(This is a guest piece fom BOXETTE)

A friend thought she saw me at a meeting the other day. I wasn’t at the event, but someone who looked like me was. And that person spent seventy minutes ignoring my friend.

– How did you feel? I ask.

– Furious.

– Didn’t you realise she wasn’t me?

– Only later. But I’m still angry with you.

This happens a lot. I’ll go somewhere for the first time and people will stage-whisper: it’s amazing how she dares to show herself after last year.

When we work out I couldn’t possibly have met them, let alone stay at that particular B and B, they start tutting that I could tell such a bare-faced lie.

This is complicated by the vague uneasiness that I experience in new social situations. I’m terrible at recognising people I have met before, even several times, especially if they have changed their shoes.

So whilst I’m fairly sure I haven’t broken the law (unless when sleepwalking), there’s a nagging doubt that I may have encountered my accusers somewhere, in a doctor’s waiting room or Lidl, and done something unspeakable that they only discuss after I’ve left. It’s like the time a pigeon poo dropped from an overhead branch onto my jacket. I felt a soft thud but only noticed when I got home.

It would stop me going out entirely if it weren’t for the need to rein in my doppelganger to clear up the mess she is making of my life. She’s undoubtedly having more fun (I have no time for frivolity). She’s also enjoying a kind of post-punk freedom of expression, which is deeply unfair because I never allow myself to speak out of turn. Without a doubt, she’s been losing friends all over the place, and making more interesting ones that I don’t know about.

I wonder whether her new acquaintances are mistaking me for her, disappointed that she has become so dull, so aloof and so ill-advised in fashion purchases.

I hope they’re offended. It would serve her right.

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There was a piece on the Internet the other day about the ten words you shouldn’t use as they reveal your weaknesses. These were were maybe, perhaps, actually, might, honestly, literally and four others I can’t remember. All words that reveal a sense of doubt or hesitation or playing for time. If we were living in The Wolf of Wall Street world doubt or hesitation might be seen as weakness. In the real world such sentiments are mostly good things.

My three words to be always avoided are 1. amazing  2. unbelieveable  3. passionate. These are the words that express the enthusiasm or delight that we hear from television interviewees when they are invariably asked by televion interviewers to reveal how they feel. My advice to them. Just spend ten minutes thinking about a word other than amazing or unbelieveable to express your feelings about the atmosphere at, say, Euro 2016. These words might be bemused, alienated, contingent or perhaps even an entire phrasal construction of the type curiously distanced  from the euphoria as I am mainly concerned about finding a way of putting the ball in the back of the net but happy that so many people are having a good time in their own way as long as this does not get out of hand.

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Yesterday I saw a youngish man on the tube take a cotton handkerchief out of his pocket and blow his nose. He then briefly examined the mucus on the cloth, folded the handkerchief up and replaced it carefully in his pocket. It struck me then that I had not witnessed such a moment for quite some time. Leaving aside the increasingly rare business of nose-blowing, the handkerchief as a personal accessory has now almost completely disappeared from our lives. As a child I was never without one and was told by my mum to keep it up my sleeve, even as she told me to keep chewing gum behind my ear. I never really took to this method of chewing gum storage, though I did always have the unsightly lump of a hankie under my jumper. When I lived in France I became familiar with the notion that the cloth handkerchief was an unhygenic throwback to bygone days and had now been superceded by the paper tissue or le kleenex. My English friend John , though, was forever getting a voluminous handkerchief out of his pocket and waving it around. This was greeted with much ridicule and some disgust by the natives. In the theatre in recent years I have often seen the cotton handkerchief as a signifier of pomposity and prissiness. They are unfolded to sit down on by eccentrics or used for effeminate dabbing motions by bowtie or waistcoat-wearing characters. Nowadays the cotton hankie has all but become extinct and le kleenex has triumphed. The middle classses have fallen in love with tissue paper. They take five luxury triple-ply out of the box at once just to apply a faint dab at their middle-class nose and then toss the whole handfull into the bin.  What they then go on to do is continue lecturing me about how they are contriving to save the planet. Bring back the proper hankie.

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Because I am not always that sociable and because there are certain times of the year where I might receive invitations for drinks or diners that I’d rather not accept, I find myself constructing an alternative social diary which often clashes with the real one. So I am unable to go out to the restaurant with some people because I have another already booked fictional meeting with someone. I find myself embroidering on the details of these fictional dinners (they are sometimes dates) so that if a question about them came from left field I could easily handle it.

