It’s my bespoke stomping ground in the Intermatrix . You are very welcome, and thanks for stopping by…
This time, the Strimmer’s Revenge…
A little bit more off the top, please
32 degrees C and six months since my last hair-cut: a true Lockdown moment.
Should I:
a) go to the barber and wear a mask, and the barber a visor and mask, to feel like I was having my hair shorn by the riot police;
b) leave my hair to carry on growing until I could play tug-of-war with Rapunzel; or
c) give myself up to the mercy of my wife to satisfy that crazed look of anticipation as she held the tiny scissors to the industrial-sized whetstone.
I woke up shackled to a small plastic chair, my knees around my ears, providing a sight-line for the first cut. Vrooom! The sound of a chainsaw engaging, snippety-snip the sound of garden shears approaching me from behind. The glug of Agent Orange shampoo being rubbed into my ends which were about to be split with an axe.
No mirror to protect me, and as Meatloaf nearly sings:
Hair in the rear view mirror may recede more than you think
(especially when attacked by Mrs Scissorhands).
My chainmail suit at the dry cleaners, the Jaws soundtrack thundering in our bathroom, reflecting off the tiles – duh DUH dur DUHDADADADADADADA
The feel of a swathe of hair sloughing off my head and crashing to the bathroom foor like the calving of a huge iceberg, a sinister chuckle from just behind my left ear, sending a chill down my spine as I stayed rooted to the spot in terror.
CRASH!
Another copse of mountain trees swept away in the avalanche.
Bit more on the left to level it up, bit more on the right to level it up, bit more on the left to level it up…How much was left? Would my parting eventually amount to a thin Mohican on the crest of my head where the furry tectonic plates lurched together…?
And then it was over as the massed jungle foliage that that rooted itself in my eyebrows was chopped away with a machete – what proved to be Nicola’s weapon of choice in the Hairena of Doom, or WWFluff…
Then the clouds of hair blew away revealing a work of art – more a rough sketch than the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, but Michaelangelo had more promising contours to work with. A pretty good first attempt on the back of a three-minute YouTube coaching video (half of which consisted of ads for FIFA 21 – she snips, she scores! – and following a suspicious recent interest in regularly brushing our golden retriever as a way of limbering up).
The exciting thing is that in another few months time, unless I’m ambushed earlier at the top of the stairs with a suspiciously glinting blade – like Norman Bates with a detailer trimmer – it will be time to
...We packed our bags last minute pre-drive
Zero hour nine AM...
In fact, it ended up being after lunch.
We stuffed the car with garden games, a blow-up giant avocado (with accompanying blow-up stone) and, in a fit of optimism to defy the British climate: multiple pairs of shorts and our swimming costumes for an outdoor pool. No rooftop box, in case we took a wrong turning and ended up in Cornwall. A dizzying drive along the myriad motorways of Britain (well, the M25 and the M40), around 60 miles for the family staycation, to be fair less Easy Rider than Herbie Rides Again.
Can’t help thinking of Elton again for the are-we-there-yet journey,
...I think it's gonna be a long, long time...
Arrival at the cottage was straightforward, meaning no need to get within two metres of any other human being before being given sanitised keys. And so it proved for the rest of the week.
This guy in the grounds was firmly told to stick to the distancing limit:
It’s OK, I used a telephoto lens to maintain appropriate social distancing.
We experienced an odd sense of timelessness and falling out of the world for a while. Ask him, he even has a very natty Lockdown beard.
The cottage is attached to a hotel with an entrance door retro-fitted with a motion sensor, and a thermometer able to take my temperature automatically before the laser cannons activated. A sign of the times, and lucky that no facial recognition was required for registration. My chin-to-nose face covering made it look more like I was there to commit armed robbery than check in.
Aside from a food delivery to the cottage and the usual dance to keep everyone’s distance, that was it, a week of more isolation but with unfamiliar kitchen devices and a real garden. Bliss. No air tickets, knackering plane rides, all the stuff that makes a holiday generate a need for recovery time when arriving back home. Just Aylesbury for the week.
