Another One of Those Days

It's August in Texas and therefore fucking baking, but so far I've just about managed to avoid my annual psychological meltdown arisen from ordinary daily pressures amplified in the heat. I've found that the twenty daily miles I cycle from Monday to Friday helps to keep everything nicely balanced - mentally speaking - and this year I've managed to get out each day before the heat gets too much, although it hasn't been easy. I cycle along a local greenway called the Tobin Trail which runs a circuit around most of the city but for a few places where different stretches are yet to fully connect. I cycle the Tobin Trail because Texas roads are frequented by shitheads in trucks the size of fucking houses who believe that running a cyclist off the side of the road represents a blow struck against the forces of both communism and anyone who ever laughed at your tiny penis.

Sometimes it can be difficult to cycle along the Tobin Trail due to repair work. For example, the end of Holbrook Road has been impassable for at least this last year, possibly two or three. This is due to renovations being made to the city's drainage system. I watched as a massive hole was dug in the road opposite the Black Swan Inn, a hole of volume sufficient to conceal a truck. Reinforced metal sidings were lowered into the hole, then pipes of the kind along which rebels traditionally flee for their lives in dystopian science-fiction movies, and then they filled it all in. About a month later they dug it all up again and repeated the exercise about fifty yards along from the first hole. They're now on their third hole, and it's beginning to look one hell of a lot as though they just can't decide where to bury the fucker.

I lived in London for twenty years and I saw a lot of road works in that time, but I've never seen road works which suggest that someone got the map upside down, necessitating whatever they buried being dug up, then reburied a little further on. It's almost as though fucking idiots are in charge. Some mornings in London I'd walk to the shops, passing workmen just getting started on a hole in the road, and the thing would be all done with tarmac being rolled flat by the time I came back the other way, heading home.

Part of the Tobin Trail runs along Salado Creek, which is dry at this time of year. This stretch comprises nearly a mile of raised wooden walkway named Morningstar Boardwalk. A few months ago I noticed a sag at one part of Morningstar Boardwalk, presumably where the supports had given way underneath. Then last week temporary signs appeared at each end informing us all that Morningstar Boardwalk would be closed for repair from Monday to Friday. The damage really didn't look like five days work to me, but then what do I know?

So it's August in Texas and therefore fucking baking, but I'm doing okay. I'm due to fly back to England in a couple of weeks time but I'm not thinking about it. I don't like flying. I don't really like England that much. I don't like my connecting flights being cancelled, distending the misery and discomfort of long-haul travel to forty-eight hours or more, and my connecting flights tend to be cancelled two out of every three times.

Like I say, I'm not thinking about it.

I deduce that I can exit the trail before I come to Morningstar Boardwalk, head through the subdivision along Astronaut Drive, then out onto the common land following the electricity pylons at the end of Luzon Drive. My theory is that I will be able to get my mountain bike down to Salado Creek from there, then across to rejoin the Tobin Trail at the other end, bypassing Morningstar Boardwalk altogether.

Monday is a bit hairy. The land across which I end up pushing the bike on foot is dry but overgrown with reeds and the like. I go slowly so as to be able to hear rattlesnakes, having seen at least one in this general vicinity. Then I recall I've also seen a wild hog down here, thankfully from the safety of the boardwalk at a distance of several hundred yards. It was too big to make sense. I couldn't tell what I was looking at and was momentarily reminded of interviews with people who claim to have seen Bigfoot. I'm told that wild hogs are to be avoided in the same way that mountain lions are to be avoided.

Nevertheless, I make it to the other side and I'm back on the trail. I can't quite face more of the same when coming back, so I wheel the bike parallel to the boardwalk, half suspecting that the promised workmen won't yet have turned up to effect the proposed repairs and that my detour will have been for nothing. There are a couple of trucks parked as I come to the damaged section. I expect someone to tell me that the boardwalk is closed and that I'm trespassing, but they only look at me and shrug.

I follow the same route on Tuesday, albeit later in the day. I explore the creek along the cracked, dry beds of water courses, eventually finding one which, if longer, seems less hazardous with less places which might conceal a rattlesnake; but it's way too hot so I turn around and head home, making up the usual mileage by doubling back on myself at certain points.

Wednesday is better - across Salado Creek and then back again as planned, although I still have some trouble remembering which dry stream to follow and end up getting lost in the reeds.

Boris Johnson suspends Parliament, and I add it to the other stuff I'm not thinking about right now - the Amazon in flames, the probability that Donald almost certainly will get a second term, everything turning to shit.

My sleep is restless and I dream about getting back somewhere or other, and I'm racing against the Beatles in their moptop incarnation in the matching suits with weird collars. I'm puckering my mouth and giving McCartney the thumbs up, mocking him by singing nursery rhymes. You know that Bah Bah Black Sheep - that's one of your songs, that is…

People I don't know are defending Boris Johnson's decision to suspend Parliament on facebook, proclaiming that he's a guy who gets things done, and I remember how much I'm not looking forward to whichever Sun opinion column my dad will be recycling for my benefit when I return to England in a couple of weeks.

I try to feed the cats as usual. Grace won't come in because Gary terrorises her. I pick Gary up and try to take him inside but he scratches my face, drawing blood. I'm really beginning to tire of his bullshit.

I hit the trail, then Astronaut Drive, then I cross Salado Creek. I'm cycling across rocks and dried mud. The ground is uneven, so I'm in first gear. I notice the bike has slipped into third for no fucking reason as I attempt to scale a particularly annoying mound, so I flip back to first and there's an agonising crunch. Everything stops.

The entire gear array - the derailleur as it's known - has somehow chewed itself up between the chain and the rear wheel, consummating damage first implemented by Ian the arsehole back in November. I dismount, which isn't easy on this ground, and make an inspection. The thing is beyond immediate repair and will need to go into the shop. I'm fucked. I'm about six miles from home and I'm fucked.

I push the bike towards the boardwalk, planning to follow the route I took on Monday. It's still closed off for repairs. The repair team is one fucking bloke sat in his truck, which doubtless explains why the work was estimated at taking a full week. I pass the section of boardwalk currently under reconstruction, at least in a general sense. Unless I'm missing something, the work is such that it should have taken a morning to complete, but maybe it's special wood which only grows on the planet Venus and the one fucking bloke sat in his truck is waiting for the next shipment.

I have 2Pac's posthumous Better Dayz playing on my Discman, and now I turn it off because I'm irritable and it's begun to get on my tits. I've been listening to a lot of 2Pac over the last week, mainly because I've realised that I have all of his CDs and I'm only really familiar with a couple of them; and now I realise that this is because, truthfully, he was a bit of a berk. In the wake of his undoubtedly tragic demise, 2Pac has somehow been held up as the black Noam Chomsky on the grounds of having read a book or two, even if one of those books happened to be Linda Goodman's Star Signs; but if his heart was in the right place, he still had some way to go, and simply repeating wisdom and understanding over and over whilst pulling a wise face is not the same as having depth. This is the man who decided that NIGGA was an acronym for Never Ignorant Getting Goals Accomplished, who insisted on a new, more positive meaning for the word thug, and so Better Dayz is all thug life, thug nature, thug passion, thug this, thug that, and by the time we get to the thug hot water bottle* I've really had enough of this shit

Once past the section under repair, I haul the bike up onto the boardwalk. I call my wife on the phone but she can't get away.

'Never mind,' I say. 'I just needed to vent. I don't mind walking home. It's all exercise.'

A trail steward stops as I reach Ladybird Johnson. 'You doing okay there, buddy?'

'My gears are knackered.' I point to the scrap metal wrapped around my rear axle. There's nothing he can do, and I can't be bothered to have a conversation about either bicycle repair or how I'm from a different country.

'Sorry,' the steward says.

'It's okay.' I tell him. 'It's not your fault.'

