Author: Robert Wringham

What are you supposed to do with a guest bedroom when you don’t actually have a guest in it? Just leave it alone? Come now, madam, that’s no way to milk 600 words out of nothing.

Looking for a new home in 2016, we had a ludicrous number of criteria for a rented flat to meet. After a year or so in a Thatcher-era apartment building with admittedly-delicious mushrooms growing on the walls, we longed for a properly-built Victorian tenement. It also had to be cheap, to be near to a railway station, to have taps and showers that work when (and only when) you turn them on, and to be within crawling distance of one or more of our favourite pubs.

We also dared to hope for a second bedroom to serve as a landing pad for far-flung friends, but we were prepared to forego this luxury if all the other criteria were met. They’re only friends, we thought. Fuck ’em.

Miraculously, the place we found (and now live in) actually has the long-coveted guest bedroom as well as everything else we wanted. We remain grateful to the person who was obviously murdered here before our arrival. You have kept the rent down and the competition at bay. Ta.

As international Citizens of Nowhere, we have friends and family all over the place and we felt they’d be more likely to visit us if we could promise them some privacy and a soft pillow on which to rest their travel-weary heads. In return, we’d forever have the company of our favorite folk without having to actually go anywhere.

Our sly plan was so successful that the guest bedroom is rarely unoccupied. Almost as soon as we’d moved in, Landis popped over from America and stayed for two months. Even now, I sometimes forget that he doesn’t actually live here anymore and I end up having to eat a whole second serving of “eggs-hummus-toast” (his favourite) all to myself. Please come back, Landis, I am lonely and full.

For all the joy this extra room has brought us, it presents that eternal First World Problem — how to decorate? We want to do something in there because there’s currently a subsidence crack marching down the wall that makes the San Andreas Fault look like a papercut. We also want it to be comfortable for any one of our pals but not so generic that it feels like a Premier Inn.

Unless, of course, the “Premier Inn” we’re talking about is the Overlook Hotel.

Oh yes indeedy. It may be the snow madness setting in, but I’ve been thinking about giving the room a horror-themed makeover. What do you think, reader?

I’ve found the perfect wallpaper for this caper and I’d also like to install an ominous grandfather clock and a fire-damaged Crying Boy.

I’ve even sketched out the design for a “tell-tale heart” mechanism that would not only start beating in the dead of night but also slightly raise-and-sink one of the floorboards to the beat. I got the idea from a whack-a-mole.

You might think it’s my intention with this guestroom to satirize the post-2012 Hostile Environment to Immigrants through the medium of interior design and you’d be right, but the main payoff will be the looks on our friends’ faces when I guide them, tired from the journey, into their promised sanctuary only to encounter what looks like (and is) the brainchild of a dangerous crackpot.

There is no way this is a bad idea. If our friends don’t like it and refuse to come anymore, we can at least sub-let the room through AirBNB to psychopaths who need somewhere to consummate their extra-marital affairs but who don’t want to do so without the eerie presence of fifty china dolls. It’s win-win.

Diary, I will keep you apprised.

On nights when I can’t sleep — nights like tonight — I find myself thinking about asteroids. There’s over 150 million of the fuckers up there, just hanging around and, so far as I can tell, waiting to fall on our heads.

(In case you’re curious, this doesn’t help me get to sleep. It’s just the sort of thing that drifts in while I’m counting sheep.)

In particular, I’ve been thinking lately about our old friend (35396) 1997 XF₁₁.

Remember (35396) 1997 XF₁₁? What a crazy summer! We were all chanting its name in the playground and chatting about it at the water cooler.

Wasn’t there a novelty record about it too? I rather think there was. “Oh baby, you’re sky high,” it went, “brushing against our atmosphere like a pervert on a bus. Oh, (35396) 1997 XF₁₁, usher in the sixth extinction of my heart, blacken the skies with the dusty fallout of your love.”

Or something. It wasn’t a very good song but we liked it at the time. I preferred the Mike Flowers Pops verison.

Anyway, the reason I found myself thinking about this particular asteroid is because YouTube recently nudged me into watching a news-based magazine programme from 1998 in which a comedian spoke briefly of “that asteroid that will hit the Earth in 2028”.

Hmm, I thought, it’s 2018 now so we’re almost exactly halfway through the available prep time for saving everybody’s lives.

I wondered how the project was getting along so I googled it. Imagine my dismay when the only news and science items I could find about it (once I’d waded through all the nostalgia stuff, I mean) were from 1998.

Is it possible we’ve all just forgotten about this threat to our entire planetary existence? How could this happen?

You know when you’re studying for an exam with a couple of months to spare and you keep thinking “oh, I’ve got ages to go, I’ll not worry about that yet” and then before you know it the exam’s tomorrow and all of the useful books on the subject have been taken from the library by other people? Well, do you think it’s possible that all of the scientists and astronomers and world leaders have done exactly that and put off coming up with a solution to the problem of (35396) 1997 XF₁₁ until, say, December 31st, 2027?

I think that’s exactly what’s happened.

