Feud

Since moving here, I've done more or less all of the Texan things which establish oneself as part of the San Antonio landscape. I've eaten chicken fried steak. I've experienced the music of both Selena and George Strait. I've been to a Spurs game, even though I found it massively underwhelming. The only thing left seemed to be feudin' with hornery types, and now I've ticked that one off the list as well.

It was a routinely horrible morning at the beginning of 2020, routinely horrible because the year didn't really get off to a great start with three deaths amongst friends and family, one relative sent into something of a tailspin by the same, the demolition of the house in which my wife used to live - apparently because the new owner just wanted something in a different colour - a traffic citation, and the aforementioned wife suddenly finding herself obliged to work from home because the company decided it could make great savings by giving the office space to someone else. Then, as I take out the trash I happen to notice Squidward out in his yard.

'Good morning,' I call.

I won't remember the reply but it's something testy about how he's engaged in the activity of gathering turds produced by our cats which have been deposited upon his property, or at least his landlord's property.

Okaaay, I think, and get back inside.

Squidward has lived here since before we moved in. He used to star in a popular children's cartoon series and I believe he worked in seafood retail but is now retired.

Ten minutes later he rings our door bell.

'Sorry about the snide comment,' he says, 'but you've got to understand my problem. I'm asking nicely, so what are you doing about all the cats?'

We have a number of cats, although not all of them belong to us. Most of them are feral or stray cats which we feed because someone has to. The population is fluid, more than ten, but not too much more. Some of them roam into Squidward's garden from time to time because they're cats and it's cruel to keep them cooped up inside.

We work with people from the San Antonio Feral Cat Coalition, which is recognised by the Animal Control Services of the city council, to make sure all of our ferals and strays are spayed or neutered, which usually reduces the nuisance factor unless you just plain hate cats. I've told him this before, suggesting I'm fine with him hosing any that wander into his yard so as to deter repeat appearances. I bought him a bag of something called Silent Roar, which is also supposed to deter feline incursions.

I've heard his objections before and I still don't know what he wants me to say. Maybe he wants me to concede and get rid of them or have them all put down in accordance with what is presumably his idea of a good neighbour.

'I mean I wouldn't mind if it was just one or two,' he says, and I immediately recall that he clearly did mind when it was just one or two. He's been at us since we moved here, not often but just enough to form a pattern built up from just about every conversation I've ever had with the man.

Our first encounter was him welcoming his new neighbours across the chain link fence which divides our respective yards. The welcome was a detailed account of how terrible the previous tenants had been, three young guys who partied hard all of the time. This one always puzzled me because the mail we still get for the previous tenant is all addressed to Maria Ramos, a young single mother who lived on her own with just her kid. This is how everyone else in our street remembers her. No-one remembers the three party dudes. Not even the landlord was able to remember the three party dudes, because we asked when we bought the house from him.

Then Squidward wanted to know whether we were leaving food out for vermin - raccoons and opossums. We weren't, but he established the theme of the great interest he takes in what happens in our yard, the one we now own. I find this odd because generally I've never given a shit what other people do in their own yards, so I find it difficult to imagine that sort of mindset.

Yet here he is again.

He tells me that he's just sold one of his three cars - which I presume would have been the one with the personalised licence plate. The buyer complained about the paintwork having been scratched by cats. Online research suggests that this is actually impossible. Cat claws lack the necessary density to make a mark on automotive paintwork just as I'm unable to scratch the paint of a car with my fingernail, excepting obviously shitty paint jobs where some hillbilly has brought a can of emulsion back from the hardware store in hope of recreating the vehicle from The Dukes of Hazzard. Casual scratch marks left upon vehicles almost always turn out to be from trees, so it is generally believed.

As we have our conversation, such as it is, he takes a call from the disgruntled buyer so I have to stand and listen, wondering if he actually does want me to promise to have them all rounded up and euthanised. He clearly believes it's an option.

The city of San Antonio has a no kill policy regarding feral or stray cats, instead having opted for TNR - trap, neuter, vaccinate, and then return them to wherever they were found. The policy was adopted on the basis of it being better to manage stable cat populations which aren't going to produce a ton of kittens, for without stable cat populations, unstable cat populations tend to move in, bringing with them all the fucking, fighting, disease, and territorial marking you get with un-vaccinated, un-neutered cats.

Squidward gave me a heads up as I was heading out on my bike about a year ago. 'Hey, just a heads up,' he said. 'There's been an Animal Control truck seen in the area. They've been picking up any cat they find and euthanising them on the spot, so you might want to keep your guys inside. I'm telling you this as a friend.'

Even at the time it sounded a little like the five-year old who has definitely just seen a real dinosaur.

More recently he suddenly had a daughter who was going to get rid of her two beautiful cats after ten years, and did we know anyone seeing as how we're obviously cat people and all?

