldn't make it up!

'It has,' he explains, 'but it's airport prices too.'

'It was about a tenner this time last year,' I whimper plaintively, whilst trying to keep from sounding like I think it's his fault.

I go to stand outside the terminal building where there's a designated smoking area. I think about the sheer improbability of a complete fucking clown like Boris Johnson having become Prime Minister, and I think about my £34 worth of tobacco, and I look around half expecting to see someone pushing a wheelbarrow full of money into a bakery. The last time I came back to England, my initial unwelcome shock was provided by the headlines of newspapers on sale in the very same branch of WHSmith, mostly crowing over Brexit with creaking, witless puns such as SEE EU LATER or DOVER AND OUT. There's always something.

I take a coach to Coventry, then a taxi from the bus station to my mother's place in Earlsdon. She is now having trouble getting around, finds it difficult without a stick, and has had a stair lift installed. This follows on from a series of medical complaints of mysterious composition which began with an email amounting to I don't want you to worry but I think I've had a stroke. Thankfully, what medical diagnoses she has been given have at least confirmed that it wasn't a stroke, and neither was it anything in the general vicinity of cancer; so despite everything, the situation is at least not quite so terrible as I'd feared. I'd anticipated the beginning of the end, my mother seeming abruptly and dramatically two decades older than she was this time last year with a house miraculously transformed into the set of Steptoe and Son, neither of which have turned out to be the case.

Each night, we watch the evening news on Channel 4. I haven't really seen television news in over a year, more or less since my last visit. I avoid it at home in Texas because it clashes with Wheel of Fortune and features a depressing level of focus on American politics, which is never anything sunny. My wife and myself occasionally watch Eyewitness News on KENS5, but only because it precedes Wheel of Fortune and we sometimes want to know what the weather is doing; but otherwise it doesn't really count as news, mostly being gurgling horseshit about basketball.

My perception of what's going on in the United Kingdom, is therefore usually subject to distortion. For example, back in July, 2018, one of my neighbours posted on Next Door, our neighbourhood forum, giving account of her visit to London, which had coincided with that of Trump. Don't worry, she reassured us, the Brits love our President. I know there were some protesters, but I'd say there were about two-hundred of them at the most, so don't believe what the liberal media has been telling us. The liberal media - and a few of my facebook friends who had been on those same marches - estimated the number as being at least tens of thousands. I mentioned this but the subject was subsequently closed because I'd brought politics into it. The point is that what little I know is mostly seen through a funny-shaped keyhole.

I spend some of my time in England with my dad, and whilst he hardly mentions Brexit - perhaps having finally realised that we're never going to see eye to eye on this subject - his general fear of reality expresses itself in other ways. Whilst out walking, there are a couple of points at which he somehow steers the conversation around to the history of the environment. Our climate is now very different to what it was in prehistoric times, he explains as though this will be news to me. He doesn't quite get so far as to deny climate science, but it feels as though that's where he's heading. Later, as we wander around Coventry city centre with my Aunt Lynda - presently visiting from Australia - I hear him conclude some muttered discourse by telling her that England is full up. Later still, Mary - who would have been his third wife but for the fact that he didn't want to get married again - tells me that what she likes about Donald Trump is that he says what he's thinking.

Channel 4 News therefore comes as quite a shock to my system because I'm not accustomed to discussion of climate change as something which is absolutely, definitely happening right now; and  I'm not accustomed to discussion wherein angry numbskulls who don't understand stuff aren't steering the conversation. So there's coverage of the Extinction Rebellion protests, very much impressing upon me a sense of scale, and just how many people are genuinely pissed off by how things are going. There's coverage of glacial retreat, green valleys which were filled with compacted ice just ten years ago. There's coverage of coastal towns and villages abandoned as sea levels rise, both in Wales and Rhode Island.

It's horrifying, but at the same time it's kind of uplifting to realise that people are actually talking about this stuff, and a lot of people, and people who can string a fucking sentence together without having to pull a rolled up Daily Express from their back pocket and have another look at the headline. Channel 4 News additionally visits a Swedish plant which sucks carbon out of the atmosphere; the message being that, contrary to the received wisdom, the technology exists. Rendering the planet unfit for human habitation is now something in which we have options. We could make a start on undoing the damage right now; or we could bow to the shitheaded edicts of people who demand that there be two sides to every story when they can't even get their own arguments straight.

Against the usual odds, I return from England feeling better about the world, because I return with a better understanding of the shape it's in, and a significantly better appreciation of how many people actually give a shit. On my last day in England, the Supreme court essentially tells Boris Johnson to go fuck himself, and then later in the evening I learn that impeachment proceedings are underway back in the US, at long fucking last. It feels as though we're coming to our collective senses. It feels as though we're finally getting to claw back some ground from the shitheads.

Doctor, No

Six months before I moved to Texas I had a blood test. The results came back confirming my being in possession of so much cholesterol that I could have caught fire at any moment, and that my blood pressure was so high as to facilitate my fighting crime as a sort of blood-gusher-based superhero by opening a vein and blasting criminals with a high-pressure geyser of claret.