My phone pings with text messages. It will be Bess, but I can't be arsed to go through the rigmarole of stopping, finding my glasses, finding some shade then reading a text, whatever it says. I call her back once I reach Los Patios.

'My co-worker says she could pick you up,' she suggests.

'It's okay,' I say. 'It's only another couple of miles.'

I stop and take a look at the derailleur. I manage to unscrew it so that it's at least no longer wrapped around the chain. The chain now hangs loose, but I am able to cycle. Unfortunately I can't go much further than twenty feet without the chain slipping from the cogs and jamming, so I freewheel or walk the rest of the distance. I wonder if I'm sufficiently stressed to resume smoking again.

'You doing okay?' the black dude asks.

I've seen him enough to nod some vague greeting. He's about my age and is usually walking five or six dogs of various shapes and sizes. I can never tell whether they're his dogs or that's just his job.

'Yeah,' I say, and a minute later I notice that I've launched into a barely coherent summary of my life up to this point. I'm waving my arms wildly like Suzanne from Orange is the New Black and have made an embittered reference to the one fucking bloke sat in his truck.

'Well,' says my audience, 'I hope the rest of your day goes better.'

He means it, but you can tell I came across like a crazy person.

I'm less than a mile from home and I guess I feel better, having sobered up on the viscosity of my own mania.

What a fucking day.

*: This stands for Brothers Only Try To Live Excellently, y'all better recognise.

Worst Halloween Display Ever

There's a house with a chain link fence on a corner a few blocks from where I live. The chain link fence runs across the front lawn of the place, which is unusual. The rest of the street is just regular houses, fairly well-kept lawns, trees, maybe flowers, no chain link fencing. Some of those other lawns are presently host to political campaign advertising, mostly Beto but a couple for Ted Cruz, according to the political leanings of whoever lives there. Beto is standing for the Senate on behalf of the Democratic Party, challenging Ted Cruz who currently holds the seat on behalf of the Republicans. Those dwelling within the house on the corner favour Ted Cruz, and his campaign material is secured to their chain link fence, along with a whole load of other stuff advertising their political sympathies to those who drive along North New Braunfels Avenue. Amongst the other material is a large presumably canvas banner which reads:

We have had it with Barack Hussein Obama, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Dianne Feinstein, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Cory Booker, Chuck Schumer, Colin Kaepernick, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, Beto O'Rourke, Socialism, and political correctness. Vote as if your life depends on it, because it does.

To unpack all of this for anyone unfamilar with this array of names, Barack Hussein Obama was our last president - meaning either the president we had before the current guy, or our last president, depending how things go from hereon. The good news for our people behind the chain link fence is that he ceased to be president nearly two years ago, so I'm not sure why they've had it with him, as they put it. Maybe he regularly pisses on their lawn on his way back from the pub, which might also explain the fence.

Hillary Clinton is the wife of another former president, and she herself applied for the job at the same time as Donald Trump, but didn't get it. Again, I wouldn't like to speculate on how she's managed to upset our mysterious family. I can understand why people might not have wanted to vote for her, and it isn't that they're scared because she's a woman and she's brilliant - as one dimwit so memorably put it, but sheesh...

I don't know much about Nancy Pelosi beyond that she's a Democrat politician whose name is routinely employed as a smear in Republican campaign messages. Current campaigning against Gina Ortiz Jones here in San Antonio relies upon her association with Pelosi. Having just come back from a weekend in Houston, I noticed that one of their local Democrat candidates is also supposedly awful due to something or other to do with Pelosi, whom I therefore assume to be a malign Lovecraftian octopus entity manipulating human history from behind the scenes.

Colin Kaepernick is a football player, or at least a participant in a game which Americans call football. He famously failed to stand for the national anthem in protest of institutionalised racism. This caused the heads of certain people to explode due to toxic levels of what Orwell described as primitive patriotism.

It was not desirable that the proles should have strong political feelings. All that was required of them was a primitive patriotism which could be appealed to whenever it was necessary to make them accept longer working hours or shorter rations. And even when they became discontented, as they sometimes did, their discontent led nowhere, because, being without general ideas, they could only focus it on petty specific grievances.

I'm only vaguely familiar with the other names which have apparently struck terror into the hearts of our family behind the chain link fence.

At the risk of shooting a fish in a barrel, these neighbours of mine therefore feel - as is implicit in the last line - that their lives are jeopardised by someone who isn't president, someone who didn't get to be president, a football player, a space octopus from beyond time, a political ideology which has never had much of a foothold here in the United States, and anyone who tells them that they can't say the word n***** because it's disrespectful. This stuff is ruining their lives.

On the other hand it could be that they're just shitheads who don't fucking understand nuffink, instead pooing their pants every time some power hungry nest-feathering plutocrat waves Nancy Pelosi in their faces and growls, she's coming for your children, and she's going to force them to have abortions and gender reassignment surgery. It's always depressing to see people whose buttons can be so easily pressed by almost anyone in a nice suit claiming to be on their side.

Hopefully no-one will take offence at my use of the term shithead here. Angry Moron Who Doesn't Understand Stuff seems cumbersome, and is a little too politically correct for my liking.

The button pressing would seem to be revealed by the inclusion of Barack Obama's full name, given that the banner appears to have been commissioned from a company specialising in such things, in which case I imagine our family would have been charged by the letter, or at least the word; and Hussein, Obama's middle name, is not widely used and is therefore a superfluous inclusion unless attempting to establish an association with Saddam Hussein by means of sympathetic magic. This is the same button pressing favoured by the sort of righties who photoshopped images of Obama with a Hitler moustache, so I suppose our bunch are just passing it on. The possibility that someone behind the chain link fence owns a banner manufacturing business and got this one as a freebie seems unlikely given crude handwritten cardboard signs affixed to other parts of the fence reading God Bless the USA, Secure the Border, Keep Our Guns, and all of the usual rightie concerns for things which either aren't the problem, or are else actively contributing towards it.

Hung from the awning of the house is another home-made sign reading We Love President Trump, and in the garden there's a professionally made one pertaining to a local anti-bullying campaign. Evidently they see no contradiction there.

I was in the middle of an already lousy morning when my wife told me about the signage at the house with the chain link fence, and I found it significantly depressing. There are too many shitheads in the world as it is, and I don't like to think of them living in the town I've come to call home.

While I would agree with the shitheads that there are problems on the left, if they genuinely believe America even has a left, then they're even more shitheaded than I thought. My position is that the difference between Republican and Democrat politicians is that the Democrats at least feel a little guilty after they've shafted you. I don't trust anyone in a suit who tells me they have my best interests at heart, because historically they never have done, and if they did, it would be self-evident and would hardly need stating.

However, the bottom line is that part of being an adult is making peace with the idea that maybe not everything in the world will be exactly as would you like it to be; and if you're an adult you should have the ability to reason and to at least empathise with those in opposition to whatever you happen to believe, to at least understand where they're coming from even if you don't agree with it. That's what being a grown-up is about.

Therefore, when a stranger waves something awful in your face, explains that this awful thing wants to turn your kids into homosexuals, communists, people who can tie their own shoelaces, or whatever else gives you cause to wake up screaming in the middle of the night, when the next thing that stranger tells you is that he or she has the answer to all of your problems - the ones you've only just found out about, thanks to the testimony of this same individual - if it doesn't occur to you that you're being played like a fiddle, then you're either a very small child or a fully grown shithead.

I don't know how much more simple I can make it. It really isn't that hard to understand. No source of information - no news source if you prefer - is without some form of bias; but this simply means you have to use the power of your mind to deduce whatever may actually be going on. Living in the information age, it's not difficult to find varied accounts of any given situation or issue, and it's down to you to reach a decision based on what seems likely rather than on what seems most comforting, most consistent with your existing view of the world, and which requires the least effort expended outside your comfort zone.

If you're unable to do this, then you're a shithead.

