I remember I used to go to a cafe at Worlds End in Chelsea on Saturday mornings. My friend Andrew always ordered this particular type of sandwich that only they did only for him. Each time he came in the cafe he exchanged a nod with the lady at the counter and the sandwich was made up for him with all his favourite ingredients in it. What a sandwich! he said one day. It keeps me going the whole day. There’s just one thing. They will insist in putting raisins in it and I don’t like raisins. Why don’t you tell them? I said. It wouldn’t be nice, he said. It’s almost perfect. Why create a problem?

Anyway, this routine of the sandwich continued for many months. Until one day for some reason we were called upon to exchange a few words with the lady at the counter. When you make that little sign I know exactly what you want, she said. That’s right, said Andrew, After all, it’s so rare to get a relationship work so neatly and so nicely as this one. The perfect triangulation betwwen two people and a product. Yes, said the lady, turning to her co-worker. He wants some raisins put in. It makes all the difference, doesn’t it? We nodded and smiled back. Somehow the magic had gone.

There is something emblematic in this story. We set things up just right, but something, some confusion or misapprehension, will always come and puncture your perfect system.

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Mid-life crisis is a term I have never really believed in. I realized it was never a valid term for me. I didn’t have a regular-type job and a wife and kids and a car and a house in the suburbs. I didn’t ever think I was on a career path anywhere. Mid-life crises were for people with those kind of things who arrived at a certain stage and realized they weren’t going anywhere special after all.

Now I don’t believe in mid-life crises for anyone. I think it’s a made-up condition because our culture only wants young people doing certain things; driving fast cars and wearing tight jeans. If you’re old and wear tight jeans, it’s a mid-life crisis. Why can’t it just be an older, maybe fatter person in a pair of tight jeans? It is easier to pathologise those who don’t flatter the brands.

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When the Jehovah’s witness people come to my door I take them in. I like to explain where they are going wrong. They have a love of exegesis. They are literary critics manques. They love to pick apart the texts of the bible. That’s wonderful, I say. Come into my home. I too have a love of exegesis. I bring them in. They are already confused. You know there are other texts other than the bible. Look at all these books on my bookshelves. It is a world of analysis. Hours of discovery in the forms and shapes of texts, their cross-references, their sub-textuality, skirmishes in textual authority. Why only the other day I was looking at the Marquis de Sade’s Justine. Thay are unfamiliar with this text. They remain guarded. They are not doing what they came here to do, which is make me believe that all these texts are true. They leave me with a leaflet. Come again soon, I say. They back away. He was crazy, they must be laughing to themselves. He reads that stuff, but he doesn’t believe any of it!

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For a number of years now the expression I’ve have been aiming to post up on my face when I am reacting to nothing in particular is disinterested but alert. Disinterested but alert.This has seemed to me to be the right solution. This works nicely with one of my new mantras which goes empathy yes; sympathy no. In the gym you see a lot of poor choice faces. Men do angry in  the gym. It is allied to aggressive, which men like to do as a default setting. Women do preoccupied. Preoccupied is part of the business of avoiding men. Hence the great fuss with the smartphone and the i-pod. However, the other day I saw myself doing disinterested but alert on a series of photos and was disappointed to note that disinterested but alert was beginning to slide into what you might call vacant and confused. And unhappy. Vacant, confused and unhappy. If I do some trick with the mouth, give it the inkling of a smile (nothing too overt, just the ghost of a smile), I might get away with it. Unhappy would go. A smile would occupy the vacant. Confused would necessarily disappear if I’m inhabited. The only problem, looking in the mirror now, is that a new attribute has arrived. Smug. 

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I do understand the problems Man Utd may have fitting Angel di Maria into their starting line-up. It may entail switching from Van Graal’s 3-5-2 or 3-5-1-1 to a more conventional 4-4-2 or sacrificing Juan Mata. It must certainly mean pigeon-shooting down the birdbrained Ashley Young. There are any number of issues to deal with in guaranteeing that you retain the requisite amount of steel, pace and guile in the starting line-up when a new player is acquired. Why, I myself have been going through similar logistical and tactical heart-searching with my purchase of a camelbone chess set (one hump or two? This was one question I stupidly neglected to ask of the chess shopman). I chose the particular design over the Isle of Lewes set. It has an Ottoman or a central Asian quality of florid decoration and rooks that look like minarets that fits neatly into my mainly South Caucasian lounge. But how do I find a place for it on one of the limited number of tables and surfaces availablel in the living space. A simple matter of ditching the small coffee table usually used for supporting a selection of magazines you might think, but no, as these carefully curated Zeitschriften have a key place in the global aesthetic of the room. Like Van Graal, finding my top top formation may take some considerable time.

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When you are abroad there is religion and cigarettes, but no tattoos. Men keep coming past in vans with loudspeakers saying something very urgent in foreign. It sounds like there is a zombie invasion. All women and children to the air-raid shelters. If you are bitten you will have ten minutes before the contamination takes its course. Do not be afraid to behead close relatives. I ask Helen what they are saying. Apparently, they are selling watermelons. There is a lot of religion that they put on loudspeakers too, to keep you up all night, because there are vigils. 15 August is the Assumption of Our Lady, the day she went up to heaven in a rocket (or died). We all have to be subjected to this strange tale for days beforehand by loudspeaker, the Orthodox cleric and his acolytes singing it for hours on end. And then she went up in a rocket. Or maybe it was more in the manner of a space shuttle, they sing. Amen. This is sung in a 4-part version for two baritones, one tenor and a bass.
On the beach (in my family we used to say the sands), on the sands I have seen one tattoo. This is remarkable. I have been on tattoo watch for some weeks and can now even spell it with two t’s. The man I saw with a tattoo was playing beach (or sands) tennis. He had a discreet triangle on one calf. You can imagine the tattooist. Ah! A customer! Just a triangle please. Christ! What was the point? All those years in tattoo school. He probably just got Stavros his apprentice to do it. Hey Stavros! Go to! Then lit up another cigarette and looked out at the long lonely beach (or sands).

