Dear Octopus,
Not a long letter from me tonight. Back in Devon, among the warming seclusion of familial familiarity, my parents are brothers are out socialising and the house is suddenly quiet. A clock ticks insistently on the mantelpiece, but that is all. I think that the new and inestimably idiotic cat (Stardust Squid) might actually be stuck under the tree. Soon my parents will come home and will cook the Austrian Dinner (a permanent Christmas Eve fixture purloined from the long arms of our distant family now among the faithful departed), we'll slope down to the frosty beach and walk along it on our way to mass, and then come home to drink my father's best scotch and reminisce on festivities passed. Nothing spectacular by way of tradition, I suppose. But it is ours, and therefore much valued.
Send my love to your parents and grandparents, your sister and your friends, and maybe if necessary keep a little left aside for yourself. It's strange to think that I wrote you a similar note to this, on this same day of last year. So much has changed. So many people have come into my life, and some have sadly departed. The carousel keeps revolving, bringing with it witches and pirates, soldiers and Bond villains....but what forever remains constant is my hope that you are happy, wherever you are. You are my favourite person in the world.
Merry Christmas Octopus. I miss you, and think of you always.
Your loving friend,
Action Squid
Saturday, 24 December 2011
Wednesday, 14 December 2011
Killepitsch (or: 'A Face On A Lover With A Fire In His Heart')
Dear Octopus,
This year I seem to have found the festive onslaught less pernicious than previously. Maybe it's the array of Christmas lights in the narrow streets of Covent Garden as I walk home, that were not to be found on the broad, crammed Strand of yesteryear. Maybe it's the miserly yet necessary rationing of Christmas music instigated around the office in order to keep things fresh; limiting us to only one or two renditions of Wham's Last Christmas per day. This is the first year in a while that I've had an advent calendar, now that I think of it. Maybe it's just that seasonal misanthropy can only keep a fellow happy for so long.
Whatever the reason, this unexpected swell of Christmas cheer lead us quickly onto the concept of throwing a party. Invites were sent (digitally), initially ignored (also digitally) and then finally confirmed (in person, due to unanimous digital apathy).
To be fair, our preparations were as detailed as they were far-reaching. Mistletoe on door frames. Fairy lights almost everywhere. Carpets cleaned. A fridge full of champagne. Pongo's delicious mulled wine simmering tacitly on the stove (cinnamon, nutmeg etc all included, no expense spared). A salad bowl full of kettle chips standing nonchalantly on every coffee table and bannister, mince pies with home made brandy cream lurking suggestively in every nook, crevice and cranny. I even straightened the living room rug.
The halls were literally decked with boughs of holly. Such peaceful domestic bliss. Such serenity. I almost expected the Virgin Mary herself to knock timidly on the door, and for the Good Lord himself to be born in the gap between the vacuum cleaner and Honksy's stack of girly vaudevillian romance novels.
What descended upon the house was quite the opposite. What descended upon the house was something bestial, and from which I'm not certain I shall ever fully recover.
Fortuitously most of the following events are scorched from my memory like the blackened grass of Hiroshima. Some things I do recall though are as follows:
The net result was that the next morning I awoke next to a girl who had no knowledge of requestioning over 75% of my bed space, nor the crude and insulting brand of temerity with which she had done so. She was suitably bashful, thankfully, and I ejected her from the room on stable enough terms. The situation awaiting me downstairs, however, was something far more difficult to set right.
...bottles. Cans. Mess. Squalor. Wretched puddles of toxic ooze. A man wearing a rudimentary head-bandage sprawled wildly on the living room rug (no longer even vaguely straight). Tinsel hanging forlornly from the mantelpiece. Cigarette butts trodden repeatedly into the carpet. A glove from our first aid kit hanging from a picture frame. A plate of vomit on the kitchen table. One of Pongo's best dinner plates. Probably Pongo's vomit...
On viewing this utterly heinous spectacle, the only thing left for it was to run.
I think I'm still running.
I miss you Octopus, and think of you always.
Your loving friend,
Action Squid
This year I seem to have found the festive onslaught less pernicious than previously. Maybe it's the array of Christmas lights in the narrow streets of Covent Garden as I walk home, that were not to be found on the broad, crammed Strand of yesteryear. Maybe it's the miserly yet necessary rationing of Christmas music instigated around the office in order to keep things fresh; limiting us to only one or two renditions of Wham's Last Christmas per day. This is the first year in a while that I've had an advent calendar, now that I think of it. Maybe it's just that seasonal misanthropy can only keep a fellow happy for so long.
Whatever the reason, this unexpected swell of Christmas cheer lead us quickly onto the concept of throwing a party. Invites were sent (digitally), initially ignored (also digitally) and then finally confirmed (in person, due to unanimous digital apathy).
To be fair, our preparations were as detailed as they were far-reaching. Mistletoe on door frames. Fairy lights almost everywhere. Carpets cleaned. A fridge full of champagne. Pongo's delicious mulled wine simmering tacitly on the stove (cinnamon, nutmeg etc all included, no expense spared). A salad bowl full of kettle chips standing nonchalantly on every coffee table and bannister, mince pies with home made brandy cream lurking suggestively in every nook, crevice and cranny. I even straightened the living room rug.
The halls were literally decked with boughs of holly. Such peaceful domestic bliss. Such serenity. I almost expected the Virgin Mary herself to knock timidly on the door, and for the Good Lord himself to be born in the gap between the vacuum cleaner and Honksy's stack of girly vaudevillian romance novels.
What descended upon the house was quite the opposite. What descended upon the house was something bestial, and from which I'm not certain I shall ever fully recover.
Fortuitously most of the following events are scorched from my memory like the blackened grass of Hiroshima. Some things I do recall though are as follows:
- Pongo forcefeeding me four consecutive shots of Killepitsch Premium Krauterlikor, a thick, foul-tasting dose of human excrement with 42% alcohol content
- Parading around the kitchen wearing The Game Boy's turkey helmet
- Beer
- Apple sours
- Mulled wine
- Apple sours
- Beer
- Party Squid trying to cellotape a robin to his fingers to accentuate his bauble
- Unknown Party Guest #17 smashing his hand on a ceiling lampshade, said lampshade smashing on his head, Unknown Party Guest #17 being taken to A&E by Dutch's brother 'Sturgeon's Electro-Magnet'
- Killepitsch Premium Krauterlikor (for which I'd by now developed quite a taste)
- Hammering on my bathroom door to interrupt the two people either having sex or killing each other within
- The Bear and the Toad fighting over who had the worst Christmas jumper
- The Agent asking me if he was being 'too rapey' with the neighbours
- The hideously inebriated schoolteacher who crawled into my bed after I'd gone to sleep and demanded nastily that I 'move up'
The net result was that the next morning I awoke next to a girl who had no knowledge of requestioning over 75% of my bed space, nor the crude and insulting brand of temerity with which she had done so. She was suitably bashful, thankfully, and I ejected her from the room on stable enough terms. The situation awaiting me downstairs, however, was something far more difficult to set right.
...bottles. Cans. Mess. Squalor. Wretched puddles of toxic ooze. A man wearing a rudimentary head-bandage sprawled wildly on the living room rug (no longer even vaguely straight). Tinsel hanging forlornly from the mantelpiece. Cigarette butts trodden repeatedly into the carpet. A glove from our first aid kit hanging from a picture frame. A plate of vomit on the kitchen table. One of Pongo's best dinner plates. Probably Pongo's vomit...
On viewing this utterly heinous spectacle, the only thing left for it was to run.
I think I'm still running.
I miss you Octopus, and think of you always.
Your loving friend,
Action Squid
Sunday, 20 November 2011
Young Jedi 'Inky Squid' Shown The True Nature Of The Force
Dear Octopus,
When we were children, my younger brother Inky Squid developed an appallingly hooliganistic penchant for writing on the walls. Admittedly he was only five; and his crime stemmed more from experimentation with crayons (and presumably a lack of suitable paper) than it did the senseless desire to deface public property under the guise of 'art', as currently propagated by the junior members of the future working classes. A dark time in our Devonshire abode, maybe, but now it makes for a good Sunday-night yarn which I hope you might enjoy.
Around this time (and forever since) our father Captain Squid had very specific guidelines on what he (and the police) might consider criminal infractions. To illustrate his policy on household lawlessness he would often quote his favourite phrase from his time in the navy. As follows: 'one mistake is an accident, two times is happenstance, and three times is enemy action.' In short, you're allowed to make a mistake twice. Just. But make it a third time, and your ass is on its way to the chokey.
Inky Squid ought to have known better.
Nevertheless, he's found something. And as childhood is all about pushing boundaries in order to find them, he finds a crayon and writes on the wall. His mother tells him he cannot do it. It is naughty. Walls are not to be written on, after all. Very few vertical structures are. He is told, in no uncertain or subjectively vague terms, not to to do it again. THE ACCIDENT.
The second time he writes on a wall, his mother is angry. She has reasoned with him before, she's told him why he mustn't do it. She isn't in the habit of repeating herself, nor should she have to. Little boys must listen to their mothers; a fact of science, a law of nature and rule of thumb. So this time there is a real and credible threat to household security. A counter-strike is required. She kneels in front of him. 'If you write on the walls again,' she says, 'you'll be smacked, and you'll have no tea, and you'll be sent to bed.'
Smacked.
No tea.
Bed.
The triumvirate, the holy trinity of unwanted punishments. This shit just got real. This is...THE HAPPENSTANCE.
A noticeable air of calm descends upon the house. Life awaits an outcome which never arrives. The bomb fails to detonate. Maybe he has learned. We, his two older brothers, look on in mystified awe. Maybe he has ascended to a higher plain of spiritual enlightenment. What then? Nothing? No final showdown? No fireworks? Apparently not. Life returns to normal. The three of us wait for Captain Squid to come home from work so we can ambush him in militaristic horseplay. And then, one day, mother notices that he does not come when he is called to his tea. Impatiently, she marches out into the hall. There he is; a small boy, hunched at the wall like a prisoner trying to discreetly chisel through it, red crayon in hand. Red-handed, so to speak.
Two words:
ENEMY
ACTION
'Right!' she barks in a Basil Fawlty-esque way that even now is so marvellous, grabs him by the top of the arm, marches him to the foot of the stairs, and proceeds to literally propel him up the aforementioned stairs by the sheer and repeated force of a heartily smacked bottom. Party Squid and I watch in silent, grim acknowledgement. We pass each other a glance which seems to say, 'this is what happens. Smacked, no tea, sent to bed. The holy trinity. The only way to subvert enemy action. Regular...as....clockwork.'
