Mentally
I am at my best and most alert in the mornings and that is when I
tend to write this nonsense but physically I am at my worst and most
decrepit first thing. I feel like an octogenarian and my back nags
at me and my legs feel like concrete. Lord knows how I will feel in
the mornings if I reach a ripe old age. On peeling myself out of bed
this week I’ve felt particularly dilapidated as I have had the
pleasure of being with my dear son Kenteke, which involves a lot of
football, cricket, tennis and generally running around. The
physicality of playing sport with Kenteke has probably enfeebled me
more than ever due to my third mid-life crisis, which is now passing
quietly by without me having the customary tattoo.
The
mid-life crisis has at least brought about one positive change, being
that of me drinking half pints instead of full pints in the Flagon &
Gorses. I have been using the half pint tactic for over a week now
and the experiment has been wholly successful which has had obvious
health benefits but also great financial attractions too; my beer
consumption and expenditure on it as been reduced by fifty per cent.
It is a novelty leaving the Flagon with bank notes in my wallet and
brightness in my eyes.
The
new approach has been so successful that when I was faced with
drinking a pint on Sunday it seemed like a foreboding amount of
liquid. I have taken my own half pint glass to the Flagon, which has
a handle and a thick, glass bottom, as psychologically it appears
that I have more beer in said glass than in a regulation half pint
glass and I for one fall for the optical illusion every time. The
real beauty of the scheme is that the more that I drink, the more
money I save. A typical pint in the Flagon is £2.90, so I am saving
£1.45 every half pint that I drink which means that instead of
drinking six halves I need to drink twelve, which will mean I will
save £17.40 instead of £8.70, thereby generating more money. I
think that I have unwittingly invented a drink yourself rich scheme
and I may write a book on the subject which could rival Dr Atkins's
diet book as an international best seller. I shall call the book,
Half Pint to Heaven,
which
is a cross between the titles of two songs, Led Zeppelin's Stairway
to Heaven and
Billy Fury's Halfway
to Paradise. When
the readers of the book realise that they are being conned the book
will go down like a lead zeppelin and they will show me a great deal
of fury I am sure.
I
could use the money that I am saving from decreased beer expenditure
to re-join the gymnasium, which I quit for mostly fiscal reasons a
few months ago, especially as they sent me a message in the week
informing me that I could now subscribe with them at the reduced rate
of £20 per month, as opposed to the usual rate of £32. However,
this type of marketing does not generally attract me as if they had
offered me the deal when I was a member I would not have left in the
first place. Car insurers use the same warped marketing approach.
When your insurance runs out your current insurer will often quote
you significantly more than the year before, which prompts punters to
search for a better quote. Once you have opted for the cheapest
quote you inform your current insurers that you are not renewing with
them and they then instantly offer to undercut your new quote by
reducing the extortionate price they gave you in the first place. At
this point I always suggest to my current insurers to naff off,
informing them that I have no time for their sneaky, underhand
techniques.
My
decision to leave the gym in the first place was mostly financial but
I was also constantly irritated by the awful, blaring music that was
pumped out, from which there was no escape. If I attended the gym
when it opened at 0630 hrs occasionally they would take pity and
would refrain from subjecting me to the unmelodious dirge and it was
pure bliss but after a while the thumping music would begin,
shattering the early morning peace and it seemed even more bothersome
at that hour. To make matters worse the gym appeared to only own one
CD, so the same nauseating tunes would be played time after time and
I would be unable to shake them from my mind during the day. I
believe the KGB used to use a similar torture tactic. I do not know
why gymnasiums have to play music at all as if a member wants to
listen to music during exercise they will bring their own portable
device to play it on. I sometimes used to take a personal radio to
the gym to listen to a broadcast on BBC radio but it was no use, as I
could not hear the programme above the din.
The
inhabitants of Umpalungu, Zambia also have the ability to make a din
as I witnessed this on television whilst watching a rerun of Michael
Palin's Pole to Pole the
other day. A man was up for murder and an odd “trial” was being
undertaken with the local witch doctor orchestrating proceedings in a
room packed with onlookers who all seemed to have the words “guilty”
burning in their gazing eyes. They whipped the accused's shirt off
his back, knelt him down and bunged a live chicken on his head before
making him perform a shuffling sort of dance. The hearing was
accompanied by the kind of repetitive, hypnotic and foreboding music
that the Africans excel in. All in all the accused must have been
sh*tting himself. The whole débâcle was being undertaken in a
bungalow, so it was comparable to a Darby & Joan club meeting on
acid. Frustrating Palin did not announce the outcome of the trial
or what became of the chicken. The Africans definitely do things
differently, but different does not necessarily equate to wrong.
Lowlife
has not yet quite taken off in
Africa but I found out by accident last week that the column has
shockingly been read by unfortunate readers in places as far away and
diverse as Russia, United States, Germany, Ireland, Holland,
Australia, Poland, China and France. China?! Who on Earth in China
would want to read this? I can only assume that the Baby Faced
Assassin from the Rharely Peking Chinese take away has recommended
Lowlife to his family
back home, which would be a real turn up for the books. Whilst
waiting for some of the Rharely Peking's delectable haute cuisine the
other Saturday, which I ordered out of desperation, I quizzed the
Baby Faced Assassin behind the counter on Chinese art and asked him
politely if he could enlighten me a little on the subject. To my
dismay and indignant disgust the Assassin replied that he knew
nothing about Chinese Art, which in that instant I found to be
altogether unsatisfactory. It was not until I thought about the
incident later, as I munched on my Szechuan Beef, that I realised
that the Assassin is entitled to know sod all about the art of the
Orient as it is not a prerequisite of being employed in a take away
in Halesowen after all. If the Assassin showed his baby face in
the Flagon and asked me to provide him with a few nuggets of
information on English art, I would be equally baffled as I do not
know a Turner from a Constable but I do know a decent pint of bitter
when I taste it.
It
is round two with the counsellor in the morning and I hope it all
goes off as well as my visit to Shulman, my Indian dentist wizard,
today. My early reservations about Shulman (see Lowlife No
9) have completely melted away
and he has gone up in my estimation immeasurably. Today Shulman
again exhibited his new age dentistry techniques and he subjected me
to an executive tooth polish which he undertook using what appeared
to be a mini drill that merely pleasantly tickled the inside of my
mouth. My teeth have not gleamed so much since childhood and due to
Shulman's neo-dentistry I feel like a new man. More importantly,
Shulman gave my teeth a clean bill of health (even the cracked, half
molar), which was especially important as my current funds would not
have stretched even to the tiniest of fillings. As I left Shulman's
surgery my only regret was that I wished that I had asked him for a
brief synopsis on the history of Indian art.
©
Dominic Horton, August, 2013.
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