Category: People

It’s called Iceland for a reason, dummy

~ kevinrevell ~ 2 Comments

Yet another ‘sorry I’ve not been bothered to write a blog for ages’ apology to start. Sorry.

In particular, sorry to the several (yes, several) people who mentioned this in the pub last weekend. And not that there’s been nothing to write about, either. Since the last time we met*, me & the Mrs have been on a few adventures, Norwich City have managed to drag themselves into new lows/highs/lows on a weekly basis, and there’s been fun & games with bicycles, running, dogs and music, often all in one day. So sorry. Again.

With that in mind, I’m going to start jotting down some thoughts on being away from home (incidentally, until recently the only place that NCFC have had any success this season), and, more or less in reverse order. And then it’ll be time to tackle some of the weightier questions of the day, such as how to manage when your dog becomes older than you, what age is appropriate to stop messing around in bands, and why your smoking history may say more about brand affinity than any market research programme.

First then, to Iceland. We’d decided to go to Iceland last summer, when you might remember, it was desperately hot. Unlike myself, Mrs E doesn’t really enjoy any temperature much above 15°C, so was quite keen on planning some time away, to go, I suppose, to a place not in the sun.

Taking this sort of decision was, in retrospect, a bit of a knee jerk reaction. Just like how you shouldn’t go to the supermarket when you’re hungry, get married for the presents or lead a government with no qualification to do so, booking a cold holiday for January when you’re hot in August should really take account of the fact that you’re going to be bloody cold for a good few months before you go. But we were also going because Mrs E believes that being cold, and in particular, being cold while submerged in water is good for her joints (insert your own joke here about making them difficult to light). So it seemed an ideal destination.

Mrs E is also fascinated by countries that can be dark all the time, or light all the time, and that’s a box that was ticked almost immediately on arriving in Reykjavik around 4pm in complete darkness, and by spotting the first tiny bit of sunlight just after 11am the next day. But Iceland seems to manage its way through darkness by making the most of it. We were there mid January and were surprised to find Christmas lights everywhere – we were told later that they stay up typically to the end of February, as they lift the spirits during the more depressing months of the year. Blocks of flats have matching lights across all the balconies, often paid for by the building owners, and we heard of fines being issued if you didn’t do your bit to cheer up your fellow man. Indoors seems to be a bit different – Iceland appears to have taken elements of the Danish hygge movement to its heart, so that any time you walk into a public building, hotel or restaurant you’re plunged into darkness, even during that narrow window of light outdoors. On a couple of occasions we had to search for things we’d dropped in the hotel room by using the torches on our phones , and we used the same technique in restaurants, fearing that if we didn’t get the order right that we might be landed with some of that tasty fermented shark that we’d heard about.

Reykjavik, some time between 11am and 3pm

Maybe these low wattage rooms were something to do with conserving energy, you might think. And you’d be completely wrong. Where the rest of the world wrings its hands and pays lip service to our apparent energy-driven oblivion, Iceland sits back with a pious grin on its face. It may not be that great for fresh food, or a stable tectonic environment, but it does very nicely for clean energy, thank you very much. Electricity comes from geothermic water processing and hydroelectric dams. Hot water goes straight from the geysers and underground sources into the pipes that provide domestic hot water, which is why in older buildings you can still smell the sulphur when you turn on the hot tap. There’s so much electricity being generated that Iceland has three of the world’s largest aluminium smelters, and Icelanders pay around €90 a month for all of their utility bills.

So, they’re pretty well sorted in lots of ways, and now that most people have forgotten the Icelanders’ part in crashing the world economy in 2008, they seem to be making up their economic numbers with a heavy focus on tourism, which provides about 40% of Iceland’s annual exports, 10% of its GDP, and 15% of the workforce. This is mainly focussed in Reykjavik, where curious tourists like ourselves can step out of their darkened rooms onto a dark streets and be picked up and transported across the dark landscape to lagoons and geysers and frozen waterfalls, all of which have a significant wow factor. And if you’re adventurous, and don’t mind being cold and very patient, you can go out and search for the northern lights, probably the greatest tourist money-spinner of all. We were very keen to see the greatest free show on earth, so forked out £60 each to stand on the side of a big boat for a couple of hours in -10°C at 10pm. The lights did make an appearance about an hour after we’d set off, and danced about the sky while about 200 tourists scrambled for their phones to take some very grainy photos. Our captain obviously wanted to get a good look as well, so turned the boat towards the lights, at which point all 200 of us rushed to the stern of the boat, in a scene eerily reminiscent of the last scenes of Titanic.