Mother slams the bedroom door, fuming. Inky Squid can be heard whimpering in his room. She storms downstairs, furious, and as she passes the spot where he was committing this last and most unutterably heinous of domestic offences, stops suddenly. We all look.
For there, on the wall, written in red crayon:
'I love my mummy.'
I suppose the moral of this story is that even if your intentions are good, you shouldn't break the law. Particularly when you're the youngest of three boys living by a strict naval disciplinary code. It is of little consequence now, I would suggest. Inky Squid turned out to be a fine man. I am proud to call him my brother.
Your loving friend,
Action Squid
When we were children, my younger brother Inky Squid developed an appallingly hooliganistic penchant for writing on the walls. Admittedly he was only five; and his crime stemmed more from experimentation with crayons (and presumably a lack of suitable paper) than it did the senseless desire to deface public property under the guise of 'art', as currently propagated by the junior members of the future working classes. A dark time in our Devonshire abode, maybe, but now it makes for a good Sunday-night yarn which I hope you might enjoy.
Around this time (and forever since) our father Captain Squid had very specific guidelines on what he (and the police) might consider criminal infractions. To illustrate his policy on household lawlessness he would often quote his favourite phrase from his time in the navy. As follows: 'one mistake is an accident, two times is happenstance, and three times is enemy action.' In short, you're allowed to make a mistake twice. Just. But make it a third time, and your ass is on its way to the chokey.
Inky Squid ought to have known better.
Nevertheless, he's found something. And as childhood is all about pushing boundaries in order to find them, he finds a crayon and writes on the wall. His mother tells him he cannot do it. It is naughty. Walls are not to be written on, after all. Very few vertical structures are. He is told, in no uncertain or subjectively vague terms, not to to do it again. THE ACCIDENT.
The second time he writes on a wall, his mother is angry. She has reasoned with him before, she's told him why he mustn't do it. She isn't in the habit of repeating herself, nor should she have to. Little boys must listen to their mothers; a fact of science, a law of nature and rule of thumb. So this time there is a real and credible threat to household security. A counter-strike is required. She kneels in front of him. 'If you write on the walls again,' she says, 'you'll be smacked, and you'll have no tea, and you'll be sent to bed.'
Smacked.
No tea.
Bed.
The triumvirate, the holy trinity of unwanted punishments. This shit just got real. This is...THE HAPPENSTANCE.
A noticeable air of calm descends upon the house. Life awaits an outcome which never arrives. The bomb fails to detonate. Maybe he has learned. We, his two older brothers, look on in mystified awe. Maybe he has ascended to a higher plain of spiritual enlightenment. What then? Nothing? No final showdown? No fireworks? Apparently not. Life returns to normal. The three of us wait for Captain Squid to come home from work so we can ambush him in militaristic horseplay. And then, one day, mother notices that he does not come when he is called to his tea. Impatiently, she marches out into the hall. There he is; a small boy, hunched at the wall like a prisoner trying to discreetly chisel through it, red crayon in hand. Red-handed, so to speak.
Two words:
ENEMY
ACTION
'Right!' she barks in a Basil Fawlty-esque way that even now is so marvellous, grabs him by the top of the arm, marches him to the foot of the stairs, and proceeds to literally propel him up the aforementioned stairs by the sheer and repeated force of a heartily smacked bottom. Party Squid and I watch in silent, grim acknowledgement. We pass each other a glance which seems to say, 'this is what happens. Smacked, no tea, sent to bed. The holy trinity. The only way to subvert enemy action. Regular...as....clockwork.'
Mother slams the bedroom door, fuming. Inky Squid can be heard whimpering in his room. She storms downstairs, furious, and as she passes the spot where he was committing this last and most unutterably heinous of domestic offences, stops suddenly. We all look.
For there, on the wall, written in red crayon:
'I love my mummy.'
I suppose the moral of this story is that even if your intentions are good, you shouldn't break the law. Particularly when you're the youngest of three boys living by a strict naval disciplinary code. It is of little consequence now, I would suggest. Inky Squid turned out to be a fine man. I am proud to call him my brother.
Your loving friend,
Action Squid
Monday, 31 October 2011
The Only Way To Be Happy Is To Be Good: Part II
Dear Octopus,
Yesterday was a bleak and gloomy Sunday afternoon. As I sat on a rickety bench in our local Iranian laundrette, trying (and failing) to read a book over the repetitive watery thudding of various antiquarian machines, I thought: 'this is fucking grim.' And that made me think about the phases of our lives as they unfurl around us; some grim, some not so. I'd like to think - after all -that having lived in our nation's capital for five years now that I'd be above this sort of thing. The seed of this particularly abstract thought was planted by my mother Vino Squid, who told me recently that our lives are dictated by chapters; some short, some long, and as such one should never be afraid of ending one and starting another. Don't dwell on the past, was her point. I believe I made reference to it in Part I.
As anyone who knows me in anything other than passing should immediately realise, this situation called for a diagram. But with my sketching skills comprehensively and irreversibly depleted by the fact that I have absolutely no natural talent for it, my inadequacy forces me to make do with a description.
As follows:
2003-2006: The Apple Tree
Three years of university. Cereal, daytime television. X-Box. Beer, mixed with cider, mixed with blackcurrant cordial. Red biros circling illegible notes. Summers working in an actual office (how grown up), evenings drinking red wine (how grown up) and listening to the Toad play guitar under the apple tree. Road trips, elaborate drinking games, scourges of paranoia and a crippling lack of self-confidence. The Postal Service, Bright Eyes, Coldplay. Bright sunny days viewed from the bottom of an unusually dark hole.
2006-2008: The Bar Under The Bridge
London baby. University, but with money. Work hard / play hard our way to Inferno's: boozing inside, fighting outside, drudgery, a girlfriend, the lagging realisation that this is not just another semester between holidays. Ironing shirts of an evening whilst watching reality television. Our landlady's depressing painting hanging on the kitchen wall. Cheap dates in cheap restaurants, cheap talk. Interim appraisals at the bottom of the ladder. Curries on neon Brick Lane, Sunday evenings on Peckham Rye. The art student who ran the shitty pub quiz in the Bar Under The Bridge, his stupid fucking haircut, getting asked to leave for calling him the c-word (he so was). Jamie T, Regina Spektor, The Perishers. The last vestiges of us all living together, now that we are here.
2009-2010: The Loft
A loft on Lydden Grove. New housemates. Saturday Kitchen, eating fish finger sandwiches. Lots of cooking programmes. Nights out in Artesian Well, being ignored. Social networking. A winter so cold there was frost on the inside of my window. A winter so cold I could see my breath when I was lying in bed. Chain-smoking with worry. A fear that something is changing, and can never be undone. Kissing on the Waterloo footbridge. Cat Power, The XX, Joan Armatrading. A book, a new life, and you.
2009-2011: The House That Love Built (And Forgot)
The shared house, the fallout. Strangers. A hospital of living. Bicycles stored in hallways, toilet roll in cupboards. The gradual osmosis of change; Honksy and Pongo sauntering in on a dry Saturday. Nicknames, takeaways, house parties spent mixing martinis for sweet, pretentious children. Lavatorial humour laughing on the sofa. Sunday walks in Wimbledon Park, sleeping under the trees. Dates with very lovely, very sad women. Promotions, roof terraces, nights at the theatre. Coming home from Hoxton Square warehouse parties in black cabs, sidling slyly through the peach-cream dawn. Bon Iver, Laura Marling, Grizzly Bear. Writing letters to someone who cannot read them, thinking it okay.
What next?
(Whatever it is, I hope it doesn't involve that fucking laundrette. He keeps over-starching my collars and I'm just not standing for it.)
Your loving friend,
Action Squid
Yesterday was a bleak and gloomy Sunday afternoon. As I sat on a rickety bench in our local Iranian laundrette, trying (and failing) to read a book over the repetitive watery thudding of various antiquarian machines, I thought: 'this is fucking grim.' And that made me think about the phases of our lives as they unfurl around us; some grim, some not so. I'd like to think - after all -that having lived in our nation's capital for five years now that I'd be above this sort of thing. The seed of this particularly abstract thought was planted by my mother Vino Squid, who told me recently that our lives are dictated by chapters; some short, some long, and as such one should never be afraid of ending one and starting another. Don't dwell on the past, was her point. I believe I made reference to it in Part I.
As anyone who knows me in anything other than passing should immediately realise, this situation called for a diagram. But with my sketching skills comprehensively and irreversibly depleted by the fact that I have absolutely no natural talent for it, my inadequacy forces me to make do with a description.
As follows:
2003-2006: The Apple Tree
Three years of university. Cereal, daytime television. X-Box. Beer, mixed with cider, mixed with blackcurrant cordial. Red biros circling illegible notes. Summers working in an actual office (how grown up), evenings drinking red wine (how grown up) and listening to the Toad play guitar under the apple tree. Road trips, elaborate drinking games, scourges of paranoia and a crippling lack of self-confidence. The Postal Service, Bright Eyes, Coldplay. Bright sunny days viewed from the bottom of an unusually dark hole.
2006-2008: The Bar Under The Bridge
London baby. University, but with money. Work hard / play hard our way to Inferno's: boozing inside, fighting outside, drudgery, a girlfriend, the lagging realisation that this is not just another semester between holidays. Ironing shirts of an evening whilst watching reality television. Our landlady's depressing painting hanging on the kitchen wall. Cheap dates in cheap restaurants, cheap talk. Interim appraisals at the bottom of the ladder. Curries on neon Brick Lane, Sunday evenings on Peckham Rye. The art student who ran the shitty pub quiz in the Bar Under The Bridge, his stupid fucking haircut, getting asked to leave for calling him the c-word (he so was). Jamie T, Regina Spektor, The Perishers. The last vestiges of us all living together, now that we are here.
2009-2010: The Loft
A loft on Lydden Grove. New housemates. Saturday Kitchen, eating fish finger sandwiches. Lots of cooking programmes. Nights out in Artesian Well, being ignored. Social networking. A winter so cold there was frost on the inside of my window. A winter so cold I could see my breath when I was lying in bed. Chain-smoking with worry. A fear that something is changing, and can never be undone. Kissing on the Waterloo footbridge. Cat Power, The XX, Joan Armatrading. A book, a new life, and you.
