2021: The Bits I Can Remember

This was the year Texas froze like nothing I've ever known. I've seen England freeze on numerous occasions, but England is used to it and has gritting lorries and warm clothing so it's not usually a massive deal. Here, in a city where we can somehow experience a power cut because it rained a bit, we were fucked. Nowhere was open. No-one could get around. Power went and pipes froze and it lasted about a week. Our household didn't have it too bad - aside from the lack of hot water - and once everything returned to normal I lagged all the pipes which seemed like they might need lagging and adopted the practice of keeping about a month's supply of tinned cat food squirrelled away in a cupboard just in case.

I didn't bother hoarding toilet paper during the pandemic because we produce only a normal quantity of poo, but we have an indeterminate number of cats - somewhere in double figures - so I'm reluctant to take chances on that score, not least because the cat food supply chain has been intermittent since September, at which point the pandemic slowed to a trickle.

 

No-one I knew well died this year so far as I can recall, at least no hominids. That said, we lost a rabbit around the beginning of the year. His name was Tony. He was only a baby and was our third rabbit to go in roughly the same number of months due to a combination of extraordinarily shitty luck and what happens when rabbits develop a taste for cardboard. We were both devastated and vowed no more bunnies for a while because it's too heartbreaking and they seem unusually prone to pegging it whilst in our care. We lasted until March, at which point the empty hutch in the corner of the front room became too depressing, then adopted Oreo who, already being five, seemed more likely to survive our hospitality. Thankfully this has turned out to be the case, so it seems that losing three rabbits in quick succession really was just extraordinarily shitty luck. Gus II, one of the feral cats who lived in our garden and whom I fed daily also passed away, which was similarly incredibly depressing. Being feral, she remained suspicious, but always seemed pleased to see me.

 

Inevitably, we've acquired more cats during 2021. First came the litter of kittens comprising Lucy, Luna, Lilly and Mr. Meow Meow, the latter of whom was given that name by the people who ended up adopting him. We kept the other three and have since added Ollie, Polly, and Otto to their ranks. Otto is the most recent arrival and is presently still a kitten. He has a German name because we watched the movie Cabaret followed by the first two series of Babylon Berlin. We tried the third series but I kept falling asleep and couldn't get into it as I had with the first two series.

 

We rescued a raccoon too. She was a baby found out on our porch, presumably abandoned during one of those pseudo-Biblical storms we have here from time to time. We gave her to a woman who raises raccoons, who named her Roxie.

 

In addition to Babylon Berlin, we watched Wolf Hall - thanks to my mother sending Bess the DVD for Christmas, Succession, the Sopranos yet again, and a ton of Wheel of Fortune. I'm sure we watched other things but nothing comes to mind right now, aside from a couple of episodes of Doctor Who which I attempted out of morbid curiosity and which were complete shite. On the other hand, I read a ton of books, the greatest of which were probably by Robert Moore Williams, Andrea Dworkin, D.H. Lawrence, Isabelle Nicou, and José Saramago.

 

I also published a ton of books, or self-published four if we're going to be pedantic. These were Golden Age, Missing Words, Bess News and The Bunker. Golden Age was my first science-fiction novel since 2013's Against Nature, and all sorts of enthusiastic noises were made, none of which amounted to anything - which was about what I expected.; Missing Words was yet another mammoth collection of previously published essays, and The Bunker is a found novel - as I'm calling it - which I spent two years transcribing from no less than thirty cassette tapes of testimony from a maniac of my former acquaintance. It's been an admittedly esoteric undertaking, but I feel it has been worth it, at least in artistic terms.; Bess News collects a series of newsletters my wife produced about herself when she was a teenager back in the eighties. Some person at her high school made a comment along the lines of if you're so special you should have your own fan club, which was intended as criticism but which she took as a challenge. Bess News reproduces all of the existing issues of the same - about thirty in all - in lavish full colour and is not available in the stores. In fact, having been put together as a Christmas present, it isn't actually available unless you know myself or my wife personally.

I've also been writing a novel, more science-fiction, and approximately a sequel to Against Nature, or maybe a response. It's called Inward Collapse at the moment and will be available from the same publisher as the last one, unless I'm somehow exposed as an admirer of Adolf Hitler and find myself subsequently cancelled prior to publication. It will probably be my final Faction Paradox thing on the grounds that I hadn't actually intended to make a career out of it.

