The fact is that for some time now Professor Zazzo Thim has been lost, and it is my duty to find him. The manner of his disappearance is, beyond question, one of the most unusual cases I have ever come across. Yet the evidence I have before me, and the testimony of various witnesses, all point to the one conclusion: that Professor Zazzo Thim is trapped, helpless, somewhere in Marcel Proust’s grand novel, ‘A la recherche du temps perdu’.
It did not take me long to deduce the basics of this case. Various students and colleagues of the Professor attested that he was busy constructing some sort of grand device in the basement of the institute in which he was employed. Various noises had been heard from the cellar towards the end of each academic day, and strange lights were seen by those leaving the building, orange in hue and regulating a slow rhythm. Those closest to the Professor could not find out from him exactly what it was he was building, though one colleague, Doctor Hermann Spatt, was most helpful in his assertion that the Professor was constructing a device which would, atom by atom, replicate his body as a series of words, and distribute them throughout a chosen text.
‘How do you know this?’ I asked
Spatt grinned at me from across his desk. I asked my dear old colleague. I came right out and asked him. Of course, he was pretty drunk at the time. But he told me what the machine entailed and what would happen to him as a result. At this, Spatt’s smile faded, and he leaned back in his chair. ‘Such a sad waste’, he whispered
‘You must obviously have been close to your colleague’, I said, gently.
‘Thim? Oh no, I couldn’t stand the chap. What I’m sorry about is that a book so wondrous as a la recherche should be sullied by his ugly mug’
The key to the basement in question remained locked and, on account of the strong, fortified doors to the cellar, I quickly deduced that it would take months, possibly years to enter that sacred room. Yet I remembered what Doctor Hermann Spatt had told me, and I set about reading Proust’s epic tome, that I may find some mention within its pages of the eminent Professor Zazzo Thim.
The institute was good enough to provide me with accommodation during my stay. It was late autumn, and the trees were almost without their leaves. The paths around the park land in which the institute is set were slippery, and it seemed the sky was hardly ever anything but a deep grey. Proust’s volumes accompanied me everywhere. I would take walks in the gardens, or through the woods, with one volume open under my nose and the next thrust under my arm. I would go to the dining hall and sit with the other students, hardly noticing their banter, so engrossed was I in the societal gossip as recorded by the redoubtable Marcel. Even my rare journeys outside of the campus were spent in the company of the Guermantes family, the many minor characters and the overriding sense of times past as recorded in those weighty books. It seemed my whole life had started to revolve around the novel, and I would make lists of the endless family members, associates and contemporaries of the narrator, but each evening I would sit down and study these lists, safe in the knowledge that none of those mentioned bore the slightest resemblance to Professor Zazzo Thim.
At around this time, Doctor Hermann Spatt, with the help of two science students and a Professor in electronics, began to build a machine using the blueprints found in Thiim’s empty office which might, when up and running, be able to rescue the Professor from the depths of the accursed novel. The machine started to take shape in a far corner of the institute’s gymnasium, roped off from the rest of the hall by an arrangement of badminton nets, and each lunch time I would call in to see what progress was being achieved
‘None at all’, Spatt said, despairingly. ‘The machine just won’t function. It needs more electricity than we are supplied’.
‘Then how did Thim’s machine run so effectively?’ I asked.
Spatt pushed back the hair from his forehead and let out a deep sigh. ‘The energy needed to suck a character from a book is ten times more powerful than that needed to throw a character into the narrative. You see, Thim had the advantage of gravity, but we have nothing, nothing at all.
I walked around the machine and looked at it from many angles.
‘It’s looking quite hopeless’, Spatt said, and I swear I saw a tear well in the corner of his eye as he contemplated his missing colleague.
That night I retired to my room. By now the bed was covered with the six volumes of Proust’s masterpiece. My reading of it was haphazard at best, covering the first three sections of each novel simultaneously, so that my understanding of the plot and the order in which Marcel’s life was playing out was tenuous at best. At worst, I didn’t know what was going on.
So many dukes, matriarchs, minor members of the aristocracy, childhood memories, subtle, beautiful women with strangely masculine names. That night I fell asleep and found myself in a nightmare, a dark, dismal Paris street where Proustian characters advanced upon me with their arms outstretched, their eyes displaying a frightening malice, humming, intoning some strange, ritualistic prayer which sounded for all the world like Kylie Minogue’s first hit single, ‘1 Should Be So Lucky’. I woke with a start, frightened into reality yet not trusting the world around me, the darkness of the night, the wind which, ever so gently, was roaring in the trees and felling the last of the leaves.
I got up and walked to the window. I was dizzy, I was sweating, yet the room was cold. It was as if the natural laws which surrounded us all had ceased, that the earth itself no longer recognised whatever constitutions had kept it going for so many years. I rubbed my eyes and looked at the trees, and the leaves falling, one by one, across the sodium light of a campus street-lamp.
‘My God’, I whispered.
Excitedly, I telephoned Doctor Hermann Spatt immediately. He answered on the third ring, and asked, blearily, what it was I wanted.
‘The machine!’, I said. ‘You remember what you were saying? That Thiim had the benefit of gravity?’
‘Hmm?’
‘And that we needed more energy because we were sucking a character out of a book, not throwing one in?’
‘Yes?’
‘Then why don’t we just turn the whole machine upside down? Put the machine on the floor and the book suspended above?’
There was silence on the other end of the line, and then Spatt’s voice came back. ‘My word’, said he, ‘You’re a genius’.
The next morning Spatt, accompanied by his assistants, set to work making the modifications I had suggested, while I, now with the help of three assistants of my own, continued my reading of Proust’s novel. We each took a volume and, starting at the very beginning, ploughed our way through the dense script, using different translations and even the French language original, so that we were working on three separate texts at once. Halfway through the afternoon Spatt rang to tell me that the machine was working perfectly, and all it needed was for me to find Thiim in the novel so that we might rescue him. This news gave us a welcome feeling of progress and we intensified our efforts until, by six in the evening, we were all very tired and our eyes and heads ached.
‘Thank you, lads’, I whispered, as they headed towards the door.
‘Erm, we were wondering’, said one of them, an amiable young man by the name of Adam. ‘Would you like to come out for a drink tonight?’
I smiled at their offer, for it was proof that we had gelled as a team. ‘Thank you, but I would rather maintain my capacities’, I told them.
Their shoulders slumped.
‘And I suggest you do the same, for we need our full concentration if we are ever to find the Professor’
Adam smiled. ‘Very well’, he said. ‘We wouldn’t have gone overboard, anyway. Just a couple of drinks and then back home.’
‘Thanks once again, I whispered
The days were getting shorter, and once I had eaten my dinner, (accompanied, once again, by the ever-present Monsieur Proust), I went back to my room and prepared for sleep.
To be honest, I was beginning to doubt that we would ever find Thim in this mammoth book, and a part of me was content just to sit back and enjoy the experience of being a small part in such a large, well-funded experiment. Though the more I thought about it, the more desperate I started to become, as I realised that the whole project now depended on me and my abilities to wade through the novel for just the smallest clue. Worse still, I was afraid to sleep, for I knew that I would be haunted by Kylie once again, that inane, stupid song, ‘I Should Be So Lucky!’ Timidly, I retired to my bed.
At two in the morning I was woken by a fierce pounding on my door. Hardly able to concentrate, I opened the door and blinked in amazement to see Robert de Saint-Loup.
‘Do forgive my intrusion’, said he, ‘But I was wondering if you had had word of the Duc de Guermantes?’
‘I beg your pardon?’, said I, hardly believing my eyes.
At that moment M. de Charlus bounded down the corridor and patted Saint-Loup on the shoulder. ‘There you are!’, said he. His eyes then focused on myself, standing in the doorway in a pair of boxer shorts and nothing else. ‘Hello!’, he said, twirling his moustache.
‘I say!’, said a voice from the end of the corridor. They both looked up and bowed, courteously, as Albertine approached. ‘Are you not on the way to the Verdurin ball? I proclaim it to be the most whimsical event of the decade!’
Hurriedly, I shut my door, then went over to the window. Oh, what a scene met my eyes!
The quiet park was awash with people, elegantly dressed, bowing, nodding, dancing, chatting in the glare of the street-lamp as if they were in a ball or a turn of the century function. And they were all, I was horrified to note, characters from Marcel Proust’s mighty tome.