I suppose we all have a fictional, alternative history, one that is ready to be revealed for public consumption but may have very little to do with what really happened. You might want to cover up what really happened for all kinds of reasons: shame; enbarrassement; the desire to protect others. It can be that over the years you have so elaborated the fictional version of a motive or incident in your past life, with each telling modifying the material to suit the new listener, that you have lost all contact with what once really happened, with what you once really thought. So that we might say that the more you recount your history, the more it becomes a lie.

There is a passage in Stendhal somewhere, I remember, wher he writes about his experience in the Napoleonic army crossing the Alps and after a moment he realises that what he has been describing is not his actual recollection of the event but is, rather, the description of an etching he has since seen of the famous crossing at St Bernadino or wherever it was. We are all living a lie.

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Mr V. came bouncing into the room wearing a pair of bright red trousers. Ah, I say. I see your wearing your Brexit pants. I was joking. I didn’t know he was Brexit. Apparently, he is. You never can tell. You suddenly turn round and the person beside you whom you thought you knew casts no reflection in the mirror. The country is split. It’s the War of the Roses and the strata of allegiance are complex. Hard left and hard right are Brexit? Soft left and soft right are Remainsters? Idealists can be either. Pure sovereignty fetishists are Brexit; pure love they euro-neighbour fetisists Remainsters. David Cameron and Jeremy Corbyn are Remainsters though we suspect they are secretly Brexits. You can be a secret Brexit who won’t associate with Jonson and Gove. Or a closet Remainster who likes to grandstand Brexit. I felt a bit Brexit when I lived in France where there were politicians who constantly spouted stuff about closer European integration being a historical inevitability, as if we all led our lives on Hegelian principles. In the YouKay I go the other way in reaction against Ian Botham who thinks we should do all we can to remain an island, as though aspiring to hold a tea party in a war zone like Syd James and Charles Hawtry in Carry on Up the Khyber. It’s all very complicated. And meanwhile at home at Number 10, in the secret enclosure of the Prime Ministerial bedroom, Sam Cam asks DC for a bit of kinky role play. Oh please put your red Brexit trousers on for me tonight DC. Let’s pretend your Michael Gove. If it gets out of hand, same safeword  as last Tuesday: Common Agricultural Policy.

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At this time of year minds turn to holidays. Does everyone really like holidays? They tell us that we do.   We have to decide if we want the familiar or the alien; if we need stimulation or respite from stimulation. Do you need to forget yourself or find yourself?  Sometimes the alien turns out to be too familiar: overly resourceful agents of exotic venues can sometimes spend energies making the exotic familiar; do we want coca cola and dominos pizza in Cairo?  But would we rather venture into a dark doorway and eat something we do not know amongst strangers speaking in an alien tongue? Or we might end up spending too much time with the ones we thought we wanted to spend more time with. Holidays teach the value of moderation. And anyway, as the man at Total Recall tells Arnold Scwarzennegger: the real holiday we all need is a holiday from ourselves.

There are places I find it hard to go to. Places where the wash of the past is too insistent. These are often places where I have spent a lot of time, where ghosts have been created by past life. When you go back there things have changed. Where once there was a charming cafe, now there is a Starbucks; where once you knew someone, now there is a stranger; people go on with their own lives and you play no role in this city anymore.

There are other places where a city has so many layers of history, so many palimpsests emerging one from beneath the other that it is difficult to deal with the polyphony. In Berlin it is hard to accept what is happening in Mitte now at the spot where the wall ran between east and west, which itself was the spot where Hitler sat in his bunker contemplating the end. Now there is a drum and bass party going on there.

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I had a heavy package so I took the bus from Royal Albert Hall. The driver’s machine wasn’t working so he waved me through. A free journey. A mere grain of pleasure but many grains of pleasure make a whole heap of pleasure. By the time we got to Sloane Square the bus was labouring and the driver called an early terminus, everybody off. The bus had broken down. I cursed under my breath. The one day I have a heavy package. The next bus came. The last bus broke down, I said as I skipped past the driver to grab a good seat by the window, not paying. You see, I had offered to pay on the first bus. My offer was (was it not?) rejected. The second bus is subordinated to the negotiation of the first bus. A fine legal point but, I’m sure you will agree milord, a valid one. In Pimlico a bus inspector got on. My argument about bus subordination withered. I was determined to carry the day by my acting abilities. I rehearsed the moment. The inspector puts my debit card on his little control plaque. You haven’t paid, he says. Yes. My last bus broke down, so I didn’t pay on this one. I dare to look boldly into the inspector’s steel blue eyes. But you didn’t pay on the last one either. His technology is formidable. I post up a puzzled mien for a couple of seconds before feigning a realization. Oh! I exclaim. The machine was broke on the bus that broke down. The driver waved me through. The ticket inspector, convinced by my acting abilities, allows me to pay retrospectively with no fine. The danger is negotiated. As it turned out, it wasn’t a ticket inspector. It was just a man in a high-viz jacket. Or if he was a ticket inspector he was off-duty and on his way home. He got off at Vauxhall, no doubt to take another bus into the far reaches of South East London where, on a ticket inspector’s wage, he could afford accommodation.