 

Musically, I will have had a new Retirement Community EP out by the time anyone reads this, all going well. It features sonic tributes to Pat Sajak - the host of Wheel of Fortune, el Chapo - one of Mexico's most successful businessmen, and is much harder to dance to than the first record.

 

I've been painting too, at least on and off, mostly book covers but I sold the oil painting of the apples for a hundred bucks, so busy-busy-busy.

I'm older and I still don't have cancer.

We discovered a new palace to eat, El Potosino on San Pedro which is one of those Mexican diners which feels like it's actually in Mexico, and rural Mexico judging by the fleeting glances of confusion when we've gone in. This is a good thing because it keeps the white people out, even though we're white people, technically speaking. That sentence may not make much sense to anyone who doesn't live in San Antonio. Anyway, English is the lesser of the two languages spoken at El Potosino, and they have a deafening live Tejano band on Saturdays, complete with a fucking tuba, so the clientele rarely seems to include persons named Josh, Greg or Tammy and the food is astonishing and affordable.

I'm sure other things of note happened during 2021, but that's all I can think of at the moment.

Everybody Having Fun

Christmas comes but once a year and when it does it clogs up airwaves and supermarket PA systems with the worst music you've ever heard; although a few of them probably sound okay when you're drunk or if you're the sort of twat who simpers awww, how can you not love ELO? when someone correctly explains that ELO were shit*. Anyway, here's an arbitrary and mercifully incomplete list:

Gene Autry Here Comes Santa Claus (1947) I'm not sure I ever heard this one back in England, but you can't escape from the fucker here in Texas. It does pretty much what you would expect of a song called Here Comes Santa Claus which may or may not be addressed to listeners under the age of three - it's kind of hard to tell. For some reason, the most irritating line is the one describing Santa's proposed route of travel via Santa Claus Lane. Aside from it being common knowledge that he can fly by admittedly mysterious means thus precluding the need to stick to roads, highways or any other existing feature of the urban landscape, the idea that he might arrive via a thoroughfare named after himself seems too coincidental to be even remotely plausible.

Awkward Geisha All I Want for Christmas Is You (2019) Awkward Geisha is Ade Rowe from Harsh Noise Movement and friends. This one comes from 100 Soft Rock Anthems, an album which also features moving and apparently sincere tributes to Barry of the Chuckle Brothers and Geoffrey from Rainbow, so we're dealing with individuals who rightly shun the general concept of guilty pleasures. This cover is therefore more faithful to the original than you might expect, given the pedigree and despite a free jazz approach to some of the instrumentation. It's a bit odd but I would be quite happy to hear this version blasted over the tannoy in my local supermarket.

Band Aid Do They Know It's Christmas? (1984) I don't even know that anything really needs saying about this one, and the general nobility of the cause doesn't make it a decent record, let alone excuse Bono suggesting that you should be glad it's them rather than you. Somehow my first exposure to the song was during a festive talent show at Maidstone College of Art. With everyone else juggling hard-boiled eggs or performing peculiarly ponderous comedy sketches, the kids from the art foundation course banded together to perform this song - all forty or fifty of them. I'd never heard it before and assumed it to be their own composition. The kid who handled most of the main vocal, and who probably came up with the idea, had a George Michael hairstyle and turned his back to the audience at the end of the song to reveal feed my ego printed on his t-shirt, which I assume was supposed to be a punchline amounting to, I'm not really an arsehole whom you've just watched performing a non-ironic cover of the current number one. Never having heard the song, much less being aware of its placement in the hit parade, most of this was lost on me. I simply assumed that the art foundation department had suffered a fall and hit its collective head or something.

Maria Carey All I Want for Christmas Is You (1994) She married the head of Sony, a man twenty years her senior who was, I'm sure, a lovely man with a great personality and I doubt that his using one-hundred dollar bills to light cigars was really a factor. She sings in that wobbly voice style which is mostly just notes, and I find it very, very difficult to believe that she would have been happy with just the person to whom the song was addressed on Christmas morning, a hunch I base on the b-side of the song being called What? Not Even a Pair of Fucking Socks, You Cheap Cow-Son? To my ears, the sincerity of the song seems therefore questionable. Awkward Geisha's version was better. Also, she resembles a pre-Toy Story CGI chipmunk.