I telephoned Spatt and he confirmed my worst suspicions. Some students, drunk of course, had broken into the gymnasium and fiddled with the machine. Instead of pulling the hapless Thim from the depths of the novel, they had, wantonly and without thought to the effects of their crime, pulled out every other character instead.
‘But this is horrendous!’, I whispered.
‘There’s no choice’, said Spatt. ‘We must round them all up and post them back into that hideous novel. Do you know what they’re doing now? They’re in the canteen, holding a mass madeleine tasting. This has got to stop!’
‘There’s only one way we can get them back into the novel’, I told the Doctor. ‘We must break into the basement and use Thim’s machine.’
It took the best part of the night to round up all of the characters. Because we had been using three different translations, there were three of each of them, and the three Marcels had met some time after half four and, indignant that their individualities had been compromised, had challenged each other to a duel, (from which, naturally, each one backed out.) Charlus was the worst, and three of his characters had to be retrieved from the public lavatories and from various male student’s bedrooms before they were all accounted for. At last we had rounded them all up and we were engaged in the act of congregating them around the door to the basement, a tricky act which was achieved only by the entertainment of a piano playing Chopin and the liberal refreshment of champagne. Spatt and I, meanwhile, busied ourselves at the door. The thick oak would not budge to our shoulders, neither to rudimentary battering ram fashioned out of an old roll-top desk. However, when one of the Robert de Saint-Loups saw what we were trying to achieve, he supplied us with some dynamite which, he assured us, was fresh from the Great War battlefields.
The following explosion was deafening. Two of the Mme de Verdurins went flying through the air, their stiff petticoats flaying in all directions. At last we entered that hallowed room and saw Thim’s machine which, somewhat comfortingly, looked not unlike the reverse example we had fashioned in the gymnasium. Yet only now did Spatt and I see the almost fatal mistake that Thim had made. Indeed, the machine functioned well, and had been put together expertly. However, the absent-minded Professor had, one can only assume, accidentally, mistakenly placed within its confines not Proust’s magnificent novel, but a CD of Kylie’s first UK Number One hit, ‘I Should Be So Lucky.
It didn’t take long for the machine to be put to use. How affectionately we said good-bye to all the characters, who each invited us to various balls and society functions for the following Paris season. When they were all quite delivered, Spatt and I took Thim’s CD upstairs to the gymnasium, where we placed it on top of the machine and pulled the necessary levers. Seconds later, Professor Zazzo Thim materialised
‘Oh, my word’, he said, feeling his nervous forehead. I was having the time of my life! I’ve never danced so much!’
‘You realise what you did?’ Spatt asked
‘Oh, the CD? Entirely intentional, my dear friend.’
‘But that’s preposterous!’
‘So many hours l’d spent on that machine, a copy of Proust under my arm. So many years I’d dreamed of meeting those wondrous characters. Yet when it came time to leave, I thought long and hard about it …
‘And?’
‘And I realised I would rather be with Kylie, instead.
‘Good gracious!’
‘Well, my dear Spatt. They’re so stuffy, aren’t they? And Kylie’s much more vivacious’. At this, Thiim looked left, then right, then left again. ‘And another thing’, he said, confidentially. ‘She’s quite a go-er, I can assure you’.
Alas, the story does not end here. The following week, Kylie’s management refused to confirm that a new mix of her original hit single had been mixed, with some quite bizarre vocals by various French dignitaries, mostly concerning the petty discriminations and social faux pas of turn of the century Paris.
‘My god!’ Spatt whispered to me, down the telephone line. ‘We must have sent them to the wrong place!’
Yet not one scholar, student or academic genius happened to notice that Proust’s six-volume masterpiece now seemed not to have a single character at all.
Between the late nineties and the mid 2000s, I wrote hundreds of short stories. This was a very hectic time in my life, and probably needlessly so. In 2000, I moved into a gothic flat near the seafront in Paignton, almost directly over the road from the shop where I worked. I was studying Open University every morning, getting up at 5, studying 6-9, going over the road and working 9-5, then home, and spending every single evening writing short stories. On my day off I’d attend a Writers’ Circle and it soon became apparent that the other attendees seemed drawn to my funnier stories. In one story, I invented a character, a professor of literature by the name of Zazzo, and soon the other members of the writers’ circle started saying things like, ‘Oh, I can’t wait to see what Zazzo gets up to next week!’ My Open University degree was in Literature, so I’d have to watch a lot of videos (it was still videos back then), and listen to lots of cassettes presented by these eccentric academic types who were a million miles away from the milieu in which I moved. I saw Zazzo as belonging to this community, perhaps barely tolerated by his contemporaries, and often shooting off at a tangent, seeing patterns where there were no patterns, narratives where there were no narratives. Zazzo was a literary investigator. Whenever there was a mystery with a literary element, Zazzo would be there. Skateboarders quoting Shakespeare for no reason? Send in Zazzo! A crab routinely predicting the winner of the Booker Prize every year? Another case for Zazzo! The discovery of yet another Brontë sister? Who do we call? Professor Zazzo! The Zazzo stories were saved on various floppy discs, and then promptly forgotten about for twenty years. I had no way of accessing them for quite some time, but now, thanks to various technological developments (and some paper versions I recently found), Professor Zazzo has been saved from obscurity! My life has moved on since those days. I’ve been working as a comedy performance poet since around 2008, and worked on various other projects, so it was a delight to rediscover this strange world. And I really hope you might enjoy reading some of the stories which I shall be publishing on this blog.
As the train pulled into the station, Professor Zazzo Thiim felt a twinge within him, deep down where he knew his heart should have been. He didn’t want to be there, he knew what was waiting for him. It was here, this very place where, years before – decades before! – he had given his infamous speech in which he had proclaimed the death, as an art form, of the short story. There had almost been a riot.
But the Professor was a sentimental man, and when he had received, in the depths of the University in which he taught literary experimentalism, a letter from a middle-aged lady who had witnessed him that day, fleeing for his life amid the baggage trollies and the tourists, pursued by an angry mob, he knew he had to go, just for old times sake. How lucky that he had given them the slip on platform sixteen, he thought to himself, as the train slowly navigated the last few inches of the track. Would anybody recognise him now, all these years later?
The grand old station was the same as it ever was. The glass roof was a dirty grey, matching the overcast skies outside, while the rusted superstructure was plastered with pigeon droppings. Zazzo pulled his coat collar around him as he stepped off the train on the worn tarmac of the platform. He felt a coldness in the air, an eternal coldness, as if all the emotion from the thousands, the millions of journeys begun and ended here, the lives separated, the people who would never see each other again, had somehow become crystallised and manifested just in him. The Professor began to shiver.
She was waiting for him at the exit of the platform, next to the aerodynamic train engine which throbbed and sizzled as it recovered from its journey. She recognised the white-haired professor from the photographs on the jackets of his various, little-read volumes on the literature of Greenland and the cultural significance of the Haiku in Guatamala. (Verdict: virtually none at all). She stepped forwards and extended her hand, then helped him with the big bag slung over his shoulder which contained the manuscript of his latest novel. They went to the station cafe.
“We talk about it even now”, she said, over a cup of coffee which steamed gently in the slant of morning light.
“I didn’t realise it was such a big event”.
“Big event?” she asked. “It was the only event”
The cafe was filled with travellers, youths with backpacks, old ladies with small trollies, all of them static for this one moment in time before they each went their seperate ways to the furthest corners of the continent. Behind the counter, the coffee machine let off a cloud of steam which moistened the ceiling, while a small radio played jazz in the kitchen. The saxophone made Professor Thim feel sad, though he didn’t quite know why. Something about the passing of the years, perhaps.
“You certainly caused quite a stir” the woman said. “Let me introduce myself. My name is Mathilda, and the day I saw you leaping over the tracks while being pursued by that mob, l was employed in the cigarette kiosk. I remember it now : your scarf trailing in the wind, the papers of your speech flying away behind you, the angry mob piling over baggage racks and the barriers like ants coming back to their colony. Nothing stood in their path! You started a change in me…”, she said, contemplatively.
“What do you mean?” the Professor asked.
“While I was working that morning I was listening to your speech. When I saw you set up on the main concourse with a soap box and a sheef of papers I thought you were just another religious nut, or maybe one of those hopeless politicians. But when you started speaking about the short story, and speaking so eloquently, I might add, I became entranced. I remember it to this day – the way you said that short stories no longer mattered, that we were all philistines because we preferred trashy novels or the television, that all writers of short stories are, in some ways, the chroniclers of the modern world, capturing moments and emotions in subtle
ways which other means can never attain. I remember the way you used to adjust the scarf around your neck as you talked, your face wrinkled in concentration. I was so captured by this! I couldn’t concentrate on my job, and when these people started crowding around you and heckling, I thought – a-ha! He has struck a nerve!”