In order to raise some awareness our pending extinction through procrastination, I think the first step is to rebrand the asteroid, perhaps changing the name to something more catchy. I mean “(35396) 1997 XF₁₁” is so 1998 and is not the sort of thing that would win the attention of the social media generation.

We may all have been doing the (35396) 1997 XF₁₁ dance in the playground and the offices in 1998 — raising the arms to signify the brackets, stretching the index fingers to the ground in celebration of the subscript ₁₁, everyone’s favourite part — but that sort of thing is just embarrassing now.

Traditionally, if not named for a string of letters and numbers, an asteroid is named after a person. The comedian who spoke about the asteroid on TV in 1998 was Stewart Lee. Luckily, he is still popular. Do you think he would consent to having a potentially Earth-ending asteroid named after him?

Frankly, time is running out and we cannot take the risk that he’ll decline the honor or coolly not show up to the naming ceremony. Someone please set up the requisite Change.org petition to have (35396) 1997 XF₁₁ renamed “Stewart Lee” and we can get on with building the necessary laser cannons. Ta.

I am writing this entry on no sleep at all. I hope it doesn’t show.

I awoke this morning — okay, fine, this afternoon — to find a Valentine’s card propped up on the dining table.

Either Samara had placed it there before leaving for work, or an especially committed, Eugene Victor Tooms-like admirer had slithered through a vent in the night and left it without disturbing either of us.

I knew it was from Samara, of course, because she had written, ominously, on the envelope TO THE OCCUPANT.

This is a reference to how, as eternally on-the-move renters, we often get letters addressed TO THE OCCUPANT shoved through our front door. The sort of properties in which we tend to live are those where the authorities have no idea who might be living there in a given week. It’s good to keep them on their toes.

It may also have had something to do with how she had to go out into the hostile, drizzly world after writing the card this morning while I would remain spectacularly ensconced in dreamyland.

I was genuinely surprised and touched to see this Valentine’s card. My wife has been extremely busy with unwanted and largely unpaid work commitments of late and also, perhaps not unrelated, has been quite ill. She had not mentioned Valentine’s Day in advance even once, so I assumed she’d forgotten about it or justifiably not been in the mood or had the time to do anything about it. I’d quietly written off the idea of observing V-Day this year, so it’s amazing and lovely that she remembered and bothered.

Luckily, I had already bought a card for her. Phew!

I’d not written in it yet, what with the sleeping ’til noon and everything so I had the opportunity to also address the envelope TO THE OCCUPANT if I so wished.

Pen in hand, I was politely tapped on the shoulder by my comedy self. My comedy self is a sort of out-of-phase ghost version of myself who is always on the alert for opportunities to say or write or do something in a funnier or wittier or at least less-obvious way to what my regular, farting, shoe-wearing, schlub self would say or write or do. Thank goodness for him. He’s what keeps me light on my feet, is the reason I’ve not been murdered by aggrieved thugs, and is presumably why my out-of-my-league wife still sends me Valentine’s cards after a decade.

Comedy Self wanted me to write, not TO THE OCCUPANT but TO THE OCCUPIED.

I saw what he was getting at. It was partly, of course, a penis-in-the-vagina joke, but it was also a post-colonial joke about how my wife is Canadian and I am British. Fuck, that’s clever isn’t it? Alas it was also largely useless as I wasn’t supposed to be writing shtick today but something private and lovely. What’s the point of you, Comedy Self?

I’ve simplified things with this explanation. Comedy Self doesn’t just tap my shoulder to present his alternative to the obvious. He kicks me hard in the backside, resulting in the instantaneous presentation of a Minority Report-style holographic interface before my eyes, upon which all comedic or at least non-trite options are displayed and await executive selection before deployment. Another option today was TO THE OCTOPOD. It was the whimsy option.

I wouldn’t normally countenance this option because it has fewer levels of meaning than TO THE OCCUPIED but, as it happens, the Valentine’s card I’d already bought had a picture of an octopus on it. I was also slightly concerned that, while I knew she’d take the OCCUPIED joke in the right spirit, it is possible that it could come up again in a non-joke way in the future. Could the unpleasant thought of being “occupied” fleet across her mind without the shield of irony one day and be the end of us? I shouldn’t be having thoughts like this on Valentine’s Day, Comedy Self! I thought you were the fun one?

I returned to the wit interface. TO THE OCUPADO was all that remained. “Ocupado,” is what you call out if you’re sitting on a public toilet in Spain and someone tries to open the door. This one made no sense whatsoever.

TO THE OCCUPIED, I wrote, and hoped for the best. If my wife dislikes the joke and says “what were you thinking?” I can at least point to this diary entry for a complete explanation. Anyway, it’s how I roll, baby — risking everything for a minor zinger. (Happy Valentine’s Day!)

I’m 35 years old but I’m constantly taken aback by the horrors of adult life.

Listen to this. A couple of weeks ago I bought a small bag of new potatoes.

Wait. It gets better.

We’re not exactly a meat-and-two-veg sort of household, so it was with a sense of ticklish nostalgia with which I bought them. New potatoes as far as I’m concerned belong in the same abandoned World War II bomb shelter as Oxo cubes and instant coffee.