If you're a shithead, then your opinion is of no value because you don't understand stuff, and there's no reason the rest of us should be obliged to listen to you or to take your uninformed shitheaded views into account; because when a small child tells you they've just seen a real live dinosaur, it's cute, but hopefully you won't believe in the literal truth of such a claim; which is why we hopefully don't vote for people engaging in cock-obvious attempts to goad you into hatred of whatever easy target happens to be on the table at the time.

The day after I learned about the house behind the chain link fence, I passed by the place on my way to have a root canal. I wasn't in the most buoyant of moods, but nevertheless I had to stop and take photos, just as I would have done had a real live dinosaur been reported in my neighbourhood by someone more authoritative than a small child. I cycled down a street with lawn after lawn playing host to Beto's campaign material, and there it was at the end, like a shit splatter of Info Wars taped over the end of an episode of Kenneth Clark's Civilisation, the house which still seemingly fears that Obama is a'comin' for our guns.

I dismounted.

To my surprise, I realised that I felt sorry for the poor dumb bastards. I'm scared of all sorts of things - old age, cancer, and the likelihood of the entire planet becoming significantly less habitable during my own lifetime - but I can't imagine what it must be like to be so terrified of the rest of the human race, even one's own neighbours. I can't imagine daily existence lived in the belief that they're out to get you, with they being whatever some over-moneyed corporate saviour has you scared of this week. I can't imagine how difficult it must be making one's way through life with the comprehension and reasoning power of a typical eight-year old boy; and if this comparison seems unfair, consider that the shitheads are in power, gaining more ground across the world every day, all the cards in their hand, and the fuckers still aren't happy.

So I felt sorry for them, because what else is there?

One of Those Parent-Teacher Things

I've been rehearsing what I'll say all day inside my head. Theresa Thatcher will see my wife and do that exploding face thing, faking the joy with arms out, pretending it isn't the most awkward situation in the world. She's so glad to see us and how have we been?

I don't want to seem rude, I'll explain, but the thing is that we don't like you very much, so we're going over here now, and we'll walk away, easy as that.

'We'll be polite,' Bess tells me in the car. 'We'll be polite and then we'll walk away.'

'My way would be polite though,' I say, 'maybe a bit direct, but still not actually telling the woman to fuck off.'

Unfortunately I know that my wife is probably right.

The woman isn't really named Theresa Thatcher, but she carries herself with both the warmth and sincerity of the two female British Prime Ministers and has similar hair, so she's Theresa Thatcher for the next couple of paragraphs. She is mother to Devil Boy, possibly the most evil child I've ever encountered outside of an Omen movie. She is motivated almost entirely by money so far as any of us can tell. We thought we'd seen the last of her, but no, Devil Boy has been signed up for this same school. He's in our kid's class.

We're on the way to the high school because it's one of those parent-teacher things. We're late. We were supposed to be there at ten to six, a time which seemed to presuppose that most parents will be wealthy oil tycoons who don't actually have to work for a living. It's a private school, so most parents probably are something along those lines, and we're the exception. The boy decided he wanted to attend this school, and the relatives who can afford to stump up the lolly said yes, so here we are. If it were up to us he'd be at a regular school, but never mind.

Don't worry about it, I told Bess. We'll eat as usual, and we'll go after that and see what happens. If we're late it's tough shit. They should have started at a more reasonable time, like seven.

We're supposed to be there at ten to six to pick up our schedule, whatever the hell that is. My understanding of parent-teacher evenings is that we, the parents by some definition, get to speak to the boy's teachers, but apparently it isn't that simple and we need a schedule. It's going to be an experience of some kind. Even without it being an experience, I don't really see the need.

The teachers are paid to teach.

Logically, they'll either spend the time snorting coke, setting things on fire, rampaging around the school with a hand gun, and telling kids with questions about the curriculum to go ask someone who gives a shit; or maybe they'll do their jobs and teach. I'm banking on it being the second option, and I'm so confident of this being the case that I don't require reassurance or even a demonstration. I seem to recall my mother telling me that she only ever attended one parent-teacher evening and never bothered after that because it was difficult to see what difference any of it made to anything.

The parking lot is full of trucks due to this being Texas. Many Texans drive trucks because they are engaged in work which requires heavy machinery or livestock moved from one place to another in rural areas. Other Texans drive trucks because they're idiots with too much money and are probably compensating for something underwhelming in the trouser department. My wife and I keep driving until we can no longer see trucks, then we park in what space is available.

Once inside, we realise that the parents of the entire school are here, pretty much. The place is heaving. For some reason I had assumed it would be just parents of children in our boy's year, but no - which at least explains the need of a schedule. Each parent has an itinerary based on a typical day of lessons undertaken by their child, but scaled down to ten minute periods. Junior apparently kicks off the day with an hour or so of algebra, so that's our first class, followed by ten minutes of geography, then English and so on. It's all been scheduled so as to prevent disaster should seven-hundred parents have decided they all want to find out what their kid gets up to in the Latin class at the same time.

We collect a schedule from the cafeteria, then make our way to a classroom containing the parents of all the kids who have algebra first thing on a Monday morning. There's a teacher at the front, stood before a massive flat screen where I'd expected to see a blackboard. She's explaining to us that she's going to do her best to teach our kids how to do really complicated sums, and she gives us her email address so we can get in touch if we have any questions. Unfortunately we spot Theresa Thatcher sat at the front, and she's seen us, even though she's pretending she hasn't because it's awkward.

Suddenly this first session is at an end. I'm not sure we're any richer for having been here, and now we have to find our way to a geography class in some other room. The corridors are lined with lockers which doubtless have pin-ups of Michael J. Fox or Cheryl Ladd selotaped inside the door. It feels like I'm trapped in an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Everywhere I look I see squareness and team spirit worn with pride. I can see nothing I recognise from my own time at school, other than the basic configuration of hominids within a building.

We dive into a darkened theatre, following other parents similarly swarming towards geography.

'I'm so glad to see you,' beams Theresa Thatcher out of nowhere. 'How have you been?'

Fuck.

She asks whether our boy is taking drama, that being the function of the darkened theatre.

Nope.

We're away through the other door, into daylight. We've escaped.

We climb stairs to the geography room, another teacher stood in front of a massive flat screen telling us his email address. We take seats, those screwy plastic chairs with an arm rest upon which you can lean to write or take notes. They don't even have desks as I understand it, nowhere to carve swastikas, skulls, the logos of heavy metal bands, or messages casting aspersions on the sexual preferences of other pupils. It feels as though we're in training for office work, as I suppose we are.

The teacher fills the screen with a page explaining which parts of the globe the kids will be studying over the coming year. It looks as though it will be mostly in socio-economic terms, with much less emphasis on plate tectonics or colouring around the edge of your fjord with a blue pencil, although I could be wrong. The teacher additionally informs us that he will be taking a dim view of anyone found playing with their phone in class, explaining in no uncertain terms that they will be told to put their phone away. I'm not even sure where to begin with this idea.

The bell goes and our ten minutes are up. The bell is actually a harsh electronic tone of the kind which alerts citizens to the arrival of a new batch of soylent green in a dystopian movie.

Everything is different. My school was primarily about teachers writing things in chalk on a blackboard, following which we would usually take books out of our desks - an operation effected by raising the lid - either to read them or write in them. I recall my dad's account of writing on a piece of slate at his school and how archaic it sounded to me even when he first told me, and realise I am now at a similar remove from the present. I am waiting to see how anything is improved.

We enter the English class. My wife is suddenly excited to see someone and is making all the noises. There's Theresa Thatcher half way up out of her chair in response, but both of us seem confused; then I recognise Duncan's mother. We'd forgotten her kid is also here, so that's nice, and it is indeed good to see her. Bess later tells me she felt hugely awkward, having failed to spot Theresa Thatcher seated in the next row. I had assumed it was deliberate.