Not a holiday destination that any of us would ever have particularly considered – no offence – but it proved to be awesome. Not that we saw anything of Aylesbury proper, but that didn’t matter, we were Oooh! (Out Of Our House) for an extended period of time, somewhere unknown, somewhere DIFFERENT. OK, no beach parties, lingering sunsets over an azure sea, blahblah, but peace and quiet, and time to kick back with the family.
Aside from one game of footie and University Challenge, no TV for the whole of the week, and – shocking news – it was not missed. At all. I’m not going to suggest there was no social media stuff going on, but it was at a much reduced rate. And there was the allure of not having to open post. Remarkably liberating. Also, my position as Bin Tsar was furloughed for six splendid days…
We played games, all four of us – Father, Mother, the Offspring – not just taking advantage of the lawn with a croquet set that we had finessed into the car. The kids thrashed us. They were also better at Funny Bunny (a family favourite board game for ages 4+ – improved by combining with cocktails). And a card-based Mahjong without the incessant clickety-clack of frenzied tiles that I remember well from Hong Kong – the police station on Lamma Island has always been a particularly loud venue for that sort of thing.
The other thing that we did, courtesy of BBC Good Food Magazine, was a stay-at-home (in Ayesbury) European Tour of Cooking. The kids joined in and we were each responsible for dinner on one night, travelling by food to Portugal, France, Spain and Italy with matching cocktails for each country. A touch of the exotic, albeit in Buckinghamshire. Fun for all the family.. We didn’t manage to persuade the Offspring that loading/unloading the dishwasher would be an exciting first-time novelty fest of fun, but we were on holiday rather than totally delusional…
Anyway, my point is that the little things matter. I think just switching off from mundane household tasks as far as possible, even if you haven’t gone anywhere, doing different stuff at home or wherever you are, seems like a breath of fresh air. That didn’t really impress itself upon me in a practical sense until we got back home and Life re-started in that inexorable way that it does, with a jolly round of car servicing/repairs, acquiring a replacement microwave, the trepidation before a new diet starts…
It’s my bespoke stomping ground in the Intermatrix . You are very welcome, and thanks for stopping by…
This time, just when you thought it was safe to go back in the drive-in….
Man-eating shark spotted in Marlow
Drive-in movies. Pure American, right?
No! A beautiful Summer’s evening on a showground on the Marlow-Henley Road for an early evening movieon a massive outdoor screen.
We were half an hour early, third in line to get in (can’t trust the M25), it was like arriving four hours early at the airport for a holiday flight, but this time Lockdown-style. Four of us in a reasonably large Volvo SUV, three of us pushing 6′ 3″. What could possibly go wrong?
We were excited to be out out, albeit in in a car-sized bubble, about to be fed and a classic was waiting for us, brooding in the shallows, filing its teeth.
Jaws was on the menu.
I lined up the car within our parking space, a safe distance from the screen: a perfect view for the driver (me) and Mother. For Twins 1 and 2 in the back? Not so much.
Volvo hadn’t really legislated for this cabin configuration. We adjusted the seats, the rear-view mirror and the passenger-side wing mirror; lived with the passenger-side windscreen pillar and non-detachable head-rests, not having packed a chainsaw; slid the back of the driver and front passenger seats down to about 35 degrees each; worked the front seats far enough forward so that the blood supply to my legs started to flatline; regretted – again – not having a convertible.
Perfect.
Food was courtesy of Tom Kerridge / Pub in the Park: cheeseburger and cheesecake. So ethnic, I nearly wore a cowboy hat. Glad I didn’t, it would have blocked more of the screen.
Fortunately, the food was a manageable size…
Yum yum
After that, time for a fun game before the movie started.
Over six foot driver (me), over six foot nineteen-year-olds in the rear passenger seats; less tall Mother in the front passenger seat. Cue an expert session of a combination of Twister and Rubik’s Cube to position all of us to best advantage to watch the movie out of the available windows.
Bonus sessions of movie re-enactment (feeling like we were trapped in a small shark cage) and Ultimate Fighting Yoga in the back were available at no extra charge.
Duly installed, we attacked the food with the enthusiasm of a Great White vieiwng a tasty boatful of humans. And when it came to the line in the movie,
…what we are dealing with here is a perfect engine, an eating machine. It’s really a miracle of evolution. All this machine does is swim and eat…and that’s all.