'It's winter and everywhere is frozen,' I explained to my doctor, 'I've been sat on my arse for the last six weeks, but okay - I'll make the effort to get out and about a bit more.'

She wasn't having it and prescribed Simvastatin, which struck me as a little premature seeing as I felt fine. I had the feeling she was just really into writing out prescriptions.

After three days of taking the drug, I hadn't slept for so much as five minutes, hadn't even felt drowsy, and I wanted to kill myself. By suggesting that I wanted to kill myself, I don't mean to imply that I felt a little bit glum and went around with a frowny face. I mean that I wanted to kill myself. I therefore stopped taking the pills and immediately felt better.

My doctor told me off, saying that I should have consulted her before quitting the prescribed medication and that I'd been very irresponsible.

'It's because I couldn't sleep and wanted to kill myself,' I explained.

'Of course, there are sometimes minor problems of that nature,' she admitted, 'but side effects usually pass after the first couple of weeks.'

'I would have killed myself by then.'

I refused further medication, instead knuckling down to riding my bike fifteen miles each day regardless of ice and snow. Six months later I underwent another medical examination at a Harley Street practice, as required by the immigration people. My cholesterol was fine and my blood pressure was normal.

Gosh.

More recently I underwent a medical examination at the Oakwell Farms medical center, something required by my medical insurance. I came close to weighing 210lbs before Christmas and had therefore been trying to get my weight down, mainly just through increased exercise and less snacking. It seemed to be working, and I was down to about 194lbs when I went for the medical.

'Shouldn't I take off my clothes or something?' I asked.

'No. Just get on the scale,' said the nurse. 'Do you know how much you weigh?'

'I was 194lbs this morning.'

'Well, you're 205lbs now.'

'That would probably be the boots and the three layers of clothing.'

The examination was over in minutes and struck me as lacking attention to detail. The results came back confirming I had more cholesterol than anyone who had ever lived in the entire history of triglycerides, and my blood pressure was so high that I could have severed my feet at the ankles and blasted myself off into outer space like a human rocket.

The results pissed me off so I ignored them. For one thing, my blood pressure was usually normal when I had it checked at the periodontist's office three or four times a year.

Another couple of months later I decided to have yet another medical examination. It seemed like high time I should have a doctor stick his finger up my arse in search of prostate cancer, and I figured I might as well have a proper check up on the same ticket. I was exercising every day, losing weight and doing well, so I wanted to know just how well because the previous examination had been a bit of a joke.

The nurse weighed me, stood me next to a tape measure, filled five big Cumberland sausage sized test tubes with blood, and asked a string of questions.

Do you smoke?

How much do you drink?

How many fingers am I holding up?

Can you tell me the name of the president?

I pulled a face answering the last one, and so did she.

The doctor came in.

'Are you going to stick a finger up my arse?' I enquired.

'No. No. There's no need. Cancer screening is all part of the blood test these days.'

'Okay.'

'I see that you smoke,' he said happily.

'No.'

'You don't smoke?'

'No, I don't.'

He seemed disappointed. 'Well, your blood pressure is a little high.'

'Is it really?'

'Yes, if I could—'

'I can tell you now, I'm not taking statins.'

'Statins are used to treat cholesterol, not high blood pressure.'

'Oh okay.'

'Well, perhaps we'd better wait until the results of this latest blood test come back.'

We waited, but I'd already knew I didn't like the guy. He was younger and fatter than myself, and I was somehow the wheezing porker in the equation. I could already sense him angling to prescribe something. He seemed to be fishing around in my medical history for anything he could work with. That was the impression I received, and the phone call came a few weeks later.

'The doctor urgently needs to discuss the results of your blood test. You have so much cholesterol that we've had to invent a new number by which to quantify it, and your blood pressure is such that at first we thought it was simply that Hulk Hogan was somehow living inside you.'

'Oh fuck off,' I didn't say, not actually slamming the phone down. I made an appointment, then cancelled it and made another for a day on which my wife would be able to come along, because she works in healthcare and is fairly adept at bullshit detection.

We were bang on time because they charge twenty-five dollars for missed appointments, a fine imposed because they could have spent those minutes curing someone, and healing the sick is the only thing with which they are concerned. Forty minutes later we were at last ushered into the presence of my doctor.

'You have a 13% chance of contracting heart disease before you reach seventy,' he smiled.

'Well, no-one lasts forever,' I said, 'and 13% - aren't those about the same odds as I have of being hit by a meteorite?'

My wife pointed out something statistical regarding the hereditary aspect of heart conditions such as the one which had an alleged 13% chance of killing me. I didn't really understand all of what she was saying, but the doctor did, and didn't really seem to have an answer for it, not directly.

'So, is there any history of heart disease in your family?'

'It isn't really a disease though, is it? I mean you can't have a stroke because you ate a sandwich with heart disease germs on it, or have I failed to understand some aspect of my impending doom?'

'It's a very real condition,' he said, apparently not having grasped my point. 'Do you know if anyone in your family has suffered with heart trouble?'

'No-one whatsoever, although significantly more or less all of them have had cancer, which was the actual reason I came here seeing as that seems a more pressing concern from where I'm sat.'