“It’s nice that you remember” “, the Professor said, fingering his collar where the scarf would have been. He remembered the scarf, he still had it at home, somewhere.
“So I went home and I started to read short stories. Nothing major at first – romance, a bit of light comedy. Then I progressed to Dorothy Parker, Mark Twain, Chekov. After a few years I wanted more, so I started on James Joyce, Italo Calvino, even dear old Franz Kafka. Borges came next, of course, the master of them all. And now…”
“Yes?” the old man asked, fearfully.
“Now I’m reading Samuel Beckett”
“My word” , he whispered
“And it’s all thanks to you. My life has been enriched by that moment, by the passion and the fury of that one episode. I resigned from the cigarette kiosque, enrolled in university, and I began to acquire literary ideas of my own. Do you know what it means for a character to appear in a short story, for example? The characters believe themselves, for just one moment in time, to be so important as to be forever captured in the reader’s mind, and lodged there forever. Yet they do not have the longevity, the life-span of characters from, say, a novel. Such animosity exists between them! The moment in which they exist is so precious, so pure and concentrated that they could never last a whole novel with the same intensity. Just look at ourselves – if we two were to last a whole novel, we would be exhausted by the end of chapter three”
The Professor nodded, solemnly.
“I have so many ideas inside of me”, Mathilda continued. “And it’s all thanks to you. So when I read a textbook on the use of penguins in the shorter fiction of Virginia Woolf – (in which it was concluded that penguins hardly featured in any of her work) – and I saw that the author was a certain Professor Zazzo Thim, who, years before, had almost been lynched right here at this very station, I thought: T’ have to find him, I have to thank him personally for the life he has given me'”.
The Professor fingered the clasp of his briefcase. He felt so many different emotions. “I’m glad”, he whispered, above the soft saxophone solo from the kitchen. “That I have made an impact on someone’s life”.He opened the briefcase and pulled out a manuscript. “In fact”, he continued, “I would like you to have this . .”.
“What is it?” Mathilda asked, laying an expectant hand on her chest.
“My latest academic work, explaining the death of surprise endings in short works of fiction. It is my belief that all surprises have been eliminated, that nothing more can ever be said at the end of a short story which may shock or confound the reader. I have called it, ‘No More the Lonely Badger'”
“I’m touched”, Mathilda said. Zazzo passed the manuscript across the table towards her and she took it in her quivering hands. “No more surprises”, she whispered, reading the sub-heading. “An investigation by Professor Zazzo Thiim”.
“Just one more thing”, he asked. “Why did the crowd react so badly to my speech? Why did they set about me in such a hostile manner? Surely, the people of this city don’t care that much for the short story as to attack me personally, just because of my hypothesis? I’ve thought about it for the last forty years, I’ve thought about the effect I had and the passion they displayed, you see, and it, too, changed my life, it changed my ideas, and I started to devote my life to demonstrating that short stories do make a difference, and I have used the episode as an illustration in lectures, academic works and after-dinner speeches. Indeed, it could be said that my whole career has been based on this one incident! So tell me, why was the crowd so incensed?”
“Didn’t you know?”, Mathilda asked. “It was your scarf. They thought you were a United supporter.
Twenty years ago, I wrote a novel. And some of that novel had material in it from fifteen years before that. It’s lived at the bottom of a drawer for most of that time. Thanks to technology, I can now bring this to you. I will be sharing a chapter a week.
Here is a brief synopsis:
A comedy novel set at His Nibs, a fictional shop at a seaside town which sells only pencils. Assistant manager Robert once had a steamy and passionate romance with his colleague Matt. Matt is now with Clarissa, and it must be serious because they have got a cat. Meanwhile someone has burned down the pier, which means there are no tourists, and the shop is not making its targets. It rains a lot. Manager Carol has gone off the rails and harks back to the glory days of pencil retail. Robert is determined to win Matt back, or at least recreate the romance with someone else, while area manager Mona is determined to turn things round at the shop. Standing in their way are mystery shoppers, angry refunders, the company auditor, weird customers, light-fingered gang members, the local protection racket, increasingly bizarre memos from head office and the joys of the twice-annual stock take.
Chapter One
The Stock Take
We haven’t sold a pencil in hours yet we’re not supposed to start counting them until six o‘clock. It’s quite worrying that we haven’t sold a pencil in hours because the whole shop exists just to sell pencils. It’s a pencil shop. Pencils and the very minimum of pencil accessories. Pencil sharpeners. Pencil erasers. Pencil cases. And pencils. If we sold some pencils then there would be less to count, obviously. If we sold two pencils in the last hour then that would be two less pencils. The shop has probably got thirty thousand pencils in it. We will find out in the next six or seven hours. How long does it take to count one pencil?
But that’s life. The tills are all computerised now and if we were to sell a pencil after the stock take had started, then it would bugger everything up. The count would be wrong and we’d have gaps in the stock list where more pencils should be. And the area manager, Mona, she would get awfully sarcastic and make us do it all over again. And a part of me would understand the world a little better while simultaneously bemoaning its perpetual unpleasantness. A part of me would wish that the world would have less pencils in it. A part of me would want to be at home luxuriating in the freedom associated with a man who does not have to do a stock take. For some reason the company likes to know how many pencils it has.
‘Right, I’m off home’, Carol says. ‘Let me know how it goes’.
Carol’s the boss, the Manager. Carol is a canny operator. Carol has come up with a theory that when it comes to a stock take, it’s more accurate to have two people doing it instead of three. Two people can easily get on and do it. Three people would just complicate things. That’s what Carol says. And she lives furthest from the shop, so it only makes sense that she be the one to forego such nocturnal delights.
The door closes behind her. She locks it on the way out.
I’m not looking forward to it, obviously. One pencil starts to look like another after a while. There’s really been no innovation in the pencil industry for quite some time. Some have got rubbers on the end and some haven’t and that’s really the only source of variety, otherwise they’re all straight and made of wood and they’ve all got a pointy end which draws or writes. I’ve been working in pencils for over ten years and I still don’t know what the pointy end which draws or writes is called. I mean, the technical term. It’s easy to lose enthusiasm for pencils when you’re around them for as much as I am.
I’ve got Matt helping me with the stock take, though. That’s something, at least. I like Matt for a number of reasons. The first reason that I like Matt is that he’s accurate and occasionally conscientious. The second reason that I like Matt is that we’d sometimes stop counting for a bit and lose ourselves to the simmering sexual tensions that have existed between us since the very first day he walked into the shop with his CV and his boyish grin and his impetuosity and his fashionable hair and his love of life and the rumbling sense of innate masculine ecstatic oblivion I feel whenever I’m in his company which makes each nerve tingle and the air itself crack with hormonal longing. The third reason I like Matt is that he lifts some of the heavier boxes.
Alas, the chemistry between us has been somewhat depleted these last few months.
‘How’s Clarissa?’ I ask.
Because it’s only polite to ask.
‘She’s great’, he replies. ‘She’s perfect. We‘re thinking of buying a cat.’
Which is disappointing, because as well as being conscientious, masculine and impetuous, Matt is also alarmingly moral. Our stock-room trysts, foibles and peccadilloes are now a thing of the past. Clarissa is his life. A cat only compounds that.
‘Let’s start this thing’, he says, picking up a pen and a clipboard. (Carol doesn’t like us using pencils during a stock take for fear of accidentally using shop stock). ‘Let’s put this baby to sleep!’
It’s an unusual metaphor. This baby wont be asleep for another six or seven hours just yet.
Dextrously, Matt’s fingers pour over boxes of stock. His large brown eyes – the eyes of a particularly obedient puppy, eyes which have always seemed far, far too big for the rest of him – concentrate on the task at hand. One pencil, two pencils, et cetera. There’s no guess work, no cutting corners with Matt. He always goes for the maximum. If he wants it, he gets it. He does things properly.
I think back to a couple of years before, when Matt brought a sudden burst of romance into my life. Perhaps he was drunk on the wooden smell of all the pencils. He couldn’t control himself. What started out as a gentle re-organisation of the pencil case shelf in the stock room blossomed into full-blown rumpy pumpy. He became a floppy love machine, curling himself around me and oozing warmth and sensuous impossibility, it was all I could do to put down the pricing gun.