Not entirely satisfied with our dodgy photos from the boat, we chatted to a couple of Icelandic folk, who advised us that Thursday would be a far better night for chasing the northern lights, but we’d be better off going by minibus across the island and away from the light pollution of Reykjavik. It was going to be a bit more expensive, but the trip did include hot chocolate and, more to the point, ‘if anyone was going to find the northern lights, it would be the driver of that minibus’. So, we were duly despatched from the hotel late on Thursday, hopped into the minibus, and spent several hours experiencing the art of searching for the lights. In practice, this seemed to be about getting off the main road and heading into the heart of Iceland, on narrower and narrower roads, stopping occasionally for the driver to jump out, look up at the sky, tut loudly then jump back in the bus and drive on again. A word about Iceland’s roads at this point. There is a main road that goes around the island, imaginatively called the ring road. This is used a lot, and looks like it is gritted. As a rule, no other roads are. Certainly no footpaths are gritted, although some people clear the snow from outside their houses, and you sometimes see a bit of black ash scattered on the paths to make them a bit less slippery. But once you’re off the ring road, you’re driving on a mix of snow and ice. Or in our case, being driven at pace by a born again fearless Viking who was keen to get his charges to their destination in record time. We wouldn’t have been surprised at all if he’d put up a novelty fairground sign with ‘Scream If You Want To Go Faster’ written on it. So a long journey, but far from boring. We stopped, as above, to check to see if the northern lights were any more visible from a layby than from the windscreen. We stopped for hot chocolate, which was hard to drink with mittens and wrapped up like the invisible man, but delicious nonetheless. We even stopped to help our fellow tourists, as our driver skidded to a halt and cried (in a very non-Viking style) ‘Let’s go and do some good, guys’, and we piled out of the bus to try and push a hire car out of a snowdrift. I realised this was unlikely to work as I found myself waist high in snow as we tried to push the car out. But we were in the middle of nowhere, so at least we were able to give the three Spanish tourists a lift back to Reykjavik. You’d think they’d be grateful, but for some reason they weren’t too happy about being rescued when they heard they’d be out for another three hours – kept muttering about having a flight the next morning and needing to tell someone that their car was in a ditch with no known location. Anyway, they held back, looking fairly unimpressed when, half an hour after the rescue, the driver finally stopped the bus and let us out. The driver was very excited.

‘Trust me” , he said, “I think I see them”.

To be fair, the ‘fairly unimpressed’ feeling was quite contagious. We’d piled out of the bus, expecting bright green fires dancing across the heavens, ended up looking at a grey sky that was only slightly less grey than the ones we’d been looking at for the previous three hours. Echoing the punchline of the Emperor’s New Clothes, an apologetic voice referenced the whole grey/green dilemma.

“Aah, but look at the photograph!” triumphed the driver.

Among his many other talents, out reckless Viking driver was an enthusiastic photographer, and had set up tripod, support lights and very expensive camera, every time we’d stopped, and this time he was fairly skipping with excitement. Sure enough, as we lined up to look at the screen on the back of the camera, we saw quite a bit of green sky. Unfortunately, as the actual (very grey) sky was also quite visible, it took quite a bit of Viking mansplaining to tell us that his camera had a more sophisticated understanding of light than our own eyes. Having said which, who were we to pass up the chance of a free photo?

“I bet they’re right in front of us”, we were both thinking

I mentioned Mrs E’s enthusiasm for managing her well-being by getting extremely cold, and ideally submerged, and Iceland in January was, in many ways, her ideal destination. We spent time in the (not so) Secret Lagoon with quite a few other tourists, swimming around between temperatures from baby-bathing to vegetable-blanching, then getting out in our cossies to hobble across the ice to the changing rooms. We had what Mrs E described as possibly the best day of her life, at the Sky Lagoon, where we descended down tiled steps into 38°C water with so much fog that we couldn’t see beyond a couple of metres – it took us a while to get our bearings, and only after some light swimming, a submerge in the ridiculously cold plunge pool, a huge sea-view sauna, an invigorating salt scrub and a bit of a steam bath did we make our way back to the pool and locate the bar, where we spent part of the kids’ inheritance on a beer and a wine, to be enjoyed overlooking the edge of the pool while the sun set over the ocean. Awesome.