Bing Crosby & David Bowie Little Drummer Boy (1977) While I can't really fault White Christmas, I've never found this a convincing duet. It's okay, and it's not actually offensive, but that's hardly a glowing endorsement. My favourite thing about Little Drummer Boy was my wife's aunt announcing that she'd discovered a duet sung by Bing Crosby and David Bowie, and it was a Christmas song, and it was this Christmas song, and it was 2017 meaning that my wife's aunt was the only person on the planet who hadn't heard it by that point. This didn't stop her playing the song at us on her soundbar while smiling beatifically as though she'd recorded it herself and it was her gift to the rest of us.

Eazy-E Merry Muthafuckin' Christmas (1992) While some may object to the work of Eazy-E for its reckless moral irresponsibility, enthusiastically violent message and emphasis on sexual acts and substance abuse, the rest of us recognise this as pretty much the greatest Christmas song ever recorded, or if not the greatest, it's at least top two.

The Go-Go's I'm Gonna Spend My Christmas with a Dalek (1964) Oh just fuck off. Learn to use an apostrophe.

The Greedies A Merry Jingle (1979) The Greedies were actually the Greedy Bastards, an amorphous supergroup formed mainly for the sake of gigs and pissing about by members of Thin Lizzy, Chris Spedding, and Cook and Jones from the Sex Pistols. Regrettably this was the only record that came from the enterprise, although more was recorded. It's a bit shite but it's Cook and Jones, which is good enough for me.

Bobby Helms Jingle Bell Rock (1957) I assume the reference to rock was made so as to tap into the lucrative juvenile delinquent market because the song is otherwise a million miles away from anything ever recorded by Charlie Feathers and doesn't rock even a little bit, which is why it's fucking annoying. One might anticipate an exemption by virtue of its use in Mean Girls, which is arguably the greatest movie of all time, but no - the only reason it works in Mean Girls is specifically because it's fucking annoying.

Jethro Tull Christmas Song (1972) It's taken me the best part of a decade to work out quite what I feel about Jethro Tull, specifically that one should tread very, very carefully once past the first album and Witch's Promise. There's a live version of Living in the Past which Ian Anderson introduces with the words, this is an oldie that we've utterly loathed for fifteen long years but it's now resurrected in a slightly more tricky form to make it a little more fun to play. To my ears, this sounds somewhat akin to a complaint about those who, having paid to get into the venue, might want to hear the hit single when they could be improving themselves with that four-album song cycle about Gandalf written in 3/17 time; and Christmas Song conveys the same snooty attitude but more so, amounting to a passive-aggressive rendering of Once in Royal David's City which suffixes what little cheer it concedes with I just hope you're satisfied, you selfish cunt; because if anyone is qualified to deliver condescending sermons on the evils of greed and materialism, it's a man who once bought an island.

The Kinks Father Christmas (1977) It's a song about Father Christmas being mugged by inner city hooligans of some description - possibly bovver boys given that it was 1977. The b-side is a song called Prince of the Punks which is about how Tom Robinson thinks he's all lush with his gobbing, pogoing and safety pins but his real name is Tarquin, and so on and so forth. The Kinks were way past their best by this point and it's all a bit Two Ronnies if you ask me. Also, play this record immediately following the mighty Bully For You by the Tom Robinson Band and it sounds like Russ fucking Abbott, quite frankly.

Eartha Kitt Santa Baby (1953) I know it's Eartha Kitt but sorry, this is horrible. It's general delivery seems to ask us to consider Santa in a sexual context, which doesn't greatly appeal to me.

John Lennon & Yoko Ono Happy Christmas (War is Over) (1971) Possibly not quite so condescending as the Jethro Tull offering, but pretty close, and there was obviously something in the water that year. Apparently it was in part a protest song about the Vietnam war, and doubtless sounded great if you were living in New York in the early seventies. Unfortunately it sounded like pure ballsache if you were living in London between 1990 and 2009 and were obliged to endure the cheerless fucking dirge on the radio approximately every twenty minutes during the busy Christmas rush of a Royal Mail sorting office, which was already sufficiently stressful and miserable without having this pair of wankers turning up to sneer over your shoulder about what you haven't done to end the war in Vietnam.