2009-2011: The House That Love Built (And Forgot)
The shared house, the fallout. Strangers. A hospital of living. Bicycles stored in hallways, toilet roll in cupboards. The gradual osmosis of change; Honksy and Pongo sauntering in on a dry Saturday. Nicknames, takeaways, house parties spent mixing martinis for sweet, pretentious children. Lavatorial humour laughing on the sofa. Sunday walks in Wimbledon Park, sleeping under the trees. Dates with very lovely, very sad women. Promotions, roof terraces, nights at the theatre. Coming home from Hoxton Square warehouse parties in black cabs, sidling slyly through the peach-cream dawn. Bon Iver, Laura Marling, Grizzly Bear. Writing letters to someone who cannot read them, thinking it okay.
What next?
(Whatever it is, I hope it doesn't involve that fucking laundrette. He keeps over-starching my collars and I'm just not standing for it.)
Your loving friend,
Action Squid
Monday, 24 October 2011
The Only Way To Be Happy Is To Be Good
Dear Octopus,
You may have noticed that I haven't written to you in a while. I was indisposed, and apologise profusely. Nothing too major, you may or may not be pleased to hear, merely a sprained ankle acquired in the pursuit of a well-groomed hedge.
I say 'nothing major'........it was totally major.
Because - as I found out - spraining your ankle is not your average, quotidian injury. In fact it's what I've come to call an Absolutely Unmitigated Disaster. People think that a sprain is akin to a pulled muscle or stubbed toe; a loose, vague ailment with little lasting discomfort or inconvenience. It couldn't be further from the truth. It was totally inconvenient for me.
I'll skip the actual wounding. That grim, sickeningly vile moment when I fell from the bench and into the herb patch, clutching my foot and hyperventilating 'Pongo...fuck Pongo...fucking hell mate...this is not fucking good mate...' while he stood and recalled with wistfully smiling nostalgia the incident where he saw his friend stab himself in the heel with a large garden fork. It's too emotionally and physically excruciating to contemplate, let alone casually retell in the worldwide digital webisphere. Dutch and Honksy very kindly transported me to the Accident & Emergency department of the lovely St. George's Hospital in the thoroughly un-lovely Tooting, and even bought me a dirty magazine and an ice cream in order to buoy my ailing temperament. (I watched Downton Abbey on the waiting area's television set and ate the ice cream, while they perused the dirty magazine.)
I was wheeled up to be examined, down to x-ray, then wheeled back up again to be handed my crutches and told to keep off said offending ankle for 48 hours. Simple.
Not simple. The worst part of being on crutches is the preparation. Nothing is easy. Getting up or downstairs to and/or from my bedroom - three flights no less - goes from a jaunty eleven-second dash to a seven-minute pain-marathon. So essentially you can't go anywhere without planning exactly what you'll need, because any possibility that you might have to come back for something alludes to another fourteen long minutes of Japanese torture. Or, more pertinently, once you're there you're stuck with what you have.
By the second day I was writing a list and then packing a rucksack just to go downstairs. Having no meaningful capacity for carrying, my meals consisted of foods that could be made and then put in the rucksack for the trip from the kitchen back to the sofa. There aren't many. But worst of all was the boredom. There is only so much television a man can watch before his thirst for life is quenched entirely! What of the trees, the sky, birds singing their maniacal pop songs from next door's partially-caved-in chimney flue! What of work, human interaction, the happy discourse of friends' muted concern!
(Plus we don't have Sky.)
Don't ever sprain your ankle little one. But more on my recovery next time.
By the way I saw Bon Iver last night, at Hammersmith Apollo. It was amazing. I did spare a thought for you, and how my last real memory of you is us talking about how strange it would be to finally see them together. Well, I saw them. So I spared you a thought.
Just one though. Dwelling on the past is not conducive to goodness.
Your loving friend,
Action Squid
You may have noticed that I haven't written to you in a while. I was indisposed, and apologise profusely. Nothing too major, you may or may not be pleased to hear, merely a sprained ankle acquired in the pursuit of a well-groomed hedge.
I say 'nothing major'........it was totally major.
Because - as I found out - spraining your ankle is not your average, quotidian injury. In fact it's what I've come to call an Absolutely Unmitigated Disaster. People think that a sprain is akin to a pulled muscle or stubbed toe; a loose, vague ailment with little lasting discomfort or inconvenience. It couldn't be further from the truth. It was totally inconvenient for me.
I'll skip the actual wounding. That grim, sickeningly vile moment when I fell from the bench and into the herb patch, clutching my foot and hyperventilating 'Pongo...fuck Pongo...fucking hell mate...this is not fucking good mate...' while he stood and recalled with wistfully smiling nostalgia the incident where he saw his friend stab himself in the heel with a large garden fork. It's too emotionally and physically excruciating to contemplate, let alone casually retell in the worldwide digital webisphere. Dutch and Honksy very kindly transported me to the Accident & Emergency department of the lovely St. George's Hospital in the thoroughly un-lovely Tooting, and even bought me a dirty magazine and an ice cream in order to buoy my ailing temperament. (I watched Downton Abbey on the waiting area's television set and ate the ice cream, while they perused the dirty magazine.)
I was wheeled up to be examined, down to x-ray, then wheeled back up again to be handed my crutches and told to keep off said offending ankle for 48 hours. Simple.
Not simple. The worst part of being on crutches is the preparation. Nothing is easy. Getting up or downstairs to and/or from my bedroom - three flights no less - goes from a jaunty eleven-second dash to a seven-minute pain-marathon. So essentially you can't go anywhere without planning exactly what you'll need, because any possibility that you might have to come back for something alludes to another fourteen long minutes of Japanese torture. Or, more pertinently, once you're there you're stuck with what you have.
By the second day I was writing a list and then packing a rucksack just to go downstairs. Having no meaningful capacity for carrying, my meals consisted of foods that could be made and then put in the rucksack for the trip from the kitchen back to the sofa. There aren't many. But worst of all was the boredom. There is only so much television a man can watch before his thirst for life is quenched entirely! What of the trees, the sky, birds singing their maniacal pop songs from next door's partially-caved-in chimney flue! What of work, human interaction, the happy discourse of friends' muted concern!
(Plus we don't have Sky.)
Don't ever sprain your ankle little one. But more on my recovery next time.
By the way I saw Bon Iver last night, at Hammersmith Apollo. It was amazing. I did spare a thought for you, and how my last real memory of you is us talking about how strange it would be to finally see them together. Well, I saw them. So I spared you a thought.
Just one though. Dwelling on the past is not conducive to goodness.
Your loving friend,
Action Squid
Monday, 26 September 2011
Romario Goes On Holiday
Dear Octopus,
I dedicated last Friday night to the zealous pursuit of good times in the company of my best friends. Whilst falling unceremoniously around the pavement outside one of Carnaby Street's more secretive public houses, I was - for a time at least - held up on my feet long enough to hear a few funny, disgusting and thought-provoking anecdotes, but there was one in particular that I thought might interest your keen mind and strong analytical acumen. You'll like it all the more because it was told by that mysterious and handsome creature known colloquially as 'The Agent', for whom I believe you always had something of a soft spot. I digress.
For the benefit of your understanding and the protection of the very real identities involved, we shall call the heroine of this story Sally. I don't know why. But one day not too long ago, Sally was lugging an extremely heavy suitcase up the stairs of Vauxhall Tube Station. Commuters passed, as they do, without offering a sympathetic glance to her loathsome toil, let alone lending a passing hand. Imagine her relief then when a stranger miraculously offered to help. He was a decidedly rough but kindly-looking fellow, and his offer to carry her case up the remainder of the stairs could not be refused solely on account of his unsavoury appearance. She passed him it gratefully, and caught her breath.
'It's so heavy!' the man commented jovially, 'what have you got in here anyway?'
Sally casually replied, '....oh, nothing really, just work stuff....a couple of laptops and a projector.'
She should have been wiser really. At the top of the stairs, the man bolted like a hungry panther. Carrying her case. He ran like Forrest Gump in Forrest Gump, or Lola in Run Lola Run. From the entrance to the subway she surveyed his bony, bow-legged form disappear under the distant railway bridge, dragging the massive case behind him. His supposed kindness was nothing more than a duplicitous charade. He was a confidence trickster, a ruffian, a blaggard, a vile defrauder of distressed damsels with heavy luggage. And there was no way he would be caught.
Sally allowed herself time to think. The words 'stop thief!' remained trapped in her mouth, unuttered. She was calm, even. Because the case did not contain two laptops and a projector. It contained the corpse of her dead dog.
In her immediate defence (in case you might think her some sort of canine-serial killer carting the remains of her victims around our metropolitan transport network seemingly at random) Sally had adopted the dog from Battersea Dogs' Home a week earlier. It was old. It only had one eye. But it seemed sweet enough. Plus adopting an old dog is less of a commitment than getting a puppy. Forget 'life', 17-year old Romario was not even just for Christmas. He wasn't even for Hallowe'en. It died five days after she adopted it. Upon confronting the home on their extremely sketchy 'returns policy', Sally found that to have the remains collected and incinerated would cost £250. But if she brought it to the home herself, they'd incinerate it for just £50. Not much of a dilemma there. Not owning a car - and not being able to enrol a single friend into so macabre a Saturday venture - she ventured to take the tube alone. Lying to her eventual assailant was out of the understandable fear that he might not take the response, 'oh nothing really...it's just the corpse of a dead Alsatian...' too lightly.
Not a dignified end for the poor dog, clearly. But imagine the idiotically grinning visage of the opportunistic rogue as he sauntered into his dreary hovel, boasting ostentatiously to his Fagin's Gang of fellow criminals that he had successfully pilfered enough computer equipment to kit out a small (very small) office. Imagine his comrades' faces when he grandly opened said purloined artefact to reveal its grisly tenant. I hope he was ashamed.
(Sally, I might add, was secretly thrilled. She saved herself £50.)
The moral of this story? Crime doesn't pay. And if it does, sometimes it pays you in dead dogs. I thank The Agent for allowing me to repeat his story. It's lost a lot of his droll candour and effortlessly loquacious charm in my tedious retelling, but I hope I've at least partially done it justice. If not, I'm sure he can be persuaded to tell it again someday.