'Well, you're fine on that score.'

'That's good to know.'

'Everything is looking good aside from the cholesterol and the blood pressure.'

'Well, I'm not taking statins as I already told you.'

'Statins have come a long way and have been greatly improved over the last couple of years.'

'I don't care. I'm still not taking them.' I reiterated the account given in the first nine paragraphs above, mainly because it seemed as though he'd forgotten our having met on the occasion of the examination which had yielded the results now under discussion.

'Yes, I've heard all about your NHS,' - he curled off a wry smile, almost a sneer - 'no diagnosis, just chucking a handful of pills at you and sending you on your—'

'There's nothing wrong with the NHS,' I said, noticing I'd used that tone of voice which expresses openness to the possibility of finishing the conversation outside in the parking lot. I wasn't having this fucking tosser running the NHS down.

'Well, for now we can consider other options, healthier eating and so on.'

'I eat healthy,' I said. 'I suppose you're going to tell me I should cut my McDonald's intake down to just four visits a day, or something of the sort.'

'We eat very healthily,' my wife confirmed. 'He does all the cooking and it's all fresh. We don't eat salty things.'

'You may not think you do, but even when you open up a can of Campbell's soup because it's in the recipe, well, the salt content—'

'That isn't,' I cut him off with just a hint of Margaret Rutherford in my voice, 'the sort of cooking in which I engage.'

My wife has a recipe book typed out by an ageing relative during the great depression. I barely recognise any of the recipes, which truly belong to a culture to which I am alien. Many of them seem to combine ingredients which are already recognisably food, a tin of mushroom soup poured over battered onion rings, then baked as a casserole - and the recipe concluded with a bewildering comment of sooooooo good or similar. It seems like the sort of cooking I tried when I was fifteen, baked beans plus a teaspoon of every herb or spice on the rack because if one is good, then twenty-six will surely be amazing. I like to think I've evolved beyond the culinary level of a bewildered teenager left to his own devices.

'I apologise if it seems like I'm on the defensive,' I said without feeling even remotely sorry, 'but you have to appreciate that I eat pretty well, I don't smoke, hardly drink, and I cycle one hundred miles a week, and you're telling me that it isn't enough. I may as well be sat on my arse scoffing pies and cakes all day for all the difference it makes. That's what you're telling me.'

'Well, I'd like you to imagine the effects of a stroke, being unable to speak, maybe one side of your body paralysed—'

Now he was trying to scare me, somehow imagining I had no idea what a stroke could be or how it might affect a person. 'Sure, but if you don't mind I'll just keep on as I am. I've lost a stone since Christmas and a little bit more drops off every week, so I'm not even sure what I'm doing here.'

'Well, we can see how you're getting on in another six months.'

'Fine.'

We left with no real intention of coming back. It seems I put on weight when I first moved to America, because the government forces us all to eat a cheeseburger whilst saluting the flag every morning; I have about a stone to go before I get back to what is supposedly my ideal weight for my age and height. I will get there, and if my blood pressure and cholesterol remain high then I'll just have to assume that's how it's going to be.

Truck Pictures

The diner is called Bar-B-Cutie, which makes me wince somewhat. Barbecue is okay but it's way down my list, contrary to current geographical determinist thought or at least to Mary, my dad's partner who asked what sort of thing I eat in Texas, then declared but it's all barbecue innit. This will be my third top convention, an event hosted for the benefit of collectors of high-end hand-tooled metal spinning tops.

Me neither, but Andrea does, and Andrea is my wife's best friend. The person who agreed to organise the convention raffle has gone AWOL, so Bess is helping out. The convention is tomorrow but we're meeting tonight for the sake of having a look at the venue.

Bar-B-Cutie seems to be the McDonald's of barbecue - the cheap and cheerful version. I order decimated brisket in a burger bun with sides of mashed potato and coleslaw, plus a beer - obviously. The two previous top conventions were similarly held at barbecue joints, the towns of Mansfield and Spring respectively. Collectors of high-end hand-tooled metal spinning tops enjoy barbecue.

We find a seat and wait for the food. I haven't eaten all day so I'm very hungry. Other spinning top people mill around, and Andrea points out Robyn and Lawerence. I recognise Robyn from one of the two previous events.

The brisket is delicious, once it arrives. The mashed potato is decent. The coleslaw is unpleasant, with a faint tang of waste disposal or a sink which fails to drain. After two forkfuls I decide against it.

Robyn turns up at our table. She remembers Bess and she shows us photographs of her resin creations. They're purely decorative but are quite nice. She explains that Lawerence's name is spelled that way because his father didn't make it through high school, so the misspelling is legal. Funnily enough, when banks and shitbrained employers misspell my name, that's how they misspell it.

'Also, he's Lawrence with a w,' Robyn adds. 'I know back in your country it's mostly Laurence with a u.'

I try, but am unable to recall ever having met a Laurence. I can't think of many Lawrences either, excepting Lawrence Miles.

I'm still hungry so I order another burger, this time with Polish sausage. It comes with fries and tastes good, although the fries are a bit dry.

Robyn shows me a photograph on her smartphone - a truck with horns attached to the front bumper.