Jaws (1975)
it gave me a vision of the kids standing in front of our open fridge.
And of Jasper, our eternally hungry golden retriever with his latest helpless prey (above)…
The burgers added a 4-D effect to the chomping sounds coming out of the in-car speaker.
The experience was brilliant.
And I love Jaws.
It’s good that it’s so topical, the tension between keeping stuff open and fending off a dangerous threat.
All thanks to the magic of the movies; and a film that contains one of the best ad-libs in movie history.
It’s my bespoke stomping ground in the Intermatrix . You are very welcome, and thanks for stopping by…
This time, some Cuban reflections.
We were in Cuba in February 2020, a lifetime ago. The sun was out, the sky was blue, the cocktails flowed like, er, wine. Like Freddie, we were Havana good time, Havana ball… Far away from where we are right now after these dangerous months.
When I think of Cuba, I think of cars, cocktails and – slightly strangely – cats. At times, they blend together: when we first arrived in Cuba, a 1958 Plymouth ride back in time to La Guarida restaurant in the heart of Havana, its feline guardian in the entrance hall large enough to hold a dance floor, a rooftop terrace housing the open-air Mirador Bar dispensing life-giving Negroni Habanero cocktails – a mixture that includes aged Campari, red vermouth and the perfume of orange rinds. Plenty of ice.
I thought I would share a few memories like that of our trip to bring a little salsa (and, as you will see, heavy metal) back into life for a few minutes as we mingled with the cool cats of Cuba.
Paladar La Guarida, Havana with a bonus game of Spot The Cat
Music is an enduring part of the place. Take a look at a few moments of this street sweeper practising asome moves to the beat of a nearby bar.
A brush with Cuban music
And in Varadero, a table band in a restaurant playing the final notes of some AC-DC…It’s a matter of great regret that I didn’t hit record sooner; too busy head-banging with the rest of the restaurant-goers…
Definitely not A Touch Too Much…
In addition to hearing some heavy rock on a violin in Cuba, I have also been lucky enough – quite a few years ago – to hear Jingle Bells on a sitar in an Indian restaurant in Sri Lanka to get us in the festive spirit.
But it’s best to leave the last words to the cats and cocktails of Cuba:
Please do not park on this cat
The cocktail below is an El Presidente (there are numerous variations, but this one works a treat):
25 ml Bacardi
25 ml White Vermouth
5 ml Grand Marnier
Dash of Grenadine
Beautifully cut Orange Peel, preferably sliced very thin and in one piece – the one below was from the maestro who served us at El Floridita in Havana
Shake with ice. Pour into a Martini glass.
Glorious
Harking back to AC-DC, this cocktail is perhaps a Highway to El…
It’s my bespoke stomping ground in the Intermatrix . You are very welcome, and thanks for stopping by…
This time, I’ve had a think about how I got going with my new book, based on past experience with the others…
I’ve written and published two books, one an urban fantasy-thriller, the other a (short) book of (ultra-short) stories. I’m in the middle of my third book, a novel, around 40K words in out of probably about 75K…
What have I learned from my earlier forays?
That a rapid lift-off is important. My first novel started as more of a “write one chapter of something and see how it goes”. The longest things I had written before that were long legal opinions. I wrote the first chapter, felt good and just struck out into the ocean from my tiny island beach, trying not to be swamped by churning waves and iffy Internet.
The first chapter proved not to be the first chapter at all in the end. My initial efforts were very much aimed at describing the world and some of the denizens, I suspect more for my benefit (and pleasure) than anyone else’s.
Nothing actually happened in the book when I started it. There was a set-up scene of the main character wandering around his London HQ, bumping into what I thought of as interesting locations and characters.
Nothing changed. It was like painting a mural.
Then, when I’d properly got the taste for it, came the painful evolutionary process of re-organising material and dumping some of it – particularly any over-indulgent scene-setting material that I was too pleased with (or it simply pleased me) but did not fit the needs of a Beginning (I hate prologues, I find them too artificial and jarring with continuity).
The pick-axes and shovels had to come out…What had to go was too info-dumpy, too self-obsessed, too whatever – too needing to be cut and then pasted into an “at some point may come in useful” file. You know, the file that you never look at again, like most clippings from the Good Food magazine or that recipe book based on Madagascan delicacies that Auntie Beryl gave you six Christmases ago.
