A Lone Ranger
By Dominic Horton
Following my
latest romantic calamity I am slowly coming around to the creeping realisation
that being on my own is actually my natural modus operandi. Burdening a potential partner with my habits,
quirks and shortcomings (of which there are many) would be an unfair imposition
on someone that I liked and if I didn’t like them then there would be no point
in being with them in the first place. Fundamentally
I am a creature that prefers to lurk alone in Codger Mansions and in the bar of
the Flagon & Gorses, fraternising with the other inmates who loiter
there.
There are of
course pros and cons to being on one’s own.
I can stumble up the Flagon & Gorses when I want to (finances
permitting) and I do not have to sit through anything on television that is not
to my taste such as Coronation Street, a snippet of which I recently had to
suffer at someone’s house and I was horrified at how truly awful it was. Complete and utter dross. The acting of one of the cast (who has been
on the show for many years but I do not know his name or character’s name [he
is Mancunian but I know that is hardly much of a clue]) was shallower than the
shallow end in a flea’s swimming pool.
The main
drawback of solo living is usually perceived to be loneliness and in my case
there is an element of that but I think I would still feel lonely, or more
accurately desolate, if I lived with a woman, even if I was head over heels in
love with the poor soul, so that in itself is no reason for me to seek a
companion. “Sharing” things seems to be
one of the main reasons why people like to be in a relationship but I can
easily share the miseries of life with my fellow internees at the Flagon &
Gorses any day of the week. To my mind
the biggest disbenefit of living alone is a fiscal one as I have to pay the
rent and the bills with only my insubstantial income. Like most things in life it usually boils
down to pounds, shillings and pence in the end.
The inimitable Colly Coren explained to me a few years ago that he is so
set in his ways and used to his own routines that he would find it almost
impossible to live with a woman and he then enlightened me with the comment
that at our ages (he’s 10 years older than me the cheeky b*stard) men are only
seeking women for companionship as reasonably, procreation is out of the
question. Fair enough I thought. But then he condemned me by saying that I am
as crotchety, stubborn and inflexible as him and would not last five minutes
living with a woman. I immediately
disputed Coren’s assessment of me but on reflection later I realised that he
was actually on the money. It is a case
of others knowing you better than you know yourself. One of the reasons why periodically I have
tenuously tried to find a suitable partner is that subconsciously I want prove
Coren wrong but his wisdoms have won the day.
Often society views
living alone as not a natural state but people are increasingly doing it. CBS reported that 17% of Americans lived
alone in 1970 but by 2012 the figure had increased to 27%. In Britain it is reported that 34% of people
currently live alone. There often seems
to be an assumption that people would rather not live on their own and that all
singletons are relentlessly pursuing potential partners like Captain Ahab
obsessively hunting his nemesis, the great white whale, in Moby Dick. We all know what
grisly fate befell Ahab after he ignored Starbuck’s voice of reason to cease
his chase for the whale. My voice of
reason tells me that my status quo of living in a solitary fashion is the way
it is meant to be for me. Anyway, a
dim view is taken of whaling in this day and age so my harpoon sits idle in the
shed acting only as a reminder of former glories.
One thing is for sure
I can ill afford to have a girlfriend at the moment at the pennies are few and
the creditors many. (Incidentally,
“Girlfriend” and “boyfriend” seem awkward words to apply to people in their
40’s or older and if I had a “partner” it would make it sound like we ran a
window cleaning business together.)
Although I know full well that I am over my overdraft limit (which was
inevitable after Christmas) the Bank keep sending me letters to remind me of
the fact just to rub my nose in it which doesn’t put me in the best of moods,
especially as it brings to the forefront of my consciousness that all I have
managed to muster for myself in life is a hand to mouth existence that
constantly teeters perilously on the brink of oblivion, both in a financial and
emotional sense, like the van balanced on the cliff at the end of The Italian Job – maybe that image
should be printed on the front of the envelopes of the bank’s letters to me to
indicate their content so that I could throw them away without even having to
open them.
The charity Shelter
recently reported that as many as one in nine people put unopened bills
straight in the bin unable to face up to their financial predicament. There are an awful lot of people in the
country worse of that me in these difficult times as the Shelter report stated
that last year approximately a fifth of the adult population of the country had
to borrow money to pay their rent or mortgage.
The Mexican at work questioned why there has been no revolution given
the state of the country and we agreed that a revolution might not be a bad
idea to shake things up. But we thought
we would have a cup of tea before we hatched plans to storm parliament. It
would have to wait until later as we had more pressing matters to attend to
such as discussing the weekend’s football results, which was a shame as I can
just envisage after the revolution Mex triumphantly parading around Trafalgar
Square on a horse like Pancho Villa.
If I could earn a few
quid from this writing lark it might ease the pecuniary pressure but I am not
holding my breath for any success.
Apparently the successful Pakistani writer Mohsin Hamid, whose last book
is entitled How to Get Rich in Rising
Asia, divides his time between Lahore,
New York, London, and Mediterranean countries including Italy and Greece. Being a penniless writer of significantly
less talent and resource than Hamid I divide my time between my Codger Mansions
bolt hole and my retreat of choice the Flagon & Gorses. The Flagon is not a tax haven but more like a
haven from a taxing life.
A safe haven for
everyone is the toilet but I have been having increasing difficulties in the
karsi this week as the toilet seat, which has been broken for some time, has
taken a turn for the worse and is in a terminal condition. I will have to wait until payday to buy a
new seat so in the meantime visits to the toilet for a number two are fraught
with danger. Mind you things are not as
bad as a few years ago when there was a crack down the front of the toilet seat,
which didn’t cause much of a problem until one day when I unwittingly got my
foreskin caught in it, which needless to say was not pleasant and it bought
tears to my eyes.
The sight that greeted
me Tuesday last in the Flagon & Gorses also bought tears to my eyes but
fortunately on that occasion they were tears of laughter. The Pirate and Harry Stottle were muddling
through the crossword but given that they had been indulging in a bit of
overage drinking for the preceding few hours the whole thing was a farcical
fiasco. The pair were making such a
hash of the crossword that yours truly had to step in and provide a couple of answers
and I am generally as bad at word puzzles as the Pirate is at running the
marathon.
But in fairness to the
Pirate and Stottle despite their tipsiness and advancing years they got there
in the end and completed the crossword, in a fashion. We get by in life by managing such little achievements
and I have just about achieved writing another 1,500 words of nonsense for this
edition, so until next time adios amigos.
©
Dominic Horton, 2014.
Email: lordhofr@gmail.com
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