It was a weird question. The daughter was living hundreds of miles away, and it seemed odd that someone in San Antonio had been picked as the potential solver of this apparently knotty problem. It seemed odd that she somehow lacked the ability to seek adoption in her part of the country; and the description of beautiful cats sounded very much like the words of a man trying too hard to impersonate someone who has no problem with cats. It felt as though the answer he was rooting around for was, hey - we'll take them, we love cats, we need as many cats as we can possibly get our hands on.

The thing is, we actually don't want that many cats but here they are, and there were at least five already hanging around when we moved to this street. When it's practical we find homes for them, as we have done over and over. We didn't bring the raccoons or opossums with us either.

Back in the here and now, he ends the call and says the same stuff all over again. I still don't know what to tell him. We can't do anything we're not already doing.

'That guy who lives next to Donna shot someone in the head a few years ago, right inside their house,' I tell him. 'You remember that? I mean with all due respect, while I'm sure we're not the most amazing neighbours in the world, I don't really see how we can be the worst.'

'I think very highly of you.' He seems slightly stunned and is pulling back, trying to be the nice guy again. 'We're very fond of the both of you,' he adds to no obvious purpose, then leaves.

A few days later we get a letter from Animal Control Services. Someone in our neighbourhood has registered a complaint about property damage and nuisance animals, but it's a form letter naming no names, adding that we should ignore it if it doesn't apply to us.

We talk to Susan from the Feral Cat Coalition. She works with Animal Control and warns us that we should expect a visit, and also that Squidward has filed a claim against us with the small claims court for property damage, a claim which didn't go anywhere due to lack of evidence seeing as he'd already sold the car, despite it having apparently been reduced to scrap by cats.

We spend a couple of days shitting ourselves. We've all seen Animal Cops Houston.

Animal Control turns out to be one young woman who turns up in the truck. She's a cop and actually very helpful. The city is mainly concerned that strays are subjected to the TNR process, which all of ours have been, and that we're demonstrably making efforts to reduce potential nuisance - for example leaving sandboxes around the yard to draw the production of cat poo from adjacent properties, which we do. Having been satisfied that we're not the sort of people who end up on episodes of Animal Cops Houston, she leaves and puts in the necessary good word by which we are able to apply for a cat colony license. This means that providing we TNR and otherwise stick to the established rules, we can have as many cats as we fucking well want.

I never had a strong opinion regarding Squidward, beyond thinking there was something a bit unpleasant about him. Now, however, he's pretty much revealed himself for who he is behind the unconvincing nice guy persona. Donna has told us he once called the cops on her son who was playing his radio too loud, so loud that the walls of Chez Squidward were apparently quite literally shaking. Everything about him seems fussy, suggestive of a privileged upbringing which failed to segue into the riches and status he probably believes to be his due, which is why he's reduced to living around here. He'd clearly rather live in Terrell Hills surrounded by doctors and dentists, prissy older women with face lifts, a better standard of person, people who touch base or give you a heads up, somewhere with a neighbourhood association to prevent scumbags such as ourselves moving in.

I've seen our cats in his garden, but they mostly stay away, and I find it difficult to believe in the hundreds of steaming turds with which they supposedly bespoil his beloved driveway on a daily basis. I suspect it's more likely that he simply hates cats and is too finely attuned to how others may impact upon his existence. Anyone living in a town or a city will probably have neighbours, and one has to make allowances for the same or else fuck off and live on a private estate with a high wall around it.

Our cats are all neutered, excepting the Wombat whom we have as yet been unable to catch. There's not much fighting, not even much bird destruction going on - contrary to the received wisdom - and not much, I would argue, to get all snitchy about. It's not like we have a fucking meth lab in the garage.

The next day, a tiny grey cat turns up on our door, a living skeleton who has been seen up and down the street for weeks, getting  more and more emaciated by the day. We haven't been able to get near her, but hunger has evidently overridden her fear, and here she is. We get her to eat, although she can't handle much at first, and over the next couple of days she gets stronger and begins to fill out a little. Once she's up to it, we'll get her neutered and take it from there, maybe see if we can't find a good owner as we've done with previously rescued kittens. Once inside our home, she's friendly, and too friendly to have been just a stray. Most likely she was dumped by some arsehole.

I've never been the sort of person who can simply walk on thinking fuck it - someone else's problem, and I don't understand anyone who is, at least where animals are concerned. I don't understand anyone who sees a cat, raccoon, opossum, stray dog, or any form of wildlife, domesticated or otherwise, and whose first thought is that had better not shit in my yard. On days such as today I tend to think such persons lack empathy and are as such incomplete human beings who probably shouldn't be allowed to raise children.

I am resident in America thanks to a green card and my whole life is here. I'm reliably informed that criminal convictions of any kind don't look great when reapplying for a green card, or even seeking citizenship, and I live next door to a man who calls the cops because he can't get along with others.

I don't think I'll be having much to do with him for a long time.