'We knew we were in Texas just as soon as we saw this.'

I don't know if she expects us to be flattered, impressed, amazed or what. I think about my dad showing Lynda around Coventry Cathedral, telling her all about Australia and what it's like to live there based on the month he spent visiting Frank, his younger brother. Lynda moved to Australia in 1973. I expect she knows a fair bit about what it's like to live there but is too polite to say anything.

Meanwhile, back in the present, back at Bar-B-Cutie, Robyn is showing me a picture of vehicles driven by herself and misspelled Lawerence, both dayglo lime, a truck and a Dodge of some description, therefore ticking another couple of boxes.

The air conditioning is such that I'm cold enough to wish I'd brought a jumper. I can't really hear what anyone is saying because we're in a room full of people, specifically top enthusiasts; and when I can hear them, I don't always understand because they speak with that wide-ass Texan cracker accent which I don't actually hear on a daily basis; and when I do understand them, I can't work out why they're telling me. Someone is showing me a picture of their fucking truck and I feel a powerful need to be elsewhere before anyone asks what I thought of the last Spurs game.

Bess, as usual, is able to read my mind. 'We'll leave before nine,' she reassures me, except it doesn't because it's only just gone seven. I don't say anything but my face says it for me. I've always found it difficult to conceal expressions of despair and horror.

Ten minutes later we're in the car heading home.

'Maybe you should just do a half day tomorrow,' Bess suggests. 'I could come back and pick you up around lunch.'

I agree to this, then realise I simply can't.

'Do you really need me to be there, I mean at all?'

'Well, I don't like to leave you on your own.'

'I'll be fine,' I say.

'Honest.'

The Filth & the Furry

San Antonio is host to yet another furry convention. There was one a couple of years ago. Bess and I drove past the hotel playing host to the event a couple of times just for the sake of watching adults dressed as bright orange cartoon rodents wander back and forth in broad daylight. Despite some initial sneering, it was difficult to really settle on what we thought of these people, even whether we really thought anything at all.

For those of you who have been avoiding both the internet and popular culture for the best part of the last couple of decades, furries are persons - adults from all walks of life - who spend time dressed in anthropomorphic animal costumes. They communicate online or in person at dedicated conventions in the persona - or fursona, as they seem to prefer - of their chosen animal. I see it as essentially the same deal as dressing up as Batman and attending a comic book event, although many furries would probably insist that their calling is something which runs much deeper.

I have no horse in this particular race, although I know at least one furry, and he's a nice guy so I'm reluctant to pour scorn on something which he clearly enjoys. Bess and I watched Fursonas, a 2016 documentary examining the community dynamic, directed by Dominic Rodriguez, so most of what I know comes from that.

The documentary proposes, amongst other things, a community of people who identify with animal personas in some notionally spiritual sense, because naturally it has to be something deep. It can't be anything so simple as that you just like dressing up as a bright blue raccoon, because that would be weird. I don't buy the spirit animal angle, or that identifying as a googly-eyed panda is in any way comparable to having been born with a sexual orientation other than one of those sanctioned by fundamentalist religious fanatics. One reason for my inability to buy it is that the fursuits - for which furries pay one hell of a lot of money - aren't really meant to represent animals; they're cartoon animals or mascots, cutesy anthropomorphic descendants of Saturday morning children's television, Bugs Bunny, Top Cat, Sonic the Hedgehog and the rest. They're a child's eye view of the animal kingdom representing, as with much popular culture, a retreat into the secure, simplified realm of childhood - a tropism which is probably not in itself difficult to understand.

Is it harming anyone?

I'm not sure it's even a meaningful question given that nothing is entirely without the potential for harm under certain circumstances. The character I found most alarming whilst watching Fursonas was Boomer the Dog, an IT technician who strives to live his life as a dog, specifically as a Berger des Pyrénées dog. He has a fursuit he made himself from shredded newspaper, and wears twin ponytails on top of his head which he describes as his puppy ears. He comes across, at least to me, as someone who has retreated into a sedated Disney-inspired child state as a means of skating around a nervous breakdown of Biblical proportions. He's so far gone as to have repulsed others in the furry community, who have accordingly denounced him as just some nutcase whilst themselves dressed as bright pink chipmunks and prairie dogs. Personally, I found him creepy and slightly disturbing as I do almost anything with even the faintest whiff of Disney or its infantile aesthetic, and I really wonder if Boomer's private obsession is doing him any good; but on the other hand, he claims that it makes him happy, and he certainly seems happy, and he doesn't appear to give two shits what the rest of us may think. Additionally, I'm not sure Boomer's private obsession is necessarily any worse than those of your average truck-driving Coors-chugging shithead. When it comes to persons with whom I'd least like to find myself trapped in an elevator stuck between floors, I'm not sure Boomer even makes the list.

Bess and I turn up at the hotel. It's Saturday afternoon and we're going to hang out at the bar and watch convention attendees come and go. Hanging out at the bar is free.