Paul McCartney Wonderful Christmastime (1979) Irritating as fuck, but it means well and I've thawed to the McCartney in recent years. At least it isn't Happy Christmas (War is Over).

The Pogues Fairytale of New York (1988) I know this always comes up as somehow more authentic than the rest, and I suppose it is when compared to Christmas in Smurfland, and yes, we all miss Kirsty MacColl obviously; but I've never been particularly struck on the Pogues and this one didn't do anything to change my mind.

Frank Sinatra Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas (1948) While I'm disinclined to disparage Ol' Blue Eyes, his golden tonsils, or any of the legitimate Italian-American businessmen with whom he was allegedly associated, this one was written for Judy Garland five years earlier and never struck me as a great choice of cover. As a song it's mostly harmless but what the fuck is a merry little Christmas supposed to be? I presume it would be a low-scale celebration with just a few pals and maybe some tinnies, but quantifying such an undertaking as little sounds wrong somehow, almost as though the writers just needed two syllables in there so that the thing would scan right. I would have gone with Have Yourself a Merry Fucking Christmas, but I suppose that would have been frowned upon back in the forties.

Slade Merry Christmas Everybody (1973) I know it's become something of a cliché to claim this as the greatest Christmas song of all time, but it probably is.

Bruce Springsteen Santa Claus is Comin' to Town (1985) I expect Bruce was simply covering somebody else's song here, but I don't care enough to find out who got there first. I'm not a massive fan of the Springsteen but accept that he has his moments. Unfortunately this wasn't one of them.

Shakin' Stevens Merry Christmas Everyone (1985) I remember Shakin' Stevens as a comical holiday camp Elvis knock off who was so stuffy and square that he probably didn't even know what the first Joy Division album was called, let alone where it was recorded or the name of the producer; but time passed and I found myself grudgingly forced to admit that actually, he didn't sound even remotely like he was trying to impersonate Elvis and his cover of Ricky Nelson's It's Late was pretty decent. These days I'm past caring. I'd listen to Shakin' Stevens before anything by Sonic Youth, and if Merry Christmas Everyone isn't quite up there with the true masterpieces of seasonal novelty songs, I've heard much, much worse.

The Waitresses Christmas Wrapping (1981) This rocks. In fact it's generally better than the thing it's singing about. I've always thought Christmas was a bit of an overrated institution.

Wham! Last Christmas (1984) I can't remember whether we're presently supposed to regard Wham! as having been pure shite or the most 'tastic thing ever, but I've never really had a strong opinion about them apart from their being better than Depeche Mode, which is hardly an achievement. I probably could have done with hearing this a bit less on the works radio, but at least it wasn't that John and Yoko shite, and it was always entertaining when my pal Richard sang along, changing the words to last Christmas, I gave you my arse, the very next day, you said I was gay, and so on and so forth. It was funny because we were working class so we read the Sun and had unenlightened views about things. Not like it is today.

Wizzard I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day (1973) I know Roy Wood was in ELO but he at least had the sense to leave, and clearly wasn't entirely without talent as Ball Park Incident demonstrates; but no-one sane wishes it could be Christmas every day, and glam rock hyperbole doesn't really excuse the idea. As a child in the seventies, I vaguely recall some light feature on our local news show about a man who celebrated Christmas every single day of the year. I don't remember how he financed this undertaking, but I don't doubt that the offending Wizzard single was striped onto the soundtrack of the piece at some point. Light-hearted magazine show chuckles aside, the man was clearly mental.

*: I will admit that, to their credit, ELO don't seem to have recorded a Christmas song so far as I'm aware - although admittedly I'm disinclined to check. I concede this information because it's Christmas, a time of goodwill unto all, even simpletons.