In the supermarket, I’d shifted the potatoes around in my palm, getting a sense of their weight and shape as best I could through the bag. I did this partly to evoke some potato memories (Ah, Sunday Roasts, the Denim record, the Smith’s Crisps advert, Sir Walter Raleigh coming in from the docks with a mysterious bundle — whoa! too far, come back!) but also because I didn’t want get home and find I’d slipped mindlessly onto autopilot and bought a load of avocados.

Yep, they were spuds alright. Straight off the gravy-flooded plate of Henry VIII or Captain Mainwaring, except not as soil-caked as I remember potatoes being. What machine has been invented in my lifetime with the express purpose of de-soiling a potato? And how? I can’t see the Dragons going in on that. It’s got no zazz.

Today, as I cracked open the kitchen cupboard with plans to feast upon said tuberous delights, what should I find in place of my scrumptious potatoes but something that looked like it hitched a ride to Earth in the core of a meteorite?

I resisted the urge to get Professor Quatermass on the phone and searched for the use-by date. January 31st!

The potatoes had gone to seed. What had been neat little eyes when we’d first met were now sprawling across the countertop like something from The Evil Dead.

How was this possible? I thought potatoes lasted forever.

My frame of reference for this nugget of wisdom comes from playing in my Nan’s pantry as a child. There were always potatoes and carrots, unrefrigerated, in one of those wooden market boxes and this always struck me as fine. It occurs to me only now that the potatoes I encountered there each week may not have been the same potatoes.

But isn’t their longevity why people buy the bloody things? Why else could it be? It can’t possibly be for the flavour or the nutritional value. Can it? Unless curried beyond recognition, eating potatoes is barely a level up from eating acorns.

Anyway, I found the courage to handle the problem. We internationalists eat things with tentacles all the time.

It turns out the gangly, sprouting eyes are easy to slice off. It’s like giving a haircut to someone with a very small head. And then, in true English culinary fashion, you boil the living daylights out them.

They resisted the pot at first but after a little bashing with the butt-end of a crucifix, we had some lovely boiled potatoes for our dinner. Yum Yum.

Anyway, lesson learned. My Nan bought potatoes weekly. Potatoes do not last forever.

All I can say is thank God they hadn’t got as far as the bedroom. Imagine waking up with one of Cthulhu’s less-charismatic relatives clamped to your face, and having to go about the rest of your day trying to act normal.

Potatoes. What’s the point?

I swear, one of those creeping roots had a fingernail on it.

I’ve been having a frustrating time this week with taxes.

As a recidivist wastrel, filing my tax return is usually straightforward. I just pop my income and expenses into the online self-assessment thingy with one hand while eating a burrito with the other.

My earnings tend to be minuscule compared to those of normal, non-workshy people so the tax office usually ends up sending me a cheque each year for two-hundred pounds or so, presumably out of pity.

When I file, a siren goes off somewhere and besuited officials, examining the read-out, shout things like “Good God! Get this kid a rebate! Now!”

And that is how I like it.

This week, however, on conducting my annual heist, I got nasty shock. Apparently I owe them two-thousand pounds. Her Majesty’s RC is taking back everything I’ve ever taken from them, and probably more. I’ve never had a bill of this order in my entire life so it hit me like a diesel locomotive hits a medium-sized serving of chocolate profiteroles.

It turns out I’ve been making phat stacks.

“It turns out,” I call to Samara who is in the other room, perhaps anticipating debris, “that I’ve been making phat stacks.”

“Fat what?” she said.

“Stacks!” I said, “Phat stacks.”

Hah. “Fat” stacks indeed. The very thought.

“Where did you learn an expression like that?” she asked, rounding the corner, bringing a concerned expression along for the ride.

“It’s what the gangsters say,” I explained.

“Oh yes,” she said, “You’ve been watching Breaking Bad.”

Samara knows what I watch because we have the same Netflix account. I’ve been horsing Breaking Bad in five-episode sittings because I’m supposed to be writing another book, an art form best left until the last possible minute.

“No I haven’t,” I said.

Truth be told, this television programme is getting me too excited. In anticipation of next year’s tax return, my German publisher gave me an exemption form “to be signed by HMRC.” I didn’t really understand what this meant, but because of Breaking Bad my instinct was to visit the offices of HMRC, drag someone out of the building and make them dig their own grave in the desert.

I marched out full of determination but, naturally, when I got there, the approach I settled on involved gingerly approaching the security guard I found reading the Metro with his feet up on the desk, and begging to speak to “a Tax Man,” which in hindsight I realise is probably what children call them.

“You can’t do that,” he sighed as if for the hundredth time today, “It’s got to go in the post.”

I thanked him and left. The building completely failed to explode behind me.

It’s a good job it didn’t explode really, because if it had I wouldn’t have spotted the curled and sun-faded poster pinned to an information board outside explaining that HMRC had closed all of its offices to the public four years ago and that I should call an 0845 number instead.