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If Britain were a police state Clare Balding, say, would unwittingly be the Head of the Secret Police. She would say things like, This is an amazing Games. People are calling them the Friendly Games. She would ask questions like, How does it feel out there at the Friendly Games? and athletes would answer, Amazing! Sometimes they would add to this, saying, The atmosphere is amazing! Then Clare Balding might say, Are these Games important and relevent? and the right answer would be, Yes, they are both important and relevent. And they are amazing too. Or perhaps awesome. But Clare wouldn’t be the only one officiating over this police state. For example, there would be many ex-athletes and sports stars like Sir Hoy who would interview athletes and ask them how they are feeling and they’d say amazing and then he’d ask, What is the crowd like? and the athletes would say, They are amazing. Sir Hoy used to be an athlete himself . Now he has fortunately become a corporate mouthpiece. If there was dissent, like someone saying the Games were s— or not as good as some other games, this would quickly be excised by the police state and the person who mistakenly said this thing, because he is fortunately a corporate mouthpiece too now, though he is a corporate mouthpiece for himself. There would be another interview and this time the Games would be amazing or awesome again.

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We are sitting in the bit of garden left over after the extension. It has cleared up since this morning. Dad says, see that hedge. A few years ago it was thin and little. I could talk over it and see through it. I look at the hedge. It is dense and about nine feet high. Yes, I say, it’s all grown over. Then I say, you know I’m off tomorrow. Ah, says dad. I’m taking the train. But David’s coming on Friday, so you’ll only be on your own one night. Oh, he says, you’ll have to stay another night. I can’t, I say. I’ve got my ticket now. I know this works best; the material trumps everything. You’ll be all right for one night. Then David’s here for the weekend. Then Liz is back from Italy on Monday and she’ll come and pick you up and you’ll be at her house for a couple of weeks till Helen comes back and it’s back to normal again. He likes normal. Remember your glasses and your pills and everything, won’t you? when Liz comes to get you. I shouldn’t have said that. He starts to fret about everything he’ll have to remember.
When I came here a week ago I thought I’d write a post and call it Egg and Chess because I wanted to get dad playing chess and get him eating egg. I thought that’d be good for him. He soon put me right on that: didn’t want to be taught chess and didn’t like eggs. Fair do’s. We are looking at the hedge, which is mature and tangled, formidable really. Do you want an ice cream? I suggest perkily. No, he says and looks somewhere else.

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What’s it doing out? I say. Dad is sitting in his chair looking out of the window. He says he likes that chair because he can see out. From the angle he can just see the sky and the top of the house opposite, but he can see weather, which is the main thing. Not doing anything at the moment, he says. Not spitting? I say from the kitchen as I put my eyes in (contacts). Dad has already put his teeth in. He does that in his chair. He is going to pop out to Bargain Booze to get some more milk for his honey hoops. Isn’t there enough in the fridge? I say. What? Milk. Isn’t there enough in the fridge? I need some for honey hoops. But isn’t there enough in that bottle in the fridge? You put too much in yesterday remember and had to throw it down the sink. What? Milk. Yesterday you put too much in and had to throw it down the sink remember. Go way. Dad is putting his gear on. Jacket, shoes with velcro fastener, cap. Have you got your glasses? What? Have you got your glasses on? Dad goes round to find them. There are a collection of different glasses throughout the house that must mostly belong to people who are not here this week and then there is dad’s reading glasses as well as his distance glasses. Ten minutes later. Have you got the right ones? What? The right glasses. Don’t know. What are those ones there? Who put them there? says dad. Don’t look at me, I say. What’s it doing out? I say. Not doing anything at the moment, he says. Not trying to spit, I say. Nah, he says dismissively. Got some change? I say. He is rummaging though a coat pocket where he keeps coins. Take an umbrella, I say. He makes a quiet guffaw. For some reason, he has never liked umbrellas. That way, if it rains you put it up. Go way. He’s out the door.

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We went to the bank. There has been much confusion because my dad has two bankbooks from the Halifax (he won’t do bankcards). One bankbook has a lot of money on it. One less. I said, they’re putting your pension money into the bankbook with a lot of money, dad. He insisted they weren’t. His reasoning seemed to be that because he was using the other one to take money out, that was where the pension was going. But this one’s got no deposits in it, dad, just your withdrawals. Go way. So we had to go to the Halifax to get it confirmed by an eighteen year old teller. The bank is the authority. I know nothing. I remember a few years ago we went to see my sister on the other side of Manchester. We had to take the tram back to to the centre of Manchester. Are you sure we’re going the right way? This is the only way, dad. We just follow the line. It can’t turn off and go down a back street. This wasn’t enough for him. He went round asking people on the tram if we were going the right way. There’s only one way, mate. And then there’s the next door neighbour Paul. At the slightest confusion dad wants to knock on his door and bring him in. How do you switch the oven on? I’ll just have a look, dad. I’ll go and bring Paul in. No, Paul’s got his own family, dad. He doesn’t want you bothering him. I’m too late. He’s out the door and comes back with Paul. And then he asks him for the number of a qualified electrician for the lamp? I’ve told him an electrician will cost £100 to come out. We can buy another lamp like this for £10. Go way, says dad. I look at Paul. Paul gives his assent. That’s all right then. We won’t call the qualified electrician. Paul the neighbour is now the biggest Paul in dad’s life. He keeps calling me David anyway. David’s my brother. The other day he actually said it. Which one are you? I’m Paul I said. Go way!

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