Saying Something Twice

Classical Nahuatl, the language spoken by the people we erroneously recall as Aztecs, achieves emphasis by means of something called reduplication wherein a morpheme is repeated. For example, where the adjectival prefix meaning old is hue—, something very old is therefore prefixed huehue—. Depending on the context, reduplication may also be used to denote the plural form, so that teotl - amounting to god - becomes gods when rendered as teteo, and ancient gods is huehueteteo. Reduplication can also be found in contemporary Texan speech. Although Texas was colonised by Spaniards ranging north from Mexico, and they bought a number of Nahuatl speakers with them, I'm not convinced that Texan reduplication is a direct continuation of some Nahuatl precedent. Nahuatl sounding place names are found all over northern Mexico, notably the state of Coahuila immediately south-west of San Antonio - although the etymology is often vague; and yet I've encountered reduplication mainly in Mexico and Texas. It's probably a coincidence, but it's nevertheless a suspicious coincidence; and because it irritates the living shit out of me, I've decided to compile a list.

Cow-cows. This was said by my stepson during a car journey as he attempted to draw attention to cattle gathered in a field which we were passing. The full sentence was, 'Look, Mom - cow-cows.' I don't recall how old he was at the time, possibly about nine. In any case, he seemed kind of long in the tooth for such an affectation. In his defence, he's presently about six months short of switching over to discussing animals exclusively by their Latin classification.

Dadad. see Momom.

Gus Gus. Another one from the boy, this time referring to a cat named Gus - short for Asparagus, a cat from a poem by T.S. Eliot. In full, the frequently repeated exclamation was usually, 'Look, Mom, it's Gus-Gus!' drawing attention to a cat who had, more often than not been sitting in the same place for at least an hour, and whose presence therefore scarcely required any sort of announcement, and certainly not one seemingly defining the speaker as the observational prodigy who has at last found the elusive cat for which the rest of us had been searching. To be fair, the boy has always been a little tightly wound, and his locating a cat which wasn't actually missing was probably less exhausting than the redundant greeting of hi, Mom! delivered roughly every fifteen minutes despite both parties having been in close proximity for at least the previous half hour.

Kia Kia. This was the signature call of a man dressed as a hamster in a television commercial for World Car Kia, an automotive dealership based in San Antonio specialising in vehicles produced by the Kia Corporation of South Korea. Television advertising for local car dealerships tends to be pure arseache by definition, but this one really pushed the boat out. The commercial features the usual amateur sales pitch gushing over stock footage of cars in the lot of the local showroom; then the image of a man dressed in a hamster costume zips across from the left side of the screen by agency of the sort of cheap CSO video effects no-one has used since 1989. The hamster is dressed as though having come direct from an eighties rap video with baseball cap and satin jacket, and quickly throws some kind of pose while saying Kia twice in a high pitched voice, then back off the left side of the screen - all over in a split second and lasting no longer than it takes to say Kia Kia! It's difficult to work out what the hell anyone thought this added to the already pointless commercial, perhaps an element of fun, given that some people can be entertained by a light bulb turning on and off or videos of babies falling over. I like to think that some fucking idiot in marketing imagined that naming this particular vehicle manufacturer twice in a squeaky voice would become a popular catchphrase echoed across playgrounds all over San Antonio, and I additionally like to imagine that said fucking idiot soon found himself back at the labour exchange, or whatever it is they have here. The commercial mysteriously vanished from our screens after about a week, so I know it wasn't just me.

Merry Merry. A particularly bewildering addition to the canon here, this was a Christmas specific greeting proposed by some relative or other as the first thing one should say upon meeting another person on Christmas morning; and, unless I'm getting my wires crossed - which I sort of hope might be the case - one responds to Merry Merry by saying Christmas Gift, which makes no fucking sense whatsoever and does little to increase the ambient seasonal jollity of the day so far as I'm able to tell. The person who came up with this greeted me with Merry Merry one year and more than anything I just felt embarrassed for her. It probably works better if you're five and have just formed a secret club of the kind which requires passwords.

Momom. Momom was my wife's grandmother, an obvious reduplication of Mom or mother serving to make a generational distinction. I always found the term, which was mostly informal and affectionate, a bit weird, and was told that it was just something my brother-in-law came out with one day. Although this may be true, I've now heard a number of Texans refer to grandparents as Momom and Dadad, so I guess it's actually a thing. Interestingly, my wife refers to her great grandmother as her great grandmother rather than Momomom, I suppose because it would eventually get ridiculous.