I’d made a bit of a schoolboy error in the Sky Lagoon, by not wearing a hat to go swimming. I’d seem people going into the pool in trunks and bobble hats, and decided that I wasn’t going to go for such a ridiculous look. Instead I kept from getting too cold by simply submerging into the pool whenever I started shivering. Unfortunately, as the air temperature was a bracing -15°C, this resulted in my hair freezing with a thick layer of ice within a few seconds. Never thought there’d be such a thing as bobble-hat envy, but there is.

All of this wasn’t quite enough cold water action for Mrs E, so we elected to walk a couple of miles to a local swimming pool a couple of days later. The weather forecast was quite bleak, with lots of snow, sub zero temperature, and what looked like a lively wind on the forecast. We’re used to lively winds at home, and I thought that the weather app was making a bit much of it – it looked like 22 mph to me, which might normally be described as fairly brisk. About halfway to the pool, after much sliding and swearing, I realised that I’d not read the app properly; I’m pleased to report that 22 metres per second is almost exactly 50mph, which is why we’d spent so much time being blown across the icy roads. The wind was still blowing when we got to the pool, still blowing when we got changed, still blowing as we gingerly stepped onto the ice surrounding the pool, and still blowing as we tried desperately to keep warm by swimming up and down, teeth chattering in the gale. Unsurprisingly we were the only people in the pool, and the only people flying back to the hotel in the wind.

There was lots more to occupy us while we were there – Reykjavik has loads of museums, particularly if you’re interested in dark age history or cod fishing, and there are some fabulous places to eat, although, again, a keen interest in cod fishing is helpful. It’s horribly expensive and ridiculously cold, but for all that, coming home to only have to wear two jumpers indoors and managing to get a pint for a fiver suddenly felt like we were living a new dream.

So, if you have a chance, go. Take lots of money, a torch, and a hat to match your swimming trunks.

*Can’t say ‘Since the last time we met’ without reference to :

Since the last time we met I’ve been through
About seven hundred changes and that’s just a few
And thе changes all tend to be somеthing to do
But you’ve got to believe that they’re all done for you, for you

You will win my undying admiration for placing this lyric without the need of t’internet.

Through a glass, darkly

Featured ~ kevinrevell ~ 2 Comments

Well, during these strange times, I’ve been looking to find ways of wasting time productively, or filling the gap between a) proper work and b) my vegetative state between the fridge and the TV. You may have a similar challenge in your life – some people seem to have the energy to do interesting things in their gardens, or setting quizzes, or spending time with Joe Wicks; I’ve decided to spend a bit of time researching my family tree. This involves taking the contents of boxes of stuff that I’ve accumulated over the years, and plugging this in to the rather wonderful ancestry.co.uk site, which gives you not only a platform to land your ancestors onto, but also links to all the digitised census, birth marriage, death & criminal records from the past, and, if they let you, access to all the other family trees that might intersect with yours.

I’m aware that hearing about other people’s family trees can be desperately tedious – a bit like listening to, say, Matt Hancock spinning another yarn about government guidance. Things start off uninspiring, and go steadily downhill, until you start running calculations in your head around time off for good behaviour. This will happen at about the time you’re told about a second cousin who might well have had a grandparent on the Titanic, or, in Mr Hancock’s case, where he starts advising on your civic duty. But this blog isn’t really about a family tree as such, it’s about one person – not an exceptional person by the sort of standard you might set today, but someone with a telling story nonetheless.

Below is a picture of my grandmother, Dorothy Kerridge. She’s on the right – from the left of the picture are her brother Reuben and her elder sister Dora, then her mother, Mary.

Grandma was born in 1909, and this picture was taken around 1916. By this time, her other elder brother Sidney had been called up and was fighting in the Great War. He came back unscathed, and came out of the army at the end of the war, but millions of others didn’t. There’s a war memorial in the village where Grandma lived; it has 60 names on it, which at the time would have been about a loss for around every fourth household – she would have known most of the families as she grew up. One of the names is P Kerridge – this was Grandma’s cousin Percy, a sailor who lost his life in the Indian Ocean somewhere near Bombay – a long long way from Suffolk.

And just at the end of the war, the Spanish flu epidemic claimed 50 million lives – 500 million were infected, which was about a third of the world population. I’ve never seen memorial to Spanish Flu, but this would have dominated thinking in East Anglia several years after the war ended:

(note very Suffolk subheading!)

Having survived those early years, Grandma attended school in Wickham Market and in 1922, aged 13, was enrolled on the ‘Rural Teacher’ training course, she completed aged 19, at which point she was appointed as an assistant mistress.