I walked home where I kissed Samara on the cheek, dialled the number, and patiently listened to “Greensleeves” for twenty minutes, still feeling inexplicably like a tough guy.

The telephone agent told me to put the form in the post.

Phat Stacks are more trouble than they are worth.

Our local railway station must have been designed by Satan himself. Every detail has been expertly sculpted to cumulatively unhinge the once-sane commuter. It is a work of total design genius, the Mackintosh House of Hell.

At first, the station seems quite charming. There’s a bucket of flowers maintained by Friends of the Station and a wall plaque celebrating a bronze award for Scotland’s Tip-Toppest Station. It is staffed by friendly humans where most similarly-sized stations have been automated. There’s even a station cat, though he doesn’t wear a conductor’s hat like you insist on imagining.

But forget all of that. These are mere flourishes put in place by Beelzebub to disarm you before the madness of his black design takes hold of your skull.

I’ve been taking more trains than usual — often during rush hour — and experiencing the station from the perspective of a commuter for the first time. It makes me want to set up some sort of commuter’s union. The poor bastards have difficult enough lives as it is, without starting each day in a Jean-Paul Sartre play.

Any train you care to name is guaranteed to be late — by three minutes. It is so inevitable that I wonder why they don’t simply adjust the timetables to account for it.

Each delay is accompanied by an automated announcement over the PA system to inform us that “we are sorry to announce that the eight oh eight to Dalmuir is delayed by approximately three minutes. We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.” Given that every single train is late and will continue to be late forever, I don’t think this is necessary. We take it for granted. Moreover, as arrivals to this station are so frequent, the announcements form a chain, an endlessly repetitive reminder that you should have learned to drive.

There is a set of double doors to enter the vestibule where the ticket kiosk dwells. A sign describes the doors as “automatic” but they are merely electric. To open them, you must push a button intended for wheelchair users and then they slowly, slowly, ever-so-slowly open in a theatrical “open sesame!” way as if they should reveal a Georges Méliès wonderland rather than a few chairs and some tourist information leaflets. They also close quite forcibly on their own (ah, so they are automatic) cutting the patiently-waiting ticket queue in half.

Most maddening of all — I have saved the best ’til last — are the information screens. Ah yes, the screens.

There are two little screens, one to describe arrivals and departures for Platform 1 and one to do the same for Platform 2. The screens are quite small, capable of displaying perhaps ten short rows of digital text.

The only information a commuter wants to see on these screens is (1) the terminus and station stops of the next train to depart the platform and (2) the arrival times and destinations of perhaps the next five trains. That is all. Instead, it gives us superfluous information about trains arriving at the other platform and various “special announcements” that really aren’t special at all.

These special announcements are either highly generic (reminders not to leave baggage unattended) or ludicrously specific (the elevator at Exhibition Centre is out of order) and not relevant to anyone at this particular moment.

Inevitably, you arrive at the station to find a train whose body language suggests it is ready to leave. You want to know immediately if it’s your scheduled train to work, or some other delayed train — perhaps a non-stop scenic service to John o’Groats.

But instead, all the screen tells you is that you must inform the Transport Police if you see anything unusual (like a train that actually leaves on time, perhaps?) and that this notice is “screen 6/8.” You just know that by the time the information you so pressingly need rolls around, your train to work — crammed with colleagues clutching their Andy McNabs — will be a dot on the horizon.

Is it so unlikely that there’s a CCTV booth somewhere, staffed by two Scotrail demons who, like the Sun and Wind of the Aesop’s Fable, compete with one another to see how many commuters they can convince down onto the tracks? I am certain of it.

After an unusually busy day working in the capital, I scurry to the National Museum of Scotland to meet my wife and her parents. My in-laws are visiting us from Canada and today had been their Edinburgh day.

By the time I reached them, they’d already seen my favorite items in the museum — the robot who can spell my wife’s name, the Millennium Clock Tower and the Sheep Rotator — so I had to make do with my memories of these particular treasures.

I asked what the family had thought of these treasures and while the Clock Tower had strangely failed to chime on the hour and the spelling robot had been broken (I asked if its blocks had said “out of order” or “help me!” but apparently they had not) but the blockbuster Sheep Rotator was an all-round hit. If only every museum could have a copy of that sheep.

They also spoke enthusiastically of an interactive section of the museum in which they’d learned that my wife can hit the bell on a Strength-o-Meter (not surprising to me, that one) and that they’d all “kicked ass” on some sort of reaction test.

This sounded like precisely the sort of competitive, sportiness I cannot oblige. How typical of my sporty, air-punching, New World family to find such a monstrosity in a place of art and natural history! It slowly dawned on me, however, what, in essence, this so-called reaction test was:

I am not competitive about much in life, dear reader, but I really must defend my honor when it comes to Whack-a-Mole.

The machine was built into a wall with 20 or so touch-sensitive pads. A pad would illuminate soundlessly at random and you’d have to slap it with the palm of your hand before moving to the next one, wherever it might appear.

There were some small Dutch children playing the game when we arrived, so I stood slightly too close in the hopes of intimidating them into leaving. One of their parents came over and said they they should “let the man have a turn”. You’d be surprised how often I hear that expression.