Pizza pizza. This is the call of a small cartoon Julius Ceasar who serves as mascot for the Little Caesar chain of pizza outlets. He's drawn as he would be had he escaped from a sixties Pink Panther cartoon. He carries a pike upon which is speared a slice of pizza, and he says the word pizza twice at the close of each advert in that voice we adopt when impersonating John Major or nerds. I guess it's supposed to be an earworm, a sort of audio meme, and it's almost certainly the inspiration for World Car Kia's mascot disaster; but, lacking the sort of explosive delivery which would suggest enthusiasm, it's just someone saying a word twice for no obvious reason. It perhaps doesn't help that I've never been tempted to try a Little Caesar pizza because they don't look massively appetising in the television commercial, and boasting about how cheap they are doesn't do the brand any favours.

Pop and dip, pop and dip. Because I can't be arsed to write it all out again, here's a direct lift from my facebook page about a year ago.

I'd like to open discussion regarding the current Popeyes' advertising campaign, expressed as two similarly themed but variant television commercials. The first features webcam footage of a woman who, so it is claimed, has been so moved by the quality of Popeyes' chicken that she's decided to sing about it. We then see the woman happily dipping a chicken nugget in a small pot of sauce of some description while saying pop and dip twice, presumably in reference to her actions. The second commercial shows a woman of possibly Polynesian ethnicity playing a ukulele while singing a couplet about how much she enjoys Popeyes' chicken. My objection is that the first woman, introduced as the author of a song, merely says pop and dip twice. My understanding of music theory is admittedly patchy, but saying something twice is not the same as singing a fucking song; while the woman in the second commercial is introduced as merely expressing her thoughts on Popeyes' chicken, thoughts which quite clearly take the form of an actual song with two lines, a time signature, a tune and so on and so forth. This shit keeps me awake at night.

Of course, pop and dip may be effectively considered a full sentence within the context of this list, and is therefore an example of idiocy rather than reduplication, but pəˈteɪtəʊ, pəˈtɑːtəʊ...

Ray Ray. I've never met the man. He's the nephew of a friend of my wife's aunt. His name is Rayfield, which sounds like a surname but isn't, and everyone refers to him as Ray Ray for reasons I will probably never understand. Should I ask about Ray, they know exactly who I mean and nevertheless refer to him as Ray Ray in the response. Recently I learned that Ray Ray has a son similarly named Ray, or possibly Ray Ray. I therefore fucking give up.

Yummy yummy snack snacks. My stepson habitually talks to himself - although this shouldn't be considered strange in and of itself - and this was what he said to himself one afternoon when looking for something to eat. He passed where I was working, heading down the hall towards the kitchen. I heard the pantry doors open and he then said, yummy yummy snack snacks, quite loudly. He was about thirteen years of age at the time. Even now, the memory of this incident causes me to frown so hard that I can carry pencils in the creases.

Zom-zoms. It's possibly unfair to dwell on vocal tics dating from when my stepson was more tightly wound and less verbally dextrous, but then life isn't fair and it's not like I made him say any of that shit. Back when he referred to cattle as cow-cows, and many years before he developed a taste for yummy yummy snack snacks, he had a thing about zombies. From what I can gather, the zombies he encountered were mostly in fairly innocuous video games or slightly edgy children's cartoons - more Phineas & Ferb than Night of the Living Dead. He was fascinated and yet terrified by the general concept. Stranger still was that he was genuinely star struck when meeting Charlie Adlard, artist of Image's Walking Dead comic book whom I've known since we were at college together, although I'm not sure he'd actually read an issue of the comic book; and yet even at that age - thirteen, maybe fourteen - he'd get pissy if any of us said the z-word, thus apparently reminding him of the source of his combined terror and fascination, and to whom he would indirectly refer as zom-zoms because apparently that defused some of the fear he felt regarding this thing which doesn't actually exist.

Terry & Dune

It was a warm summer morning at the dwelling of Terry and June. Sun shone in through the French windows overlooking the patio, illuminating the front room. June sat, comfortably reposed with her tea served in an ornate goblet, reading from her book which was a great leather bound volume of archaic appearance with the name of the scribe creeping across the cover in copper filigree, Viscount Jeffrey of House Archer. Just as she turned a page, a great wailing came from afar to assault her ears.