She met my Grandpa at a fair in Suffolk when they were both 16. He had to move to Bournemouth shortly afterwards, but would visit her every month until they were married in 1933. By then they’d both seen the Great Depression and the tough times of the 1920’s – one of the reasons they were apart was because he was following his father around the country finding work as a journeyman butcher.

They had two children, my father and his brother, in the 1930’s, and life was beginning to settle down until the Second World War broke out, when, again, they found themselves travelling about after Grandpa was called up. They were never separated during the war, despite him being posted all over the country, often to the sort of location where a young family would be in danger.

Some sort of stability came after the war – Grandpa was back in the butcher business with his name above the shop, my father and his brother left home, and they became grandparents just about the time that his heart problems meant he had to give up work – they moved into a static caravan on a park near Bournemouth. I was their second grandchild, born just before the Cuban missile crisis, when the world held its breath and waited anxiously for the big bang.

My Grandma died in 2005, aged 96. Between my arrival and her passing away, she’d seen multiple recessions; world famine; the Cold War; cholera, flu and measles pandemics. She saw all three of her siblings and her husband pass away between 1987 and 1995.

I’m writing this down because I’m keen for some perspective at a time when so much talk seems to be of the end of all things. I’m not diluting today’s crisis in any sense, but the nature of all crises is that they do, eventually, come to an end. And also because, at this time, I can remember my Grandma very clearly indeed. Any one of those world events could have hardened and depressed her, and they didn’t. She lived a very, very happy life, never seemed to stop smiling, and took delight in simple pleasures. She would have got through the current challenges by waiting it out, and being sensible and caring for those around her. Being a very British person, she’d have raised her eyebrows a little at some of the pictures in the paper:

And being a very kind, generous person, she would never say anything rash like ‘they don’t know they’re born’. But you really wouldn’t have blamed her if she’d thought it.

Stay safe x

Before your very eyes…

~ kevinrevell ~ Leave a comment

Mrs E and me are away for the weekend. Staying in a hotel, no less. No dogs, no work, no responsibilities. Bliss.

We have a fabulous Saturday, filled with all the things we like, spending time with a couple of the kids, a very wet run and some light retail therapy. About the only downer of the day was at 16:09 – four of us were having a meal and Mrs E started describing something very serious and emotional. I know it was 16:09 as that’s the point at which my phone beeped, I made the mistake of loudly celebrating Todd Cantwell’s goal against Everton (A), and quite rightly was told that I wasn’t really concentrating on the conversation in hand.

With that almost forgiven, we had a level of entertainment in the evening that  was more fun than space permits to tell, and fairly skipped back to the hotel just after what used to be called closing time.

The great thing about hotels in the UK used to be that they could keep serving to residents for as long as either party was interested in buying or selling. The licensing laws have gone a bit skewed on us now, so there isn’t quite such a distinction, but there’s still something splendid about walking into a hotel bar after hours and feeling that you can have the run of the optics.

So I was particularly impressed when Mrs E, not one known these days for late nights or drinking, suggested we have a quick pint before bed. I was even more impressed when I saw that the main event in the hotel’s ballroom was the annual Magic Circle Dinner Dance.

We agreed that there might be some people-watching to be done here – we both have a passing interest in quirky societies and the people that inhabit them, and magicians are about as quirky as you can get. And the idea of them perhaps the worse for a light ale or two, maybe settling old scores or generally getting a bit ‘office party’ in front of us, was too good an opportunity to miss. We grabbed our drinks and made our way to the quietest corner of the bar, and prepared to be entertained.

Well, we weren’t disappointed.

First up, a couple leaving the ballroom and sidling up to the bar to drink gin. He’s in a rather relaxed outfit which, contrary to most of the other guests doesn’t even involve a waistcoat. She is wearing a slinky green number, which they both seem quite keen on. He’s got a stubbly beard and carries himself with the air of someone who really ought to lose a couple of stone, but hasn’t yet noticed it. She has a face that has the eyebrows a little too high; and if they’ve been lifted, they’ve forgotten to leave the lower eyelids behind. We conclude that he must be one of the new generation of magic circle members, and that she may well be his new magician’s assistant. They certainly seem to be using the annual dinner dance getting to know each other’s patter.

They come and sit a few yards away from us, eyelids are fluttered on both sides, and they provide a slightly seedy romantic backdrop to the rest of the evening’s events.

There’s a sound of shouting over a PA in the ballroom, sounding like the post dinner entertainment winding up. Tough gig, that, to entertain a room full of magicians and their confidants, and it sounds a bit like bingo calling, which it may well be. This soon gives way to the sound of a band playing disco hits from the 70’s and we guess that the transition from dinner to dance is complete.