This happened again the next night, after Carol had seen the reorganised pencil case shelf in the stock room and told us to put it all back again. And then it happened once more the night afterwards, though we didn’t touch the pencil case shelf or reorganise anything, and Matt had brought some whipped cream along with him, you know, for some added pizzazz. It was only on the eighth night that we began to ask ourselves why we were using the stock room of a pencil shop when we could easily just go back to my flat and use the bedroom.
It kind of slowed down a bit after that.
But every now and then, perhaps excited by the sight of so many pencils in a kind of as yet undiagnosed drawing implement fetish, Matt and I would give vent to all kinds of ingenious desires, until Carol got suspicious at all the time we were spending together and thought that we were only doing it for the overtime. Then Clarissa sauntered in one day looking for a pen, (seriously!), and Matt didn’t seem to get quite so excitable around me any more.
‘1147367’.
‘HB hexagonal shaft blue with a white stripe?’
‘Six’.
‘1147374’.
‘HB hexagonal shaft red with a white stripe’.
‘Nine’.
It took us two hours to work out that all of the numbers started with ‘1147’. The stock count started to go a little bit quicker after this.
‘479’.
‘HB hexagonal shaft yellow with rubber’.
‘Seven’.
Matt is seemingly unflustered by the fact that we shared so many intimate moments in this very room. Yet I cannot get over the lack of passion he now shows. I pretend to count, gazing up from the boxes of pencils, and I cannot envisage anything beyond the madness to which we would willingly succumb. There are seven pencils in the box but I manage to lose count, and he makes me do it again. Two years before, we would have been all over one another. There’s nothing more sensual than a box of pencil sharpeners when you’re both naked and gagging for it. His new-found professionalism is an affront to the memory of our passion. If only a switch might be activated ensuring his sudden interest in matters other than the rigours of a damn good stock take.
But there’s no let up in his demeanour. Never before have I seen anyone so intent on the counting of pencils. It’s not that he wants to finish the job any quicker, though. It’s almost as if he relishes the opportunity to lose himself in stationery. This cheers me up for a little while, repays some of the faith that I have previously lost in the human spirit. But then I realise that he’s probably concentrating so intently so as to ward off some of the emotion he might otherwise feel on returning to the scene of our many romantic escapades.
‘45, er . . .’.
‘Yes?’
The thought has jarred me a little.
‘458. No. 459’.
‘So what is it?’
‘459’.
‘There is no 459’.
‘Ah. It’s 458. There was a bit of dandruff or something on the code number. It made the eight look like a nine’.
‘How many?’
‘I don’t suppose it matters’, I tell him. ‘There’s only one. And it’s snapped in half’.
‘It’s still got to be counted’.
‘But it’s snapped. It’s either one, or two halves. It wont make any difference in our overall figure whatever we decide to do with it’.
‘We will have to write it off. But first we need to count it. The Damaged Stock Form will arrive at head office after the stock take, so it’s officially still a part of the stock’.
‘I can fill out the Damaged Stock Form now and send it this moment. Then we wont have to count it at all’.
‘But it would be wrong’.
‘It’s one pencil’.
‘You know the procedure’.
‘It will cost more in postage and work hours filling out the form than the worth of the pencil’.
‘Procedures must be adhered to’.
‘Why don’t I just buy the pencil?’
‘The shop isn’t open. So therefore the pencil is officially part of the shop’s stock at the time of the stock take’.
Matt does not appear very happy for someone with a girlfriend and the chance of getting a cat.
As the evening wears on I feel the insanity of our chore become ever more evident until I cannot see the world except through the subtle variations and design of the pencils that we are counting. Chair legs, skirting boards, anything straight or wooden or both present themselves to my mind which then, automatically, starts looking for a serial code. Another hour and life itself – nay, existence – seems secondary to the task of counting all the pencils in the shop. 1147001, big bang, celestial detonation : one. 1147002, universe, (expanding), infinite : one. I start to wonder if counting the universe in our stock take might automatically nullify the need to carry on with the stock take, but Matt says no. It has to be done. It is the reason why we are here. It is our aim and our purpose. Without the stock take, we are as nothing.
And then a secondary madness takes over in which it becomes obvious, or at least, it feels obvious, that those at His Nibs head office damn well knows how many sodding pencils we have and that this is all some kind of cruel test or punishment inflicted on us just because we had the temerity to work for their company. And the company, oh, how it becomes in our minds so powerful and so all-consuming, directing us with its bulletins and conducting the whole shape of our lives with the list of items that we, us mere mortals, have to count, through the fabled, legendary stock take sheets. There’s no room for error, no room for improvisation. How deliriously do our managers sit in their offices compiling this list, laughing at themselves as they envisage the mayhem that it will bring to our lives! Oh, great and mighty stock-take co-ordinator, oh, you saintly powerful all-knowing New Goods department, how we aim to please you with our pitiful late-night counting!
A couple of years before Matt had been a completely different person. There had been something sly about him. It was as if he were throwing subtle hints all the time. I would catch them in the way that he would look at me at certain moments, or the way he’d brush a stray hair away from my shoulder while we were making a display of pencils, or perhaps it was the fact that whenever we were alone he’d run his hands under my shirt and beg for ten minutes of ecstatic human physical companionship as if enraptured by the pounding, constant sensuality conferred on all like-minded sexed-up individuals. Such subtlety. But things are much different now. There’s nothing.
I find myself looking at him as we embark into our fourth hour of counting. The clock on the wall nudges inexorable towards midnight. He opens boxes of pencils and spends a couple of seconds running his fingers lovingly through the stock within, and it is the first sign I’ve seen of him wavering from his professionalism. He’s almost mesmerised by the pencils. He used to be mesmerised by me. But this was all before Clarissa and the promise of a kitty.
‘Are you OK?’, I ask.
‘Often’, he says, ‘I get a feeling of . . .’.
An achingly long gap. He doesn’t say anything. Oh, the emotion, it must weigh heavily on his soul. My heart pounds with excitement.
‘Yes?’
He puts down the clipboard. This alone is significant. And all of a sudden I can feel the last two years peeling away. This is how we used to be, so eager to share our private feelings and comfortable in each other’s emotional presence. He was so unsure of himself back then, so driven by the needs of the moment. He needed guidance in the ways of the world and I was always there for him. The night starts to feel slightly different. It’s as if Clarissa and the cat don’t exist at all. I can feel that he wants to say something significant, yet the new version of himself that he has created over the past couple of years would never be so forthcoming.
He lets out a big sigh.
‘There are things in this life’, he says, ‘That I’m really not sure of’.
‘Such as?’
Silence again.
‘You can tell me’.
Much silence.
Emotional silence is all very well, but this is bordering on plain rude. At last, he says:
‘Have you ever looked at the world and thought that it’s been put together just ever so slightly askew? And that certain components of it were – how do I put this? – meant for some other plain of existence, and used in a kind of half-hearted attempt to cobble the world together – and by ‘the world’ I mean the way that we live our lives, the philosophies and strictures which we adopt to govern our behaviour?’
It’s not the most coherent question I’ve ever been asked.
‘What I mean is, do you often think there’s more to living than just this?’
Not going so well with Clarissa, then, I feel like saying.
‘Well . . .’.
‘Because for a while I’ve thought that even though I’ve got all the things I’ve always wanted, I’ve still been missing out on . . .’.
‘Yes?’
‘Life’.
It’s not the sort of thing that I’d been expecting him to say. I’d seen him become a machine over the last couple of years, a unit designed for living normally. And yes, I want to agree wholeheartedly with his sentiments. He’d gone chasing after the life that culture has told him to live, quite forgetting that he would still be the same person underneath.
‘Do you remember how it used to be?’ I ask. ‘The fun we used to have? Do you remember?’
‘To be honest’, he replies, ‘Not entirely’.
‘All those nights reorganising the pencil case shelf?’
‘Doesn’t ring any bells’.
‘And you’d say, gosh, it’s so hot, do you mind if I take my shirt off?’
‘Doesn’t sound like the sort of thing I’d say.’
He’s right, of course. It doesn’t. Not any more.
‘And anyway, what’s that got to do with . . With what I’ve just said?’
‘I’m just trying to remind you of the times that we used to have together, the fun and the physical nature of our relationship, and how you used to live for the nights and you’d come in to work and you’d whisper to me, hey, let’s reorganise the pencil case shelf tonight, and all day long I’d be longing for the moment when Carol went home and we could lose ourselves to the absolute bliss of each other’s company, and some times we got so into it that we’d finish reorganising the pencil case shelf and then start all over again, and the world seemed right and the night stretched before us with all its promise, and we’d be both so incredibly happy that we’d had the fortune to find each other, that the world should be a place where constant adventure could happen right here, right here, in this crappy little town’.