I have read thousands of books, but had never really clocked how they tend to work. I have simply read them.
Something happens to get the reader interested, the main character is introduced and is hopefully appealing, there is some sort of hook at around the end of the third chapter or so to keep the reader from the book equivalent of channel-hopping to yet another of the millions of available tomes. That all sounds very cold to me, but it wasn’t until I focused on that kick-start that things started to happen a little more fluently. And I had to realise that everything was a kick-start for the next part, phase , whatever of the book…
In my current book, I have three main protagonists, all on a collision course from the off. I have changed the running order of the first three chapters once, and I think that’ll be it. No navel-gazing, just an attempt to make sense of that and the following material. I’m just going along for the ride at the moment.
I’m eager to see what happens.
I have a rough idea of how it will end, but that’s up to Rebecca Slade, Greg Barker and Charles Fitzgerald, Cheung, Unusual Steve and the others.
In the meantime, here’s my proposed (not set in stone!) first line, which I hope you’ll find enticing…
It began with a cat, a single-decker London bus and the First World War, not necessarily in that order.
Guardian Angel
My plan is to give you periodic reports of where I’m at, now that my new book is more than a mere glimmer…
And I’m nearly ready for beta readers of the first half, if you’re interested.
First off, congratulations to Liverpool, the best team in at least Britain this year by a country mile. A great triumph, I’m delighted that it wasn’t the case in 1971.
Just get on with it…
Second, there are more important things around at the moment in the world, but the empty stadiums have somehow managed to magnify and accentuate the dire problems that football governing bodies are creating for themselves right now.
I have always loved football, even when I didn’t know better and had a Man City kit as a small kid because I liked the light blue top. That was when Man City had no money and were rubbish. How times change. My Dad supported QPR, what was I to do? Follow his lead or follow my own path?
Then Charlie George changed my football life.
I have never been to an FA Cup final, but oh boy the 1971 final, Arsenal v Liverpool, would have been the one to cash in a pile of tickets to go and see. Charlie George was majestic that day, imperious, commanding, spraying dangerous passes from midfield, buccaneering forward to let off a few long range rockets.
And then the Snow Angel Moment.
In extra time after he’d lashed home what proved to be the winner. Collapsing on the floor spreadeagled, his unspoken words, Yup, that’s how goood I am. Captivating.
That was the moment. When I became a Gooner.
My love for the club has not diminished over the years, it has kept strong, helped by the merry band of Henry & Co. and despite agonising dips and painful moments (I give you the Champions League final). They have often done stuff the hard way – That Moment in 1989 is one of the best examples. If you’re going to do it at all, please make sure you leave it more or less to the final kick of the game. Nick Hornby, take a bow for capturing the pain and the ecstasy.
My choice was rewarded by the footballing Gods when Charlie was the Legend on my Legends Tour of the Emirates. (Awesome! Like being a kid again.)
So, what’s my problem?
Three nasty little letters. V. A. R.
And two words: Handball and Offside (the main VAR issues).
My cosy little arrangement with Arsenal to scare me to death watching them – often in glorious failure – is being torpedoed by these things.
The equation is straightforward:
Football is a sport played by and refereed by human beings (for now). Human beings make mistakes. What to do about that?
The answer is not to use technology to eliminate EVERY SINGLE MISTAKE ON THE PITCH EVER. Ask Sheffield United about the Hawkeye goal-line technology (I am a fan of that tech which had been faultless until the recent debacle against Villa, but it supports my point: nothing is infallible).
That means the Powers That Be, bless them, need to get a grip before they kill the game as a spectacle.
VAR is purportedly there to get rid of stupid, obvious errors, not to take five or more minutes to pore over a video fifty times to see if one pubic hair of an attacker was in an offside position.
I guarantee that normal fans do not give a damn. Offered a choice of 100% accuracy against a free-flowing game, they would absolutely go for free-flowing. The issue that needs to be grappled with and put into a locked box on the ocean floor is that the game is the important thing, not the micro-millimetres…The argument that the money in the game makes it important to get it faultless is misguided: any cock-ups wash out over time, just get rid of obvious howlers…(If they’re not obvious, it’s not a howler.)