My Own Personal Nelson Muntz

Nelson Muntz is a character from The Simpsons, the bully at Bart's school who graduates to being merely a slightly unpredictable hardnut in later episodes. When I saw my first Simpsons way back in the nineties, I recognised Nelson straight away. I felt as though I knew him. My own Nelson wasn't quite a bully, but I'd certainly found him intimidating.

The school was tiny, Ilmington C of E Junior & Infants on the edge of the Cotswolds. There were seven kids in my class, expanding to nine or ten by the final year. We got to know each other reasonably well, excepting Nelson - as I'll continue to call him - because like I said I found him intimidating, and I really had the impression he worked at it. One day during the later years, our teacher - Mr. Davies - announced that we would be keeping diaries of our daily activities as a writing exercise. None of us were particularly happy with the idea. Nelson was particularly disgruntled, explaining to the rest of us that he resented the proposal that he might be required to keep a record of all the little kids he'd beaten up that week. Even at the age of nine, this struck me as a slightly weird announcement. It must surely have occurred to him that he could simply omit mention of all the little kids he'd beaten up that week, but apparently he really needed to tell us about it.

Boasting aside, he can't have been much of a bully. I never really developed a fear of him as I did with a couple of the older kids; and once we all went to the much larger secondary school, much like his Simpsons namesake, his status was downgraded to that of mere hardnut in relation to some of the genuinely violent psychotics spawned on the farms around Shipston.

Additionally, Nelson was sometimes quite funny, so if we were never quite pals, it was difficult to harbor animosity towards him. He sold me the first two Boomtown Rats albums and one by Public Image Limited when motorbikes and the New Wave of British Heavy Metal lured him away from anything punky, as happened with almost everyone else at our school.

I was never into motorbikes, although I drew the Philadelphia Freaks riding their bikes from the Inferno strip in 2000AD comic. The Philadelphia Freaks were a sports team of horrific cyborgs, and the drawing so impressed my art teacher that it was pinned to the wall in the art class. It also impressed Nelson. He asked if I'd accept a commission to paint horrific cyborgs on the petrol tank of his own motorbike. I said yes. He paid me a tenner, or maybe a fiver, and gave me the drawing of the character he wanted me to paint. He'd taken my art from the wall of the art room and cut out his preferred monster. I wasn't sure how I felt about that, but obviously I wasn't going to say anything.

I spent a weekend painting the thing, using the enamels with which I would paint Airfix kits to fill in the detail on a silhouette of the figure sprayed in gold paint. I don't recall the result as having been anything special, and years later, I popped the question on facebook:

Do you remember I painted the tank of a bike for you, maybe around 1982? Did it ever get put back on the bike and did you ever take a photo? Just wondering because with hindsight I'll bet there's probably some reason why bike custom people don't use little pots of Humbrol enamel or whatever it was that I used.

It turned out that he did remember:

I do and do you what I fucking regret selling it to this day it was brilliant the tank and the bike I mean, do you know never took a picture of it either (sorry) I remember to this day it was black with artisan robots and stuff way ahead of its time the bike was an old villiers Sprite 250 that I had for my 12 Christmas !!!

This came as a relief to me:

I'm just glad it worked. All these years I've imagined you taking it out on the road and the whole thing sort of peeling off before you're back home.

I'd anticipated some vague memory of resentment over my shoddy custom job, thankfully without foundation.

Think back it all brings back a bit of a comedy, the day you gave it back to me Michelle Warren told me I couldn't play with her tits anymore after I got my painted tank back it kind of took my mind of things ..... Oh and the paint job was as good the day you gave it back to me think sold it when I was 17 or so !!!

I remembered Michelle Warren but not her tits, and I suspect it had escaped me that Nelson had ever been granted access to them, so it's probably a good job that he mentioned it or I never would have known; but this exchange came later.

Meanwhile back in the eighties, I left school and had no good reason to think about Nelson; but as I've found, as one progresses along the path of one's existence from one place to the next, those I miss tend to be those I never knew very well, those who provided texture, those who had something but not a good reason for us to keep in touch. So from time to time I wondered what became of Nelson. Eventually, inevitably, facebook provided the answer to this question which I probably should have known not to ask; because we still didn't really have much to say to each other, and then there was the Brexit referendum, upon which Nelson opined:

Sorry Lol you are a better person than that !! We have got a real chance to actually do things right and if I'm being selfish get our own way for once, we as a country have objected to 79 (I think) new EU rules and our objections were ignored every single time, try not to look into this too much I think the vote to exit is nothing more than ....... "Do you know what, I am fed up with being dictated to 100% of the time and ignored if I dare challenge or question" we are quite prepared suffer in the short term to forge a better environment for ourselves. The whole immigration bit is largely a red herring and a convenient label to stir the shit

Despite my being better than something or other, this wasn't a dialogue I could see going anywhere useful, which it accordingly didn't:

Doom and gloom doom and gloom suck it up at least we haven't got shit loads of Brussels rules and regulations to tick off before we tackle it all ..... All you need is some Tommy can do attitude .... Ok let's have a brew then come on you wankers lets get at it !!!