There are a few of them in the lobby - some sort of reindeer, what is probably supposed to be a fox, a few people in regular clothes but wearing a tail or cat ears. We came out of curiosity, roughly expecting it to be sort of funny, but it isn't really anything. They seem idiotic, slightly pitiful, and just enough so as to suck the fun out of our nurturing such uncharitable thoughts; and then our guy turns up, the one we both know in real life. Today he's working security so he hasn't come as his fursona. He's glad to see us, but probably feels a little awkward. At least it seems so. I hope not because, after all, Bess and myself are the intruders in this situation.

A giant child arrives in the lobby - someone dressed in a suit resembling a little Japanese girl with purple hair tied in pigtails, not even an animal. It seems like a step too far in the wrong direction, and it definitely tips over into creepy.

'Is that Uncle Kage?' Bess asks me.

We gaze across the lobby to a middle-aged man in a white coat, like that of a pharmacist.

'I can't tell,' I say. 'It could be.'

Having watched Fursonas, Uncle Kage seems to us like the closest thing the furry world has to a celebrity, so naturally we're sceptical; but then again, why wouldn't it be Uncle Kage?

Pronounced ˈkɑːɡeɪ, the name is a contraction of his fursona, Kagemushi Goro. He seems to be the emperor of the furries, although opinion is divided. On the one hand he seems both eloquent and passionately vocal in defense of his chosen community and their right to exist without the rest of us pointing and laughing. On the other, some see him as a dictator, as someone who has overstepped certain boundaries; and his apparent public loathing of Boomer the Dog as someone giving the rest of us a bad name seems to reflect better on Boomer than it does on Uncle Kage.

I finish my drink and we take the escalator up to the next floor where stalls of traders line the concourse to the main entrance of the convention. We're not going in, but we want to have a look around. The stalls specialise in merchandise relating to cartoon animals with big dopey eyes. There's nothing we would want to buy, which is about what we expected. Some of it is truly horrible.

Going back down the escalator we pass the man in the white coat. He's stood chatting to a couple of attendees in fursuits, and it's definitely him. It's Uncle Kage in person. For reasons I don't fully understand, I am momentarily star struck.

We leave, having taken as much as we could from the experience. I still don't know what I think. Excepting adults dressed as little Japanese girls, it's difficult to feel anything strong about what these people are doing, because it's really their business. In certain respects it strikes me as idiotic, but then plenty of things strike me as idiotic to the point of being dangerous, which this probably isn't.

The only thought I can form is that I now have a sneaky sort of admiration for Boomer the Dog, because that guy really doesn't give a shit what the rest of us think.

But again, maybe what I think doesn't matter.

A Gastropsychogeography of England

Philip Best of notorious room clearance outfit Consumer Electronics observed that I was a food pusher. I was visiting him in Austin and making delivery of some of my home made pork pies - because it's easier to make too many than it is to make too few and we can't get them in Texas - and the comment came as I was describing a brief period of the nineties during which Jim Macdougall stayed over at my place every other weekend and I'd make us a chili in the hope of keeping him alive - his strict diet of beer, fags, bar snacks and Temazepam being nutritionally questionable; so Best's observation seemed fair. Thus deciding to embrace the role, I hereby declare my invention of gastropsychgeography, a philosophical discourse in which one gives account of what is eaten, where, and what it means. This follows on from psychogeography, a practice devised by Ivan Chtcheglov which seeks to map the meaning of a place in terms of its history, and psychochronography in which Sandifer ingeniously lists what was at the top of the hit parade when certain episodes of Doctor Who went to air. Gastropsychgeography is therefore, in essence, a travelogue of meals consumed by an author except much more important; and this is where it begins. This time next year you'll be reading Alan Moore's brooding testimony of Northampton's finest chip shops and Sandifer will be self-publishing tallies of previously obscure forms of iconic artisan bread consumed whilst binge watching Who, but it was all my idea. You're welcome.

Fish and chips, Earlsdon.
My mum gave me a tenner and sent me up the road for fish and chips from Gabriel's Fish & Chips in Earlsdon, Coventry. Being fifty-four years of age, I was conscious of this being one of those grand English traditions once immortalised in the likes of Beano and Dandy, so grand in fact that I'm surprised some red-faced gammon has yet to fume over imagined EU rulings preventing English mothers sending their offspring up the chippie with a tenner. We had two portions of battered cod and a single helping of chips between the two of us, because Gabriel's single helping is a shitload of chips in itself. It was pretty great, and we ate while watching Downton Abbey, an episode in which one of the butlers gives in his notice and the other one gets a bit sniffy about it.

Doner kebab, Earlsdon.
This time my mother sent me in the other direction, down the road for doner kebabs which I didn't enjoy quite so much as I thought I would. They were okay but not amazing, the main selling point simply being the pleasure of a doner kebab served in pita bread with chilli sauce, like nature intended - as distinct from a puffy flatbread with no sauce of any description, which seems to be a Greco-Texan thing. We watched The Curse of the Were-Rabbit whilst dining, which I hadn't seen before, so that was nice. Less entertaining was that Motecuhzoma took a small measure of his revenge on the both of us the following morning, so that's a lesson learned until next time.