'Why oh why oh why…'

June looked up from her reading. 'What is it dear? I thought you would be happy this morning.'

Terry floated in, huffing, puffing and steering his bulk about the room in a red sweater with a golfing motif knitted across his generous belly. Here and there, tiny wisps of gas sputtered from junctures where his flesh had grown around the anti-gravity suspensor webbing which kept him aloft.

'I thought so too!' he spluttered, indignant.

'Well, whatever is the matter? Do you not like your book now that the postman has bought it?'

'My book!' Terry hovered red-faced by the window. 'I was really looking forward to learning all about the history of sweaters, jumpers and cardigans.'

'So what's the trouble this time, dear?'

'What's the trouble?' Terry blustered rhetorically. 'Look what they've sent me!'

June lent forward a little, peering through her spectacles as Terry held up a large book for her to see. The cover was a black and white photograph of an elderly military gentleman sporting a large Victorian-style moustache, medals arrayed across the chest of his heavily brocaded jacket. 'David Saul,' she read from the cover, 'The Life of Lord Cardigan.'

'See!' Terry spluttered. 'It's all about the Crimean war - not a solitary item of comforting knitwear within sight!'

'Oh dear.' June stifled a giggle. 'They must have got it mixed up with the one you wanted. What are you going to do?'

'I'm considering syphilis.'

'I mean about the book, silly! They've obviously sent you the wrong item.'

'Well, I suppose I'll have to nip down the post office and have it sent back.'

'In that case, there's a list of a couple of things we need for tonight, if you could pop into Tesco while you're there.'

Terry's brow darkened. 'Tonight?'

'You'd forget your own head if it weren't attached by a cluster of artificial bioflesh ligatures.' June rolled her eyes and chortled. 'You invited Mr. Johnson from the Banking Guild over for dinner, remember?'

'Oh - that's right. I did.' Terry's brow remained tenebrous as he passed over the coffee table like a smelly indoor thundercloud. 'Do you know, I really wished I hadn't.'

June tutted and spared her husband an indulgent smile. 'Well, if you will keep beating him to the final hole on the golf course…'

Groaning, Terry floated away towards the kitchen in search of the shopping list which he knew his wife would already have written out for him.

* * *

That evening, Terry was to be found floating up near the front room ceiling, peering from the window as the suns went down. He glanced to the clock on the wall - five minutes before seven - then back out across the garden. 'No sign of him yet. I do hope he isn't going to keep us waiting.'

Culinary sounds came from the kitchen, cutlery and plates arranged ready for dinner to be served. 'I'm sure he'll be here on time,' said June.

'I see the sandworms have been playing merry hell with my radishes again.' Terry sighed and vented a particularly expressive cloud of gas. 'Oh! Here we go. He's here!'

'Goodness!' June exclaimed, rushing in to finish setting the table.

Terry flipped a relay in his suit and the French windows drew slowly apart to admit their guest. Once they had reached their full extent, Mr. Johnson's vast mobile tank projected into the front room, with Mr. Johnson's huge mutated cranium just visible within the swirling orange mist. 'Good evening, Fletcher,' his voice boomed mysteriously. 'I do hope I'm on time.'

'Prompt as always, Mr. Johnson.'

'Please, we're not at the club now - call me Bernard.'

'Bernard, yes of course.' Terry tried and failed to conceal a nervous laugh. 'Please take the weight off er—' He gazed helplessly at the chair he'd just drawn back from the table, then at his guest before tossing the chair to one side. 'Please make yourself comfortable, Bernard. Dinner shall be served forthwith.'

'Hello, Mr. Johnson,' June beamed, dashing in from the kitchen with a couple of plates now piled high with food. 'It's so nice to meet you at last. Terry has told me so much about you.'

'Delighted.' Johnson's v-shaped oral flap twisted into something approximating a winning smile, providing one was familiar with the super-evolved physiognomy of a stage four Bank Manager. 'I am so looking forward to this.'

June zipped back and forth as Terry floated to his place at the other side of the table, and within moments they were ready to enjoy dinner.

'I do hope it's to your liking,' said June as she poured the wine. 'Terry and I don't often have rice, but I've tried my best.'

'Rice?' said Mr. Johnson ominously, his deep blue eyes opening and closing within the smoky depths of the tank.