This was followed by some peculiar comment about the spirit of Isambard Kingdom Brunel with Nelson announcing that he was heading outside to build a suspension bridge on the grounds of the possibilities having become endless. I was unable to find the comment when I went back to look for it, so maybe he'd deleted it, having discovered that Brunel was the son of French immigrants.

Anyway, the pattern had been established, this pattern being our social media interaction being limited to politics. The one exception was some comment I'd made about the Sex Pistols which he'd somehow read as a criticism and accordingly jumped to their defense on the grounds of the Pistols at least having been better than all that New Romantic stuff which came after, which was all a bit gay. Otherwise, I might submit all manner of posts to my facebook page, photographs of things I'd painted, myself stood on the surface of the moon, selfies taken while bowling with Prince Philip and the Chuckle Brothers, and never so much as a dickie bird from Nelson, but the moment I mention Jeremy Corbyn, as if by magic...

Sad to say you are wrong Lawrence on the simple premise, once an anarchist gets what they want they simply cease to be an anarchist and morph into something more wildly extreme like Che, Pot, or dare I say Hitler ? Or they swing the other way and conform to line their own pockets !

Corbin typifies for me the very essence of anarchy in attacking the establishment - be careful what you wish for !

The thing I found the most mystifying about this one was the bewildering conflation of Che Guevara with Pol Pot and Adolf Hitler, almost as though he had no fucking idea about who Che Guevara actually was but was simply pulling names out of his ass. Under other circumstances I might have asked did you even go to school, but I quite clearly remember that he did because I was there too.

It didn't get any better when I opined that the Conservative party comprised mostly amoral money-grubbing shitbags who shouldn't, under any circumstances, be re-elected at the end of 2019. My argument was based on the idea that if all of the country's problems were, as fuckwits claimed, the fault of the previous Labour government and the Conservative government had spent its time in office correcting their mistakes, their apparent inability to correct those mistakes despite having had nine years in which to do so would seem to suggest they might not be the right people for the job. Additionally, Conservative solutions to Labour's mistakes had included the extradition to Jamaica of old age pensioners who had arrived in England at the age of just three months, and austerity policies, by which those physically or mentally unable to work were denied benefits just to see if it might inspire them to pull their socks up and get a job, at least in the cases of the ones with legs. As my mother's job is to provide legal advice to such people, I'd met a few of them and therefore had direct experience of their problems being absolutely life threatening and genuine. The argument that they all get given free cellphones and live a life of dole scrounging luxury never sounded like much of an argument to me, but apparently it worked for Nelson.

Anyone remember the lovely note left on the treasury wall from the last government 9 or 10 years ago ? Well it read like this ..... money all gone, good luck !

Life is fab till the moneys all gone...then some poor fucker has to go in and clean up the mess then gets blamed for the shit not of their making !

Just saying

I wanted to argue against this drivel, to suggest that maybe the whole point of government was finding ways of raising money to pay for essential services - because I'm pretty certain government funding isn't based on whatever small change the previous lot dropped down the back of the fucking couch - but I knew I was in essence arguing with the contents of a right-wing opinion column, something which waves a hand to make some general point about those people, then orders another pint. I was wasting my time.

Money greases the wheels, when you run out guess who suffers the most ....go ask any Cuban when Russian turned off the tap ....and its those in over paid jobs top 5 or 10% pay 70 to 80% of the tax in this country ...where the fuck do you think they will do when they get taxed 99p in the pound as they did back in the 70s ?

Yeah great idea let's eat cake and caviar for a week and starve for a month after month after month, because the money,s ran out ...that's really good for the poorest and most in need like those in hospital or unable to work.

Still there will always be a room at Chequers and massive debt owing to those you ought not to have borrowed from.

Still the needy will have free WiFi and a £600 phone to check if their benefits are in their bank account ! ....well until such time the treasury is empty ?

The thesis, as I understood it, seemed to be fuck those dole-scrounging sponge monkeys and will no-one think of the millionaires?, a thesis I can have delivered direct to my earhole by phoning my dad, should the need arise.

I'd tried with Nelson but I should have known better. I didn't really know him at school, and I don't really know him forty years later beyond that he plays a lot of rugby and holds views such as those given above, delivered with the same bullying tone as the one about all the little kids he'd beaten up that week. He was setting me straight whether I liked it or not.

I shuffled him off into a subgroup of facebook friends, one bound by settings which mean they don't see any of my posts or get to comment upon them...