The English class seems to combine what I recall as having been two separate lessons, literature and grammar. I glance around the room. There are two book shelves. One contains generic text books. the other is empty. It seems to me that an English classroom should maybe have a few more books. The teacher tells us that she expects her pupils to spend the first five minutes of each lesson reading a novel, something of their own choice. Somehow I don't find this reassuring.

The next classroom is full of sporting paraphernalia, trophies lined up on every surface, framed photographs of winning teams, pin-ups of soccer players, and a fish tank.

'I like the fish,' I tell my wife.

'This is the biology lesson,' she explains.

I look around. There's a poster featuring a cartoon octopus on the rear wall, otherwise it's mostly sport.

'He's the PE teacher,' my wife elaborates. 'Physical education staff over here tend to have a second subject, something else they teach, although it's usually history that suffers.'

I take another look around the room. It's mostly about him, not very much relating to biology. He tells us his email address in case we have any questions, then describes his teaching methodology by means of an acronym, GTS. He doesn't believe in just filling their heads with meaningless facts. He prefers to show them how to find out those facts for themselves, how to Google That Stuff, which is somehow delivered to his audience as a sales pitch.

Science, and specifically marine biology, is one of our boy's favourite things. We now understand why he hasn't been telling us much about the class in his usual way.

The bell goes.

Religious instruction follows. We're invited to ask questions.

'I don't want to seem facetious,' I say, 'but what are you teaching here? Do you deal with other faiths, or are you mainly focussed on Christianity?'

'Well we're starting with the Book of Genesis,' he tells me, 'so that mentions polytheistic faith.'

This answers my question in a way which does nothing to contradict the impression that has been forming over the last hour.

'Tell me,' he asks, 'is there anyone here for whom religion was unimportant when they were growing up.'

About a third of us raise our hands and he starts asking for reasons. Sadly the bell goes before he gets to me.

Finally, we end up in the Latin class. It isn't on the schedule but we were passing and we just happened to see the teacher. It's just the three of us, so we actually get to have a conversation with the guy.

'You know our boy picked this place because of the Latin?'

He didn't, but he's gratified to find this out. He talks some more, at last introducing something positive to my impression of this apparently expensive school. His room is decorated with posters relating to his subject, even with a small mosaic on board depicting the Minotaur at the centre of a labyrinth.

We finally leave with something to consider, and the rest will, I suppose, just have to look after itself.

An Englishman in Texas in England

Mary grins and chortles, gleefully poking me in the gut like I've just been rumbled. 'Hoo hoo - what's that?' she cackles. 'You take after your dad.'

I have a paunch because I'm middle-aged. I've been middle-aged for a while, and I'm surprised that this is the first time she's noticed how I bulge around the middle, particularly as I'm pretty sure I bulge slightly less than I did when I last visited.

It seems an inane observation.

I'm back in the old country, and it's getting harder each year; although on the positive side I'm still surprised and pleased to have found myself living a life from which I can issue such a sentence, because it means that I escaped, and I would much rather visit this country than still be living here. It gets harder each year because I get older each year, I suppose, and I become more and more acclimated to life in a hot country. I like to see my parents and people I know, but at the same time I dislike disruptions to my routine, and I dislike the process of travelling, twenty hours spent in constant motion from one door to another with all of the waiting around and headaches it will inevitably entail, then the jetlag amounting to a four-day hangover.

Last time I came back was the first since the people had spoken in favour of Brexit, and there was something unpleasant in the air. The country felt meaner in spirit, more insular than ever, more suspicious of anything slightly different. This time, the background noise of ambient xenophobia seems less pronounced, although to be fair it may only ever have been my imagination, a result of my being unable to shut out certain conversations occurring across social media. I've possibly just had more time in which to notice how many people now regard Brexit as a terrible idea. Either they're coming to their senses, or else it simply looks that way from where I'm stood.

In any case, it's strange being back, and I have an irrational fear of being stuck, somehow forced to resume my former mostly miserable existence. I'm presently a tourist in a life I've left behind.

My wife's friend Heather was back in San Antonio at Christmas, staying at her parent's house for the sake of convenience. Heather's father shook my hand and said, 'Well, at least you'll soon be out of the European Union,' as though this was something which would have been playing on my mind. I didn't bother to answer. It had been a peculiar announcement, because I hadn't said anything, let alone anything inviting consolation.

I've been trying to maintain an equivalent silence today, because I'm in the car with my dad and we're driving to some village on the outskirts of Leicester. Mary is sat in the back and we're dropping her off at her sister's house in the aforementioned village.

Typically I speak to my dad on the phone once a month. This time last year it had become something of a chore, with the first minute of conversational formalities usually giving way to his views on immigrants and how they were ruining the country, and how I wouldn't recognise Coventry any more. I usually shut up, hoping he'd run out of foreigners upon which to heap blame. Raising the obvious objections was a waste of time because I had the impression that for him, living a relatively comfortable life unimpeded by either immigration or immigrants in any tangible sense, it was really just like talking about the weather. His casual xenophobia was purely conversational and didn't seem to run very deep because it had no real reason to do so. Then in recent months our phone conversations became less contentious, focussing rather on whatever was going on in our respective gardens. It felt as though my dad might have come to his senses, so that was what I told myself.

I phoned him before I flew, and was thusly informed of his most recent holiday on the Costa Brava. Neither himself nor Mary had enjoyed it, because the Costa Brava has been ruined by foreigners - mostly from eastern Europe, very rude people apparently.

'It's not like it used to be,' he told me sadly.

This was an unambiguous return to the theme of what's wrong with foreigners, but I told myself it was different in at least being born of direct experience rather than some alarmist crap picked up from a tabloid newspaper.

Now we're in the car, heading towards Leicester, and I'm looking out of the window as my dad once again explains how I wouldn't recognise Coventry.

Mary offers a chorus from the back seat, explaining about all those jobs which would have gone to good Coventry lads but for something or other to do with Somalia. 'I'll tell you what the problem is, Lawrence,' she adds thoughtfully, 'some of them, they just don't want to work.'

I'm completely fucking lost by this point. I look at my watch. The case for the prosecution has been running for fifteen minutes.

'Do you think we could change the subject?' I say it loudly and forcefully, although my voice squeaks a bit because I'm trying not to sound as pissy as I feel. 'I hear it all the time and I'm sick of it - all the problems of the world blamed on the poor fuckers who have nothing and are the easiest to blame,' and I go on to give parallels and examples, notably fruit now rotting on Californian trees because migrant workers suddenly feel somehow unwelcome in the United States, and white people won't work for the shitty sub-minimum wages the farmers insist is the best they can do. I talk about the proposed wall and take some pleasure in pointing out that its main function is to appease angry morons who don't understand things, because it's not like it will actually keep anyone out. My speech wails and wavers and is peppered with awkward grammatical conjunctions because I'm improvising, but given the quality of the argument I'm attempting to counter, I probably sound like Carl Sagan.

I finish and take a deep breath and feel a little embarrassed.

Thankfully it seems it hasn't been taken as an outburst, because the conversation resumes normally and naturally; although Mary has just remembered some other things she doesn't like about immigrants.

I may as well have been talking about my favourite cheese.

'That's enough politics now, Mary.' My dad sounds firm, yet somehow not even slightly disgruntled. It really is as though we've been discussing the weather.

They talk about their ruined holiday on the Costa Brava, with reduced emphasis on lack of manners as an inherently east European trait. They talk about a holiday in Amsterdam.

The roads are amazing in Holland, brand spanking new and not a pothole to be seen. My dad explains that these wonderful highways are paid for entirely with British money stolen from us by the European Union, but I suppose that one won't be a problem much longer, so he doesn't dwell on it.

The Dutch will soon have to pay for their own roads.