Your loving friend,
Action Squid
I dedicated last Friday night to the zealous pursuit of good times in the company of my best friends. Whilst falling unceremoniously around the pavement outside one of Carnaby Street's more secretive public houses, I was - for a time at least - held up on my feet long enough to hear a few funny, disgusting and thought-provoking anecdotes, but there was one in particular that I thought might interest your keen mind and strong analytical acumen. You'll like it all the more because it was told by that mysterious and handsome creature known colloquially as 'The Agent', for whom I believe you always had something of a soft spot. I digress.
For the benefit of your understanding and the protection of the very real identities involved, we shall call the heroine of this story Sally. I don't know why. But one day not too long ago, Sally was lugging an extremely heavy suitcase up the stairs of Vauxhall Tube Station. Commuters passed, as they do, without offering a sympathetic glance to her loathsome toil, let alone lending a passing hand. Imagine her relief then when a stranger miraculously offered to help. He was a decidedly rough but kindly-looking fellow, and his offer to carry her case up the remainder of the stairs could not be refused solely on account of his unsavoury appearance. She passed him it gratefully, and caught her breath.
'It's so heavy!' the man commented jovially, 'what have you got in here anyway?'
Sally casually replied, '....oh, nothing really, just work stuff....a couple of laptops and a projector.'
She should have been wiser really. At the top of the stairs, the man bolted like a hungry panther. Carrying her case. He ran like Forrest Gump in Forrest Gump, or Lola in Run Lola Run. From the entrance to the subway she surveyed his bony, bow-legged form disappear under the distant railway bridge, dragging the massive case behind him. His supposed kindness was nothing more than a duplicitous charade. He was a confidence trickster, a ruffian, a blaggard, a vile defrauder of distressed damsels with heavy luggage. And there was no way he would be caught.
Sally allowed herself time to think. The words 'stop thief!' remained trapped in her mouth, unuttered. She was calm, even. Because the case did not contain two laptops and a projector. It contained the corpse of her dead dog.
In her immediate defence (in case you might think her some sort of canine-serial killer carting the remains of her victims around our metropolitan transport network seemingly at random) Sally had adopted the dog from Battersea Dogs' Home a week earlier. It was old. It only had one eye. But it seemed sweet enough. Plus adopting an old dog is less of a commitment than getting a puppy. Forget 'life', 17-year old Romario was not even just for Christmas. He wasn't even for Hallowe'en. It died five days after she adopted it. Upon confronting the home on their extremely sketchy 'returns policy', Sally found that to have the remains collected and incinerated would cost £250. But if she brought it to the home herself, they'd incinerate it for just £50. Not much of a dilemma there. Not owning a car - and not being able to enrol a single friend into so macabre a Saturday venture - she ventured to take the tube alone. Lying to her eventual assailant was out of the understandable fear that he might not take the response, 'oh nothing really...it's just the corpse of a dead Alsatian...' too lightly.
Not a dignified end for the poor dog, clearly. But imagine the idiotically grinning visage of the opportunistic rogue as he sauntered into his dreary hovel, boasting ostentatiously to his Fagin's Gang of fellow criminals that he had successfully pilfered enough computer equipment to kit out a small (very small) office. Imagine his comrades' faces when he grandly opened said purloined artefact to reveal its grisly tenant. I hope he was ashamed.
(Sally, I might add, was secretly thrilled. She saved herself £50.)
The moral of this story? Crime doesn't pay. And if it does, sometimes it pays you in dead dogs. I thank The Agent for allowing me to repeat his story. It's lost a lot of his droll candour and effortlessly loquacious charm in my tedious retelling, but I hope I've at least partially done it justice. If not, I'm sure he can be persuaded to tell it again someday.
Your loving friend,
Action Squid
Tuesday, 20 September 2011
Severe Delays (Due To Signal Failure)
Dear Octopus,
This morning my shower broke. The water was running, but was icy-cold. I almost fell back out of it, both shivering and muttering inane swathes of profanity. But aside from the not-inconsiderable angst caused to me by having to use the other shower, I realised that there was a far deeper and terrifying cause for what could at best be called concern and at at worst an all-encompassing horror. My routine had been disturbed.
And then it hit me. I HAVE A ROUTINE.
The whole thing appears to have sneaked up on me, like an aggressive chest infection or desperate urban charity collector. And as I worried my way into the office today, it was painfully - nay excruciatingly - evident how enslaved to said routine I have gradually become.
My alarm goes off at 7.00am. Snooze is set for nine minutes. My sleep is now so controlled by this fact that I now don't even remember 7.09am or even 7.18am. I'm only really awake at 7.27am, where every day I think, 'if I were any sort of a man I'd overcome all of the past failures of my life and get up now...' and every day fail to do so. Every day I get up at 7.36am. Every day. From there I shower - hot water permitting, obviously - attend to my toilette, choose my attire from a horribly small pool of wearable v-neck sweaters and pairs of Levi jeans, get dressed, go downstairs, and put on my trainers. I'm at Wimbledon Park tube no later than 8.08am. Every day the same people are on the platform: Fuckhead Frostyballs (with whom I used to vie for a seat in the second carriage, until I grew tired of his elbows' athleticism constantly outwitting my wit), Gormy Temp-Girl-Smith (who looks terribly well-bred but listens to 'rap' music and can't close her mouth), and Luther Smarm-Diabolo (who appears to want me to think him a City trader when I've come to suspect he works in Westfield Shopping Centre). As the train arrives we all slope into the same carriages, and take the same seats. We all know the exact spots on the platform where the doors will appear. Mine is between the left hand edge of the tube sign and the door-knob of the winter waiting room. Yes. I know that.
Change at South Kensington any time between 8.21am and 8.32am (forgoing signal failure at Earl's Court, and by which time I've always finished the Metro), and am usually at Leicester Square by 8.41am, having moved onto a book. Headphones in, and from the tube to the office I can listen to either three medium lengths songs or two long ones. Normally chosen from a pool even smaller than that of the v-neck sweaters. Outside the office by 8.48am, and at my desk by 8.52am. Sometimes this used to be 8.54am, if I decided to stop en route for a wee. This is no longer the problem it once was, having been edited out due to its unpredictable effect on timing.
Needless to say, this is only about two hours of my morning. The same is true, to lesser or greater extents, for the WHOLE DAY. My whole fucking day is lorded over by such stringent patterns of inconsequential governance. Why? What does it matter? Who cares if I get up late, or early, or arrive at 8.54 rather than 8.52? Would anyone in that office even notice if I didn't come in at all? Who set these Machiavellian axioms to their devious machination, if only in my mind? And why am I so in love with them?
Am I alone? Or is that virile, semen-sweating blaggard Luther Smarm-Diabolo similarly entrenched in meaningless repetition, from which his successful extrication is his sole and heartfelt aim? Did Gormy Temp-Smith spend her childhood envisaging this quiet, gloom-filled martyrdom? Does it make her happy? And why the fuck have we never spoken? How can I have formed these presumptions about them, when I see them every day but know nothing of their lives? What does that say about me?
It's ironic really. You may not think it, but these fervent existential questions are nothing new. They are not original programming in the channel of this mind. In fact they arrive every evening, between Parsons Green and Putney Bridge.
Yes, they too are just constituent parts of the all-encompassing routine.
Your loving friend,
Action Squid
This morning my shower broke. The water was running, but was icy-cold. I almost fell back out of it, both shivering and muttering inane swathes of profanity. But aside from the not-inconsiderable angst caused to me by having to use the other shower, I realised that there was a far deeper and terrifying cause for what could at best be called concern and at at worst an all-encompassing horror. My routine had been disturbed.
And then it hit me. I HAVE A ROUTINE.
The whole thing appears to have sneaked up on me, like an aggressive chest infection or desperate urban charity collector. And as I worried my way into the office today, it was painfully - nay excruciatingly - evident how enslaved to said routine I have gradually become.
My alarm goes off at 7.00am. Snooze is set for nine minutes. My sleep is now so controlled by this fact that I now don't even remember 7.09am or even 7.18am. I'm only really awake at 7.27am, where every day I think, 'if I were any sort of a man I'd overcome all of the past failures of my life and get up now...' and every day fail to do so. Every day I get up at 7.36am. Every day. From there I shower - hot water permitting, obviously - attend to my toilette, choose my attire from a horribly small pool of wearable v-neck sweaters and pairs of Levi jeans, get dressed, go downstairs, and put on my trainers. I'm at Wimbledon Park tube no later than 8.08am. Every day the same people are on the platform: Fuckhead Frostyballs (with whom I used to vie for a seat in the second carriage, until I grew tired of his elbows' athleticism constantly outwitting my wit), Gormy Temp-Girl-Smith (who looks terribly well-bred but listens to 'rap' music and can't close her mouth), and Luther Smarm-Diabolo (who appears to want me to think him a City trader when I've come to suspect he works in Westfield Shopping Centre). As the train arrives we all slope into the same carriages, and take the same seats. We all know the exact spots on the platform where the doors will appear. Mine is between the left hand edge of the tube sign and the door-knob of the winter waiting room. Yes. I know that.
Change at South Kensington any time between 8.21am and 8.32am (forgoing signal failure at Earl's Court, and by which time I've always finished the Metro), and am usually at Leicester Square by 8.41am, having moved onto a book. Headphones in, and from the tube to the office I can listen to either three medium lengths songs or two long ones. Normally chosen from a pool even smaller than that of the v-neck sweaters. Outside the office by 8.48am, and at my desk by 8.52am. Sometimes this used to be 8.54am, if I decided to stop en route for a wee. This is no longer the problem it once was, having been edited out due to its unpredictable effect on timing.
Needless to say, this is only about two hours of my morning. The same is true, to lesser or greater extents, for the WHOLE DAY. My whole fucking day is lorded over by such stringent patterns of inconsequential governance. Why? What does it matter? Who cares if I get up late, or early, or arrive at 8.54 rather than 8.52? Would anyone in that office even notice if I didn't come in at all? Who set these Machiavellian axioms to their devious machination, if only in my mind? And why am I so in love with them?
Am I alone? Or is that virile, semen-sweating blaggard Luther Smarm-Diabolo similarly entrenched in meaningless repetition, from which his successful extrication is his sole and heartfelt aim? Did Gormy Temp-Smith spend her childhood envisaging this quiet, gloom-filled martyrdom? Does it make her happy? And why the fuck have we never spoken? How can I have formed these presumptions about them, when I see them every day but know nothing of their lives? What does that say about me?