‘To be honest, I don’t remember any of that’.
‘You don’t remember?’
‘Not in the slightest’.
‘It was the highlight of my year!’
His eyes narrow.
‘If you must know’, he says, ‘It sounds a bit far-fetched’.
Far-fetched. I can remember every second of our many encounters. Emblazoned as they are on my memory in all of their vivid detail, there can be nothing more real than the exquisite mix of heart-felt longing and rampant masculinity, blending as they did into a fine madness into which we both so willingly succumbed. And yet, yes, he’s right. It does all sound magnificently far-fetched.
‘Often’, he says, ‘When something is very horrific, the mind shuts it out completely’.
‘But you must remember some of it’.
‘Well . . .’.
More silence.
‘What has all this got to do with what I was saying? I trust you enough to delve right down to the deepest part of my soul and you highjack the moment just to concoct some bizarre story about us having a relationship which I can’t even remember. It can’t have been that special, really. That’s what I’m thinking. It probably wasn’t even with me, was it? I don’t go around shagging work colleagues in the store room of a pencil shop. And just at the moment when I need some help in trying to understand the world, you go and make it even more complicated. Well, thanks. Thanks for that.’
‘So you don’t remember any of it, then?’
‘The only thing I remember is . . .’ He stops for a second. ‘Did you hear something?’
‘We need to talk about this. I don’t think you understand how important this is to me’.
‘Can you hear it? Movement, out the back. And it sounds very much like . . .’.
Please, no. Of all the times.
‘Bin robbers!’
‘You said yourself, Matt. You said that you weren’t sure about life. You said it just now, that there was something else. Well, there was. And you don’t remember any of it. I showed you what it was that you were missing. I showed you, two years ago, but . . .’
‘Bin robber!’
They come every night, the bin robbers. They rummage, standing on upturned milk crates in order to delve deeper into the mysterious delights of the pencil shop skip. They’re looking for pencils, obviously, or anything else that may have been thrown away during the day. It’s a wonder they find anything amid the boxes and the packaging and the assorted detritus of a pencil shop skip, but every now and then they find what they’re looking for. Pencils. Only the pencils have been broken in half, as per company guidelines. Go to any car boot sale and you’ll find a stall of short stubby pencils, sharpened, perhaps, at both ends. Discontinued lines from pencil shop skips, pencils with health and safety issues now illegal to trade, dug out from the bottom of pencil shop skips and sold by shady looking gentlemen with stubble and inappropriate piercings. Some of these gentlemen might even have tattoos. There’s money in pencils, obviously. The internet hasn’t killed everything.
But they’re nasty, too. There’s many a report of bin robbers threatening shop staff, managers holed up in their offices on the phone to the police or, god forbid, violence against any hapless employee who should go out after dark to empty a waste-paper bin and come across a bin robber. Territorial, occasionally hyped up on various concoctions, there are even stories of rival bin robbers fighting each other in front of bemused His Nibs shop staff. They leave a mess behind them and throw the non-pencil-related skip contents across the back yard in order to get to their bounty. Sometimes they even turn the bin upside down and empty it, which is no small task what with it being made from solid steel and as large as a small car. They threaten anyone who tries to stop them. Many a time a lowly His Nibs shop employee has had to call the old bill because a particularly nasty bin robber has promised some admittedly quite inventive form of personal injury while filling up their pockets with faulty pencil sharpeners or pencil cases that have been withdrawn from sale due to copyright issues. Illegally mass-produced Scooby Doo pencil cases that head office have bought cheaply and sold at quite a mark up until threatened with court action by the intellectual property owners of the Scooby Doo franchise, now filling up the Lidl’s carrier bags of the common bin robber. It’s a vicious circle.
It’s recycling, at least.
And tonight’s is a fine specimen. In his woollen cap and bomber jacket, he looks every inch the scrote. We watch through the back door as he sets up a powerful torch, climbs on his milk crate, then dives into the bowels of the skip, his army boots sticking out as he has a good rummage. You might think that it would be safe just to let him get on with it, but there are moral forces at work, a sense of personal violation which comes from seeing such an atrocity, particularly in the private enclosure of the back yard. Indeed, as the police have pointed out, each pencil sold by a bin robber feeds violence and drug abuse, underhand dealings, and the powerful local organised crime syndicates, and that it is our duty to prevent all further bin incursions. The police have better things to do.
Matt’s fingers reach for the door handle.
‘It’s not safe’, I tell him. ‘He might get violent’.
‘He’s upside down in a bin. We’ve got the tactical upper hand at the moment’.
‘He might have an accomplice’.
‘It’s a chance we have to take’.
‘We don’t have to. We’re not here to fight crime’.
The bin robber throws a sack of waste paper over his shoulder. It lands on the ground and scatters everywhere.
‘If we don’t make an effort’, Matt says, ‘Then it will just carry on’.
‘He might be armed, and dangerous . . .’
‘What better way is there to go?’
I can think of several other options rather than being knifed by a bin robber next to a rubbish skip out the back of a pencil shop at two ‘o’ clock in the morning in a deserted seaside town. It’s not an iconic death. But Matt is starting to open the door now.
‘Matt!’
‘Tell my parents that I love them’.
‘And what about Clarissa?’
‘Yeah, her to’.
I can only assume that the worst will occur. The bin robber will lunge at him, perhaps shouting, perhaps incomprehensible, no doubt far too stoned for any rational response other than shooting at us with a concealed weapon, or perhaps a bow and arrow. (The mind does funny things during moments of stress). And already I can envisage having to phone Matt’s parents and telling them the bad news, the police helicopter hovering overhead with spotlights trying to track down the ruthless bin robber, the whole thing conveyed live to local television.
‘Hey!’, Matt says, whipping the back door open.
‘All right?’, the bin robber asks.
‘What you doing?’
‘I’m robbing your pencils’.
‘From the bin?’
‘Yeah’.
‘But they’re broken’.
‘That’s the thing with pencils’, he replies. ‘They’re never really broken. You just sharpen the jagged ends and you’ve got yourself two new pencils. Hey. My name’s Dave’.
Dave holds out his hand and, amazingly, Matt shakes it.
‘That’s all very well’, Matt says, ‘But then you’ll end up with stumpy pencils’.
‘I know’.
‘What good’s a stumpy pencil?’
‘There’s a lot of people out there with SFS. Horribly afflicted. They can’t handle full sized pencils. They’re crying out for shortened pencils. I’m only happy to help them’.
‘SFS?’
‘Stumpy Finger Syndrome’.
‘You know, you really can’t do that. It’s stealing’.
‘But you’re throwing them away’.
‘It’s still stealing. That’s the law. And I’m here to uphold the law.’
‘It’s recycling. That’s what I’m doing. Otherwise it would all go into landfill, and do you know how long it takes for a pencil to biodegrade? I‘m saving the planet, my good friend, that’s what I’m doing’.
‘Go on’.
‘What?’
‘How long does it take for a pencil to biodegrade?’
‘Hey, I’m too busy bringing hope and comfort to those with SFS to worry about minor details like that’.
Dave takes out two more pencils from the bin and holds them up to the light.
‘Right, then. I’ll wish you two gentlemen a pleasant evening’.
He closes the lid of the bin and saunters away. Matt watches him leave for a couple of seconds.
‘Well’, he says, ‘I don’t think he’s going to mess with us again’.
This whole night has been profoundly confusing.
We count through the night. The Earth spins round one more time. The count is completed by five in the morning, the last pencil located in a plastic display case next to the till area at the front of the shop. What mystical powers that one pencil holds! I place it back in its case feeling a sense of ceremonial duty, for now we have completed our task. Yet the world seems just the same. I look out the plate glass window at the front of the shop floor at the dark, deserted street, the sodium lighting and the parked cars, the fascias of the other shops unlit, silent fashion shop dummies just standing there like memories of parties past, and it all looks like hardly anything has changed at all.
‘We are free’, I whisper.
Two hour’s sleep, and a new day starts.
It’s just as well that my tiny flat is over the road from the shop itself. It’s a constant joy to open the curtains each morning and see the little shop sitting there, taunting me with its pencils and its sense of constant dread. I dream of bin robbers screaming through several surrealist situations, none of which I can particularly remember within seconds of waking.