Somehow I stifled my desire to say, “Yes, let the man have a turn. At Whack-a-Mole. He will CRUSH YOU TO DUST,” and instead I said, “It’s okay, you can carry on.”

But the sweet little boy and girl allowed the man to have a turn.

I noticed that the little girl’s score had been a rather childish 17. My family’s high score, meanwhile, was a more respectable 31. Soon, I would feast on their bones.

At first I found it quite difficult. The lack of sound meant less information to work with (some Whack-a-Mole machines have moles that taunt you with little “whee!” and “nah-nah!” noises, but it is TO THEIR DETRIMENT) and the size of the machine meant that some of the pads were outside of your field of vision when they lit up.

But I need not have feared. It seemed like I’d barely started when I heard my father-in-law, somewhere in the distance, saying “You’ve done it, Rob,” in the sort of tone normally heard outside rough London pubs when girlfriends say “He’s not worth it, Les.”

But I was not about to stop. I skittered all over the museum tiles like a Praying Mantis at his first ever pick-n-mix, slapping that wall into the middle of next week.

The timer buzzed and the digital display declared a score of 37. “Yeah!” I said, spinning on my heels and showing off my winning palms in an “it’s showtime!” jazz-hands sort of way.

My family didn’t look particularly impressed so I turned to the Dutch children and said, “Have you ever seen a grown up behave like that?” but I said it in a way that clearly meant “Don’t fuck with me, bitches” and gave the impression of forcing a lit cigarette into my own arm — and I think the message was received.

We went off to look at the Christopher Dresser teapots in silence and I had to hide that I was PUMPED.

Enjoying some time in bed with the sniffles, I decide to sign up to Netflix — or “Net Flicks” as I naively thought it was called until today. When did I get so old? Why can’t we live forever?

A universally popular TV-streaming service, I think, probably beats staring at the formation of cracks in our ceiling that some say looks like Sir Roger Moore and others say looks like a knackered bedroom ceiling.

Besides, I must admit to harboring a degree of curiosity about this thing everyone’s talking about. First time for everything, I suppose.

I’ve resisted Netflix for some time, in part because it’s one of the things contributing to the BBC’s redundancy and I hate to think of Messrs Attenburgh, Castle and Blobby not having anything to do anymore.

But it’s a tad hypocritical to worry so much about the Beeb when I don’t actually give them any money, isn’t it? The TV license, you may not know, can be avoided when you exploit the simple loophole of slinging the telly out of the window. Just make sure it’s not going to fall through the roof of a detector van before you push it off the ledge.

Anyway, what strikes me first and foremost about Netflix is its uncannny resemblance to the in-flight entertainment systems you get on airplanes.

The main comparison lies in how, despite there being a bewildering range of programming on offer, it never has quite what you want — presumably because the aim of whomever curates programming for each of these cloud-based services is to mollify a bored, anxious, probably grounded, international audience.

The effect is that you sit in your own stench, contemplating the likelihood of a pending fiery death, wile fingering a just-about-responsive interface composed of colourful, twerp-proof Whytech buttons. Yes, it feels very much like something that should be stuck in the back of another passenger’s reclined, dandruffy head.

You ask it to show you The X Files which can’t be done but, God bless it for trying, you can have any one of seventeen other things with David Duchovney instead.

You try to browse the comedy section but you end up viewing the first 13 seconds of something called Mindhunter thanks to a slow-loading banner ad.

Beyond a huge number of expensive-looking superhero- and monarchy-based exclusives is what can only be described as “an abyss of tat.” Firmly in this category is an awful lot of old BBC content. Obviously Netflix will have paid the BBC some money to show these programmes but I wonder if the The Big British Castle also receive royalties after a certain number of viewings? I don’t know for sure, but this is what happens with books — you get a certain amount up front and then a percentage after selling, say, 10,000 copies. Or so my publishers assure me.

This gives me an idea. Could we not rescue the BBC from its funding crisis by leaving old episodes of Blackadder playing from beginning to end when we all go out to work? You’d leave in the morning with Brian Blessed on the screen and come home in the evening to the fate of Speckled Jim. Meanwhile you’ve made 20p for the BBC. If everyone did this, Aunty would be rolling in pence.

Better still, we should choose to play old episodes of Bottom, just so the campaign can be called “Bottoming”. That is, #Bottoming.

Part way through an episode of an alienating, joyless cash-in called Star Trek: Discovery, I find myself wondering which is the button that will tell me the time remaining until our destination.

Might go back to staring at those ceiling cracks.

Friday night and my arm is worn out. Not for the reason you’re thinking of (honestly, madam, where do you get it from?) but because I’ve been writing a letter.

Yes, a proper, long-form letter with an old-fashioned pen and paper. Two sides of A4 if you must know (and you must).

A friend wants to keep in touch by writing letters and who am I to deny him this archaic pleasure? If it weren’t for the distraction, he’d only roam the halls of his family seat, bellowing in his pantaloons and wistfully playing the lute.