It's ironic really. You may not think it, but these fervent existential questions are nothing new. They are not original programming in the channel of this mind. In fact they arrive every evening, between Parsons Green and Putney Bridge.
Yes, they too are just constituent parts of the all-encompassing routine.
Your loving friend,
Action Squid
Sunday, 11 September 2011
'Who Cares?' Said The Fireman. 'This Is Good Cocoa...'
Dear Octopus,
I spent the last week back in Devon. On the first day home I was invited along to the birthday celebrations of one of the founding members of the Jamaican Hopscotch Mafia; the fraternity of misdemeanour within which my older brother Party Squid has risen to become a semi-prominent official. I arrived to find the entire brotherhood engaged in a veritable Olympics of back-garden party games played to much intoxicated fervour and competitive bias; sack races, egg and spoon races, arm wrestling, dance-offs, a bowls tournament, Jenga, and a provincial variant of Ring Of Fire so wild in its practices that I took a picture of the rules so I could use them as the defibrillator with which I could resuscitate many a drunken evening up here in the capital. By nine o'clock I was so worse for wear that Party Squid had to take me home; a fact that will undoubtedly be to my detriment should I venture to try and join the JHM's foreign legion via its online application exams.
In fact I was so mentally, emotionally and spiritually eviscerated by this high and potent dose of uncut debauchery that it took me a full three days to recover. I loitered around my parents' new house like a lonely ghost. Ultimately my mother Vino Squid grew so tired of my groaning that she assigned me the unenviable task of sorting through some of our children's books, to make myself useful and muffle my complaining. In the box I found our old Thomas the Tank Engine books, which had evidently spent many a year now in dusty captivity at the back of an old cupboard.
I was instantly hooked.
It took me a further two days to read them all. I drew some interesting conclusions. Essentially the core characters (forget the peripheral and utterly forgettable Bill and Ben, Donald and Douglas etc) are a pool of masculine archetypes whose arguments, misunderstandings, tensions and frictions constitute the sole narrative template for every small story.
As follows:
I spent the last week back in Devon. On the first day home I was invited along to the birthday celebrations of one of the founding members of the Jamaican Hopscotch Mafia; the fraternity of misdemeanour within which my older brother Party Squid has risen to become a semi-prominent official. I arrived to find the entire brotherhood engaged in a veritable Olympics of back-garden party games played to much intoxicated fervour and competitive bias; sack races, egg and spoon races, arm wrestling, dance-offs, a bowls tournament, Jenga, and a provincial variant of Ring Of Fire so wild in its practices that I took a picture of the rules so I could use them as the defibrillator with which I could resuscitate many a drunken evening up here in the capital. By nine o'clock I was so worse for wear that Party Squid had to take me home; a fact that will undoubtedly be to my detriment should I venture to try and join the JHM's foreign legion via its online application exams.
In fact I was so mentally, emotionally and spiritually eviscerated by this high and potent dose of uncut debauchery that it took me a full three days to recover. I loitered around my parents' new house like a lonely ghost. Ultimately my mother Vino Squid grew so tired of my groaning that she assigned me the unenviable task of sorting through some of our children's books, to make myself useful and muffle my complaining. In the box I found our old Thomas the Tank Engine books, which had evidently spent many a year now in dusty captivity at the back of an old cupboard.
I was instantly hooked.
It took me a further two days to read them all. I drew some interesting conclusions. Essentially the core characters (forget the peripheral and utterly forgettable Bill and Ben, Donald and Douglas etc) are a pool of masculine archetypes whose arguments, misunderstandings, tensions and frictions constitute the sole narrative template for every small story.
As follows:
- Gordon is bossy, arrogant and stubborn. The big swinging dick of the island. Man's man. He considers himself the big fish in a small pond; a tenuous existence (even for a steam engine) which relies on never being successfully undermined. The fact that he is constantly undermined serves to remind him not to take himself so seriously.
- Henry - by contrast - is a raging hypochondriac. Too sensitive a soul. Toughen up, nancy. It's an unforgiving world out there.
- James is a younger, sillier hybrid of both Gordon and Henry. Bit of a prig. The kind of guy who entertains a group but you wouldn't trust one-to-one. Smokes cigarettes but never buys his own. Likes to parade around in Lyle & Scott but would never admit he got it all on sale. Know a few of them.
- Percy's role in life is to mock the others. Should he have holidayed in the area, Freud might have argued that this is a defence mechanism; a means of stifling others' growth by stifling their confidence, but I think Percy is one of those guys who just wants to be accepted. And because he can't do it through any semblance of skill or charm, he has to make jokes only ever at others' expense. As Captain Squid would say, 'rather be naughty than not be noticed.' To be pitied rather than admonished really.
- Thomas is a bit of everything. That's why he's the protagonist. He makes all the mistakes of all the others (albeit to lesser extents) so this is what makes the reader relate to him. You empathise with Thomas, because you are Thomas. He's three-dimensional. For a train.
I lay awake one rainy evening thinking these concepts over, and deciding who was my favourite. The answer though was easy. It was Edward. Reliable, dependable, honest Edward. Never snide or self-aggrandising, never looking for attention, or praise. Just gets on with it. Just satisfied by working hard and doing his best. Some people find these qualities boring; as though it's not fun to be reliable, or entertaining to be a good guy. That really fucking annoys me. In a world of duplicitous misadventure, to be of strong moral fibre is harder than anywhere. Edward isn't boring, he's heroic. He's the sum of Rudyard Kipling's poem If. And the fact that he's old and worn-out, that the other engines laugh at him and don't believe in him, just makes his heroism all the more laudable. The rest of the world can fritter their lives away in meaningless haberdashery, but it is those who work hard and speak the truth who will prevail in the end. I do believe that. The meek, after all, while not necessarily inheriting the earth, will probably get an appropriately decent share of its railways.
I will endeavour, now that I am back in London, to be more like him.
As I stowed the books away after having read them (and not made even the slightest effort to sort them) I realised that Edward was my favourite as a boy. Maybe we never really change, or grow up. Who knows. But it was good to be home.
Your loving friend,
Action Squid
(PS: If you got that the title was from The Flying Kipper, Captain Squid's favourite story, you win both a piece of Devon toffee and the last vestiges of my deepest respect that you didn't already own...)
Thursday, 25 August 2011
Grand Adventures Of Yesteryear
Dear Octopus,
I've had some okay birthdays in my time. Better than okay really. In my teenage years there was something of a tradition in the Squid household, which in its own way was inestimably wonderful if only for its direct repetition of the year before. Every year on either the Saturday before or after my birthday, my father (the venerable Captain Squid) and I would board an early morning train bound for Central London, having left our car in the dubious clutches of some spotty, slack-jawed attendant at Exeter St David's Station, whom the good Captain invariably grumbled was 'totally unsuitable' as soon as we were on the train. There we ate overpriced bacon sandwiches lovingly microwaved by the train's officious dining crew, for which there was never enough ketchup in one sachet and far too much in two.
When we arrived at Paddington at about eleven, we would hop on the tube (then so exciting) and always surface at Oxford Circus, where - like a true Devon boy - I would step onto the thriving metropolitan cityscape and marvel gawpingly at the tallness of the buildings and the sheer volume of people, until the Captain advised me to follow him closely, lest I should lose him and be sold to the travelling community for a chimney sweep. Together we would peruse the wares of the trainer shops along Oxford Street, and I would buy a 'cool' pair using my birthday money.
Happy that the capital's commercial enterprises had adequately serviced our needs, we'd invariably retire to a pizza establishment in the Covent Garden area for lunch. This being accomplished and the bill paid, we'd hop back onto the tube in the direction of North London.
The first time I stepped out into the light at White Hart Lane, (1996) the first thing I couldn't believe were the colours. The pitch was so green, and the seats so blue. The Captain is an ardent Aston Villa supporter - and highly sceptical of my choice of team, largely derived from the fact that it came from my mother's side - and as such would only grudgingly accept my awe at arriving in the stadium at which all dreams culminated, and in whose confines were (and still are) all eternally disappointed. The first match was a 0-0 draw, annoyingly, but we saw a few good wins and never a loss. The best was the 3-3 draw with Leeds in 1998; 3-1 down after 80 minutes, Iversen clawed one back from the edge of the area and Judas got the equaliser with a towering header at the far post in the 93rd minute. Right by me, no less. The Captain was off having a shit, and missed the whole thing.
After the game we always strolled back to Seven Sisters with the cheering crowd, then got back to Paddington just in time for our train home. Our car was always undamaged, but the Captain still maintained that the staff was totally unsuitable. If the traffic was reasonable we'd be home in time to watch the highlights again on Match Of The Day, over which I'd force my own additional commentary onto my mother and brothers; how the pitch was so much bigger when you were really there, how green it was, how Chris Armstrong was so much shorter in real life but Darren Anderton was so much taller, even though they'd undoubtedly heard it all the year before. In the Captain's case, the hour before. And probably the hour before that. He never complained.
This was exactly the same every year, from my eleventh to seventeenth birthdays. Seven best days of my life.
Anyway, I hope maybe there's something of that old magic and the majesty of occasion still knocking around the world now. Just a little. Happy birthday Octopus. I hope that you find all of which I know you are forever deserving.
Your loving friend,
Action Squid
I've had some okay birthdays in my time. Better than okay really. In my teenage years there was something of a tradition in the Squid household, which in its own way was inestimably wonderful if only for its direct repetition of the year before. Every year on either the Saturday before or after my birthday, my father (the venerable Captain Squid) and I would board an early morning train bound for Central London, having left our car in the dubious clutches of some spotty, slack-jawed attendant at Exeter St David's Station, whom the good Captain invariably grumbled was 'totally unsuitable' as soon as we were on the train. There we ate overpriced bacon sandwiches lovingly microwaved by the train's officious dining crew, for which there was never enough ketchup in one sachet and far too much in two.
When we arrived at Paddington at about eleven, we would hop on the tube (then so exciting) and always surface at Oxford Circus, where - like a true Devon boy - I would step onto the thriving metropolitan cityscape and marvel gawpingly at the tallness of the buildings and the sheer volume of people, until the Captain advised me to follow him closely, lest I should lose him and be sold to the travelling community for a chimney sweep. Together we would peruse the wares of the trainer shops along Oxford Street, and I would buy a 'cool' pair using my birthday money.