Cue the succession of people leaving the ballroom, either to avoid dancing or to stock up on drink. First a portly man in an immaculate dinner suit, with a woman on each arm. One, who looks of a similar vintage, also looks bored out of her mind – probably the wife. The other looking slightly bemused, and needing his arm to support her balance on 3 inch heels, is about twenty years younger, and we reckon she’s his assistant. This is very much the stuff of short stories.

Next up, a man and a woman looking a little off kilter – she topples over when she hits the red carpet, and manages to pull over the elaborate metal stands holding the velvet ropes. In other venues this might have resulted in a cheer or a concerned silence, but everyone in this hotel just continues as normal – other than the man, who makes a point of kicking the rope stand before trying gallantly to help her up.

Then the balloon models start to appear. It’s well past midnight now, and although the event is due to finish at 1am, people are beginning to leave with the spoils of the evening, and those spoils seem to consist entirely of balloon models. Another tough gig, I would expect – how do you show off your balloon modelling skills to someone who may well be a master balloon modeller? Anyway, out come the guests who need taxis – first woman is clutching a very fetching Daffy Duck – the colours are spot on – and if she owns a nightstand, then that will be sat there before she hops into bed later. Then a rather odd looking model which may well be a palm tree without the palms. Possibly the modeller had had a run on green balloons. Then my absolute favourite – a balloon gun, about two feet long and looking like the sort of ray-gun that Dan Dare might have used. On the end of the gun was a slightly glazed man in what had probably started the evening as a very smart tuxedo, but was now, like him, showing signs of tiredness. Mrs Glazed Man was looking very much the definition of long-suffering. They made their way outside of the hotel. Fortunately Mrs E’s position near the window allowed her to keep up a hushed commentary on their progress on the taxi situation.

‘He’s getting a bit upset now…he’s pointing at her with the ray-gun…he’s walked down to the road…he’s trying to hail a taxi with the ray-gun…he’s back now cos it’s raining…he’s still pointing…he’s coming back inside…’

Which he did, to go to the gents, using the ray-gun as a weird latex divining rod, completely oblivious to the world around him.

Also oblivious were the couple from earlier. By now, their bar stools had mysteriously moved much closer together , to a point where you might expect her knee to be causing a little discomfort to his crotch. He didn’t seem to be too concerned though, just kept chatting away as if having someone massage his genitals with their knee was just something that happened every Saturday night. And then they kissed. For quite a long time. I tried not to look but I did. She looked as if she had her eyes closed, but frankly she’d looked like that all night. But I hoped it was the start of something…magical.

Another entry into the bar from the ballroom, this time from a man, on his own, who was the living embodiment of Don Revie, circa 1974. With one exception – he was about two foot shorter, so maybe the living embodiment in 5/8th scale. Other than that, the hair, the sideburns, the firm jaw line, even the suit were dead ringers for everyone’s least favourite Leeds and England manager.

Witnessing some light porn and seeing a miniaturised Don Revie made me remember that I’d been drinking, so I decided that I needed to wash my face. The man with the ray-gun had emerged from the gents by then,. so I knew the way, and pretty soon I found myself at a urinal, standing next to a man who appeared to be wearing a mayoral chain of office over his dinner suit.

‘That’s a nice medal’ I said, foolishly thinking I was being clever. ‘Did you win it this evening?’

‘That’s more than just a medal, my lad’, he replied, thereby in just eight words, managing to get information, charm and condescension into a single short sentence. I suppose in many ways, that’s very much the art of the magician at work.

I followed him into the ballroom.

‘There’s not much to see now the dancing has started. But it was a grand night’

It was indeed.

—

Next morning, we stuffed ourselves with as much breakfast as would last the long trip home. As we were leaving, I saw a familiar face arriving at the restaurant. It was the casual magician from the night before, this time on his own, and wearing exactly the same clothes. With one exception – he was wearing shoes but no socks. They’d disappeared. As if by magic.

 

 

 

Another tick for the Wall

~ kevinrevell ~ 2 Comments

Last Wednesday I was walking around the local cemetery, like you do, when I bumped into my friend H, who was cycling about. We stopped minding our own business and had a quick chat about where our lives were currently at. He was trying to get a very young baby off to sleep by taking her for a bike ride. I was trying to shift an injury in my left calf from the previous night’s run, in preparation for walking Hadrian’s wall later in the week. 

‘How long is that going to take?’ asked H. 

‘Five days’, I replied

‘Wow’, he said. ‘That’s the stuff of bucket lists’. 