Besides, letter-writing turns out to be good clean fun and I certainly hope to continue the practice for a while. I mean, it took me so long to find a pen, I’m invested now.

The pen turned out to be hiding in some sort of “case” along with a few coloured pencils, a half-moon-shaped piece of plastic, and one of those devices for stabbing other children in the back of the hand. It’s amazing to think that schools once asked us to maintain such kits of bizarre and sadistic gadgetry but there must have been some reason for it all.

Acceptable writing paper took time to excavate too. I genuinely considered tearing up a cereal packet into squares. Alas, we don’t have an empty one at the moment, and having to eat six bowls of Sugar Puffs in order to write a letter quickly put paid to the idea. Besides, my friend had already set a high standard by writing to me on such nice-quality paper with his home address embossed along the top that it did not seem adequate to reply using a jigsaw puzzle of the Honey Monster’s face.

I eventually found — between some fossilized layers of gas bill — a single sheet of A4 printer paper, probably half-inched from some office job of yore. Come to think of it, what do people steal from work these days to make it worth going in? Bandwidth?

When it finally came to writing the letter, I’ve not had so much physical activity in years. Up and down the pen-strokes go, across and around, dotting and looping. You must avoid the temptation to put down so many exclamation marks, just because the motions inspired by their shape is so appealing. It’s worth reserving such punctuation for phrases like “send help!” or “trapped in a drain!” if you want them to have conviction.

And then you have to tear it all up and start again because you’ve drifted off and written “cockholes” instead of “dear friend” or because you’ve crossed out too many misfires and the pen has leaked and you’ve knocked your glass of water over it.

But just six hours and two small fires later, and you have a beautiful, hand-written letter replete with meaning and personal confidence. It’s a shame the diagonal slant promoted by sitting at a table for once makes everything radiate from the top left-hand corner like an upside-down version of the explosive symbol.

It takes you back, writing a letter. You remember all manner of things — checking the dictionary before committing a word to print; putting the address in the “correct” corner; taking letters dictated by parents and teachers, mischievously including the interjections of passing strangers and pets.

Remember all of the rules like the requisite number of blank lines between date and address, and ending with “Yours Faithfully” if you began with “Dear Sir”? Today, as you know, it’s perfectly acceptable to start an email to a parent or employer with “Alright, Cunt?!?!”

And now, as I seal my masterpiece into the envelope — what better way to end a respectful epistle than with the application of saliva? — my arm is like that of the false Rod Hull. I’ve always had skinny, string-like arms but after writing the letter I fear my limbs will now only move again with the application of Kermit the Frog-style rods.

Off I go now to the Post Box. Hey, remember when we had to put one of those sticky “Queen’s head” things onto the envelope before posting it? Crazy days!

Every now and then, something from my working-class childhood floats up in memory to give me a shudder. The Nit Nurse, for example, or a scene glimpsed through a Blackpool window in 1993.

And then there’s Athlete’s Foot. Whatever happened to it? The 1980s was a golden age for Athlete’s Foot, a festive dusting of Tinaderm on the rim of every toilet bowl. Today? It is gone. I’m reminded of Richard Dawkins saying that “to allow a species to fall into extinction is to will the destruction of a masterpiece.”

Admittedly, Dickie may not have been thinking of Athlete’s Foot when he said that, if indeed he ever said it at all (which he didn’t), but it would be disingenuous for a biologist of his stature to so adore, say, the mountain gorilla and not our old friend tinea pedis, as I’d call it in said working class childhood.

“My tinea pedis, mater,” I’d exclaim in a broad Dudley accent, aggressively rubbing my de-socked feet against the rough edges of the Dudley skirting boards, “Ubi dolor, ibi digitus,” to which mother would inevitably respond “I’ll give you ubi dolor, ibi digitus ’round the head in a minute.”

But Athlete’s Foot is not what I sat down to tell you about today, loyal reader. No! That particular blast of nostalgia was merely the warm-up. What I’d meant to raise today is the strange case of the washed neck.

What was the grownups’ obsession in our childhoods with washing our necks? “Go to the bathroom,” they’d say, “and wash your neck.” I was forever being sent to the bathroom to wash my neck. The hours lost to it are probably why I never took the piano beyond Three Blind Mice.

Why the neck? Why not a traditionally smelly area like the armpit or, in my strange case, the arnus? Why not the hands, forever touching grubby surfaces and coving orifices as they do? Why not the fungus-addled feet? Or why not, simply, one’s whole self?

It was a long time ago, I suppose. Perhaps in those days they thought a clean neck kept draclias away (draclias being what we called Vampires in the British Midlands — not to be confused with Dracula who was simply a draclia who happened to be in the public eye). But if that was the case, why not pop a little clove oil behind each earlobe while you’re at it? And surely a clean neck could only make you more tempting to creatures of the night. Perhaps, then, it was a courtesy to the draclias. We knew our place.

Perhaps neck-washing was a sacred ritual to the British working classes and its significance was never explained to me. The human neck, if I remember my anatomy lessons correctly, is what keeps the human body attached to the human head (or your head attached to your body if you’re a pessimist, or your head attached to someone else’s body if you’re a surrealist, etc.) but beyond that I’m not sure of the significance of frequent localized neck cleansing.