Happy that the capital's commercial enterprises had adequately serviced our needs, we'd invariably retire to a pizza establishment in the Covent Garden area for lunch. This being accomplished and the bill paid, we'd hop back onto the tube in the direction of North London.
The first time I stepped out into the light at White Hart Lane, (1996) the first thing I couldn't believe were the colours. The pitch was so green, and the seats so blue. The Captain is an ardent Aston Villa supporter - and highly sceptical of my choice of team, largely derived from the fact that it came from my mother's side - and as such would only grudgingly accept my awe at arriving in the stadium at which all dreams culminated, and in whose confines were (and still are) all eternally disappointed. The first match was a 0-0 draw, annoyingly, but we saw a few good wins and never a loss. The best was the 3-3 draw with Leeds in 1998; 3-1 down after 80 minutes, Iversen clawed one back from the edge of the area and Judas got the equaliser with a towering header at the far post in the 93rd minute. Right by me, no less. The Captain was off having a shit, and missed the whole thing.
After the game we always strolled back to Seven Sisters with the cheering crowd, then got back to Paddington just in time for our train home. Our car was always undamaged, but the Captain still maintained that the staff was totally unsuitable. If the traffic was reasonable we'd be home in time to watch the highlights again on Match Of The Day, over which I'd force my own additional commentary onto my mother and brothers; how the pitch was so much bigger when you were really there, how green it was, how Chris Armstrong was so much shorter in real life but Darren Anderton was so much taller, even though they'd undoubtedly heard it all the year before. In the Captain's case, the hour before. And probably the hour before that. He never complained.
This was exactly the same every year, from my eleventh to seventeenth birthdays. Seven best days of my life.
Anyway, I hope maybe there's something of that old magic and the majesty of occasion still knocking around the world now. Just a little. Happy birthday Octopus. I hope that you find all of which I know you are forever deserving.
Your loving friend,
Action Squid
Wednesday, 10 August 2011
Revolutionary Warfare For The Valiant Cause Of Who-The-Fuck-Cares
Dear Octopus,
The streets are awash with an omniscient and tangible sense of dread. When the rioting started in the East End we joked about the bourgeois ways in which it might infect our leafy suburban locale (iced frappucinos being tossed disdainfully at portly tram conductors....middle aged mothers illegally syphoning double nectar points like stolen petrol....public schoolboys in straw boaters deliberately handing in their Latin homework an hour late....) but yesterday our ribaldry appeared to have transcended genres; forcing its hideously grinning face from dystopian fantasy into plain truth. Maybe we are being punished for our arrogance.
The Good Ship Media was effectively abandoned after four, leaving myself and a pal of mine from Capital Radio to fight our way west using underground trains heaving with the running and the scared. There were reports of trouble at Leicester Square and on Tottenham Court Road; then more unrest in Putney, Wandsworth, Southfields and Wimbledon. If the sum of all the world's rumours were to be believed then I'd encounter burning cars, screaming children and ragged riot police on every corner, and fight my way home only to find our darling abode besieged by zombie invaders, with Honksy and Dutch clutching tennis racquets, lamp shades and assorted kitchen utensils to fight them off.
The reality was very different. If anything Wimbledon Park was eerily quiet, with shops boarded up and streets deserted. At home the curtains were closed, and whilst Honksy was definitely gripped in a paroxysm of irrational terror.....it was no more so than usual. So we watched a film and ate Oreos, dipped in milk.
So why the discrepancy? Who got it wrong?
For all its wonders, social media is a hive of scaremongering and exaggerated rumour. While the riots' organisation were undoubtedly facilitated by its shadier mediums, so has been the perpetuation of their fear. At first everyone was updating and tweeting their simple, understandable horror (albeit all the time), but now we seem to have upgraded. The semi-informed political disenfranchisement of moronic left-wing students and right-wing young professionals - all groping ineptly for some flag with which to adorn their mast - clamour with equal gracelessness, and persistence. It seems there's really very little else to talk about. And this makes everything worse. The last few days appear to have shown that it is possible, after all, to have access to too much information, and to talk too freely when you have nothing to say. The riots are awful. But we are being undone by the habitual vanity of our own lives.
And, considering everything, I suppose I am a great hypocrite. I hope that you are safe Octopus, and not afraid. I worry about you. Let us hope that this great sadness passes quickly.
Your loving friend,
Action Squid
The streets are awash with an omniscient and tangible sense of dread. When the rioting started in the East End we joked about the bourgeois ways in which it might infect our leafy suburban locale (iced frappucinos being tossed disdainfully at portly tram conductors....middle aged mothers illegally syphoning double nectar points like stolen petrol....public schoolboys in straw boaters deliberately handing in their Latin homework an hour late....) but yesterday our ribaldry appeared to have transcended genres; forcing its hideously grinning face from dystopian fantasy into plain truth. Maybe we are being punished for our arrogance.
The Good Ship Media was effectively abandoned after four, leaving myself and a pal of mine from Capital Radio to fight our way west using underground trains heaving with the running and the scared. There were reports of trouble at Leicester Square and on Tottenham Court Road; then more unrest in Putney, Wandsworth, Southfields and Wimbledon. If the sum of all the world's rumours were to be believed then I'd encounter burning cars, screaming children and ragged riot police on every corner, and fight my way home only to find our darling abode besieged by zombie invaders, with Honksy and Dutch clutching tennis racquets, lamp shades and assorted kitchen utensils to fight them off.
The reality was very different. If anything Wimbledon Park was eerily quiet, with shops boarded up and streets deserted. At home the curtains were closed, and whilst Honksy was definitely gripped in a paroxysm of irrational terror.....it was no more so than usual. So we watched a film and ate Oreos, dipped in milk.
So why the discrepancy? Who got it wrong?
For all its wonders, social media is a hive of scaremongering and exaggerated rumour. While the riots' organisation were undoubtedly facilitated by its shadier mediums, so has been the perpetuation of their fear. At first everyone was updating and tweeting their simple, understandable horror (albeit all the time), but now we seem to have upgraded. The semi-informed political disenfranchisement of moronic left-wing students and right-wing young professionals - all groping ineptly for some flag with which to adorn their mast - clamour with equal gracelessness, and persistence. It seems there's really very little else to talk about. And this makes everything worse. The last few days appear to have shown that it is possible, after all, to have access to too much information, and to talk too freely when you have nothing to say. The riots are awful. But we are being undone by the habitual vanity of our own lives.
And, considering everything, I suppose I am a great hypocrite. I hope that you are safe Octopus, and not afraid. I worry about you. Let us hope that this great sadness passes quickly.
Your loving friend,
Action Squid
Monday, 1 August 2011
Bakery Advice From The Ragged Edge
Dear Octopus,
A weekend is a strange and quietly moveable feast. All week it quietly bakes in the oven; but what can predicted to be the sweet-tasting oasis of adventure and relaxation, a secret smile in parenthesis to the masticating toil of the working week, can slowly collapse like an improperly-observed pudding. Peering through the glass we witness its miserable imploding decline, and cannot assist. There was a clerical error in the administering of the ingredients and/or their quantities, maybe. Or it was just a poor recipe. Either way, all that remains is a baking tin scorched with unidentifiable detritus, and forty-eight hours with which to scrub it clean, ready for use another time.
I had some nice plans for the weekend. But – like the metaphorical pudding recently established as deceased – they fell apart. As such I was left alone in The Players’ Lounge; a ghost left to haunt its corridors and landings, without purpose. Dutch was visiting friends in Wales, Honksy went to see a newborn relative, and Pongo unsurprisingly chose the elegant splendour of Nobu over our drastically less opulent excuse for an abode.
My first thought was that this weekend resembled that previously-described embarrassment of inappropriately spent energy: the House Golf Experience. I immediately resolved not to create any house-bound ball games in the alleviation of boredom. This weekend would be different. Boredom would be avoided in the first place.
What arrogance. What naivety.
A mere nine hours in; I’d watched Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, caught up on my correspondence, worked on my book, read some Gogol, watched qualifying for the Hungarian Grand Prix, tried to check my bank balance, earned an additional two stars on Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, and been for a long walk around Wimbledon Park. I even threw a stick at a tree, trying to shake down some conkers.
(It wasn’t a horse-chestnut tree. Nor is it conker season.)
Back at home, House Golf began to look like a tasty option. The only viable alternative was ‘Gangly Jim’: an old game by which I make phone calls to local pizza delivery establishments impersonating various historical Blue Peter presenters trying to wheedle complimentary wares. My Konnie Huq is now old news with the manager of Pizza-Go-Go on Kingston Road though, as is my Peter Purves with most of the independent franchises on Battersea Rise. Apparently they now take a 'Zero Tolerance Policy' towards orders from any former employees of the BBC or its affiliates / partners.
After much meditation on kitchen work surfaces and inside Dutch’s wardrobe, I decided to take drastic action.
DRASTIC action.
Without going too closely into details, Honksy received an urgent phone call pretty late that night, and the caller was quite desperate to find some premium strength nail varnish remover.
Lesson: boredom can lead to the creation of some pretty horrible just-desserts. I am resolved to getting a life, preferably at the earliest opportunity. Maybe then my next weekend can be made into a delicious jam roly-poly, rather than the foul-tasting plate of raw junket recently suffered.
Your loving friend,
Action Squid
Monday, 25 July 2011
Lost At The Lady Garden (or: Accosted In Highbury By Fearsome Drugs Terrier)
Dear Octopus,
Sorry that it's been a while. I've been busy. We had a house party for Honksy's birthday, a while ago now. Incapable as she is of embarking upon let alone completing even the slightest domesticated endeavour, I was put in charge of cocktails, with Pongo in charge of food. We actually acquitted ourselves quite well; my martinis were so strong that everyone was horribly shitfaced come nine o'clock (check), and Pongo made so much hummus that we had to have the remainder incinerated after two weeks languishing fastidiously at the back of the fridge (double check). The party itself culminated in all of the habitual debauchery. At one point I found Honksy and her friend lying out in the middle of the street looking at the sky. I had to usher them back indoors like bewildered children, who knew they had misbehaved but didn't know why. Youth is wasted on the young. Well, it's wasted on them. Sebastian Vettel is younger than me. And he's German.