Which took me by surprise. Firstly, I’ve never really been one for a bucket list. You’ll be unlikely to get to the end of such a list, and it all seems a bit like a tick list of how you’ve managed your life. And secondly, I’d not thought of it as that much of a deal. Me & Mrs E were going to do some walking, and it was going to be from one side if the country to the other, but that was it. And I knew a couple of people who’d done the 84 miles in a couple of days, and one who’d knocked it out in under 24 hours, so 5 days was unlikely to test us. But the bucket list comment kept coming back to me over the next few days…

The next day we biked down to the railway station, hopped on a train to London, tubed across to Euston, got on a train to Carlisle, hung about there for a couple of hours before getting a bus out to Bowness-on-Solway, and made our way to the only accommodation I’d been able to book, which was a small shed in the garden of a rectory. 

We’d exhausted the entertainment possibilities of the inside of the shed within a couple of minutes, so repaired to the pub, which already contained two sets of walkers, one of which was just starting, and the other who’d just finished. It was fairly easy to tell which was which – the ones who’d finished were the ones with four pints, two g&t’s, and a bottle of red to their name. We fell into an easy conversation with them as they moved onto large whiskies, and I made a mental note that they’d set the benchmark for how to celebrate finishing. 

So, off early the next day, and ironically back to Carlisle, in rather more time that the bus driver had managed the trip the day before. The bits that we didn’t share with cows were shared with some lively traffic for the first part, along the Solway, which separates England from Scotland. Years ago, there was a bridge across the water, which Scots would walk across on a Sunday if they needed a drink, and occasionally fall off as they made their way back. We rattled along, fuelled by banana and jam sandwiches, and made our way into Carlisle, which, in the late sunshine, felt as if it was trying hard to come out of a depression. Friday night in Carlisle doesn’t seem to be a particularly lively time, we had a quiet pint in a pub and wandered down to the ‘number one curry restaurant in Carlisle’, for further refuelling. I made the mistake of asking the waitress if she’d recommend anything on the menu, and she said she couldn’t, as she didn’t eat spicy food. Mrs E gently suggested that she might be in wrong profession, and was told that ‘it’s just a job, innit’ before walking off, thereby assuring us that the hospitality industry in Carlisle is in another safe pair of hands. 

Setting off the next morning, safe in the knowledge that we only had 18 miles to cover, we started to hit some proper rolling countryside, all grass trails and sleepy villages, occasionally interrupted by wild eyed farmers whizzing about on quad bikes. Every now and again we’d come across a small fridge by the side of the road, advertising snacks and drinks for walkers, and asking for payment in an honesty box. I looked more closely at one of these boxes to read the small print, which basically said that anyone close to the box was monitored by cctv, and that that non-payment would result in unholy retribution. That kind of defeats the point of an honesty box,  but maybe they’ve had a spate of tracker bar thefts in the area, who knows?

We’d started to see a bit of the wall by now, and oohed and aahed appropriately, trying to get some appreciation of how 15,000 soldiers built a 5 metre high wall and a massive ditch over 84 miles, in about 5 years. By any measure, it’s remarkable, and you don’t necessarily have to be right next to it to appreciate the sheer magnitude of the thing, but once you’ve been up and down a few of the hills, and seen the size of some of the stones, it certainly helps. 

The 18 mile estimate proved to be woefully short, once we’d taken a couple of wrong turnings and remembered that tonight’s hotel was a little way off from the path, and we finished on about 24 miles. We limped into the reception of the hotel to find ourselves, confusingly, in the middle of a Scottish country dance convention. With our fleeces, sensible shorts and sturdy boots, there was a danger that we would be fully integrated, but thankfully we managed to find somewhere else in the hotel to eat away from the reeling crowd. Unfortunately the place we managed to find was a dark look into our future, an institutional room with the lighting and food that will be a feature of the retirement home that our children send us to a few years from now. We ordered quickly and safely, having been told that the kitchen was closing at 8:20 sharp, possibly as there were some neeps that weren’t going to stew themselves next door, and our food arrived in about the same time as it takes to defrost and reheat a vegetable lasagne. The experience of actually eating the food confirmed our future carehome worries – it all sort of blended into itself ina bit of a lukewarm brown mess, and all around us in the big room with the bright lighting and the gentle 80s music were people  looking as if they were dragging their way through their final meal. 