One of the eternal mysteries of retail is the stock count. The head office New Goods department has a figure which is supposed to match the number of pencils held in stock. In all likelihood, the shop will have this figure with a slight margin of error. Yet it all depends on how great this margin of error is. If it’s a lot more or a lot less, then there will have to be an investigation and it will be assumed that the stock has gone missing, somehow. If there are three thousand less pencils in stock than the paperwork says, then it means that someone has come in and robbed the shop of three thousand pencils. And this is rightly seen as an example of gross misconduct on behalf of the shop staff. But if the figure is, say, out by fifty or so, then that’s seen as officially All Right. It could easily be a mis-count. Fifty-one or more and there’s a problem. The area manager will demand that we do it all over again.
Our total is out by two hundred and fifty six.
This is when it’s wise to begin a subtle manipulation of the paperwork. The first thing to do is to look at the last Breakages list and assume that it hasn’t got to Head Office just yet. So if there’s eight pencils on the Breakages list, then these can be added to the stock count, therefore making it out only by two hundred and forty eight.
Then one has to look at the other stock that has been written off. Out of date pencils, deleted pencils, pencils that have been recalled due to various health and safety investigations. If a child somewhere gets a splinter from a pencil, then the pencil is withdrawn from sale. If an artist on a remote island artist’s community puts a pencil in their mouth and has an allergic reaction to the paint, then the pencil is withdrawn from sale. This can usually add another twenty or thirty to the final figure. And then there’s the stock that has been transferred to another branch. If shop A phones up shop B and asks for a box of two hundred HB red and white striped pencils, they will often be so relieved to receive the stock that they might quite forget to process the paperwork that comes with it until a couple of months later when it’s found at the bottom of the in-tray next to a mouldy bacon sandwich, the one that’s been funking up the office for the last few weeks. So these transfers, also, and quite cunningly, are added to the grand total of the stock count.
But Head Office gets its revenge. The stock count sheets themselves are incredibly long, a concertina of computer print-outs. A fully unfolded stock count sheet will stretch from here to halfway down the street. On each page are fifty serial codes of the different types of pencil held in stock, and there are three columns which must be filled in: stock in shop [A], stock in store room [B], and total stock [C]. Easy enough, you might think. But for a start, column [A] and [B] must add up to column [C], and each column must add up to the sub total at the bottom of each page, and then each page must add up to the grand total.
There are so many serial numbers that most of them will not be carried by the shop in question. Therefore, the total for each column will be zero. Except Head Office doesn’t like the number zero. They say that it can easily be mistaken for a six, especially if written hurriedly. Every time a zero occurs in the paperwork, the word ‘zero’ has to be written in the space allocated, rather than the number. A typical row will therefore read ‘zero zero zero’, which means that most of a stock count is taken up not with counting, but by writing the word ‘zero’ a couple of thousand times.
Oh, the unique joys of the stock take.
There’s always the dread of the familiar on arriving back at work, whatever the circumstances. The shop seems just to sit there over night, ostensibly inanimate yet filling itself with more reasons for you to hate it. There’s a crushing sense of obligation in every detail as if it’s playing with you, saying, ‘Forget any hopes and dreams you might once have had, forget anything else which might seem important in your life, because you exist for me now, and nothing else’. And while some might argue that in the modern economic climate it might be seen as advantageous and perhaps even privileged to have a job at all, there’s also something emasculating about putting so much energy and thought and worry and paranoia and everything else which makes us human and makes us function as individuals into the selling of pencils. As if to compound the delirium, there are emails from Mona.
She does a good line in sarcasm.
Indeed, it seems a pre-requisite that an area manager should dabble in the black art of sarcasm. Perhaps they teach it at Area Manager School. And like any art movement, it’s not just dependent on content, but also the circumstance and the delivery. An Area Manager standing in the doorway of a shop and saying ‘it looks like a herd of bulls has rampaged through this place’, seems to have a greater effect than merely, ‘Looks like you might need to tidy up in here’. Or then there’s the old classic ‘am I speaking a foreign language? Do you want me to provide a translation?’ This one works especially well when the simplest command has been seemingly ignored, Mona once again standing there with her hands on her hips, demonstrating that as well as being an expert in retail management, sales patterns and category space analysis, and all those other minutiae which make such middle managers feel important in the grand scheme of things, she is also something of a comedian. This morning’s email is profound with such literary shenanigans.
‘Yet again it would seem that most simple of tasks – counting stock – is beyond your capabilities’, is the cheerful phrase she uses to begin her message. I imagine her sitting at home, a plate full of cream buns next to her laptop and Wagner playing on the stereo, firing off this latest communication. ‘It’s not hard to keep a tally. Maybe I should run a seminar on it. Or perhaps not. Go into any good book shop and they will have a volume on simple mathematics’. She then has the sense to end the email with the phrase, ‘kind regards’.
Carol has called in sick. She always calls in sick the day after a stock count, you know, just in case. We open the shop. Matt goes on the till and fumes to himself for the whole of the morning. We have one customer in the first hour, getting a refund on a 25p pencil sharpener that she bought in another branch. Matt is somewhat abrupt with her. Then he’s somewhat abrupt with me when I quip that this is one more pencil sharpener that we will have to count. The fluorescent lights make my eyes hurt.
By midday we have come up with a plan to do the count again that night.
‘We’ll have to be more methodical’, Matt says. ‘Every time we count a box, I will attach a yellow sticky notelet to the side of it so that we can gauge where we have been and what has been counted’.
‘Oh yes, so that’s going to be the answer to everything, is it?’
‘I can’t see you coming up with any better suggestions’.
‘To be honest, I’m beyond caring’.
‘A sticky yellow notelet. And then we will write on all of these notelets, ‘counted’, which will act as a double check’.
I yawn.
‘You’re right’, I tell him. ‘That will be the answer to everything. Problem solved. Every problem the world has ever had, solved, just like that. Sticky yellow notelets’.
‘And they have to be yellow. No other colour will show up in the dark confines of the stock room’.
‘Another night together, then’.
He smiles.
The prospect of spending it in such a way fills me not with dread, but with a rising sense of excitement, especially as the afternoon rolls on. It’s all I can do to stop my heart from beating, seeing him there and knowing that we will be together again. Maybe it’s sleep deprivation, but the world seems suddenly filled with promise and excitement. Because last night, oh yes, last night, Matt came so close to admitting the truth. So incredibly close. And if he doesn’t do it again tonight, I might just sabotage the result myself just to make sure that it all goes in to a third night.
‘Yellow’, I repeat, ‘Notelets’.
Early evening, I find a box of two hundred and fifty pencil erasers in the kitchen microwave. I decide to hide them. Often it’s best not to admit to such things.
'Let's just slink through here', I suggested, gesturing to the rhododendrons. A hot tropical night. The sweat was pouring down my face. Out to sea there was thunder, lightning flashing, but here on the beach, fairy lights and candles threw multicoloured light and shadows which danced. 'Slink?', Jack asked. The scent of jasmine and honeysuckle hung in the Caribbean night. The sky was dark and starless. 'There's a storm coming'. 'It's just . . The choice of word'. Others on the beach were standing at the water's edge, looking out at the storm. It was obviously getting closer. 'Are we just going to stand her end argue about a word?' 'It's better than arguing about whether we should argue about a word, which is even more pointless than arguing about a word'. 'OK, let's just ignore that and shimmy into the rhododendrons'. 'Shimmy?' 'Oh, for heaven's sake!' There was a rumble of thunder, and fat lazy drops of rain began to fall from the sky. They thudded into the sand as perfect darkened circles like sudden coins. We penetrated the outer fringes of the rhododendron and found ourselves surrounded by branches cross-crossing, and roots, and a sandy, springy earth. We could hear the rain falling on to the fleshy, heavy leaves around us, as if the world were applauding our efforts. It was cooler within the foliage. 'This might not be the time to tell you', Jack said, 'But I'm a member of the RSPCR'. 'What's that?', I asked, ducking to avoid a low branch across the face. 'The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Rhododendrons'. 'Bloody hell, what are the chances?' 'We also cover hydrangeas and certain types of buddleia'. 'Well, we're not exactly being cruel, are we?' 'The constitution has several definitions . . .'. 'You're making this up!' 'I might be'. But he had a point. I hardly knew him. We'd met at the backpackers hostel the night before. He'd let me use his spork. 'There will be spiders in here'. 'GAH!' 'And snakes, probably'. I'd not thought about either of these scenarios. Thunder boomed and the whole earth shook. Neither of us said anything for a while, and then, of a sudden, we entered into a tiny clearing surrounded in all four sides by rhododendron bushes and tall palm trees, sheet lightning behind the overcast swirling clouds. I took a step, and spluttered, wiping a spiders web from my face. He emerged behind me and we stood there, feeling the heavy drops of rain on our shoulders. 'Amazing', he whispered. And then the storm begun in earnest, ripping the sky with vicious lightning bolts, the rain thudded down with increasing intensity, we sheltered under the dripping leaves of the vegetation, his warm body pressed close to mine as the thunder boomed and crashed and roared around us. 'Do you think', I asked, 'that this is a sign from the universe? That we should be together forever?' Because all of a sudden, I was caught up in the sheer magic of the moment. And at that second, a bolt of lightning hit one of the palm trees right in front of us, a vicious spew of sparks tearing off one of its branches with incredibly ferocity 'Not really', he said.