Since then, the House Of The Leaky Boiler has been quite quiet; save for lively recruit Dutch trooping home of an evening and chastising us in her thick Glaswegian drawl for wasting our lives debating this week's entries into The Players' Lounge and making ornaments from our tower of used rocket lolly sticks. She really is a character, and we're all glad for her chirpy if relentless enthusiasm, seemingly for everything.
Last week I went to go and see a friend's show (hideously funny: www.ladygardencomedy.co.uk, if you're interested.....which of course you will be, connoisseur of the arts as you are) and had an encounter of which I thought you might like to hear. I had gone to the theatre on my own, with a view to maybe catching my friend to say 'hello' after the performance, were I fortuitous enough to spot her amidst the clamouring din.
Standing at the bar (and trying to look like I wasn't there on my lonesome) I was approached by a man with a small dog. In the spirit of political correctness and liberal cultural standing for which these letters would be lauded (were they lauded); I'll say that on the scale of disease-carrying-mental-illness-ravaged-vagrant going up to virile-regal-Economist-reading-man-of-the-world.....this man was a two. He wasn't a tramp, but he really wasn't far off. At all. He gave me a knowing, highly-inebriated stare. The dog sniffed my shoe (presumably thinking it a tastier meal than whatever he'd been feeding it):
HIM: You know why he's sniffing your shoe?
ME: Because he's a dog?
HIM: No, it's because you have drugs in there.
ME: No, it isn't.
HIM: He's a police sniffer dog. And I'm a policeman.
The only down-side to this was that when my friend did arrive I had to look terribly severe and unforgiving, and a little bit like she was under my surveillance. I'm not sure there's a career in it for me, frankly. After all: I almost crumbled under interrogation from a drunk tramp. If I met some actually villains I'd probably just curl up in a ball on the floor and hope they'd go away.
Still, he who dares Rodders....
Your loving friend,
Action Squid
Sorry that it's been a while. I've been busy. We had a house party for Honksy's birthday, a while ago now. Incapable as she is of embarking upon let alone completing even the slightest domesticated endeavour, I was put in charge of cocktails, with Pongo in charge of food. We actually acquitted ourselves quite well; my martinis were so strong that everyone was horribly shitfaced come nine o'clock (check), and Pongo made so much hummus that we had to have the remainder incinerated after two weeks languishing fastidiously at the back of the fridge (double check). The party itself culminated in all of the habitual debauchery. At one point I found Honksy and her friend lying out in the middle of the street looking at the sky. I had to usher them back indoors like bewildered children, who knew they had misbehaved but didn't know why. Youth is wasted on the young. Well, it's wasted on them. Sebastian Vettel is younger than me. And he's German.
Since then, the House Of The Leaky Boiler has been quite quiet; save for lively recruit Dutch trooping home of an evening and chastising us in her thick Glaswegian drawl for wasting our lives debating this week's entries into The Players' Lounge and making ornaments from our tower of used rocket lolly sticks. She really is a character, and we're all glad for her chirpy if relentless enthusiasm, seemingly for everything.
Last week I went to go and see a friend's show (hideously funny: www.ladygardencomedy.co.uk, if you're interested.....which of course you will be, connoisseur of the arts as you are) and had an encounter of which I thought you might like to hear. I had gone to the theatre on my own, with a view to maybe catching my friend to say 'hello' after the performance, were I fortuitous enough to spot her amidst the clamouring din.
Standing at the bar (and trying to look like I wasn't there on my lonesome) I was approached by a man with a small dog. In the spirit of political correctness and liberal cultural standing for which these letters would be lauded (were they lauded); I'll say that on the scale of disease-carrying-mental-illness-ravaged-vagrant going up to virile-regal-Economist-reading-man-of-the-world.....this man was a two. He wasn't a tramp, but he really wasn't far off. At all. He gave me a knowing, highly-inebriated stare. The dog sniffed my shoe (presumably thinking it a tastier meal than whatever he'd been feeding it):
HIM: You know why he's sniffing your shoe?
ME: Because he's a dog?
HIM: No, it's because you have drugs in there.
ME: No, it isn't.
HIM: He's a police sniffer dog. And I'm a policeman.
ME: No, he isn't. And no, you're not.
HIM: I totally am.
ME: I'm not going to lie to you.....that seems kind of unlikely.
HIM: Because I'm not wearing the uniform? I'm plain clothes.ME: Very plain clothes.
HIM: So....take your shoe off.
ME: What?
HIM: Take your shoe off, now.
ME: I'm not taking my shoe off.
HIM: You have drugs in there. He can smell them.
ME: The only thing both he and I - and in fact everyone within probably eight feet of here - can smell is YOU.
HIM: Don't talk to a police officer that way.ME: You're not a police officer. And he's not a police officer.
HIM: He is a police officer.
ME: Look at him! He has mange. And why is he licking my shoe?
HIM: He likes you.
ME: I thought you said he smelled drugs?
HIM: He likes drugs.
ME: Right, get the fuck away from me pal, or I'll....
HIM: ....or you'll what? Call the Old Bill? I am the Old Bill. So there.[At this point I knew I had only one thing for it. I'd seen a friend use the following line at university, but it's high risk and can land you in extremely hot water if used in anything but the perfect context. No guts, no glory...]
ME: Look, I have to tell you, I'm actually an undercover police officer. That's how I know. You're not a copper, that dog is not a fucking copper, so I suggest you fuck off absolutely immediately or you and I are going to have to go down to Charing Cross and have a little fucking chat.
HIM: Really? You're a copper?
ME: Do you want to see my badge? [Panicking now]
HIM: Nah nah, no worries pal, I was only winding you up...
ME: ....well be more careful who you wind up next time sir. The Chief Constable is not as humorous a man as I am on the subject of impersonating a police sniffer dog....
The only down-side to this was that when my friend did arrive I had to look terribly severe and unforgiving, and a little bit like she was under my surveillance. I'm not sure there's a career in it for me, frankly. After all: I almost crumbled under interrogation from a drunk tramp. If I met some actually villains I'd probably just curl up in a ball on the floor and hope they'd go away.
Still, he who dares Rodders....
Your loving friend,
Action Squid
Monday, 11 July 2011
The Star & The Sun
Said the star to the sun, 'to me you're the one,
who brightens these skies through the day.
My love for you could split me in two,
it is dark when you are away.'
The sun blushed as it set and said, 'I really regret,
that I know that your love is not true.
For if it was so, I think that you'd know,
that I brightened the night-time too.'
The star said 'agreed, I'm not going to plead,
And I think that we did this too soon.
I'm sick of your lies and your happy goodbyes,
And I've fallen in love with the moon.'
The sun started screaming, 'you must have been dreaming,
if you thought that I'd beg you "don't go."'
But her tears were the rain on the long desert plain,
And her sorrow the city-bound snow.
(She said): 'Go back to to your mother the morning.
Run along to your home in the sea.
Waste all your best smiles on feminine wiles,
But don't waste your last words on me.'
The star quickly objected, 'it was me you rejected:
my "words" were too sparse or too few.
I've wasted long hours on thank you's and flowers,
but I won't waste my last tears on you.'
(He said): 'It's cold outside in the evening.
And the night now looks sad forlorn.
But although I'll forget that the sun has now set,
Perhaps you'll remember the dawn.'
who brightens these skies through the day.
My love for you could split me in two,
it is dark when you are away.'
The sun blushed as it set and said, 'I really regret,
that I know that your love is not true.
For if it was so, I think that you'd know,
that I brightened the night-time too.'
The star said 'agreed, I'm not going to plead,
And I think that we did this too soon.
I'm sick of your lies and your happy goodbyes,
And I've fallen in love with the moon.'
The sun started screaming, 'you must have been dreaming,
if you thought that I'd beg you "don't go."'
But her tears were the rain on the long desert plain,
And her sorrow the city-bound snow.
(She said): 'Go back to to your mother the morning.
Run along to your home in the sea.
Waste all your best smiles on feminine wiles,
But don't waste your last words on me.'
The star quickly objected, 'it was me you rejected:
my "words" were too sparse or too few.
I've wasted long hours on thank you's and flowers,
but I won't waste my last tears on you.'
(He said): 'It's cold outside in the evening.
And the night now looks sad forlorn.
But although I'll forget that the sun has now set,
Perhaps you'll remember the dawn.'
Sunday, 3 July 2011
Lord Knows, It Would Be The First Time
Dear Octopus,
The year is halfway through, apparently, so I thought this calm and tranquil Sunday afternoon might be an adequate juncture to look back over the trivial litany of incidents and occurrences that have littered the highway of 2011, and see what I might have learned. Every day is a school day (or so the teachers said before they went on strike).
As follows:
I think that's okay. Plenty to be getting on with, at least.
Your loving friend,
Action Squid
The year is halfway through, apparently, so I thought this calm and tranquil Sunday afternoon might be an adequate juncture to look back over the trivial litany of incidents and occurrences that have littered the highway of 2011, and see what I might have learned. Every day is a school day (or so the teachers said before they went on strike).
As follows:
- There are very few places in the world that have real value. However they are only places. So to lose one is not to be taken too lightly, or too greatly
- I cannot - indeed must not - be allowed to; send offensive emails from colleagues' computers, hide their telephones in fridges, glue their spare change to their desks, or draw vastly disproportionate male genitalia in their notebooks. Office-karma is a cruel and exactly mistress, and always gets her way
- The top floor of our house is now so subservient to external weather conditions that excess heat or cold could actually kill me at any time
- My standard of cooking this year has somehow got worse. A lot worse. This urgently needs to be rectified
- Gin creates more problems than it solves
- Pongo is a vicious and cunning deviant, for whom I have the utmost personal and professional admiration
- Prior to moving out, Inky Squid had sex in every area of every room of my parents' house, including the attic
- Blackpool.....you will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy
- Migraines getting considerably worse (total sight loss now within twenty minutes of haze)
- Honksy really can come up with both a new choice of house pet and a new list of preferred children's names EVERY SINGLE DAY
- If I keep cracking my knuckles at every possible opportunity I am going to get arthritis
- No-one is ever going to call me 'the steel-handed stingray' unless I somehow acquire an Abu Hamza-style hook (which may realistically happen if I keep cracking my knuckles, see previous point)
- Sometimes, to get what you want, you just have to put in your best shift, and know that the result will definitely be worth the work, and the wait
I think that's okay. Plenty to be getting on with, at least.