Having dispensed with the customary scowling at foreigners, the rest of the day is fine, without incident or anything too awkward. Mary mentions the wedding of a grandson, specifically a grandson who has married another man. There's no talk of backs to the wall or which one is the woman or any of the stuff I might have expected five years before. There isn't even any comment deployed in service of demonstrating how progressive we have all become, how we're fine with those people, just so long as they're happy...

It feels as though something is better than it used to be, at least on some level.

More Letters Never Sent

Back in August, 2014, I took to the habit of saying exactly what I felt needed to be said when engaging with others through social media, then not saying it, instead filing my testimony away with others of its kind in a place where it could do no harm. This practice has saved a lot of arguments which probably wouldn't have been worth having, and gets it out of my system. Having already shared a golden cornucopia of these passive-aggressive - and probably a little confusing given the lack of context - treasures, here's another helping in the absence of my having done anything even remotely interesting this week.

You know who else speaks as they see it? Very small children who have yet to develop the intelligence to reason anything through. I realise this will sound harsh, but then truth hurts, as they say; but if anyone remembers being about fifteen and believing you know everything there is to know, then compare that to how fucking ridiculous that same fifteen-year old seems once you're a little older. That's how Katy Hopkins looks to those of us who have tried to keep on learning as we've grown older, and that's why we get called whinning lefties (sic) by people who can't spell the principal language of their own country and who haven't made any effort to understand any argument which isn't their own, as prepackaged from the usual sources - because they're intimidated and feel justifiably inferior.

Sorry if that makes anyone feel sad. It's because you're thick, not because we're the liberal media elite. Please feel free to address this argument when you've learned how to compose a sentence using your own words.

***

I'm not scared of it in the least. I simply regard it as pointless, at best a soon to be technological appendix on the way to a device which might actually do something that needs doing rather than just saving idiots the effort of walking three feet to the dimmer switch.

***

Given that my wife's entire point was about semantic riddles rather than a discussion of gender politics, piss off and please try to avoid making assumptions about what potentially bigoted views others may or may not hold based on a joke you either didn't understand or chose to take as a statement for reasons best known to yourself. Ta.

***

Commiserations. If it's any consolation, my worst ever disaster spiral ended a day of that sort of stuff with myself sat on the toilet suffering from mysterious explosions of such force as to warrant my screaming, how the fucking fuck did it get up there?, having somehow managed to blast some of the substance of which I speak up onto the light fitting in the ceiling. I hope your day gets better.

***

Not to be sniffed at, I know, but much as I love those Sleaford chaps, Dustbin of Sound was superior to English Tapas in my opinion. I haven't heard any of the rest but I suspect you should be higher in that list.

***

I have a good friend from way back who belongs to the Countryside Alliance and speaks from actual experience of everything involved with the hunt, and we had quite a long talk about it. His take on it was that yes, the hunt is cruel, but so is nature; that hunting is a necessary evil in that the countryside is an artificial environment resulting from centuries of agriculture and therefore requires artificial maintenance of this sort, and the hunt is statistically less barbaric than a farmer taking potshots at foxes with a rifle, and most likely maiming rather than killing. That was his position, which I could sort of respect in relation to his agreeing that the hunt is nevertheless barbaric and that the chaps in the red coats are mostly overmoneyed arseholes. My take on it is that if it's genuinely so vital that the fox population be controlled, then simply there needs to be a better way of doing it. 

***

Funnily enough I've been thinking about Oasis of late, partially inspired by stumbling across some interview with Liam Gallagher in which he made me laugh, despite my dislike of the guy.

***

I can't be bothered to read the above four million comments, but you should probably up your game when it comes to spelling and grammar before criticising others for their own, which I offer only as a helpful suggestion. Also, describing those who dislike Trump as cranky, obsessed or whatever it was you said is somewhat undermined by your following and posting on a facebook page which would seem to be mostly pitched against Trump. Do you see?

Whatever your reasons may be for supporting the man are made redundant by the childish way in which you show that support, which really looks just like a basic reactionary dislike of persons who use long, fancy words.

***

I only really mentioned the cost in contrast to prices in England, admittedly as of about six or seven years ago. There used to be a few small places where vegetables were reasonably cheap in my bit of London - or at least which I could afford, although I was thankfully a couple of quid above minimum wage at the time. Here it mostly seems to be massive chain stores full of facelifty types, so we seem to be at the extreme towards which England seems to be heading - is what I mean.

***

It's probably significant that, having moved to the US, I'm no longer exposed to the same bits of music used as soundtrack for trailers for TV sporting events - New Order, Moby, Fatboy Slim, Underworld and so on. I think I'd already heard most of this record just on trailers for tennis alone - but without that...

***

I watched three series and that seemed like enough for me. There was some good stuff in there, but I was beginning to find it a bit too depressing.

***

I am, and I'm going to insist on an extra religious one too.

***

As with all of these guys, he pulls a spooky face and whispers no-one knows in a ghostly voice, and that's really all he has. I've heard similar arguments made regarding structures in Mexico, and it's all bullshit.

These simple but happy jungle bunnies can't possibly have built this without help from someone a bit more advanced, you know - a bit more like us - so therefore it can only have been blah blah blah…

It's explaining things which either don't require an explanation or which already have a better explanation, just a less spooky one. This stuff pisses me off, and it pisses me off that people will read Graham Hancock before they'll read an actual archeological source, which you would think might be the first choice if they're that interested.

***

I'm never watching another Philip K. Dick adaptation ever again. I don't need any more blue and orange in my life, or another chiselled Keanu crying in the pouring rain about whether he's even real. Twenty times bitten, twenty-one times shy, as they admittedly don't actually say.

***

I've got to say I have doubts about this one. Pensioners are definitely getting stiffed big time, but I'd fucking love to know how an illegal immigrant goes about claiming that weekly hardship allowance if they're illegal. I'm additionally sceptical that our 2018 illegal immigrant takes home eight-thousand quid per annum more than I did in a full time job back in 2009. Anyone can type a bunch of invented statistics on facebook and get it shared. Typing out illegal muzzie pedos get a special pedo grant of nine million quid a year while our veterans get nuffink doesn't make it true. This sort of thing really doesn't look like it gives a shit about pensioners so much as stirring up the usual white supremacist bullshit.

***

Some of the opinions expressed in this thread make me so tired I want to fucking punch something. I've already replied three times then deleted the comment. Anyway, I was raised with an inherent distrust of authority due to having grown up reading the Bash Street Kids rather than Superman, so yes - fiction about good little soldiers doing the job the way it should be done is dull, which is why film and television tends to be dull; because as a medium it is at heart conservative and authoritarian, with super episodes of great shows featuring Cumberbatch dished out as a reward for loyal service or consumption of goods. It is at best commodified rebellion like Buffy the Lucrative Franchise, Product Trek, or Doctor Collectible so that we get to feel a little bit dangerous as a sweetener to the drudgery. Losers and fuck ups - as defined by the spectacle - make for a much more interesting story.

***

Still, on a more positive note, at least whilst the common man has his gun, we know a corrupt authoritarian government full of nest-feathering shitbags will never rise to power in America because constitutional amendment mumble mumble...

***

Oh Fuck - it's David Tibet was coincidentally also the name of a projected hidden camera comedy game show on Channel 4. Unfortunately I think it stalled at an argument over using the Horst Wessel song as the main theme tune, even though it would have been totally ironic, obviously.

***

If you're referring to Islam, as was the bloke I quoted, that seems to be suggesting there's such a thing as a thousand-year old culture in which aggression and rape are culturally ingrained as normal behaviour, which is the position taken by far-right racist organisations and which doesn't seem to refer to anything I recognise in the real world. It's the same argument as black people cannot be civilised, so I hope that isn't what you're saying.

***

I disliked that one with some intensity, plus it probably doesn't help that I've never been that bothered about van Gogh. There are many other painters of that era which I much prefer.