2.
Amid the midnight neon and the motorway flyovers of Tokyo, the incessant thrum of feet on the busy pavements, the night itself an electric pulse of brash branding, logos, cartoon charms and corporate magic, I found the doorway to the capsule hotel, the Paracetamol, between a gaming arcade and a brightly lit vending machine selling live koi carp. The front desk was automated and I booked in using my credit card, taking a lift up to the fifth floor, where a sign on the wall, accompanied by an over-the-top cartoon caricature of a hotel porter who also happened to be a giant panda, reminded me to be quiet, respectful to the other guests, and to take care of my own personal hygiene. My backpack almost didn't fit in the locker provided, and then I realised that the locker that I was trying to cram it in to was actually my room for the night. A mounded plastic bunk into which had been added a television, the bed, control panels for the heating, some robes. I put on the robes and went wandering around the corridors of the Paracetamol. As well as showers, bathrooms and a row of vending machines, (instant noodles, books, lanyards, and what looked like weasels), there was a small lounge right in the very corner of the building, looking down on one of the busy intersections below in all its neon glory. There was only one other person in the lounge. I sat down on one of the soft cushioned sofas and I looked out the plate glass window at the intensify and madness of the city. I then looked at the other person and I let out a gasp. 'Jack!' 'Yes?' 'Remember me?' He kind of frowned. 'Paya de los Aquafresh? We hid in the rhododendrons during the thunderstorm that time!' His face lit up. 'Yes! I remember! My god! We sheltered in the rhododendrons . . . And that lightning bolt took a branch off a tree right next to us!' 'What are you doing out here?' 'I'm in a business meeting with the RSPCRHB'. 'I thought that was a joke . .'. 'Deeply serious'. 'What are the two extra letters?' 'They've let in hydrangeas and certain types of buddleia since I last saw you'. 'I can't believe you're here!' He got up and joined me on the sofa and sat right next to me. And it felt good, his being there. In our robes, loose fitting and comfortable, it felt almost as if we were naked. How amazing! Two souls, coming together in spite of all the odds. 'I often think about that night', I tell him. 'Really? I can't remember much about it'. 'The storm, and the rain . . . And being with you'. He smiled. We were both speaking softly now, hushed tones in case we were to wake any of the other people staying at the Paracetamol, but the hushed tones could very well have been the purred small talk of love. 'You said slink, remember that?' 'I did' 'And then shimmy'. 'That's right'. I was so happy. I felt like putting my arm around his shoulders. 'You see, I would have said something different. Plunge, perhaps, or even hide. Or shelter. Let's shelter in these rhododendrons. But the way you said it . .'. 'Yes?' 'It hinted at something different'. 'This is a very weird conversation'. 'Is it?' 'A conversation about a conversation, and that conversation itself was mostly about the conversation that we were having'. 'I don't see why you've had to bring this up now'. 'Well, it's not like we're going to be meeting up again, is it?' 'Why not?' 'I . . . Don't know'. ‘Do you think', I asked, 'that this is a sign from the universe? That we should be together forever?' Because all of a sudden, once again, I was caught up in the sheer magic of the moment. He was quiet for a couple of seconds, and maybe it's my imagination, but he kind of snuggled towards me on the sofa, his body getting ever so slightly closer to mine. And at that moment, a sudden bolt of lightning was hurled from the overcast sky, lighting up the traffic intersection and the lounge with incredible ferocity, hitting the neon sign directly opposite from us of a cartoon duck advertising some local brand of shampoo. And before our eyes the cartoon duck sizzled, smoked and swung on its screws, turning upside down, unlit, where it pendulumed from side to side. 'Not really', he said.
3.
By my third day in the tiny Arctic community, I’d already worked out that there wasn't really much to do. The small huts, shacks and prefabricated homes sat shivering in the snowdrifts by the frozen sea, and it was dark by two in the afternoon. Once I'd visited the Museum of Permafrost and had a look around the art gallery built to resemble the tusk of a walrus, I'd more or less run out of activities. My only solace was the town library, a quaint prefabricated structure whose tiny lit windows created elongated squares in the fallen snow. I'd found a quiet corner, in between Arabic Numerology and Paranormal Studies, where I could sit near a radiator and read the hours away. And this is what I was doing, one never ending afternoon after dark, when I looked up and . . .oh, for heaven's sake. 'Jack?!' 'You!', he said. And he just kind of stood there for a bit in his big Arctic survival suit, and I stood, and we faced each other across the town library. 'What are you . . .'. 'Rhododendrons ', he replied. 'The feasibility of Arctic growth'. 'And?' 'None'. 'I can't believe it's you!' His face relaxed, and he came over and sat next to me. The tiny window between us began to be speckled by another snow shower, each fleck illuminated by the library lights. 'The last time we met . . in Tokyo . . Do you remember?' 'Yes'. 'We had a conversation about having a conversation about the conversation we'd had in Paya de los Aquafresh, in which the conversation had been about the conversation'. 'And now we're having a conversation about those conversations'. 'Yes', I laughed, 'we so tend to have a lot of conversations'. 'No fear of any lightning today', he said, 'though it's just started snowing again'. 'It's so good to see you'. 'You too'. 'Thanks for letting me use your spork'. 'Yeah, no problem'. And then the conversation kind of ran out of steam for a while, and we just sat there, listening to the sound of water in the heating system, the crunched footsteps of people walking in the snow. It was good to see him. The padded layers of his Arctic survival suit gave him a sudden cuddly physicality. I could hardly believe that he was there, that e we're together yet again, but it had happened twice before and yet again I could feel the planet turning, the magic of existence itself funnelling down, very much like the aurora borealis itself, and this isolated community. I looked past him, to the reception area of the library where Librarians were busying themselves, and a poster warned of the drawbacks of trying to pet a polar bear. The same old question seemed to press itself up from deep within me, into my vocal chords before it got a chance to be processed by my brain. ‘Jack’, I said. He gulped. ‘Do you think . . .’. ‘I'll have to stop you right there’, he said. The two of us smile at each other. In the pallid fluorescent glow of the Arctic community library, he looked serene, playful. I could hear someone moving bins outside and it sounded like thunder, but it wasn't. ‘I think I'll saunter out in a bit’, I say to him, ‘and see if I can get any dinner’. ‘Saunter?’ ‘Yes? What's wrong with that?’ ‘Nothing, it's just . . A very strange word’. ‘What should I have said? Mooch? Jimmy?’ ‘I don't know, it's just . . .I mean, of all the words you could have chosen . .’ The snow was coming down increasingly heavy now and piling up on the little windowsill. ‘I'll come with you, though’, he said, after a short while.
I really am a bad uncle.
Im really not that good.
I never buy them sweets or things
Like a proper uncle should.
I really am a bad uncle.
Not once did I show consternation
When I made them get the tennis ball back
From inside the electricity substation.
I really am a bad uncle
Being with them is terribly tiring.
I told them the meaningless of existence
When they asked to hear something inspiring.
I really am a bad uncle
Hey uncle, have you brought us some sweets?
No I haven’t, I said, but hey, just for fun
Help me go through these tax return receipts.
I really am a bad uncle
They wanted chicken nuggets for tea.
The vindaloo which I made was ever so hot
And they left it, more for me!
I really am a bad uncle.
Let’s watch TV they said!
So many cartoons and great things to watch
I put on the Snooker instead.
I really am a bad uncle.
I thought that I knew how to treat them.
Let’s go out for the day, hooray they said
We went to the local arboretum.
