Lowlife 55 – The Phantasm & Mr Fox

The Phantasm & Mr Fox

By Dominic Horton

In the last edition of this column I wrote about my incompetence regarding romantic relationships and my general apathy towards them, which has consequently left me in a state of tolerable solitude.  Things have taken a turn for the worse this week as even the phantasm that regularly used to visit me in a recurring nightmare has abandoned me without so much as leaving a Dear John letter.  I do not know what I have done to upset my old friend the phantasm but he has not invaded my dreams this calendar year after stopping by at least once a week for the last few decades.   Instead of inducing nightmares maybe the pre-Christmas cheese night in the Flagon & Gorses acted as an antidote resultantly chasing the phantasm out of the windmills of my mind.   Whatever the reason, he’s gone and by the looks of it he’s not coming back.  This leaves just me and my long suffering teddy Alfie in Codger Mansions in addition to my friends the woodlice and spiders. 

Come to think of it the Furnace Lane foxes have not crossed my path for a while so it looks like they have deserted me also and foxed off back to their burrows.   I used to see a fox and occasionally a badger on Furnace Lane pretty much every Sunday night on the way back from the Flagon & Gorses and not being able to fund a trip to the Serengeti it was the closest I have ever got to being on safari.  I have an affinity with foxes with them being creatures of the night and I find the sight of one quite a magical experience which I always find uplifting.  One Sunday in the summertime a fox stood motionless on Furnace Lane in the moonlight looking suspiciously at me and I carefully edged my way towards the wary beast and to my surprise I got within yards of the fox with him remaining still, his gaze resting on me.  For what was no more than a couple of seconds the fox and I stood there, him looking at me and me returning his stare until suddenly he bolted and fled off into the night.  It was quite simply a mesmerising moment, one I will cherish forever.

I will need the cunning of a fox to get through the next couple of months with my war chest being empty, especially with Pat’s MOT being due soon, which fills me with fear due to his decrepit condition.  The problem with working as an underling in banking is that it is like the line in Coleridge’s poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, “Water, water, everywhere, and all the boards did shrink, water, water, everywhere, Nor any drop to drink” as the industry is awash with money, both in terms of the cash flowing through the institution and the bonuses and salaries of my superiors, but none of it is mine.  I can look but I can’t touch.  It was heartening though to read about the sacking of rich Singapore based banker Anton Casey who put the following message on Facebook after he had to suffer the indignities of public transport when his Porsche was in the garage, "Ahhhh reunited with my baby. Normal service can resume, once I have washed the stench of public transport off me."  He also put a picture of his son on the train on Facebook with the following caption: "Daddy, where is your car and who are all these poor people?"  Tw*t.  In my book arrogance is a vulgar characteristic and I am glad that in this instance the demeaning Casey got his rightful comeuppance.

One banker who has had a better week than Casey is Jamie Dimon, the Chairman and Chief Executive of JP Morgan, who has found out that he will be remunerated to the tune of $20m for last year’s work.   I doubt whether Dimon will be trying to fashion a soup out of the contents of his sparsely populated fridge, which is what I will be doing this evening.   The fridge contains sprouts and bacon so it could be a new culinary low in Codger Mansions.  That said sometimes such concoctions exceed all expectations and turn out to be an award winning dish.  If you start out with a base of onion, celery and carrot (which I usually have knocking about) with a soup, in my experience you can’t go far wrong and there have been more high points than low in my kitchen.    Last night the Pirate and Ung Pirat were describing the state of their kitchen in the Flagon & Gorses living quarters, which is apparently piled high with washing up and the like and I said, “that sounds horrendous” and the Pirate retorted, “I would be happy if the kitchen was just horrendous, it is much worse than that.” 

Sprouts are the favourite food stuff of the Abdul, a dear crony from the Flagon & Gorses.   On the weekend I heard the dreadful news from Frank Henstein in the Flagon that the Abdul has had a stroke whilst holidaying in Goa, India, a favoured haunt of his.   The poor Abdul has been looking forward to the trip after having an annus horribilis last year.  Luckily one of his travelling companions is a nurse and she realised what was happening straight away and got him to the hospital pronto.  The doctors are hopeful that Abdul will make a full recovery and he should return to these shores shortly.   Despite concern for Abdul being at the forefront of the thoughts of all Flagoners inevitably such news leads to ponderings on one’s mortality and it made me feel fortunate to have my own physical health.   As the Scottish coach John McSeveney used to say with great zeal and vigour to my old footballing pal Fred E Mercury and unenthusiastic players at Sheffield United on cold and wet mornings at the training ground in the 1970’s, “aye, it’s good to be alive!”

I felt less than alive on Monday morning as despite not being in too bad a condition, and having had a relatively early night the day before, the booze terrors were working their evil.  I had the odd sensation when I walked into work that I was in a place that I wasn’t meant to be, like sitting unwelcome in a stranger’s front room with all the family staring at me asking themselves, “who on Earth is that man and what is he doing here?”  The booze terrors have no bounds in how distinctly uncomfortable they can make a person feel and once you are afflicted by the condition there is no escape without being treated with more alcohol and occasionally even that does not work.  You have to take the terror demons on the chin and laugh in their face but you know that they will laugh back at you with a wrathful, devilish cackle. 

One organisation who is effectively laughing in my face is Npower (NincompoopPower) as they have offered me a paltry £75 as a “goodwill gesture” for illegally breaking into my Codger Mansions home in order to inspect the gas meter.   To make things worse like a stubborn schoolboy in a playground argument NincompoopPower are refusing to accept they are in the wrong despite damning, irrefutable evidence that I have presented to them to show that I made every effort to arrange appointments to allow access to the property.    I have dismissed NincompoopPower’s unreasonable offer out of hand and made them a counter offer but they have failed to reply so now it is off to the Ombudsman.  I wouldn’t mind but like everyone else I have to pay a fortune for my power, with bills spiralling out of control in the last few years.  The BBC reported last week that Poor NincompoopPower claimed in a recent report they make little profit and that higher energy distribution costs will lead to further price rises but the energy regulator Ofgem has deemed the report, “misleading” as the figures quoted in the report were wrong.  Naughty NincompoopPower. 

Next up, according to the Telegraph the Chief Executive of NincompoopPower Paul Massara claims that energy prices are higher in the UK due to the country’s “old and draughty” houses.  I live in the same old and draughty house that I was in five years ago yet in that time my combined gas and electricity bill has increased by a whopping 33% despite my usage not increasing.   I can take an educated guess that Massara does not live in a cold and draughty house and have to heat his living room with a cheap halogen heater from Wilkos.

Talking of cold and draughty, having again populated this column with a disjointed collection of words I am off up the Flagon & Gorses for a well-earned tipple.  The adjectives cold and draughty are not in relation to the pub itself but in reference to the landlord, my comrade the Pirate, bless the bearded skipper and all who sail in him.

© Dominic Horton, January 2014.

* EMAIL: lordhofr@gmail.com.