...not because I prefer an echo chamber but because I can already read and if I'd wanted to carry on reading the opinion column of the Sun I probably would have stayed in England. Regurgitating what you heard some bigger boys saying does not constitute a viewpoint, not even when framed in matey terms as though we ever had anything at all to say to each other. I'm sick to the back teeth of those actively working to make the world worse, those who believe anything told them by a nice man in a suit. I'm tired of the xenophobes, the good company men, the good little soldiers, the loyal snitches, the teachers' pets, the police informants, the head boys and girls, the neighbourhood watch award winners, the apple polishers, the people who are only able to elevate themselves by pushing down on someone else, life's Manchester United supporters, kisser's of the royal arse, grateful Ygors, goodly serfs, those who ask can I carry that for you, master?, and anyone who ever described themselves as proud without having actually done anything to be proud of beyond being born in a certain place.

Life has been better since, at least that part of my life involving social media. My curiosity about whatever became of has reduced to almost zero because most of them apparently turned into arseholes, thankfully with a couple of exceptions.

So that's another lesson learned. I probably should have learned it back when he first cut one of the figures out from something it had taken me hours to draw.

Back in the Saddle

'Everybody make some noise!'

Bess and I are back at Mission Marquee Plaza craft fair. Following a couple of fallow months spanning the season during which Texan temperatures dip to not actually very warm at all, this is the first such fair of the year and it's good to be back - particularly after such an uncommon week. This winter has been genuinely cold, wet, grey, and relentless, feeling more like English weather than I am comfortable with; and we were all ill last weekend - Bess, myself and the boy with some chest infection which hit each of us on consecutive days. I'm still recovering. I went out on the bike just one day but had to get off and push whenever I came to a hill.

Then I noticed that all of the boy's anecdotes about occurrences at school hinge upon the phrase he then proceeded to as prefix to the thing which the person did, which is rarely anything of consequence sufficient to justify either the build up or application of such long, long words.

Then a white supremacist murdered fifty Muslims in Christchurch, New Zealand, prompting our president to quickly delete the tweet he'd allegedly posted thirty minutes earlier linking some Breitbart opinion piece about how all Muslims are bad.

These are the contributing themes from which the general mood of the week has been woven, so it's really nice to be back to something familiar, and no longer coughing or sneezing as we had both feared might be the case. We loaded up the car the night before without even really having to think about it, and here we are, back on our old pitch to the right of the stage area and the drive-in screen. Being the first craft fair of the year, there are a lot of people here, and even some entertainment.

We've set up between a couple of women selling jewellery and a younger woman with bags of fresh herbs, all from her own garden. She also has a little dog, a friendly terrier called Radio, although we never get around to asking why he is so named. The cactus family arrive as I'm attaching my paintings to the display frame. We're usually right next to the cactus family, but never mind.

I pop over to say hello.

'It's good to see you,' he responds.

'Yes,' I say. 'Where's your friend with the truck?'

'My friend with the truck?'

'You remember I did a painting, and his truck was in the way so I painted it as well. He said he was going to buy the painting.'

'He might be along later. I don't know.'

'Well, no problem. If he's changed his mind that's fine too, but I have his painting with me just in case.'

We get ourselves settled. It's still a little cooler than we like, but better than it has been. Bess has already sold a few rocks.

The entertainment is a festival of sorts, something billed as Loopfest 2019. Performers have come from all over the world - Mexico City, California, Costa Rica, Holland and so on - and today they're going to do their thing on stage for us. There are about seven people sat around on the grass up at the front. I assume they are either the audience, or other performers watching the show whilst waiting for their own turn in the spotlight. These people are Loopers, someone explains over the PA.

It's a whole new kind of music.

It's the latest thing.

It's people playing music, sampling themselves, and then using the looped sample as accompaniment. I recall seeing it done in a pub in Coventry back in the eighties, except the guy was mostly applying his sampling technology to covers of House of the Rising Sun and the like. I've even done this sort of thing myself but with tape loops; but some nineteen year-old has a go and it's suddenly a fucking movement because he thought of it and it's like, awesome 'n' shit.

The first guy sounds like Fatboy Slim who some may remember tickling the charts two whole decades ago. Then there's a guy looping the noises he generates with an electric cello - which is actually pretty good; followed by some tool with a keytar looping his own vocal beatboxing - and the rest seem to be variations on country and western which would sound exactly the same played by a full band, perhaps better, and which makes me wonder whether the Musicians Union didn't have a point all those years ago when they tried to ban the synthesiser. If it sounds like Waylon Jennings with full band and yet it's all coming from just you and a pedal, my first thought is that you're performing with samples because you don't have any friends, and my second thought is that there may be legitimate reasons why you don't have any friends. Generally this is the most underwhelming amazing new thing I've encountered in a long time, which I state as someone who still finds vapourwave quite exciting.

'Could you do a rock with the badge of the marines?' asks some guy who stumbles up to our stall. My wife smiles and makes amiable noises, but it's clear that the answer is piss off, and rightly so.