Perhaps “wash your neck” was an aspirational expression, borrowed from a more arisocratic class who’d be understandably proud of a highly-buffed neck — a comforting, almost satirical superstition developed through their residual fear of the chopping block.

On the other hand, maybe it was a euphemism I failed to pick up on. Did “wash your neck” somehow mean “have a shit” or “tap one out”? Or! Perhaps it was a secret code between parents — a bit of predetermined patoir for “let’s get rid of the kid so we can get it on (i.e. neck)” perhaps?

Wait. I think I’ve got it. If we recall that “neck” sometimes meant “a brazen attitude” as in “a brass neck” or “the neck of hell,” perhaps “wash your neck” simply meant “reign it in, lad,” in a similar way to how “wash your mouth out with soap and water” was a response to swearing. If this is the case, then I spent far too much time in the bathroom taking the request literally. My poor parents. That poor, bald flannel.

I like peaches,
they’re my favourite fruit.
But you always have to eat them
in your least-favourite suit.

Poetry! Maybe I’ll start each of my diary entries in this way from now on. Tune in next week to see if I stay true to this dream, idly cooked though it was in the fires of peach-fuelled ambition.

Yes, I’ve been eating peaches. I am drunk on their nectar. I am surfing the body electrolyte. I’m peach-stoned. I’ve been juicin’. I’m baked in a pie. Any more? I’m canned. No, that one’s not specific enough. Delete.

Seriously though. [applies stern face]. Peaches really are my favourite fruit. Maybe they’re my favourite thing full-stop. How can something like a peach grow on a tree of all things? When I eat a peach I find myself thinking, “how do they make these?” Such fine craftsmanship.

From velveteen shell,
to lesioned pit,
’tis the dandy prune,
who thinks he’s it.

There I go again. When I took to this page I never thought I’d be moved to poetry. I just wanted to write about peaches and my enduring love for them. But that’s peaches for you. They inspire verse. Truly, they are the musical fruit.

Note to self: continue writing poetry, learn piano, co-opt moniker “the musical fruit”. Great posters.

Reader, would you believe me were I to say I could each peaches all day long, surfing eternal on the syrupy rush? It seems unlikely, I know, but they are the drug choice for we polymaths. And for wee polymaths, I imagine, too.

I’d step over any number of dying relatives to reach a peach. My curse is peach addiction; my blessing, a good stride.

To a peach,
I would reach
‘cross mum and dad
each.

Yes,
a peach
I beseech,
with gangly leg-reach.

Sometimes, I have a mind to combine my love of peaches with my other true love but you’d be surprised how much scorn is poured on fruit eaters in the royal box. It’s because of the slurping, I suppose. But I say it can’t be helped and if you’re offended by the sight of a syrupy tuxedo, keep your opera glasses pointed firmly at the stage. Trichome? Tricho-you, buddy.

In Scotland we praise
the spud, neep, and bunnet,
But when I go shopping,
I just pick up a punnet.

A bit far-fetch that one, perhaps, but I don’t see you breaking out into spontaneous rhyme based on berries. Besides, when you think “punnet”, where else are you supposed to go? Oh, wait.

As every fool knows,
it resides at the summit
of the fruit hierarchy,
so let’s have a punnet.

Better.

Peaches are the only fruit to lead to such creativity. Did the Stranglers themselves not sing about the pleasure of “walking on the beaches, looking at the peaches”? Why just look at the peaches though, chaps? Sink your teeth in.

You can have a lot of fun with a peach. If you know someone who’s never eaten one, poor soul, tell them that the peach must be peeled. Better still, tell them it must be shaved.

I was always saddened by Merill Nisker’s tendency to “Fuck the Pain Away.” Why find solace in being saucy, Miss Nisker, when you could so easily be juicy? The clue was in front of you all the time.

Perhaps I could be the official product ambassador for peaches. “The Peach!” I would say to everyone who’d listen. “Shits all over a nectarine. Plums? Fuck off.”

It’s not all fun and games though. One word: stalks. You can rarely extract the stalk before eating the peach as you would with, say, an apple. And you can’t eat the stalk like you might with a strawberry. Eating a peach stalk is like chewing an antique earplug. Not pleasant.

And why so velvety? Is it because they’re Sylvanian Families eggs? I’d be surprised if they weren’t, and so would you, dear reader. Typically, we eat peaches when they’re fresh and therefore unfertilized so all we experience is the sweet, orange albumen. But dive in a day too late and you’ll find… parts.

Forget it. I’ve gone right off them.

Peaches Peaches,
Never eat,
They truly are
the devil’s meat.

I found myself thinking today about Luke.

You remember Luke. He was the chap who, when I was on work experience at the council, occupied a corner office designed to segregate him from the others lest he distract them with his exquisite beauty.

He was the one who taught me how to skive by playing Minesweeper with some invoices beside me in case someone came in.