Your loving friend,
Action Squid
Sunday, 26 June 2011
Ample Make This Bed
Dear Octopus,
When I was maybe seven or eight years old, our parents decided to sell our house. Good financial sense etc. On coming home from school I noticed the 'for sale' sign on a wooden pole standing forlornly outside, and on hearing from my mother what it was - and more importantly what it signified - I ran down the driveway, tore it from the ground and stamped it into a rather shabby and unwholesome condition, crying extensively. I don't know how your parents would have reacted to such a beastly display of selfishness and vanity, my dear Octopus, but mine just lead me back inside, and the next day my father quietly took the house off the market. Crazy really. I think of it sometimes even now, and cannot fail to reconcile these circumstances as anything but the best and most loving gesture anyone I know has ever made.
It was a penitent man then who returned to Devon on Friday night to help my parents move out, this time for good. For all twenty-six years of my life they have lived there, and endowed now as I am with some meagre semblances of rationality, there were to be no similar outbursts of sentimentalism or hurt. I did however expect a solemn and nostalgic process; poring morosely over old memories and packing them away....filing our childhoods and boxing up youth with a funereal reverence.
Not so. If anything yesterday was a cross between the opening scene from Home Alone and an ordinary day's work at Stalag Luft III.....with my older brother Party Squid screaming viciously in all of our faces to 'either work harder or curl up and fucking die....because houses don't fucking move themselves. If I come downstairs and find you without something in your hands I'm going to fucking remove them and then make you fucking carry them too.' So much for Railway-Children-style poignancy.
Essentially moving house is the same set of actions repeated over and over until you either die of exhaustion or from one of Party Squid's stinging verbal lobotomies. You go upstairs, pick up a box, take it downstairs, put it in the van (repeat x 20), drive to new house, take out box, take it upstairs, come back down again (repeat x20), then repeat the whole process ALL DAY. To say it was gruelling was an insult to other supposedly gruelling experiences. My left knee and right shoulder submitted their letters of resignation at about lunchtime, asking for an immediate transfer to a body more likely to spend its weekend relaxing in a Tuscan piazza with a nice beer and an expatriate edition of that week's Economist. I told them both that they were soon to be fired by Party Squid anyway, and in fact all of my mutinous joints, organs, cartilages and muscles were to be sold for kebab meat and shoe leather. So their current discontent was largely irrelevant.
The other thing I realised was how much utter crap we had. There were tennis racquets, fencing sabres, hockey sticks, pleated floral print skirts, blenders, juicers, remote controls to television sets long since descended to the pale fires of electrical hell, board games, action figures, family photo albums (for which I have a previously unconfessed love), scrapbooks, stamp collections, clothes, shoes, paint cans, stepladders and more than one bin bag full of cuddly toys (in one I fortuitously found Dogger; my best friend before I could say or spell best friend. I managed to smuggle him into my backback, having happily discovered that our separation of twenty or so years had not emotionally estranged us at all, and I was sure - if pressed - he would prefer residence in drab London to my parents' drabber new attic). It wasn't long before everything lost all meaning. By mid-afternoon my father discovered a mini-power drill in the depths of garage-junk and commented sagely, 'I've no fucking idea what this or what it does but it looks expensive, so pack it in with the others...'
I repeat: GRUELLING.
By evening we were all utterly shattered. The house in which we boys had been raised was more or less empty. It was such a lovely evening though that the five of us drifted into the garden and started laughingly reminiscing; the hideous gravestone Inky Squid made in his Design & Technology class for his dead hamster, Party Squid concentrating so hard on emulating Marc Overmars's dribbling technique that he ran into the side of the house and broke his collarbone, summer waterfights, drunken misadventure, family barbecues, a whole handful of summers with a handful of girlfriends all now long since departed....and of course the games of football. I smile at the thought even now, as I type. Since I can ever, ever, ever, ever remember: the same teams at the same ends (my father and younger brother playing from the back hedge, versus my older brother and I playing from the house), the same chairs for goalposts, the same furious arguments over disallowed goals and dubious penalties, the same agitated mother adjudicating from the sidelines. The same, our whole lives, since forever.
Before we knew it we were playing. And that's where I'll leave this story if I may; with my father shouting 'shooooot' in the way that only we do, my older brother still failing in his Overmars dribbling up the right wing, and our collective cheers, jeers and laughing echoing off into the past. You don't need to hear of empty rooms, or fingernails prying keys from their insolent rings. We played football in our garden for the last time, in the peachy and rose sunset. And that was that.
It's sad to lose the only house you've ever known; to where you would always instinctively fly if the world took a sour turn, and you were hurting. But it was wonderful to be there and preside over just a few of the shallow handful of memories of its great times, with those that made it so. Everything in me that is good, comes from them. As the car rolled down that long, infuriatingly potholed drive, I looked back over my shoulder for the last time, at all that once was. This time the 'for sale' sign stood unmolested.
In the car to the station I said to Inky Squid, 'you don't seem sad mate, and I thought you'd be the worst. It's been everything to us, our whole lives. Aren't you going to miss it?'
He shrugged, in his apathetic way. 'I wasn't there for the bricks and fucking light fittings mate.'
'You fucking dick,' I laughed, and looked out the window for a while. There was something in my eye which was totally inconvenient for me.
Your loving friend,
Action Squid
When I was maybe seven or eight years old, our parents decided to sell our house. Good financial sense etc. On coming home from school I noticed the 'for sale' sign on a wooden pole standing forlornly outside, and on hearing from my mother what it was - and more importantly what it signified - I ran down the driveway, tore it from the ground and stamped it into a rather shabby and unwholesome condition, crying extensively. I don't know how your parents would have reacted to such a beastly display of selfishness and vanity, my dear Octopus, but mine just lead me back inside, and the next day my father quietly took the house off the market. Crazy really. I think of it sometimes even now, and cannot fail to reconcile these circumstances as anything but the best and most loving gesture anyone I know has ever made.
It was a penitent man then who returned to Devon on Friday night to help my parents move out, this time for good. For all twenty-six years of my life they have lived there, and endowed now as I am with some meagre semblances of rationality, there were to be no similar outbursts of sentimentalism or hurt. I did however expect a solemn and nostalgic process; poring morosely over old memories and packing them away....filing our childhoods and boxing up youth with a funereal reverence.
Not so. If anything yesterday was a cross between the opening scene from Home Alone and an ordinary day's work at Stalag Luft III.....with my older brother Party Squid screaming viciously in all of our faces to 'either work harder or curl up and fucking die....because houses don't fucking move themselves. If I come downstairs and find you without something in your hands I'm going to fucking remove them and then make you fucking carry them too.' So much for Railway-Children-style poignancy.
Essentially moving house is the same set of actions repeated over and over until you either die of exhaustion or from one of Party Squid's stinging verbal lobotomies. You go upstairs, pick up a box, take it downstairs, put it in the van (repeat x 20), drive to new house, take out box, take it upstairs, come back down again (repeat x20), then repeat the whole process ALL DAY. To say it was gruelling was an insult to other supposedly gruelling experiences. My left knee and right shoulder submitted their letters of resignation at about lunchtime, asking for an immediate transfer to a body more likely to spend its weekend relaxing in a Tuscan piazza with a nice beer and an expatriate edition of that week's Economist. I told them both that they were soon to be fired by Party Squid anyway, and in fact all of my mutinous joints, organs, cartilages and muscles were to be sold for kebab meat and shoe leather. So their current discontent was largely irrelevant.
The other thing I realised was how much utter crap we had. There were tennis racquets, fencing sabres, hockey sticks, pleated floral print skirts, blenders, juicers, remote controls to television sets long since descended to the pale fires of electrical hell, board games, action figures, family photo albums (for which I have a previously unconfessed love), scrapbooks, stamp collections, clothes, shoes, paint cans, stepladders and more than one bin bag full of cuddly toys (in one I fortuitously found Dogger; my best friend before I could say or spell best friend. I managed to smuggle him into my backback, having happily discovered that our separation of twenty or so years had not emotionally estranged us at all, and I was sure - if pressed - he would prefer residence in drab London to my parents' drabber new attic). It wasn't long before everything lost all meaning. By mid-afternoon my father discovered a mini-power drill in the depths of garage-junk and commented sagely, 'I've no fucking idea what this or what it does but it looks expensive, so pack it in with the others...'
I repeat: GRUELLING.
By evening we were all utterly shattered. The house in which we boys had been raised was more or less empty. It was such a lovely evening though that the five of us drifted into the garden and started laughingly reminiscing; the hideous gravestone Inky Squid made in his Design & Technology class for his dead hamster, Party Squid concentrating so hard on emulating Marc Overmars's dribbling technique that he ran into the side of the house and broke his collarbone, summer waterfights, drunken misadventure, family barbecues, a whole handful of summers with a handful of girlfriends all now long since departed....and of course the games of football. I smile at the thought even now, as I type. Since I can ever, ever, ever, ever remember: the same teams at the same ends (my father and younger brother playing from the back hedge, versus my older brother and I playing from the house), the same chairs for goalposts, the same furious arguments over disallowed goals and dubious penalties, the same agitated mother adjudicating from the sidelines. The same, our whole lives, since forever.
Before we knew it we were playing. And that's where I'll leave this story if I may; with my father shouting 'shooooot' in the way that only we do, my older brother still failing in his Overmars dribbling up the right wing, and our collective cheers, jeers and laughing echoing off into the past. You don't need to hear of empty rooms, or fingernails prying keys from their insolent rings. We played football in our garden for the last time, in the peachy and rose sunset. And that was that.
It's sad to lose the only house you've ever known; to where you would always instinctively fly if the world took a sour turn, and you were hurting. But it was wonderful to be there and preside over just a few of the shallow handful of memories of its great times, with those that made it so. Everything in me that is good, comes from them. As the car rolled down that long, infuriatingly potholed drive, I looked back over my shoulder for the last time, at all that once was. This time the 'for sale' sign stood unmolested.
In the car to the station I said to Inky Squid, 'you don't seem sad mate, and I thought you'd be the worst. It's been everything to us, our whole lives. Aren't you going to miss it?'
He shrugged, in his apathetic way. 'I wasn't there for the bricks and fucking light fittings mate.'
'You fucking dick,' I laughed, and looked out the window for a while. There was something in my eye which was totally inconvenient for me.
Your loving friend,
Action Squid
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