'Yes, rice,' said Terry happily. 'You told me it was your favourite dish, so that's what we're having.'

'I said spice.'

'Oh dear,' said June, in preface to a further twenty-five minutes of similarly laboured misunderstandings, some of which were faintly amusing, if not on the scale proposed by the ubiquitous laugh track.

Terry had asked Mr. Johnson what was his favourite dish, but apparently he had misheard the answer because he had been concentrating on his golf!

You're welcome.

Cibolo

It's Marcie's birthday so we're going to Cibolo. Marcie is one of the women who turns up to paint rocks every Sunday as part of Bess's group, because my wife is now some sort of guru in the field of decorative rock painting. Bess doesn't know the woman very well, but some of the others will be there and it will be fun, possibly, so that's why we're going.

Cibolo is a small town just past Randolph Air Force Base - not actually San Antonio and we almost make open country before we get there, but it's not much of a distance. Marcie is celebrating her birthday at Ernie's Patio Bar so we're outside with a couple of food trucks and a live band setting up beneath a covered stage which probably used to be a barn. We meet Catherine, whom I've met before; then Fung Yui On, whose name I probably have wrong but I'm determined to make the effort. She's originally from China and is of short stature, or whatever the acceptable term happens to be this week. As we shake I am astonished by the size of her hands, which resemble those of a child, but she seems nice so I'm trying not to be a dick. Chris, Marcie's husband, tells me that he lived in Putney in London for a while. I tell him I vaguely know Putney, although I lived in the south-east, and that's more or less the end of that conversation.

I get myself a Modelo then have something from the Philippino food truck, mainly out of curiosity because I have no idea what people eat in the Philippines. It turns out they eat egg rolls and noodles, amongst other things, and the noodles are in particular pretty great.

I meet Marcie. She asks me to tell her about myself, about England, about where I'm from, about everything, so I guess it's going to be one of those conversations.

'You know Teletubbies,' I begin, reeling off the usual spiel whilst trying to keep it interesting for myself, but she has the twinkly smile of someone who may or may not be listening.

'What do you do?' she asks.

'I'm a writer,' I say, although I'm getting closer and closer to just making something up - I'm a taxidermist, or I work at the VD clinic.

'What do you write?' she asks, then tells me what she writes. It's something personal and it's for her therapist. There's a lot of metaphor. She scrolls through things on her smartphone and then says, 'I'm embarrassed now. It's very personal.'

'Okay,' I say, because actually I'm not massively interested.

'Can you do an American accent?'

'Not when I'm asked. I get too self-conscious.'

Cupcakes are passed around and evening descends. I'm introduced to more people whose names I will have forgotten in minutes. I don't like having the conversation about being from England over and over, given that I've now lived in Texas for a decade, and I worry that I'm beginning to sound like the annoying animated Cockney ghecko from the Geico television commercials.

Chuck Shaw and his band take to the stage and play driving, bluesy country and western. It's sort of uptempo but with an element of pathos, and it's played with heart and confidence. You can tell they're having a great time. It's the sort of music which, even if it's not your thing, you can't help but appreciate it; and is as such a whole different ball game from the shitty, slick country and autotune we had piped at us in the Longhorn Steakhouse on Thursday evening.

It's getting cold, so Bess goes to the car to raid the Goodwill bag she's been carrying in the trunk, never quite getting around to dropping it off. I get a shirt to go over the shirt I'm wearing, and it does the job. I stand at a distance from the group because it feels less awkward. I've never been the most sociable individual and I don't really have much to say to anyone.

Chuck's forth or fifth song features a deafening solo from a passing train which renders the music inaudible for the best part of a minute. They keep playing and you can tell they find the interruption hilarious. Applause greets the end of each song, although there aren't actually many of us here - probably less than ten who aren't here for Marcie's birthday. Marcie's young daughters run around yelping, doing sarcastic impersonations of enthusiastic young men at rock concerts making the dude noise. It actually seems kind of rude.

Eventually we leave.

I feel awkward, but it turns out that Fung Yui On is herself a woman of very few words, and that my impression of Marcie is about the same as everyone else's impression of Marcie; not that it matters because we're heading home. I didn't exactly have fun, but I didn't not have fun, so it was okay.