Anyway, for the first few days of my work experience week, I thought Luke was it. We had a connection, I thought. He’d give me knowing winks. He once had me in hysterics when he breezed through the main office, singing “have a banana.”

For all this admiration, I knew we were very, very different. He was a man’s man. I was a boy. And not even a boy’s one.

He once said “Hello Fruity,” to one of the receptionists and she seemed genuinely charmed by it. I’d never be able to say “Hello Fruity.”

If I ever said “Hello Fruity,” my name would be taken down. Rightly.

It was 1998 and one of the things Luke and I both loved was South Park. South Park was huge and I had a squishy plastic Kenny on my key chain. Luke was thrilled when he saw it. He unfastened his suit jacket and showed me his Mr Garrison necktie. It was brilliant.

During my work experience, the long-awaited second series had just started to air. I watched it at home one night and came dashing into work, excited to see Luke. “Did you see it?” I asked him, panting.

“Yeah!” he said with shared enthusiasm, “the baby went up in her head! Ew!”

And we laughed.

But something was wrong. The baby hadn’t “gone up in her head,” it was a conjoined twin. That was the whole point. Conjoined Twin Myslexia. It was practically a catch phrase, repeated and repeated throughout the whole episode. I can still remember it, eighteen years later. Conjoined Twin Myslexia!

He hadn’t understood it. I’d met my first grown-up idiot.

I mean, I already knew my parents were cultural philistines but all that meant was they weren’t interested in South Park so they didn’t watch it. This was “stupid” but I’m certain they’d have understood what they were watching had they done so. There was a difference. Luke had sat on a sofa beneath three homely wall-mounted flying ducks, watching his favourite television programme, not understanding it. But he’d laughed.

So that’s why he had the corner office.

On my last day, I went with Luke on a routine inspection of council houses. In one, the tenant had blu-tacked some pages from a pornographic magazine onto the walls.

“Oy-oy,” said Luke, and made an obnoxious vaginal suction-sound between his tongue and lower lip.

I occasionally make that noise when I think nobody’s there to hear it.

The customs officers at JFK do not take kindly to flouncers, flaneurs or fops.

If you ask me, they’ve had it in for us since Wilde’s “nothing to declare” jibe, or “Geniusgate” as they call it now.

Back 2009, I was rather full of myself. I’d been recognised a couple of times as a comedian, I was flying around in Europe and North America simply for fun, and I was sleeping with people with full sets of teeth for the first time in my life. I thought I was it.

None of this held any weight at JFK Security.

“Hello!” I said.

I’d flown in from Montreal where I’d been romancing the lady who’d eventually become my wife and was now off to New York to romance someone else entirely. It was, as they say, the business.

“What is your business in New York City?” said the customs official.

“Well,” I said. “I suppose you could say I’m here for pleasure.”

“Pleasure?” she growled.

“Yes,” I said, wiggling my eyebrows left, right and impossibly centre.

“What is your profession please?” she said.

“A bit of this,” I said, “a bit of that.”

“Some kind of comedian, sir?”

“Yes!” I said, delighted, “though between you and me I’d be more happily placed in the feuilletons of a decent broadsheet than the stage.”

She eyeballed me over the top of her glasses in exactly the way as a careers adviser would.

“What is your address in New York City?”

“I don’t have an address in New York City,” I said, fingering the unicorn on the passport, “I live in Great Britain.”

“Yes,” she said, “I can see that. But what at what address will you be residing while in New York City.”

“Gosh,” I said, “I have no idea. I’m just meeting my friend at Grand Central in about forty minutes from now. At an Oyster Bar apparently. You don’t happen to know it do you?”

The officer stood up. She was short but impressively wide.

I noticed for the first time that we were both wearing blue gloves, mine alpaca and hers rubber, but almost certainly for different reasons. Well, not entirely different reasons and we’d both probably end up thinking of England. But it all comes down to motivation.

“Sir,” she said, “You must have an address if you’re to enter New York City.”

Today, of course, I’m a far wiser traveller. I always know the address of where I’m staying and, if for some reason I don’t, I could make one up. I could simply have said “I’m staying at the Waldorf Astoria” and slipped unhindered through the barriers like a swamp adder through the bedroom duct of an unwanted heir.

“Well,” I said, “I don’t have the exact address with me. I’m staying in the Bronx, I think. Is Chinatown in the Bronx?”

“That’s no good. What if we need to contact you?” she said.

“What if who needs to contact me?” I asked.

“The TSA,” she said.

“Who’s that?” I said.

“That’s us,” she said tapping the insignia on her breast pocket, “the Transportation and Security Administration.”

“Frankly,” I said in all innocence, “that eventuality had never occurred to me.”

Ah yes. I’d got her on the ropes alright. This is probably why she huffily prodded some computer keys and said, “I’m putting a note on your record. Make sure you have an address next time.”

I suspect this was bluff as no customs officer in the meantime has referred to this “note” on my “record”. But it’s quite exciting to think that the TSA care so much about staying in touch.

I unhooked Enrique, my umbrella, from her Plexiglas sneeze guard-thing and settled back into the mood for oysters.