***

Okay, enough. I'm out of this group. Three days and I've had enough of people screaming about keeping cats inside when, you know, maybe some of us are thinking about the cats rather than ourselves. If you can't stand the thought of a cat living a happy life outside - and yes there are dangers - then maybe a cat isn't the pet for you. Maybe get a goldfish. Yesterday or maybe the day before there was a post by a woman whose cat had a broken leg, greeted with a mix of well-wishers, the understandably concerned, and people screaming either keep cat inside or we need to find out who did this and kill them. Some of you even referred to the female cat as a male, presumably not having bothered to read the thread. Frankly, I felt ashamed. Some of you are clearly wonderful people with great cats, others seem driven to cause drama.

***

Where was it moving by the way? I saw plenty of big-eyed Mockney manga girls boo-hooing because I wuv woo, Doctor Woctor with deafening sad music blowing both speakers just in case anyone didn't get it, and yes I saw the one about celebrated tea-towel artist Vincent van Gogh (the personified Dire Straits album of modernism) but I didn't see anything moving. I must have missed that one, which additionally casts doubt upon it being unmissable.

***

By way of example, I once linked some article about the impending extinction of elephants on friendface. One of the first replies came from Tim of Warwick posting in this usual real-life Alan Partridge spirit about what a shame it was because of course, as we all know, elephants are a nuisance and must be culled in certain parts of Africa blah blah blah economic sense blah blah blah lefty cloud cuckoo land blah blah blah - the thing was that, whilst he may have had some point relating to something existing in the real world, banging on about the necessity of shooting elephants in response to something suggesting that there are reasons it might not be such a great idea seemed extraordinarily misjudged to me, and my first thought was simply, oh fuck off, you stupid wanker. That was also my second and third thought, based partially on Tim not actually having much experience of anything beyond the end of his road, then standing as a UKIP candidate in local elections, and yet somehow believing his testimony to have some value despite all of the above.

Writing on the Wall

We've driven to Austin on the spur of the moment. Bess took the day off for a doctor's appointment and something at the bank additionally requiring my signature, and suddenly we had the whole day free to do with as we chose. So here we are at Austin Graffiti Park because Bess wanted to take a look at the place before they dig it up and move it to some other site out near the airport. It's officially known as the HOPE Outdoor Gallery, with the acronym standing for Helping Other People Everywhere. It was a housing project on the side of a hill, abandoned and ruined leaving only the walls, adopted by local graffiti artists, then made official during some SXSW event or other.

I quite like some graffiti art, although I don't really care whether you call it art or not. I particularly like the stuff I've seen sprayed on the side of Union Pacific railroad carriages which I encounter on an at least weekly basis as I follow the Tobin Trail beneath the bridge at Wetmore. I like what I see sprayed all across the southside of the city, which owes at least as much to the tradition of Mexican muralists as to anything else; and back in 1999 when I first visited Mexico City, I walked into the hotel bar on my very first night and met a couple of guys from the New York based Tats Cru - south of the border for some family wedding - which is probably equivalent to meeting royalty in graffiti terms.

Here in Austin, it's overcast and my enthusiasm probably isn't what it could be. We drove past a guy with a tail and I am now primed to expect idiocy. He looked to be in his late thirties and additionally wore a fedora, which is always a bad sign. His tail was long and bushy, yellow with black stripes, extending down from the seat of his pants almost to the ground. I realise how irrational it may seem to take such a profound dislike to a stranger based solely on their unorthodox appearance, but I'd probably go so far as to say that I actively hate the guy.

We find a place to park, then follow the street back along to the HOPE Outdoor Gallery. It's just a ruined pile of concrete junk set into the hillside, but with every surface a chaotic riot of colour. Empty spray cans and trash are strewn all around, and the place swarms with visitors climbing up and down worn slopes to the higher levels. It resembles the sets you always see in post-apocalyptic wasteland films, and I'm feeling a little underwhelmed. Worse still, the guy with the tail was apparently on his way here. He's set up shop with a marginally less irritating friend. They occupy the small central plaza of the site. They seem to be practicing circus skills with musical accompaniment from a smart phone hooked up to a battery-driven amplifier. I assume it's battery-driven, but maybe someone found a way to generate electricity by harnessing the annoyingness particles given off by useless wankers.

'Shouldn't you be working in a fucking bank or something?' I mutter as I watch the man with the tail juggling some kind of semi-circular dingus. He has the tip of his tail held between his teeth so that it doesn't get tangled up in whatever the fuck he's now started doing with a hula hoop, because having a tail can be such a pain  - always getting caught up in things. I can feel my inner Hank Hill beginning to bristle as I prepare a speech about growing up, responsibility and so on.

'This is why people voted for Trump,' I tell Bess.

'I know,' she sighs.

We climb up one of the banks past giant nopal cacti sprayed lurid dayglo shades which nature never managed. This too annoys me, at least a little. It suggests a lack of respect for the natural world, as does the scree of plastic spray can detritus; but, you know, just so long as cunts get to express their precious creativity...

We pass a couple of young women on their way up the slope. One has short blonde hair, ostentatiously large spectacles, and a wide, unpleasant mouth.

'She's an artist and activist,' I growl quietly, in obscure reference to iO, occasional co-host of MTV's Catfish whose name is differently capitalised so as to challenge the phallocratic orthodoxy of having a normal fucking name like everyone else.

The corner of one wall is sprayed with the words TRUMP 4 LYFE in silver.

'See,' I say. 'I told you!'

We climb back down, then along, and then up the other side. Here and there we can see the remains of some lovingly rendered image sinking beneath a sea of hastily sprayed tags and markers.

'Why would you spray your stupid fucking name over that? How does that add to anything?'

'I know. It's dumb.'

Kids pick spray cans from the ground, shaking them to see if there's any paint left, occasionally adding a name to the chaos, or the Beautiful Chaos as one piece would have it; except it's no longer beautiful. It's just chaos.

Later I will learn that permits were once required, ensuring that only persons with either talent or something worth saying could add to the graffiti park, so what I'm presently seeing is what has happened since whoever looks after the place stopped caring.

It will be demolished anyway, so what does it matter?

Find a spray can and express yourself.

Most have expressed themselves as names. There's a shittily drawn eye in a pyramid submitted by someone who probably believes themself to be a bit of a deep thinker, and most depressing of all are the wonky school logos, Central Catholic and the like. I've never really understood people who enjoyed school but I can accept that they exist and probably had their reasons, but proudly spraying the name of your school on a wall seems like the most retarded thing I've ever heard of. Proud to be a drone, it seems to say, proud to be a component! Check out this awesome barcode I just had tattooed on my forehead.

What else can I tell you? I'm a good company man through and through. Ha ha! Guilty as charged.

I'm a tool. Hear me roar in accordance with accepted community standards. Here's my roaring permit if you need to see it.

'So,' I say to Bess, 'they're going to move all of this to some other place?'

'That's what I was told.'

'I can't see the point. Can you?'

'No.'

'It's not like there's anything special here.'

Later I read that they're moving a token lump of wall for the sake of physical continuity, but this crap will otherwise be bulldozed to make way for some new development.

Yet, the longer we hang around, the more we begin to see the place as it was. Here and there, an image emerges from the Jackson Pollock scrawl. There are lost wildstyle tags in jagged letters six foot high, pink, blue and other strange contrasts of colour, names you have to know to be able to read. There are faces and heads, Snoopy and el Chavo - a child played by an old man in a slightly disturbing Mexican kid's show. There are traces of what you could even call art, now drowning in the free expression of JOSH and Central Catholic and some witless Biblical reference needlessly sprayed across the once relatively proud visage of something that was either an armadillo or a futuristic robot. This is what happens when you give people free reign. Despite the best of intentions, they never have anything to say that's worth saying, and next thing you know - oh dang, look who we just voted for!