Hi there, I don't like anything you have enough to want to buy it, but if I could persuade you to paint something completely different to any of the stuff you're selling here on your stall, then there's a possibility I might consider making a purchase.

We love these people almost as much as those whose unrequested advice begins with, you know what you ought to do?

I head off to buy tacos just as some hairy dude approaches mumbling something about Salvador Dali. I recognise his type from having spent most of my art college years avoiding him. I just know he's about to dump a load of useless suggestions on my wife, maybe if she could paint mandalas on a bong or a cigarette lighter or a Grateful Dead album…

I buy tacos and by the time I return, the hairy dude is stood alone in the middle of the field watching people sample themselves on stage. He walks backwards and forwards, and after studying him for a couple of minutes, we recognise this as dance. He holds two brightly coloured balls, one in each hand, and he's throwing them into the air then catching them. It isn't quite juggling.

'So what was he saying?'

'He read the sign,' Bess tells me.

We have a sign hung from the awning of our canopy, something along the lines of Bess & Lawrence Burton, Original Artwork in chalk. It seemed necessary to qualify ourselves as having produced original artwork so as to effect some aesthetic distance from persons selling their homegrown paintings of Batman and the Joker.

'He read the sign,' Bess tells me, 'and said something like, well, it's not exactly Salvador Dali, is it?'

'Huh?'

'I know.'

'What a fucking twat. I wish I'd heard him.'

I expect it was something well-intentioned which came out wrong, or was an innocent but fumbled attempt to introduce himself as a bit of a character, or at least as a guy who has heard of Salvador Dali. Arseholes will usually have heard of either Salvador Dali or Pablo Picasso and may even know that Mona Lisa was not the name of the person who painted her picture. When they attempt to engage you in banter on the subject of art, being way out of their depth they will assume that you will be fooled by mention of either Picasso or Dali. A very early issue of 2000AD comic, back when it was actually read by children, featured a letter from a young reader proposing that the art on Judge Dredd was so amazing that not even Picasso could have done a better job. It seems a fairly safe bet that the lad hadn't actually given much thought to how a tale of Mega City One's toughest lawman would have looked had it been drawn by the celebrated misogynist and pioneer of Cubism; and that's the mental age we're dealing with here.

Bess and I eat our tacos and watch a lone buffoon dancing in the middle of a field to country and western played on an effects pedal. Occasionally he raises up his arms to flash peace signs at no-one in particular. As usual, I haven't sold shit, while Bess has been pretty much cleared out.

It's nice to be back.

Pillock

So that wasn't Nico we were protesting outside the church with to stop Viraj Mendez from being deported in Manchester?, you said. Okay, thanks for clearing that up.

I had to read the twisted grammar twice because my first impression was that you were claiming to have protested Nico, formerly of the Velvet Underground. This would have squared fairly well with my initial point:

I usually try to steer clear of general grumbling about Trump and the proposed wall, but today found myself in violent disagreement with the former drummer of the Velvet Underground on the subject. Luckily this requires no reassessment of a much loved back catalogue of work with a peg over my nose because I always thought the Velvet Underground were pure shite; so that's nice.

It was then pointed out to me that the rest of the fuckers had probably  been Republicans anyway, so none of it makes much difference in the great scheme of things; and that was when you blew your top, swooping in to expose our shameful ignorance of Nico protesting outside the church to stop Viraj Mendez from being deported.

That showed us.

I'm a snowflake, you explained. I get emotional when people go after dead friends.

I wish I'd known about your friendship with Nico of the Velvet Underground.

What was she like? What was her favourite food? When you all went to the pub, did she stand her round or was it the case that she always seemed to have mysteriously gone off for a piss when it was her shout?

I suppose I shouldn't have been so surprised, given your close personal friendship with Adam Ant. I remember when that guy said something or other about a Nine Inch Nails song.

I will never buy Trent's records until he pays Adam what is owed to him, you boldly proclaimed, standing firm as a mighty sentinel against the injustice of wayward royalties. I'll bet Adam is glad to have someone like you on his side, although I didn't realise you knew Trent Reznor as well.

Fuck.

Who don't you know?

Did you and Adam ever go to the pub with Nico? What I would have given to have overheard that conversation. Did you all get up and walk out when Trent came in for a pint and a packet of salt and vinegar, or was that before Nine Inch Nails covered that old Adam & the Ants song, back when you were all pals together?

You once told me you had been in a punk band back in Blackpool. I asked what they had been called, because I used to read a lot of punk fanzines, and I even know a couple of Blackpool people who played in punk bands. It seemed like there might even be a slim chance I had heard of you. Maybe you know Simon or Stan?

Sadly you didn't have time to tell me the name of the band you had been in because, as you explained, you were just about to start your shift at Whataburger, and had you told me the name of the Blackpool punk band you had been in that I might have heard of, then you might have made yourself late for your shift at Whataburger; so I'm just glad that didn't happen because I would have felt guilty.

