Somewhere over the Rainbow
By Dominic Horton
Based on the recent content of
this column, on Sunday Chompa Babbee accused me or suffering from Season
Affective Disorder (known as SAD).
Chompa has known me long enough to realise that I am a miserable soul
all year round and not just in the dark and gloomy winter months. In fact as a season winter is second only
to autumn as my favourite with summer being the bottom of my list; I’m
generally not one for sunshine and the heat and this year will be even worse as
since I recently started to suffer from mildgraines my weary eyes seem to have
developed an aversion to bright lights and glaring sunshine. Recently though I have a longing feeling
that I want to go to sleep. I do not
mean that I want to end my life but just get a bit of restful, peaceful
sleep. I have plenty of chance to sleep,
and I am more fortunate than most in that regard but try as I may I never feel
properly rested. So maybe Chompa is onto
something after all and that I subconsciously want to hibernate to see out the
cold, dark winter. If I could hibernate
in the Flagon & Gorses it might not altogether be a bad thing especially as
mostly that’s where my nuts tend to be anyway.
Poor old Willy Mantitt has two
small children who like tag wrestlers take it in turn to keep him awake every
evening and as a consequence he gets about as much shut eye as a prisoner in
Guantanamo Bay being tortured by sleep deprivation. I simply do not know how Willy copes or
others in his position. He has taken to
nipping out of the office on the rouse of doing some business (which is usually
shady in his world) and having a nap in his motor on ASDA car park.
I had to coax myself out of a
deep sleep on Monday morning which was the product of the tonic or two that I
was administered at the Flagon & Gorses the preceding day. I must have looked a pitiful sight sitting
in my living room eating my unappetising breakfast, contemplating the week
ahead. Life outside of my Codger
Mansions home seemed harsh, noisy and foreboding, with traffic clattering and
banging at great speed up and down Furnace HIll. I didn’t want to leave the quiet comfort of
the house and step outside into the frosty, unwelcoming world. But of course it had to be done as work
beckoned and besides the living room still smells of the fetid odour from last
week’s electrical fire, despite all my efforts to freshen things up. I will have to invite Windy McDisco and the
Pirate round to shift the smell by imparting their own special aromas. It is debatable which stench is worse.
I could try to make work
un-beckon itself as together with everyone else in the office I have been given
the chance to apply for voluntary redundancy and it is a matter to which I have
given a great deal of thought and procrastination. There are many pros and cons but it was the
thought of sitting with the Pirate all day in the Flagon & Gorses that
finally sealed my decision. I haven’t
applied. Having a few grand in my sky
rocket with empty days stretched out before me like a Roman road will doubtless
lead to my ruination and lead me swiftly to the gutter, at least I am headed
there at a slow, steady crawl at the moment.
Anyway, there is no guarantee that my employers will accept my
application to let me go, so vital am I to the structure of the large organisation,
so important in fact that people barely know I am there half of the time; I am
sure if I slipped out of the office quietly and retreated to the Flagon, no one
would notice I had gone. My name has
never graced a structure chart and in the food chain of the company I am merely
a krill, at the mercy of bigger fish.
Having a mundane existence employed as a small cog in the
wheels of a big corporate business I have to take pleasure in life where I can
get it. However, according to the
Guardian the government are having a new crackdown on legal highs but I hope
this means that they are not going to ban Pat Debilder’s legendary pies, that
have found their way to me recently, or the another warming and hearty treat in
the form of Angel Brewery’s Pirate 63 stout.
It would be a bitter pill to swallow if the pies and stout are outlawed
and my addiction to them would mean that I would have to go through a testing
period of cold turkey, which would only be assuaged slightly by a drop of mild
and a pork pie from the Flagon & Gorses.
Mind you, I could do with steering clear of rich food
stuffs as I felt a stirring of gout in the ball of my left foot on Tuesday and
I had to flush it out by drinking copious amounts of water, which meant
spending an increasing amount of time visiting the lavvy. Talking of the karsi, I did something on the
weekend that I have not done for quite a while, which is going for a poo but
forgetting to do a wee, so having to pay a swift return visit to do the
urination bit. This only normally
happens when I am in a state of desperation to do the No 2 and it is generally
a rare occurrence. Luckily this
happened at home as it might be a source of embarrassment if the scene of the
crime was a public lavatory.
On the subject of going down the pan my hitherto trusty
(take away the letter “t” from trusty you end up with rusty, which is very
fitting) and stoic motor vehicle Pat has seemingly reached the end of his days
after failing his MOT this week in spectacular fashion. When I took him in for his yearly inspection
the mechanic was amazed that the dilapidated Pat had made it through another
year and this little victory gave me the blind faith and deluded belief that he
would pass the MOT after a few minor repairs.
But sadly it was not to be. It
is off to the knackers yard and I am crushed that Pat will be crushed. He has served me well and he at least
deserves a mournful Last Post to be played as he shuffles off his mortal
ignition coil. At least I know that he
won’t have to suffer the indignities of being stripped for useful parts as he
hasn’t got any. Pat will defiantly meet
his end whole without any of his bits being stripped for vehicular science.
More than anything else MOT day acts as a crystallisation
of a hand to mouth existence which involves constantly clinging onto the edge
of a cliff with fingernails slowly slipping away from the precipice. Somewhere over the rainbow I might have
enough shekels in the war chest to not worry about the car going in for its
MOT, but it is unlikely. There does seem
to be a lot of money around though for a lot of people though and I am not
talking about those near the top of food chains but relatively ordinary
persons. These are people who must know
how to play the game and how to win at it.
I do not know what the game is, let alone the rules and I doubt whether
I would be cut out for it anyway. The
game I play is one of survival but it is not one that Ray Mears would be able
to offer any advice on.
The alternative to surviving is not an appealing one and I
have no choice but to keep my head above water as I cannot swim. Given the frequent downpours we have had
recently I have had to wear armbands when walking through the yard area to the
toilets at the Flagon & Gorses but at least the good chaps at the
Environment Agency undertook work on the River Stour on Furnace Hill, so us
residents have not had to drive through floods at the bottom of the slope this
year with a Stour taste in our mouths. I
would love to drive through that flood water one more time with Pat, gleefully
rolling through the water together, but is not to be. I have little alternative
but to undertake another favourite pastime instead, which is decamping to the
Flagon & Gorses to raise a glass in memory of Pat and to cook up a scheme
to acquire another cheap, antiquated motor so I can travel freely around the
parish once more.
© Dominic Horton, February 2014.
* EMAIL:
lordhofr@gmail.com
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