We pass a young couple. The boy is long-haired, skinny as a rake, over six foot, and he looks about seventeen at most. He wears a psychedelic top and circular rose-tinted Lennon specs. He's either got himself lost on the way to a costume parade or undercover cops are getting younger and younger. There's a third possibility - that he's just some hopeless twat trying too fucking hard like everyone else here - but I'm not thinking about it because I know that if I do it will annoy me.

Rah Rah Rah

I haven't mowed the lawn since October because there didn't seem to be much point. The grass wasn't doing anything and we kept getting rain. It's difficult to mow the grass if it's too damp. Then, as January kicked off with a completely uncharacteristic couple of weeks so cold, grey and wet that it felt as though we were living in England, the grass became what may as well have been a wheat field, thick green stalks at least tall enough to hide most of the cats.

Texas has now resumed operation within established meteorological parameters, so it's hot and sunny again. In fact it's so hot and sunny that I've been sunburned whilst out cycling. Today, I'm going to spray on some sunblock before I go out, probably for the first time since late September. Unfortunately we're all out of sunblock. I'm not going to get burnt again, so I amend my plans. I'll walk to HEB, the local supermarket, pick up sunblock and the usual groceries, then spend the rest of the morning working on the lawn. My working on the lawn is long overdue and will be good exercise. Furthermore, this plan gets around the annoyance of making two trips to HEB - one for sunblock before I get out on the bike, and then the usual one for the day's groceries on the way back.

I walk to HEB, then consider the garden once I'm back home. I'm going to need to go over the whole lot with the strimmer, cutting the grass to a length which won't clog up the mower every three feet. I excavate the strimmer from where it's been buried in the garage for the last six months. The engine starts without any problem, but I need to adjust the head, to draw out a greater length of cutting cord from the drum. I experience difficulties of a kind roughly described in the facebook rant which they inspire:

Strimmers, trimmers, whatever the fuck you call them - why the childproof cap on the cutting head, or in my case adult proof? Why do the instructions appear to refer to a completely different piece of machinery? Why can't I get the fucking drum out of the bastard housing? It moves this way, it moves that way, and it doesn't move any other way so how the hell am I suppose to unscrew it, and no there aren't any points I can squeeze so as to release something or other whilst attempting said unscrewing, despite the lying Trumpesque instructions? Why are such things designed so as to penalise persons like myself who, whilst not completely mechanically inept, don't spend seventy-two hours a day thinking about grommets and wingnuts?

My frustration is such that I give up. The lawn can wait. Maybe I'll see if I can buy a replacement head at Lowes. I don't want to think about it, not today. I should have just gone out on the bike. What a waste of a morning.

I'll make that rice thing, I tell myself, that will cheer me up. I'm kind of hungry and it came out pretty good when I made it yesterday, and that was really just an experiment. I wanted to use up the leftover rice so I patted it flat and fried it until crunchy to make biscuits. I've since had a look at online recipes for the sake of comparison, and there was one which seemed worth trying, which suggested topping each rice biscuit with a mixture of salmon, mayonnaise, and finely chopped spring onions. I cook up some rice, pat it flat, then leave it in the fridge for a little while. Cooling means it will keep its shape when I fry it, so the theory goes. Yesterday it worked perfectly. Today, despite having fine tuned my improvised recipe, it's a disaster. The rice sticks to the non-stick frying pan, taking on a form resembling loose gravel rather than biscuits; and the fucking smoke alarm goes off, and it takes a whole minute to find the bloody thing; and there's oil everywhere and I'm beginning to feel as though I should never have got out of bed.

'Hello,' Bess calls as she arrives home a little later.

I'm in the bedroom and I call back. 'Hello.'

'Hello,' she calls a second time with the intonation of a question, apparently bewildered to find the house empty.

'Hello!' I call back, louder and with a subtext reading I heard you the first time, for fuck's sake!

'Okay!' she protests as I enter the front room. 'You don't have to be mean.'

'I already said hello.'

'I didn't hear you.'

'I haven't had a very good day.'

We go out to eat because we have an appointment at the school so it will save time. We go to a Greek place because it's near the school. We eat our kebabs and realise that we did this last week - an appointment at the school prefixed by hastily consumed kebabs. The coincidence is funny, although it's a different restaurant in a different part of town and a different school. This is the high school, the one our boy will be attending come August. Tonight it's something for the parents, or step-parent in my case. Neither of us really know why we come to these things beyond that it seems to be expected. The maths teacher will tell us that he or she intends to try really hard to teach maths to our child, and the other teachers will doubtless make similar promises. I always assumed this sort of thing would be implicit in the fact of it being a school. I don't know why anyone would need reassurance of what, for example, an English teacher will attempt to do in relation to a child in his or her English class. I don't know why it needs stating.

We scoff our kebabs and head for the school. The parking lot is full with parents still filtering into the front of the building. We're ten minutes late but I guess it doesn't matter. Clearly we aren't the only ones. We enter the building and I notice that the woman in front of us and the one behind both wear heels so high that their feet are nearly vertical and they have difficulty walking. Parents' evenings at Junior's previous school were distinguished by a surprising quota of mothers with terrible face lifts, and I wonder if high end stripper clothing is going to be the thing at this place.

We enter the main hallway where a trio of schoolgirls are sat behind a table to greet us and provide directions. They are teenagers and their smiles are either dazzling or subject to corrective braces so that they may eventually be dazzling. I don't understand them, or why they're here after hours. They must be volunteers. I don't understand people who enjoyed school or who thought of it as the best days of their lives. I don't understand team players or any of their over-enthusiastic like.

We are directed to an assembly hall, possibly the school canteen by day. Chairs are arranged like tree rings around a central podium, and there's a table of cookies and bottled water at the back from which we can apparently help ourselves. Unfortunately we spot Devil Boy's mother almost immediately. She is someone we were trying not to think about, and she's right over there looking back at us but pretending she's only looking in our general direction - a strategic affectation allowing us to pretend we haven't seen her, which is what we do. We both knew Devil Boy would be attending this school. He was friends with our kid about six or seven years ago, but even at the age of five he was weird and creepy with something cruel and unpleasant about him, so it was a massive relief when his family moved away; but now they're back, and we don't want to have to deal with Devil Boy or his social climbing mother. We choose seats positioned so that we don't have to see her, or catch her eye and fake our mutual surprise.

Oh how wonderful - you mean your boy will be here too? Gosh! How long has it been? Those two will have some catching up.

Bess and I glance at the itinerary, a long list of who will be speaking. There will also be prayer.

'How long is this going to go on, do you think?'

Bess doesn't know. 'A couple of hours maybe?'

Some woman is speaking from the podium, welcoming us to the school and to the adventure which will be our child's learning experience up until the year 2022. She introduces a priest who invites us to stand. We all bow our heads to mumble our way through the Lord's Prayer, apart from me. I had anticipated tedious scholastic information, statistics on how great the school is and why we've made such an amazing choice in bringing our kid to its door, but this feels a little as though we're being inducted into a cult. I don't have any specific objection to the Lord's Prayer but this doesn't seem like the time for it, at least not to me. That whole deal about the separation of church and state doesn't apply here because this is an expensive private school. Bess and I aren't the ones paying for it though. We're merely the parents.

'Now what we're going to do,' the woman tells us once the chorus of amen has died away, 'is come forward and get to know each other, so if you'd each like to come out from your seat - you can go back when we get to talking about the curriculum - just come up and talk to anyone you've never met. Get to know each other.'

'Fuck this,' Bess suggests. 'Let's get out of here.'

I'm flooded with relief because I thought it was just me. We shuffle along to the end of our row and head out the building, for the parking lot. We've been here less than ten minutes.

It's a school, and an expensive one, so I'm going to trust them to do what they can to teach our kid. That's their job. I don't need reassurance, or promises. If he doesn't sail into an overpaid position as CEO of some tediously thrusting corporation in September 2022, I'm not going to have a nervous breakdown or start looking for anyone to blame; and I don't need to be part of the family.