 

Battered sausage with chips, Foleshill.
I was out with the intention of catching performances by Cristiana Ilie and Hainbach at the Tin, a venue situated in Coventry's new fangled Canal Basin, but I hadn't eaten. I'd called at the City Arms, a Weatherspoon pub, about an hour previous in the hope of ordering their Full English breakfast, discovering that it is only served until noon. With my gastronomic plans having been thus foiled, I therefore had to ask around and was directed to the Sandy Fish Bar in Sandy Lane, which was just around the corner. The expedition impressed upon me how the Tin is but five minutes walk from the home of Martin of Attrition, and I'm surprised he doesn't have some kind of residency there, knocking out a set of handbag house standards every Sunday evening or whatever. He literally lives so close that there wouldn't even be much point getting a taxi for the sake of a cumbersome tuba. Anyway, I ate my sausage in batter and chips on the seating provided at the aforementioned Canal Basin, all the while monitoring the venue for signs of activity seeing as I'd arrived about an hour before even the bar staff. The sausage was, in particular, pretty good.

Sausage sandwich, Coombe Abbey.
I asked for a sausage roll and this was the closest they could manage, although it was decent so I'm not complaining. I was at the Café in the Park with my dad. We were up that way having gone out for a stroll during which he hardly mentioned Brexit at all, although there were several ominous remarks hinting at a sceptical view taken regarding climate science. It didn't seem like there was anything to be gained in rising to the bait, so I didn't. I was a bit surprised by the general youthful bewilderment which greeted my attempts to describe a sausage roll to the café staff, but never mind.

Dinner, Binley.
This was prepared by my dad some hours after the above, and comprised steak pie, roast potatoes, runner beans, carrots and squash. The pie was hand crafted and amazing, and the vegetables were all from his allotment. The squash seemed an initially incongruous addition, but was slightly sweet and went very well with everything else. We manged to avoid talking about Brexit, although on a related note, my dad's wife - or at least the woman who would have been his third wife had they bothered to get married, which they didn't - opined that the good thing about Donald Trump is that he's not afraid to say what he's thinking. I couldn't be bothered to argue. Whatever gets you through the night.

Persian takeaway, Earlsdon.
Grilled lamb, rice, and houmous delivered by the Cyrus Restaurant once the guy on the other end of the phone line grudgingly conceded that yes, they did deliver if we really weren't able to get down there to pick it up. The food was at least as good as anticipated, and the rice in particular was delicious, light and fragrant. We ate while watching an episode of Midsomer Murders during which I realised that I sort of fancy Camille Coduri. I knew I'd seen her on telly somewhere before, but couldn't remember where. Later I looked it up and found out that she once played the mother of Bingo from the Banana Splits in Eccleston era Who, which was a bit disappointing.

 

Cream tea, Coventry Cathedral.
Part of the reason for my visiting England, aside from seeing my parents and other people, was because Lynda would be there. Lynda is my mother's younger sister - my aunt. She moved to Australia in 1973 and none of us had heard from her since. Thankfully the reunion was a delight and not at all awkward as a few of us had feared it might be. Part of Lynda's visit entailed wandering around Coventry like tourists with myself and my dad - who likewise knew her back in the sixties due to his having married my mother. There was a lot to look at in Coventry, and certainly one fuck of a lot more than there had been when I lived there. Our particular favourites were the Doom Painting in the Holy Trinity Church - a recently restored fifteenth century mural depicting what happens to sinners in enthusiastic detail - and the Cathedral. My grandfather - Lynda's dad - was a structural engineer whom they consulted when they were building the thing so as to ensure that it wouldn't simply collapse into the tunnels dug by coalminers from Keresley colliery, so it's all connected somehow. Anyway, we had cream teas in the Rising Café in the basement of the modern cathedral, which was nice. The central axis of a cream tea is a scone, which is like the thing which an American would call a biscuit for no obvious reason, but better. A biscuit in the American sense is usually too salty to be considered a scone and is therefore thematically equivalent to a gammon flavoured ice lolly, at least from where I'm stood.

Pizza, Earlsdon.
My mother and I stayed home and had a Waitrose pizza, which was probably a bit scant between the two of us but then she doesn't eat a whole lot and I was probably still full of scones. Midsomer Murders had inexplicably vanished from the television schedule so we watched Have I Got News for You? because I hadn't seen it in fucking years, and it's one of the few English shows I miss. I had no idea who at least three of those involved were, but Paul Merton is still funny. One of the most amusing exchanges concerned an elephant dentist from Peppa Pig. Sarah Kennedy - whom I know from my art foundation course in Leamington Spa back in the eighties - provides the voice of Nanny Plum from Peppa Pig. I think Sarah also had something to do with The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, so like I said, it's all connected. Alan Moore probably hasn't even heard of Peppa Pig.