We stopped to look in on the country dancing on the way up to our room, the party was in full swing, and there was a serious amount of jogging and reeling to be seen.  Mrs E was delighted to witness one guy, dripping with sweat, race up the stairs to his room, to return minutes later, and ask her if she’d ‘nae fancy a wee reel’ with him. She said no (or nae), and managed to mention that her feet had just covered 24 miles and weren’t in any fit state to be chasing around the floor. Off we went for another early night, and were serenaded fairly robustly for the next few hours by the kind of noise that was going to keep men in kilts constantly on their feet. I could only make out two accordion players (which, frankly, is two too many), but they seemed to be able to punch above their weight on the volume front. On our way to breakfast early next morning and the riddle was solved – we walked past the stage in the ballroom and saw a PA system that Megadeath would have dismissed as far too loud for their needs. 

Breakfast had been prepared by the care home cook from the night before, and he/she had managed to cook a variety of food and blend into a single taste. On a positive note, it’s probably quite a skill to be able to cook mushrooms, eggs, tomatoes and beans separately to the extent that they all taste like mashed potato, and there’s probably a market for it, possibly at that stage in life just before it’s liquidised and fed through a straw. 

Well, we ate it all up, in the knowledge that we needed fuel before the long and challenging third day. We knew this was going to be tough, as we already had it down as 21 miles, and given the previous day, was likely to be more in reality (it ended up being 28, which Mrs E has mentioned several times since). We had fantastic sunshine and saw the most spectacular parts of both the wall and the surrounding countryside.

It was Sunday, so there were loads of people out walking bits of the wall, contrasting with the pair of us as they sprang along in trainers and shorts, carrying tiny rucksacks which contained proper sandwiches, flasks of coffee and car keys. We had more of a knowing slog about us, and it would be fair to say that the wonder of the wall was palling by the time we hit mile 20.

In the event we walked for 11 hours, and had to phone ahead so as not to lose our hotel room. 

‘Don’t worry’, said the kind lady who answered the phone, ‘I’ll hold your room and I’m here till 10 so I’ll probably see you’. 

Which was probably meant to make us feel better. 

But, into Chollerford we finally trudged, straight into the bar where we drank cider and bitter and ate about half of our body weight in fried food. It’s funny, said Mrs E, after wolfing down a plate of chips. ‘I feel rubbish at night but my injuries seem to heal after sleeping’. 

And so it proved as we scampered down for more fried food in the morning. The leg from Chollerford to Heddon-on-the-Wall was going to be less taxing than the day before, but there was one really long climb at the start which we fairly whizzed up, not minding the rain at all, and even showing a bit of renewed interest in the next mile castle or fort ruins. We’d passed into Northumberland by now, and once the weather cleared we could see the country falling away in front of us, still with the line of the wall visible through the trenches stretching off ahead. We had another diversion into Wylam, where we were staying the night, which didn’t please Mrs E particularly, as it added yet more miles onto what were already some fairly manky feet, but that did give us a chance to go past the cottage where George Stephenson had been born. Like Hadrian’s wall, there’s nothing to stop you reaching out and touching this bit of history (although you’d probably annoy the current residents) – we take all of this astonishing stuff in this country for granted and it’s even more fantastic that we don’t feel the need to rope it off. 

To the pub then, for beer, ginger cider (‘Not sure about this’, said Mrs E, ‘it tastes like squash’, before necking a pint in record time and demanding another in the style of Father Jack), and Thai food, which was fantastic. All followed by a night’s sleep caroused by the local youth of Wylam who may well also have been knocking back the ginger squash. 

And finally on to the last leg, which at last matched the guide book in mileage, and took us across yet more gently descending fields, a little away from the wall and onto the Tyne into Newcastle. It’s hard to properly follow the wall at this stage, as it effectively got hijacked by the soldier/politician General Wade in the 1700s, to create the military road for his troops to march across to quell a Jacobite uprising. It’s now the slightly less romantically sounding B6318. Paving over the wall was an astonishing act of outright vandalism, and if General Wade was alive today, he’d probably fit right in to the current cabinet. 

Coming into Newcastle along the North of the Tyne was both exciting and depressing in equal measure. I know Newcastle reasonably well, I worked there on and off for a few years and have mixed feelings about whether it was ever my kind of town. When I was there, I punctuated the work with long runs in the evening, and similarly, some of these were fabulous, and some of them quite demoralising. Which is pretty much how the last bit of the walk goes. Walking around the bend of the Tyne to see the bridges at Quayside is fabulous, and the buildings just fit their surroundings; if that had been the end of the walk then it would have been great. But the wall went a little bit further onto Wallsend (of course), so we still had another 5ish miles to go. Along the path, the litter began to pile up, not just odd cans of coke and papers, but assorted underwear and, for some reason, a number of disposable gloves; normally Mrs E and me will make up back-stories about the the unusual things we see on a walk, but thankfully by now we were too tired to do so.