It's the school he wanted to go to, and they seem like they mean business, and that's enough for me.

Next day, I take the strimmer to a lawnmower repair place which has a sign describing itself as the best little mower house in Texas, but strimmers aren't really their thing. I head home, dropping in at Lowes on the way because what harm could it do to ask?

The guy working in gardening equipment takes about thirty seconds to fix the thing. It seems the part I had been wrestling with had screwed itself on so tight - presumably while the strimmer was in use - that it hadn't actually occurred to me that it could be unscrewed. I was going at it all wrong.

It feels as though a storm cloud has broken.

A Cheerleader for My Teeth

It's cold and windy in San Antonio, which is strange and depressing. I'm cycling to meet a dental appointment which has been brought forward an hour from four to three for some reason. Additionally annoying is that the Texas hill country seems to begin right at the end of my road, meaning my thirty minute ride comprises a sequence of exhausting humpbacks; and yet somehow I make it, bang on three o'clock. The waiting room contains many more elderly people than I am accustomed to seeing here. Usually I'm the only person waiting, but then usually I see the hygienist at four.

Prior to my moving to Texas, I was on the verge of losing most of my teeth. I had pockets extending down into my violently receding gums of over a centimetre's depth, which most dentists will tell you means you're screwed. My gum disease was raging out of control and most of my teeth were loose as the bone support crumbled. Happily, I was treated by one Dr. Stalker soon after I got here, a miracle worker so far as I'm concerned. He operated on my gob, removed those teeth which were beyond hope - mostly from the back - and performed some kind of dental magic by which the bone support was restored to those remaining. I am left with sufficient quota of newly stabilised choppers to be able to eat and to chew. The gum disease I've had most of my life is entirely gone, and those pockets have all closed up - which another dentist once told me would never happen once they were beyond seven or eight millimeters depth. Now all I have to do is to keep them in shape, to brush and floss, and to come back for a proper clean every couple of months, just to be on the safe side and to keep on top of things.

I sit in the waiting room for fifteen minutes. One of the staff emerges from my usual treatment room, presumably a hygienist. I don't recognise her, which is odd. She escorts an octogenarian patient as the woman's husband rises from the chair next to mine. They talk about Christmas, the usual stuff. It emerges that the couple have been married for sixty years.

'So what's the secret of a successful marriage?' the hygienist coos. The old guy mutters some reply and they all laugh.

'This is very nice,' observes the old woman, touching a branch of the miniature Christmas tree on the reception desk. 'Who did this?'

'Some of the staff, I think,' says the hygienist.

The old couple leave and she turns to me. 'Mr. Burton?'

I follow her to the treatment room as she tells me how she just loves old people, then explains that Rebecca - the woman I usually see - left a couple of months ago. She introduces herself as Sabrina. This troubles me because I liked Rebecca. I felt we understood each other, and she seemed like a genuinely interesting person. One wall of her office was hung with one of those digital picture frames which displays a cyclical sequence of snaps. Rebecca's photographs were of herself and her husband on holiday in Arizona, France, Spain, England, Mexico, and other places. The slide show provided a pleasant distraction from the metal spike she would work around my gums, chipping out the tartar which my brushing hadn't been able to reach. The digital picture frame is gone, and Sabrina seems significantly younger. She talks like Regina George from Mean Girls. Her voice is such that I expect to hear her say oh my god I mean I was all like seriously? and she was all like whatever, but instead she asks, 'Where are you from?'

'England.'

I take to the chair and Sabrina gets to work.

'How are you with the sonic?' She means the device with which she intends to remove my tartar build up.

'I'm okay, I guess. I prefer the manual thing, you know?'

'Raise your left hand if I cause any discomfort.'

'Okay,' and we're off.

She hits a sensitive spot every few minutes. Each time I jump so much as to make the raised left hand a redundant statement of the obvious. Sabrina talks as she works. She has a face mask and I can't understand a fucking word. It sounds as though she just said something about a skeleton cap, whatever that is, and I think it was a question. There's an irrigation pipe hooked into my mouth drawing out the liquid, but right now she's holding it in one hand.

'I can't understand what you're saying.'

She pulls the mask down. 'You need to suck on it like a straw.' She sticks the pipe between my teeth. 'Now close your mouth.'

I do so and the vacuum is such that it sucks my cheeks in as it removes all the blood, saliva, and whatever else. The sensation is fairly unpleasant.

She pulls out the tube and I sit up, looking for the glass by which I would ordinarily rinse out my mouth. It's not there. It hasn't even been replaced by anything. The space it would customarily occupy is empty. 'What happened to the,' - I wave a hand because I'm not sure what it's called.

'Those are gone now. They were unhygienic.'

I think about this, a future with no more rinsing out my mouth in the usual way, just Regina George stood over me with her tube. Still, I suppose that's progress, and it makes sense. I always wondered about those people from the local leper colony forever wandering in and having a cheeky swig from my glass.

Sabrina tells me she has a friend from Mexico who went to a job interview, and somehow one of the questions was whether the woman had ever put her foot in her mouth. Sabrina's friend was apparently at least as bewildered as I am right now, because she hadn't interviewed for the position of contortionist. Sabrina is telling me this in relation to my having failed to understand what she was saying when she seemed to be telling me about a skeleton cap. The story illustrates how there can still be misunderstandings between people speaking the same language, particularly if they are from different countries. Sabrina apparently believes herself to be the first person I've met since I moved to America six years ago, so I gather that must be why she's explaining all of this. She doesn't seem to have realised that I can't understand her because she has the shrill voice of a hysterical contestant on Family Feud, all cobra head and oh no you din't, girlfren' and Steve, I'mma have to say at the dollar store…

Dr. Stalker stops by as is his habit. I find him a reassuring presence. He knows what he's talking about and isn't prone to hyperbole. He looks in my mouth.

'Great stuff there, Lawrence. You're keeping it clean, and that's what we like.'

Sometimes he tells me he can scarcely believe the transformation, how well my mouth has recovered from the state it was in when I first showed up at his door. He says he wishes he had taken pictures for use on the lecture circuit, before and after.

'Keep doing what you're doing and we'll see you again.'

He leaves and Sabrina gets back to work. She chatters as she grinds the pick around below my gum line. The words I understand are mostly to do with how much calcified tartar I have down there.

Eventually she finishes, and as she fixes up the next appointment, she asks about my brushing regime. Then she tells me I need to start using an electric toothbrush.

'I don't like them,' I say, although it's only later that I recall this is because I find the sensation of something vibrating against my gums really unpleasant.

'Well you need to start using one,' and she says it with a smile like that should be enough to win me over. She begins to talk about what we need to do to get my teeth into shape. I'm confused, partially because it's been years since I heard this speech, and partially because I distrust suggestions of what we need to do when there is no we that I'm aware of. I listen to her telling me about why we brush our teeth.

'I don't wish to take a negative tone,' I say, 'but I've been through all this. You didn't see my teeth before Dr. Stalker operated on them. He's the reason I have teeth, and he seems to think I'm doing fine. They used to look like a row of tombstones so,' - I open my mouth to grin in illustration - 'this is as good as it gets, which suits me fine. I don't really care about having the teeth of an Osmond brother.'

She delivers some shrill response, something which scans like a motivational poster, something along the lines of how we don't settle for second place; then she adds, 'I'm going to be a cheerleader for your teeth,' and she says it with a big smile.

'We don't have cheerleaders in England, so that doesn't really work for me.'

'What do you have instead of cheerleaders?'

'We just get on with it.'

Later I realise I should have pointed out that all previous appointments have been distinguished by both Rebecca and Dr. Stalker commenting on how well I've been doing, and how with each visit my teeth seem to require less and less attention on their part; and suddenly I'm back to being the naughty boy who doesn't brush right, and who could do better, and it's not enough to just want the bastards cleaned, you have to aspire to be fucking president too.

It has been a shitty day.