Yes, VAR is fledgling technology, but it is how it is applied that is the disaster area (not how it is said that it is applied).
Give the VAR referee say twenty seconds (and some Prozac: no pressure) to review an incident. If they can’t say it’s a clear and obvious error, then play on.
Until then, I will keep an avuncular eye on My Boys, but at a distance. I’ll keep my Red membership, I’ll watch them but VAR has turned off the excitement:
Gooooooal! Celebrate! Over-rule. Wait to celebrate then. Look over your shoulder after scoring, wait for it, wait for it…Maybe celebrate now? As a fan, that does not work, waiting to be told that it’s OK to yell…It’s all about the immediate adrenalin rush, not being given permission to get excited.
So:
My BT Sport subscription: Cancelling.
My Sky Sports subscription: Cancelling.
Match of the Day when things normalise more: Maybe every now and again to see if the boredom has abated.
Sad but true. I don’t want perfection, unless it’s in the form of a Charlie George screamer, not grey suits sweating not to make a mistake over the odd pixel.
This interview is reprinted from the one that I took part in for Jazzy Book Reviews during last week’s book / blog tour for my new book Lost In Plain Sight:
1. What would you consider to be your Kryptonite as an author?
Gin (even with tonic)…
2. If you could tell your younger writing self anything, what would it be?
Just get it down, then stress about it. I still need to yell that sometimes at myself…
3. What book do you feel is under-appreciated? How about overrated?
Difficult. I have my opinions on books, but we’re all entitled to our opinions, right? I’m not too bothered if I’m in the minority or the majority.
4. Favorite childhood memory involving books?
Discovering Isaac Asimov, or as an only child trying to re-enact bits of the Lord Of The Rings in the back garden.
5. If you could dine with any literary character, who would it be and why?
See below about my fictional friend!
6. What fantastical fictional world would you want to live in (if any) given the chance?
That’s a tough one, but I’ll plump for the absurdities, wonder and awesomeness of the Discworld. But only if I could be head of the City Watch.
7. Did you want to be an author when you grew up?
Yes. Being a lawyer in the intervening period from not being grown up to being a bit more grown up has allowed me the privilege of having a go at it…
8. If you had to describe yourself in three words, what would they be?
Me: creative; irreverent; obsessive
My wife when I asked her about me: stubborn; annoying; obsessive
All a question of perception, I’d say…
I’m not even going there with my nineteen-year-old twins, but grumpy would no doubt feature as one …
9. What is your most unusual writing quirk?
Writing while my Burmese cat drapes herself on the right side of my chest and sleeps. That causes problems of course: I need to choose a lot of words on the QWERTY side of the keyboard…
10. What’s one movie you like recommending to others?
Has to be Die Hard. Yippee-ki-yay!
11. If you could own any animal as a pet, what would it be?
Drogon from GOT’s looking good. I stopped being afraid of heights a while ago.
12. Have you ever met anyone famous?
Not really.
13. What is the first book that made you cry?
Black Beauty.
The Colour of Magic (Terry Pratchett) made me cry with laughter. It was my first exposure to his extraordinary perspective on the world. (Bambi was the first movie that made me cry when I was a kid, and I vividly remember Gallipoli as a teenager…)
14. How long, on average, does it take you to write a book?
I’ve written two.
The novel, Lost In Plain Sight, took around two years or so to write; the collection of ultra-ultra-short stories much less time. I’m hoping for about twelve months for my next novel (currently in production at Chapter 4 [now 20]…).
15. How do you select the names of your characters?
They just come, probably from people around me, the media, whatever. It then takes a while to get comfortable with them if they’re major characters. My half-human character, Meyra, in LIPS started as Grace (too serene for what I wanted), then Miranda (too witchy) before settling on Meyra (Other, without being too odd). Sam Franklin came straightaway. And Pagoda? Well, that’s my cat’s name…
16. What creature do you consider your “spirit animal” to be?
A Giant Panda – they seem pretty chilled.
17. What are your top 5 favorite movies?
Favourite rather than best, I hasten to add:
Die Hard (see above)
Aliens
Blade Runner
Gattaca
Parasite
18. If you were the last person on Earth, what would you do?
Find an iconic place to do a Charlton Heston impression and yell something iconic. Not the Statue of Liberty, he’s already done that. Mind you, it might take me a while to get to New York from Surrey.