I really am a bad uncle
I interrupted their tumbles and spills
And sat them down for a chat about how
To save seven to eight percent of annual heating bills.
I really am a bad uncle.
I seldom buy them a gift.
No wonder when I turn up at their house
They always look slightly miffed.
I really am a bad uncle.
I’m probably a disgrace.
They’ve never been to my house,
They’d clutter up the place.
I really am a bad uncle.
Let’s play football, uncle, they said.
Let’s not, I replied.
I really am a bad uncle.
I’m awfully glad they’re not mine.
I once was asked to babysit
They made me spill my wine.
I really am a bad uncle.
Come now, it’s time for bed.
But it’s only four in the afternoon,
One of the buggers said.
I really am a bad uncle.
I hate their high squeaky voices.
My sister seems so pleased with them
Who am I to question her life choices?
I really am a bad uncle
And as such on my record there’s a blot
The yelling, the screaming, the tantrums,
Those kids have to put up with a lot a
There’s nothing more evil than salad.
It’s a good chew spoiled.
And since they outlawed chocolate as a salad dressing,
All the fun has gone out of it.
You never see someone enjoying a salad.
They just have this grim determination
Followed by smug satisfaction
As they continually point out that they had a salad for lunch.
Aren’t I good?
Oh you’re so smug.
I really enjoyed my pasty.
There’s nothing more evil than salad.
It’s the lunchtime equivalent of a punch in the face.
It’s why cows always look so miserable.
It’s why people who eat salad
Always look so miserable.
There’s nothing worse
Than having a belly full of celery
And an instant regret in your own existence.
A whole afternoon with it repeating on yku
Like a bad episode of CSI,
A reminder of what a martyr you have been
With your salad.
But they don’t give out medals for that,
No sir.
They’ve started painting McDonald’s green.
That’s not fooling anyone.
They’re putting more lettuce in burgers now.
It’s just the tip of the iceberg.
It’s been a couple of years and it felt very weird, but I finally got the chance to do some shows before a live audience the last week or so. The first was in Penzance, then Wolverhampton, and then finally at Milk in Bristol.
I was incredibly nervous but hopefully it didn’t show. I ran through a mix of old and new poems, and had a lot of fun, too!
You can hear my entire set below. I hope you like it. There are one or two surprises. And wow, what a brilliant audience!
I had a wonderful time at Milk in Bristol. One of the best audiences I’ve ever had! You can listen to the entire set above.
You know what it's like. It's just gone three in the afternoon And you get a sudden pang For casserole. Not quite as full on as a stew, Not quite as funky as a hot pot, Not quite as opaque as soup Nor even a broth with its Meaty meaty chunks, Casserole, winter warmer, Dumpling soaker, Casserole casserole casserole, Mmm mmm mmm!
Traipsing round the supermarket aisle Where is the casserole? This'll take a while I tell you what will a-make a-me smile A glimpse of casserole, I would run a mile Like a character from mythology, a personal trial Casserole casserole casserole, Mmm mmm mmm!
Excuse me mister manager Supermarket manager Where is the casserole, Don't hold it back! Excuse me mister manager Supermarket manager Where is the casserole, It's something that you lack!
Casserole casserole casserole, Mmm mmm mmm!
And the supermarket manager said
2.
I am the very model of a supermarket manager We have so many bargains here we'd see off any challenger We sell our food in tins and packs and sometimes in a canister And if somebody makes a mess I have to call the janitor. I am so damn professional I'm nothing like an amateur Our shelves are always fully stocked, our sugar it is granular I make a daily sales forecast with several parameters We have a fine display in here of spoons and forks and spatulas Our singles night is Wednesday the place is full of bachelors I am the very model Yes I am the very model Yes I am the very model Of a supermarket manager!
(He is the very model of a supermarket manager!)
I have so many colleagues here and staff and several underlings I go straight home it's getting late I strip down to my underthings I'm not about to come on to you if that is what you're wondering Cos I'm a decent sort of chap though often prone to blundering The music that I hear at night is shopping trolleys trundling It fills me with a strange delight I cannot stop from shuddering A queue of shoppers in a row, the slowest till is the one working Our motto is Grab What You Can, a philosophy which underpins Our shareholders and chief exec, our profits they are funnelling I am the very model Yes I am the very model Yes I am the very model Of a supermarket manager!
(He is the very model of a supermarket manager!)
But I don't know if we've got Casss-errrrrrr-roooolllllle!
I'll ask Janet.
Oh, Janet?
3.
What?
You got any of the good stuff, Janet?
And iiiiiii-eeeeeee-iiiiiiiiii-eeeeeee-iiiiii, Will always loooovee Souuuuuuuuuupppppp.
No Janet, the other thing?
Oh yes.
(To the tune of Alejandro, by Lady Gaga)
I've looked everywhere In the stock room But I haven't got a pack n't got a pack. In the freezer In the stock room Not even in the chiller on the shelf.
You know that I love casserole, Hot like stew or a sausage roll At this point I do suggest Pot Noodle
Don't look like we Have got any Casserole -ole, I'm not your babe With casserole Haven't got none, Not in a pack Nor in a box Just a small back We haven't got We haven't got Any cass'role.
Any cass'role Any cass'role Cassy cassy cass'role Cassy cassy cass'role
Any cass'role Any cass'role Cassy cassy cass'role Cassy cassy cass'role
Stop, please! Just let me go!
I've got a spillage in aisle six.
4.
Tell me young man, Why do you like casserole so much?
I live a life devoted to it And it often gets me grumpy That a common misconception is That it's cold and ever so lumpy.
A casserole is different And lifts me high anew It fills me with a warmth inside That you don't really get with stew.
And stroganoff can bugger off Please take away that bowl And if you really love me true Just give me casserole.
I spent a night of bliss with Trish So sexual so winsome so fetching She gave me a plate of beef bourgignon I spent the whole night retching.
Casserole casserole casserole Just the sound of it makes me tingle. Casserole casserole casserole. It's probably why I'm still single.
5.
I'm sorry I can't help you With that food that you do seek The only thing that I suggest Is to come back next week.
Our casserole it takes its toll And I really don't want to harm ya Perhaps young man I could tempt you With a chiller fridge lasagne?
6.
Dinner. I want for dinner A dish that I can have with wine It's the one thing on my mind. Hunger. Increasing hunger. An empty stomach makes a growling sound It's enough to bring me down.
This supermarket hasn't got any casserole. And now I will take my leave!
Came in Around 3.30 Thought it would only take a smidge Headed to the chiller fridge Empty It was so empty A gap where obviously it should have been Everyone could hear me scream.
This supermarket hasn't got any casserole. And now I will take my leave!
Stocktake, The latest stocktake It says you had some yesterday Now they all have gone away Checking The best before date This supermarket Hasn't got It hasn't got Any casserole This supermarket Hasn't got It hasn't got Any casserole And Now I Will Leeeeeeaaaaavvvvee!
I was chatting to a friend. Yes, I have friends. And this one was called Adam. And I said to this friend, this Adam, I’m off to see Vanessa tomorrow, Because she’s another friend, And Adam said, Tell her I said hello.
What am I, I thought, Your hello outsourcing service? Offering hellos by proxy Retrieved with none of the actual feeling Of a proper hello? I thought, I didn’t actually say this Because I’m not like that, I thought, if you want to say hello So badly, Then bloody well say hello yourself. But I was off to see Vanessa. And Adam said, Tell her I said hello.
But he didn’t actually say hello. He just said, Tell her I said hello. He didn’t say, Hello, That was for Vanessa. Or, hello, that’s what I’d say If I saw Vanessa. And you can tell her that I’ve just said hello, Which strictly speaking would have been lying, But anyway I said I would.
Vanessa was in a real crabby mood. Her latest money-making venture, Selling fake moustaches to people As they enter the sexual health clinic, Had failed, Because as a society we are more open now About such things, And anyway, The police had told her to move along, And we had a row, And she told me that I was about as usual as an Air vent on a submarine, And I told her that if intelligence Skipped a generation Then her kids would be geniuses And she said That I couldn’t possibly be as daft As I looked, And I said up yours, Because I’d run out of insults, And then I said, By the way, Adam says hello.
I saw Adam the next day. Did you say hello?, he asked. I said hello, I said. And next time you want to say hello, I said, Don’t get me to say hello, I said. Go to the person you want to say hello to, And say hello, I said. And he said, Did she say hello? And I said, Actually, no, she didn’t.
Robert Garnham 