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Jose Mourinho finally signed for Man Utd yesterday. He appeared on MUTV looking slimline and contained, a controlled Mourinho in sober suit and tie with a placid smile on his lips. He is thinking, this time I won’t make the same mistakes as last time at Chelsea, when I bollocked the popular female team doctor in front of millions of viewers and so alienated my players and made the rest of the season impossible, or the time before at Real Madrid, when I poked a member of the Barcelona staff in the eye in front of millions of viewers. This time I am not the special one, I am not the happy one, I am the placid one. Think placid one. I am the placid one. And then he opened his mouth. I feel great. Well, I think I am in the right moment in my career because Man United is one of these clubs where you need really to be prepared for it because it is what I used to call a giant club. And giant clubs must be for the best managers and I think I am ready for it... Already the forshadowing of deep tragedy lurks within his first statement, the high vanity of a man who cannot remain in neutral , not for a moment, who must at every instant be promoting himself, hoisting himself upwards on his waxen wings. It is already Shakespearean. A case of And now we unveil our custodian of the kingdom, chosen to bring stability and harmony back to a troubled land. From behind the velvet curtains step forward Richard of  Gloucester, the Crookback.

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Yesterday on my way back home from the tube station, actually on the way to Tesco to buy some dinner, I was approached by a smiling gentleman who wanted to talk to me about my life. He could see I was in a hurry. He fell into step with me. Could he have my attention for some moments? He could, if he fell into step with me. I had designs on Fish Pie. He just needed to give me a leaflet. I would be most happy to look at it after my fish pie. He was pleased with my accessibility. I took the leaflet happily. He did not know I make a collection of such things and that what mainly interests me is their form rather than their content. At home I have a whole shelf full of such leaflets, all lovingly produced to melt my heart, all adorned by cute little drawings or lush coloured versions of a world that might appeal to a simple-minded eight year old. This too was a naive production. It said: God loves you on its first flap, clearly considered to be a fascinating enough opener to make me read on. I opened it to reveal the second flap where it said that no one is too bad to be outside God’s love. No one is so good they don’t need him. It doesn’t matter who you are or what you have done. God will accept you when you turn to him. I must be desperate. It goes on. Life can be different. you can start again. I must be unhappy. It goes on: God became a man – Jesus Christ- and allowed himself to be executed to solve the problem of our wrong. Yes, he was prepared to die for YOU. How many people do you know who love you so much thay would give their life for you? And so on.

I am fascinated by the alien nature of these attempts to reach out, as well as being puzzled by what it is that this god wants of us. This has never been adequately explained to me. In the catechism I learnt as a child it went: Who made me? Response: God made me. Why did God make me? Response: To know him, love him and serve him and be forever with him in this world and the next.  Judging by this, he must be a lonely God.

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The early Christian Church was much preoccupied by the relationship of Jesus Christ to God the Father. After all, a basic notion of the religion was that Jesus was God, so  you were on dodgy ground if you started watering down his divinity in comparison with God the Father.  But he was also the Son of God. As well as being human. So how could all these characteristics be defined within the framework of his relationship with the God of the Old Testament. Jesus was fully human and fully god, they claimed, not half and half but full and full, which made him a 200% man-god. Theologians spent centuries trying to have their cake and eat it. Tertullian came up with the formulation of three persons; one substance. That also included the Holy Spirit but let’s not go there. Some theologians were not keen on the of one substance formulation and of one essence was found. Substance and essence fought it out for decades. And then there was the issue of Jesus’s life span. Was he eternal, like the Father? Surely he had to be, if he was a proper god.The Creed has it that he was begotten not made, of one being with the father. How can you be begotten but not made, you may ask? Do not ask.  In fact, if ever you read the Creed it is a lattice of complex ambiguous formulations. At one stage there is something about sure and certain hope. As a child this had always puzzled me. How can hope be certain? And not just certain, but sure as well. In literature there was a word for that. Oxymoron.  But this wasn’t literature; this was religion.

Which brings me to trans-genderism and the business of gender reassignment. The early Christian Church spent hundreds of years debating the overlap between God major and God minor. In the end it said sod it, we’ll just used these words how we want and call it the Mystery of the Trinity. When someone says they just know they are a woman inside or a man inside, this is partaking of the same kind of mystery. I suppose that then it depends on how you feel about mysteries.

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