19. What fictional character would you want to be friends with in real life?
Sam Vimes (from Discworld). Although, given my answer about where I ‘d want to live, I would want his job, so that might cause friction…
20. What book do you wish you had written?
I like the books I’ve written and am writing, but I love The Old Man And The Sea (Hemingway) for sheer bang for word-buck. The simplicity of the language, the timeless themes, the bleakness and the hope, all wrapped up in such a compact package. Awesome.
21. Tell us 10 fun facts about yourself!
My Joker wig is in a hat box in my wardrobe, just in case. I keep my other nine fun facts tied up in a purple bow next to it.
22. If you could live in any time period, what would it be and why?
Another wow question. Three immediate thoughts: in the 1920s, but only if I could be Bertie Wooster; mid-nineteenth century if I could invent something to get the industrial revolution going and be allowed to wear a stovepipe hat; as a 15th century explorer when anything was possible and there still might be dragons.
23. What is your favorite genre to read?
I love books that defy pigeon-holing. But if forced to choose, then it’s Fantasy. Or Thrillers (especially Noir). Probably Fantasy-thrillers. I need some humour in that, not just bleak and dark. If any Sci-fi comes along for the ride, then so much the better. And neo-Victorian, I like a bit of that. It’s very difficult. The Maltese Falcon’s Magic Blade Runner That’s Dreaming Of Electric Sheep. There. Perfect.
Alan Camrose writes books, this Blog and quizzes . His clones help him to find time to do all these things simultaneously. His coffee machine is set to intravenous. His golden retriever, Jasper, is set to Hungry Cute at all times. His cat – Pagoda – is like all cats, she doesn’t help him at all. Even though he is a certified cat-whisperer (more a cat-yeller). Pagoda rules the house with an iron claw. Alan lives with the rest of his family in Surrey. Please do visit him at his website: www.alancamrose.com
Life is more complicated these days, not necessarily in ways we would expect. It has shown us the encrusted treasure map (encrusted with spilt curry) showing the way to the Sacred Vault Of Treasures and Wisdom.
In a stale fortune cookie delivered before the Lockdown and batted by the cat under the sofa was the following list of prophecies and wise sayings which have proved to be true and have come to pass:
Confucius, he said:
There’s no need to dial 111 if Ocado doesn’t deliver the promised tub of Phish Food.
Nor is there a setting on the Sat-Nav to figure out the whereabouts of the smallest saucepan, or indeed The Mythical Teaspoons From Antiquity. Alexa is on the side of the Sat-Nav on that one, in electronic solidarity.
No matter how many times everyone looks under the cushions, the identity of the villain who changed the Amazon account password to something obscure and then forgot it will be lost in the Eternal Mists of Forgetfulness. Even though the list of suspects is short and unchanging.
If anyone so much as peeks at something on the Interthingy, a horde of Visigoth suppliers will descend on you and besiege your computer hurling entreaties to buy a 100″ TV. Be warned!
It is possible to attempt the ‘I hate you’ teenager to parent per day world record on consecutive days for the whole of Lockdown.
It is important that opened tomato ketchup bottles are left out in direct sunlight for as long as possible to ensure a proper degree of crustiness, ideally when the top has been taken off for the first time. Bonus points for hiding the lid.
The dishwaher should not only be on for every second of the day , operated in the same way as chain-smoking but with washing tablets. As a rule of thumb, it is forbidden for anyone under the age of 20 to put anything into the machine or take anything out.
Sleeping is something to be done during the daylight hours or at night. In case of confusion, treat twilight and early dawn as either daylight or night. Short breaks from sleeping are permitted to allow access to the fridge.
The high priority items in any Sainsbury’s order are party food for seven-year-olds (to feed a pair of nineteen-year-olds).
Dirty laundry is precious and should be cherished and put away in sacred – obscure – places until its blessed revelation and its casting into the Washing Machine of Purification.