Full English breakfast, Earlsdon.
I was vaguely inclined to give Weatherspoon a miss, my enthusiasm for cheap beer past its sell by date having waned since the homeless Thundercat who owns the chain started banging on about Brexit; and my friend Carl pointed out that most Weatherspoon pubs have the atmosphere of a cross-channel ferry due to the surfeit of red-faced gammons on a quest for cheap booze; but a full English breakfast is a full English breakfast. I had mine with a couple of slices of black pudding and it tasted fucking fantastic, just as it always does. I had no reading matter to hand and was dining alone, so reluctantly browsed the Weatherspoon corporate magazine. Naturally there was a special feature on Brexit, lifting opinion columns from publications on both sides of the political divide, because that's how much the homeless Thundercat - whose name is Tim Martin, by the way - loves democracy. Each piece was supplemented with commentary from himself under the byline of Tim Says which, in the case of those pieces in support of the remain argument, tended to kick off with what the author fails to realise is that blah blah blah, reducing the enterprise as a whole to something of a stacked deck. The rest of the magazine was mostly interviews with bar staff, so I watched the telly instead, sound down but with captions. They were showing live footage from the Supreme Court legally proving that Boris Johnson is a massive cunt, which was more interesting than the Weatherspoon corporate magazine.

More fish and chips, Earlsdon.
Once again my mum gave me a tenner and sent me up the road for fish and chips from Gabriel's Fish & Chips in Earlsdon, Coventry. The queue wasn't quite so enormous this time, comprising just three people. As usual, there was some fish left over, so that was saved for next door's cats, Geoff and Pig who are brothers and both ginger with white bits. By the end of my stay in Coventry, Pig had taken to meowing his head off every time I went into the garden in presumed anticipation of my handing a tupperware box of cod over the fence. I think that's how he got the name.

Bread and cheese, Earlsdon.
My aunt Lynda told us that her favourite food is bread and cheese, and specifically sourdough bread because other types of bread tend to give her digestive trouble. My mum therefore gave me a fifteener and sent me up the road for sourdough bread and an assortment of cheeses from the Co-op in Earlsdon, Coventry. I came back with edam, brie, one of the blue mouldy ones, and a fourth cheese I can't remember. Lynda was delighted beyond expectation. It turns out that this love of cheese is apparently a familial trait. Some doctor once told my mum that she might like to think about cutting down on the cheese. She told him that it wasn't going to happen because were she to make such a dietary adjustment there would be no point in being alive.

Curry, Greenwich.
Back when I lived in London, I often went for a curry with my friends Carl and Eddy, their choice because whilst I enjoyed Indian food, there were other things I preferred. We usually went to the Mogul in Greenwich. Since moving to America, my love of curry has increased for reasons I don't fully understand, so I was fairly keen to revisit the Mogul and give it another go. Unfortunately the Mogul experienced some kind of civil war in my absence, resulting in a diaspora which led to the establishment of the Mountain View on the Trafalgar Road, so that's where we went. I recognised the staff, and even shook the hand of Ron, who I believe runs the place and for whom Carl and Eddy seem to be the equivalent of season ticket holders. I had chicken korma with saag paneer, which was gorgeous.

Tunnock's tea cakes, Solihull.
I went to visit my friend Martin who lives in Solihull. I know Martin from the art foundation course we took with the woman who went on to become the voice of Nanny Plum. Martin was in the very first line up of the Cravats, and later played in different bands with both Carl and myself. As we'd scheduled an afternoon of just hanging out rather than alcoholic abandon, we started with a trip to the corner shop for Mr. Kipling's cherry bakewells and Tunnock's tea cakes, following which we drank tea and listened to the Shameful Ca$hin album. Shameful Ca$hin is Martin's current band and they've recorded an album at Woodbine Street Studios in Leamington Spa, soon to be issued on vinyl, all going well. The album reminded me a little of the punkier incarnations of the Cravats with a touch of the Stranglers and a bit of a rockabilly undercurrent. It's possibly the greatest thing Martin has ever recorded. I opted for Tunnock's tea cakes out of curiosity, having no real memory of them whilst being aware of a wave of nostalgia having spread their legend across certain stretches of social media. They're essentially chocolate covered marshmallows, arguably the English equivalent of American snack foods such as Hostess Twinkies and the like. I thought they were okay but nothing special, and Martin didn't seem to like them at all. Also worth noting is that Martin has a ginger cat called Jeff. He really loves that cat.

Thai curry, Earlsdon.
My mother and I stayed home and had a Waitrose Thai curry, which came in a natty little wooden box, and was excellent. Midsomer Murders had once again inexplicably vanished from the television schedule so we watched three episodes of Upstart Crow on DVD as I'd never seen it before. Having grown up in close proximity to Stratford-upon-Avon, I'd pretty much had enough of Shakespeare by the time I was seven, so I didn't know what to expect but nevertheless found it very watchable. I don't actually have anything against either Shakespeare or his works, unlike Martin who is of the considerably stronger opinion that it's all bollocks, but Upstart Crow almost made me wish I'd developed more of an appreciation. My mum on the other hand thinks Shakespeare is the shit, to phrase it in terms with which she is most likely unfamiliar.