Phew.

It's a shame we didn't get to meet when you were here in San Antonio. I mean, here we are in Texas, both originally from England, both fans of the same stuff - roughly speaking, and it would have been great to meet up and compare notes; and I saw that you were at the museum. You know that's a five minute drive from my front door, right? I guess it was just a little bit too difficult so it didn't happen, but maybe next time you're in town, or maybe Bess and I will be able to visit you if we happen to be over there on your side of the state…

Who fucking knows?

Fireworks

We're driving along, out in the Texas countryside heading towards Castroville. The sky is absolutely dark, spattered with stars, and as usual I find myself looking for the one which is following us. This is because the Target Books edition of Larry Kettelkamp's Investigating UFOs had a massive impact on me when I was a kid, seven or eight-years old and living on a farm in rural England. Being a kid I was fascinated by anything weird. I'd heard of flying saucers, but Kettelkamp's book was where I first read about their notional occupants, specifically in relation to the notorious case of Betty and Barney Hill. Oddly, the detail of the story which has stayed with me is that of Betty idly gazing from the window of their vehicle as they drove along and noticing how a star appeared to be following them.

So that's what I always think about under such circumstances, and possibly because it's very rare that I'm ever inside a car driving upon a country road after dark. The reason for this is that I've lived in cities since I was roughly twenty, which is fine because I don't like the countryside once the sun has gone down. It reminds me of being a kid, and of all the things I thought were real when I was a kid; and whilst I no longer believe those things to be real, I state this with greater confidence when the sun is shining, or at least when illuminated by the lights of town and city.

We're heading for Castroville because it's New Year's Eve, the last evening of 2018, and we've been invited to celebrate with Margot, one of my wife's co-workers whom I've yet to meet.

There will be fireworks. We were going to bring some to add to the pyrotechnics, but all of the places selling fireworks along our route - because no-one in Texas is allowed to sell fireworks within city limits - are tonight crammed with customers, truck after truck backed up onto the highway.

We drive for forty or fifty minutes, maybe an hour, following smaller and smaller roads until we're on a dirt track. I'm looking for names and numbers upon the mailboxes we occasionally pass because Bess is concentrating on driving.

'What was the name on that one?' she asks.

'It wasn't a name. It was some pro-life thing.'

'Well, that won't be Margot's place but we must be near.'

We're there within a few more minutes. There are lights up ahead, and as we approach I see a house and a barn - nothing else because it's darkness all around. It's now about eight in the evening.

We see people and we park.

Out of the car, I look up and realise I've probably never seen so many stars in my life. The sky looked nothing like this when I was growing up in England.

The people we see are Margot and other members of her family. They're stood around a bonfire. It's cold so we crowd in, watching cinders sail up into the black sky, warming ourselves by an orange glow from within the logs.

My first bonfires were Guy Fawkes night on the farm where I grew up. Being the only two kids on the farm, myself and Alan would get started on the bonfire about half way through October, dragging dead conifers from the spinney at the back of the cottages to a corner of the orchard at the foot of the hill, then stacking them against each other like the bones of a wigwam. I recall the conifers as having been some twenty or thirty feet high, but then I was myself much smaller so they probably weren't much taller than a clothes pole. Guy Fawkes night came and we all gathered around to light fireworks from little cardboard boxes and bake potatoes wrapped in tinfoil in the embers at the foot of the bonfire; and naturally this is what I'm thinking about right now as we stand around in the dark at Margot's place.

I've bought a few cans of Boddingtons so I get started on one. Bess introduces me to Steve and Lupe, both of whom work with her and Margot. Junior runs off to see the critters - cattle, horses and a donkey, amongst other things.

Lupe is not only from Mexico, but once lived in Toluca, a city I've visited many times. She only recently became a US citizen, so we get to talking about her citizenship seeing as it's something I've been considering. The process sounds complicated, with laboriously completed applications prone to disappear for no obvious reason, and without any apparent consequences for the government department that lost them. Maybe this is an example of America having become great again.

I tell her I had a similar, albeit less politically suspicious experience when applying for the visa which allowed me to travel to the United States and get married. It took me many months to fill in the application owing to the level of detail required. Eventually it was done and I sent it to the US Embassy in London from which I subsequently received an interview date. The interview began with an officious woman telling me that I had failed to fill in an application form and would therefore have to do it all over again.

'I actually did fill in an application form,' I said, 'and I posted it to you, so you must have received it.'

'We never received it, so you clearly didn't post it.' She told me this as a fact established by her having stated it.

'Had I not posted it,' I pointed out, 'you wouldn't have received it, and logically you must have received it because otherwise you wouldn't have sent me the letter asking me to come here for an interview.'

Despite the impeccable logic of my defence, I was nevertheless somehow in the wrong and had to fill in the same application form again, right there at the embassy, based on what I could remember of the month it had taken me to fill it all in first time around. This meant I had to take vague guesses at otherwise long forgotten details of employment history and the like.