And the Eleventh and most important:
Four adults can co-exist in good humour and tolerance during this period of craziness and frustration (with a bit of letting off steam)…
Raaaaaaargh! Letting off a bit of steam…
Alan Camrose writes books, this Blog and quizzes . His clones help him to find time to do all these things simultaneously. His coffee machine is set to intravenous. His golden retriever, Jasper, is set to Hungry Cute at all times. His cat – Pagoda – is like all cats, she doesn’t help him at all. Even though he is a certified cat-whisperer (more a cat-yeller). Pagoda rules the house with an iron claw. Alan lives with the rest of his family in Surrey. Please do visit him at his website: www.alancamrose.com
It’s my bespoke stomping ground in the Intermatrix . You are very welcome, and thanks for stopping by…
This time, come with me on a further look around the Household during the Lockdown through Cousin It’s fringe
The nth + whatever week of Lockdown and Father has been wondering about the follicle-related issues in the Household but is not tonsure of the results
The Family has accumulated a lot of hair over the past few months of Lockdown (apart from Jasper the Retriever who is now in full-on shedding mode for the Summer, to increase the R number in the House (Rug number)).
It is now more appropriate to refer to:
Locks-down
Zoinks!
Father has always been sub-optimal at gardening, but hair is something that he has been able to cultivate in the privacy of the House. Oh, yes.
Forget toilet paper supplies, the availability of personal grooming kits plummeted on Amazon in the early days of Lockdown. It was fuelled by crazed stockpilers. They had the determination to build up stocks of home barber kits, scissors (didn’t matter what size) and precision personal care systems (on a scale where non-precision is a strimmer). It was TOO MUCH of a temptation. Like collecting first-day covers or commemorative coins. All pristine and even now unopened.
But Father had a head start on all of them (not the Joker wig).
A few years ago, Mother-in-law bought him the Beast for Christmas. It may come in useful when you’re older: The mark of a visionary Christmas present and its ticket to the back of the wardrobe.
And now, the Beast has re-emerged.
The Beast is a Hair Clipper Gift Set. How Father laughed at the time. It has a Precision (that word again) Trimmer; an Ear-Nose Trimmer (presumably for if you feel your nose is too long or your ears too large, or you otherwise want to jam a miniature threshing machine up your nose or into your ears). It also has Precision (!) Blades in minute increments from 0.8 mm to 25 mm, 8 of them. Scissors, a barber comb, a Thumb-Adjustable Taper Lever (no, no idea).
It’s still in its packaging, in the brutally efficient-looking hard plastic carrycase that seems more suitable for an assassin to keep his silenced snap-together rifle. It’s black, of course, for added glamour.
Father is terrified of it.
When it is unleashed, it will howl and roar with the full fury of its three AAA batteries, and tear at Father’s hair and facial fur in an orgy of primitive topiary. It will make offerings of slabs of matted fluff to its ancient gods.
Father has fought it off for the moment, but the time will no doubt come when it is invoked by Mother, when Father is given a (probably justified), er, wigging about his facial furniture. She has already tackled her own head of hair in a modest and well-executed way, but Father truly believes that is a ruse to lull him into a false sense of security while she teams up with the Beast for a Shearing.
Would Father’s nineteen-year old Offspring join in? In a heartbeat. But they would only be able to do so over Father’s beautifully coiffured dead body. Anyway, they are looking after their own glut of tresses for the moment blossoming out of their heads at a frightening rate.
Resistance may be futile for Father, but until the Day Of The Beast, he stands firm (and furry).
The Lockdown has made us re-evaluate how we do many things, and hair maintenance is not exactly top priority, but this period has allowed a degree of freedom that cannot be restricted or spoiled by That Bastard Virus.
Role model for the well-haired
A BIG Thank You to the NHS, Emergency Services and Front-line workers for making the world a safer place. for all of us
Alan Camrose writes books, this Blog and quizzes . His clones help him to find time to do all these things simultaneously. His coffee machine is set to intravenous. His golden retriever, Jasper, is set to Hungry Cute at all times. His cat – Pagoda – is like all cats, she doesn’t help him at all. Even though he is a certified cat-whisperer (more a cat-yeller). Pagoda rules the house with an iron claw. Alan lives with the rest of his family in Surrey. Please do visit him at his website: www.alancamrose.com
It’s my bespoke stomping ground in the Intermatrix . You are very welcome, and thanks for stopping by…
This time, come with me on a journey around the Household during the Lockdown – forget the Olympics, it’s all here…
DADDY SMASH!!!