Melted cheese sandwich, Shrewsbury.
I went to visit my friend Charlie who lives in Shrewsbury. I know Charlie from the fine art degree we took with Martin who was in the very first line up of the Cravats. Charlie is best known as artist of the Walking Dead comic book and is accordingly now a local celebrity, which was impressed upon me when I noticed that the local art gallery was advertising an exhibition of his work with his name in massive letters. We went for a bite to eat at a small café called, I believe, Ginger & Co. We talked mostly about comic books, superhero movies, comic book publishers assuming that, having finished with the Walking Dead, what Charlie really, really, really wants to draw next is even more zombies, and we talked about Comicsalopia, a comic art convention which was held in Shrewsbury a few months ago. Apparently it hadn't gone so well as hoped due to organisational complications arisen from one of the major sponsors screwing up with the wonga whilst failing to fully understand the genre, expressed as an unusual fixation with Peppa Pig. The sandwich was fancy and involved spinach and possibly mozzarella. It was very tasty.

Another full English breakfast, Coventry.
I had this one at Café 37, Earlsdon, which seems almost like it's just some bloke's front room. I've been there a few times over the years and don't ever recall any other customers, so I'm glad it's somehow managed to stay open. The food was good, sort of like the Weatherspoon version but with a bit more soul. Options for reading material were Coventry Evening Telegraph, Daily Mail, and the Sun. I tried with the Coventry Evening Telegraph but it mostly seemed to be articles on the level of how some local sports club had purchased a new tennis racket. The only piece I read in full was something about the council intending to pull down the swimming baths, which makes me a little sad as they were structurally engineered by my grandfather. I reluctantly switched to the Sun and was pleased to notice that whilst the right-wing bias was such that it actually came off on my fingers, the paper generally wasn't quite so rabid as I remembered, its mania being concentrated in small, evenly distributed flare ups within the wider context of a generally gormless whole. The only article which really caught my attention was an argument against the closing of private schools, at least partially predicated on the notion that if Jeremy Corbyn thinks it's bad then it's actually good. I don't know where the readership stand on the matter, but it's always entertaining to see members of the working class moved to fuming indignation over threats to the well-being of chinless Etonian twits who regard them as, at the very best, a slightly smelly economic resource.

Yet more fish and chips, Earlsdon.

It was my last evening in England, at least for a while, so my mum gave me a tenner and once again sent me up the road for fish and chips from Gabriel's Fish & Chips in Earlsdon, Coventry. This time was a bit later than usual. My mother is an independent benefits advisor, meaning she gives advice to, or even represents in court, those who have been wrongfully denied benefits, which is pretty much everyone who has been denied benefits due to government policies which hold that numismatic hand-outs are the only thing preventing most claimants from becoming high paid executives. Anyway she had two such persons turn up at six in the evening seeking her advice, one of whom had no head and only one leg but had nevertheless been declared fit for work and denied disability benefit. My mother had anticipated that their case would take about fifteen minutes to sort out, so I should go up the road for fish and chips once they were done. Unfortunately their case took about an hour to sort out, and in the meantime Sue from next door, patron of Geoff and Pig, came round. She was trying to separate the two sections of the tubing of a vacuum cleaner which had become stuck. I was unable to pull the two lengths of tubing apart. One of the people who had come to see my mother gave it a go, but he couldn't do it either. Anyway, it was close to seven before everyone left and I was able to go up the road for my final fish and chips from Gabriel's Fish & Chips in Earlsdon, Coventry. Now as I compose this account in a house built on a different continent, I know that even as I write, Geoff and Pig are probably finishing off the bit of cod that we couldn't manage. It's a circle, my friend.

Full English breakfast with Japanese influence, Heathrow.
I'd got up at ten to five in the morning so as to catch the flight back to lovely, lovely Texas, and yet somehow I'd managed to end up with hours to burn, just bumming around the airport; so I figured I may as well eat to pass time. Wagamama caught my eye because I recall having loved their food back in the nineties, and there was a full English on the menu which struck me as weird. I went in thinking about bowls of big fat noodles with crunchy ginger stuff, but somehow just couldn't not order the full English because it would be my last one in a while and its presence at Wagamama, which let us not forget serves primarily Japanese and Asiatic cuisine, seemed improbably incongruous. It came in a bowl and incorporated spinach and shitake mushrooms, but was otherwise the genuine article - sausages, bacon, couple of fried eggs and so on - and yet it had some Japanese quality which seemed to justify its place on the menu and yet was difficult to pinpoint, something in the subtle flavours department stemming from how it was cooked; or it could just be that I was prevented from blobbing the customary dollop of tomato ketchup on the side. Naturally I asked for ketchup, even qualifying the request with sorry to sound like a caveman, but… - but they didn't have it, and I was therefore forced to tackle the flavours unalloyed, which was okay because it was delicious. I read some more of The Face in the Abyss by Abraham Merritt as I ate. It's about four hard boiled blokes who go off in search of lost gold, and who keep having arguments about which one of their party might be considered the dirty double-crossing rat. They talk like James Cagney in a gangster movie, often finishing sentences with an interrogative see. So far I'm enjoying it. I picked the book up at the Oxfam shop on Broadgate in Coventry, which is a fucking great shop and seemingly the closest England comes to having a branch of Half Price Books, albeit a somewhat compact one. I also picked up a Rupert Bear annual and two Hornby Railways catalogues which I had as a kid - which is apparently what my midlife crisis looks like. I only mention these details because I haven't found a way to shoehorn Peppa Pig, Shakespeare, or anyone named Geoff into the account.