Lupe sighs at the inevitability of the forces of officialdom which take the piss with a big smile because they know there's nothing you can do, regardless of your having gone through the supposed proper channels. We talk about the government for a little while. We're not very impressed with them.

We meet Kyle, who is already a little drunk. I have an impression of his being in his late twenties, but he tells us that his son is twenty-three. He describes himself as a skater. He and my wife know a few of the same people from high school, but not each other.

'Where you come from?' he asks me as others crowd around to savour the answer.

'England,' I tell them, prompting in response the usual anecdotes about either visits to England or having met some English dude at some point or other.

'No, I don't mind being asked,' I say in response to another question. 'I was asked the same question only today in HEB as it happens, same place I've been shopping since 2011. I guess the cashier never noticed my accent before today.'

This gets a laugh for some reason.

'I'm just going to start telling people I'm from San Antonio,' I add, which gets another, bigger laugh.

Trays of sausage, brisket and tortillas appear, freshly cooked and steaming. We fill our plates as Margot heads off towards a speaker sat in the grass connected to someone's smartphone and blasting out rock music, Smashing Pumpkins and a few things I actually recognise. 'I got me some ELO,' she announces ominously.

Kyle is engaged in an impersonation of what a Japanese gentleman says upon encountering a transgendered individual, a ladyboy by Kyle's terminology. He squints and grimaces causing his upper front teeth to protrude. His hand reaches down to tickle an imaginary penis as he delivers the punchline, four or five syllables which all seem to rhyme, one of them being dong with the hilarity pivoted upon long mispronounced as wrong - because it's an oriental person saying it. The joke, whatever it may be, is rendered incomprehensible by Kyle's delivery. It's difficult to tell where this one came from. Nothing within the conversation up to that point seemed to be heading towards either the Japanese, gender identity issues, or the phonetic disparity between certain languages.

Welcome to 1973, I think to myself, wandering back over to the bonfire as we get started on the fireworks. Margot's husband does the honours, taking fireworks across to the designated patch of ground and setting them off. The rockets are stood upright in the well of a couple of cinder blocks, one on top of the other. The fireworks look military grade, and when they go off, it's the sort of thing I'm used to seeing at huge public firework displays on Blackheath in London. We've come a long way since I was a kid with that dinky little cereal box of Roman candles and Catherine wheels.

Ooh, we all say, then ahh as we watch the sky light up with pops, bangs, and vastly spreading flowers of briefly electric colour.

Kyle jumps through a fountain of cinders flaming up from some giant landlocked sparkler. 'Yeehaw,' he accordingly whoops.

We watch, and then we go into the house to meet Margot's dogs, and other members of her family.

Her mother extends a hand in greeting and launches into a bewildering monologue cribbed from either Dick Van Dyke or one of those bloody awful Austin Powers movies. With hindsight, I'd say it was something along the lines of cups of tea with the jolly old Queen and blinky blonky blimey what weather we are having, but I'm unable to take in any of the specific details and receive only a general impression of cartoon cultural stereotypes. I'm on my third tin of Boddingtons and am approaching refreshed, plus it's difficult to believe that this woman is actually saying this crap in an apparent hope that I will respond, that I will recognise myself somewhere in there amongst the litany of Britface cliches.

I walk away because I don't know how to respond, and maybe because I feel sorry for the woman.

Bess and I pet the dogs, four or five of them including a collie, and also a cat.

'Good choice,' I say, giving Margot the thumbs up as I spot a Devo title amongst the DVDs just behind where the cat is lounging.

'That belongs to my husband,' she smiles. 'He's crazy about them. Myself, I like Cheap Trick…'

Margot's husband has been a peripheral figure at the edge of our gathering. Apparently he isn't much of a people person. I haven't even spoken to him but I already like him more than at least two of those assembled here today.

Everyone is inside, so I go back out, walking across to the still blazing bonfire and into the field beyond. The darkness is such that I can't see my own feet, so I'm treading carefully. I come to a halt as I approach what might be a fence, although it's hard to tell, and I look directly up.

I've honestly never seen so many stars. It's as though someone has taken a spray can to the sky. It's a little cold and absolutely quiet but for the distant buzz of the speaker relaying the hits of Green Day to an audience of no-one. The reason I could never go back to life in the country is that this kind of spectacle is simply too intense, and will never become anything familiar. I prefer illuminated spaces in which everything will occur within certain established parameters.

Out here, I'm right at the edge where lines blur, where stories such as the one related by Betty and Barney Hill don't seem quite so unreasonable. It's too much to take in, although it's beautiful beyond description.

I return to the house, happy to know that we'll be leaving in a few minutes. It's nowhere near midnight, but neither Bess nor myself are particularly bothered about the countdown, the ceremony, or the arbitrary division of one point in time from the next.

It's already 2019 in England.