The nth week of Lockdown and Father has been re-evaluating his place in the Cosmic Order.
He thinks about the unexpected joys of the Offspring back from uni for an undefined and unknowable period, and the close bonding rituals that could therefore be entered into by the family to achieve a Nirvanic Utopia of harmony and shared purpose.
Then the need for another cocktail kicks in, one of the high points of the situation: a carte blanche to practise making cocktails at increasingly bizarre hours of the day. Father is the Cocktails Master, his signature chemistry experiment being an El Presidente – rum, vermouth, Grand Marnier and Grenadine, a twirl of orange peel, and see you tomorrow morning.
Not only that, his position as Regulator Of The Bins has been upgraded to Bin Czar. There was absolutely no competition whatsoever for the role, but with increased teenager presence (Father hesitates to use the word activity) it has become more of another career than a vocation. The increased fun of 4-D (with added aroma) Hide and Seek to Feed the Bins: searching for increasingly obscurely stashed ancient plastic and glass objects. Many dusted with a delicate layer of darkening yoghurt or a veneer of pasta sauce starting to glow in the shadows.
A joyous game for all the family to play.
Is Hide and Seek the correct comparison? Perhaps more a game of Jenga, where increasing archaeological layers of food are added to the sedimentary terrain until, finally, Father breaks.
When he breaks, he utters the magical words much sought after in the teenager community as the sign of a High Score: Where have all the bloody teaspoons gone?!
The answer of course lies in the Dark Regions of the Offsprings’ lairs.
There are other games that can be played with Father, to the extent that there’s no need to pine for the postponed Olympics when there’s a Pentathlon just sitting there at home, ready to go. All participants are certified to be at gold medal standard.
How about the High Hurdles?
The indoor version involves leaping over clothes carefully sorted into mountainous piles of mixed washed and unwashed clothes strewn between the bedroom door starting line to the finishing line at the window. As a word of warning, a lap of the room is not feasible except for parents who can fly.
The 4×100 Empty Box event, a test of Father’s nerve and resilience as empty cardboard boxes, cunningly disguised as part of the food supplies, are left lurking in out of the way cupboards. With. No. Food. Left. In. Them.
There’s also the Puss In Boots Eyes triple jump event in the pokey cupboard off the living room which houses all the Internet kit. Mummy joins the field on this one. Father particularly enjoys this sport, especially during the Lockdown when the country’s Internet resources are being taxed to the limit.
Once properly kitted out, all the contestants adopt a doleful, big-eyed stance (points are awarded for style) and take careful aim at Father with a brisk and accusing The Internet Isn’t Working. Like the sport of throwing the javelin but with a live target.
That is followed by the second element of the event: the deeply disappointed look. This is deployed when, after a record breaking 35 seconds of Father turning the router off and then on again – using his mystical (and unknowable to the rest of the household) Turn Off/Turn On Manoeuvre, the chant from the terraces is that the Internet Is Still Not Working.
The third and final phase has Father adopting enforced yoga and Turkish massage poses to fit into the Cupboard – the Shrine to the Interweb – with a bent paperclip and the Virgin manual written in Japanese to Reset The System.
Eventually, whether by Father’s efforts or the service provider quietly pressing a few buttons in their secret base to get rid of him, the Internet comes back on with the joyous return of Three White Lights, doing what it had been doing an hour ago.
There is no ticker-tape or open-top bus parade, instead a quick check of the stop watch by the participants to see what performance improvements could be achieved next time.
Finally, it’s onward to the Marvel Cinematic Universe Marathon, all the movies in chronological order.
Alan Camrose writes books, this Blog and quizzes . His clones help him to find time to do all these things simultaneously. His coffee machine is set to intravenous. His golden retriever, Jasper, is set to Hungry Cute at all times. His cat – Pagoda – is like all cats, she doesn’t help him at all. Even though he is a certified cat-whisperer (more a cat-yeller). Pagoda rules the house with an iron claw. Alan lives with the rest of his family in Surrey. Please do visit him at his website: www.alancamrose.com