We walked straight past the sign that flagged the end of the wall, retraced our steps, and a kindly coast to coast cycle rider took our pictures. We popped around the corner into the visitors centre, where we were met with smiling faces and sympathy for Mrs E’s feet (and feat, come to think of it). She has been testing the security and decency settings of social media ever since :

232c5ced-c631-4eff-a437-4fa04df25f5a

We asked to go into the museum, and a very astute woman behind the counter suggested that we might have seen enough Roman ruins for now, and that we might be better off just going upstairs for a coffee, which we did.

Upstairs, I chatted to the woman making the coffee, who told me that her boss had just completed the walk in three days carrying a 25 kg backpack. I’m sure she didn’t mean to piss on our chips, so to speak, but it felt a bit deflating. And it shouldn’t have; we’d walked over a hundred miles in five days, carrying all our own gear, met some fabulous people and some ridiculously steep terrain, and seen some of the most glorious countryside ever, and the stuff you’d never see from a car. And in Mrs E’s case, done all that in a pair of boots that even now were making her feet bleed, and were destined for a more appropriate place.

IMG_0610

Perhaps the walk should have been on a bucket list after all.

Hirsute you, Sir

~ kevinrevell ~ Leave a comment

In fashion news this month, #4 has started to wear a woollen hat at all times, indoors, outside, and in all weathers. Under close parental questioning, he tells us that he is planning to ‘grow his hair out’. This concerns me, not least as the thought of long hair brings back associations of hippies and prog-rock, neither of which are to be trusted, in my humble, and vocal parental, opinion.

Given that #4 is the last remaining bubba in the house, he is being treated as single child, and we’ve had to adjust parenting accordingly. Sometimes we even try and reason with him. Irritatingly, he reasons back:

Mrs E ‘You’d look so much better if you had a haircut’

#4 ‘Mmm, that’s just your opinion, and mine’s different’

Mrs E ‘But what will happen when you need to apply for your driving licence?’

#4 ‘I’ll take my hat off’

Incidentally, not the first time we’ve run into legislative challenges with him and hats. We had to go over to France in the summer of 2002, and had arranged rather optimistically to take all the family, with #4 having arrived only a month before. This meant that I had to take him to get a passport sorted out when he was 3 days old. Knowing that he would struggle to remain upright in a photo booth (not to mention operating it), I laid him on the bed in a babygro and fetching beanie cap, took his picture, had it printed, got it witnessed, and hightailed it down to the post office to have all the papers approved.

‘Sorry Sir, we can’t use this one, your son is wearing a hat’

‘But he’s only 3 days old’

‘Sorry, but the only way we can allow it is if he’s wearing the hat for religious purposes…’

‘Ok, so let’s say he is then’

‘…and in that case he’ll have to wear the same hat every time he goes through passport control’

I seriously gave that consideration, but then thought about the slight disagreements we might have if we lost his hat on holiday and had to leave him in Dover. Not to mention whether the hat would really suit him in ten years time. Although reflecting on it now, we could have saved a fortune over the years in headgear.

Back to the conversation then, and we all agree that this interim process of growing the hair out may well be the worst bit, hence the hat. The problem with this stage is that it kind of goes through a wild bedhead/mullet/fluffball stage, managing to be several unpleasant styles all at once. I can’t quite put my finger on it, until #2 pops round one evening, and surveys the situation.

‘He looks a bit of a hillbilly’

Which is pretty spot on. I mention to Mrs E that I half expect him to be wearing dungarees and playing guitar next, and to my surprise a couple of days later, wander up the garden to find him doing both of those things.

The other slight discomfort I have around this whole growing thing goes back to the very idea that men should have anything approaching a ‘style’ in relation to their hair. I appreciate that there’s a danger that I slip into the middle aged outrage that I’ve been trying to avoid for most of my life (although I found myself enthusiastically singing along to George Thorogood’s ‘Get a haircut and a proper job’ the other day), but while men’s hair is concerned, I reserve the right to be a bit Kim Jong Il. Which means it’s all a bit awkward at Emu Towers at the moment.

Kim Jong Il famously only allowed 15 haircuts on his watch (well, 16 if you included his own, which no one else could have), and there wasn’t actually a great deal to choose between any of them:

Most of my hair cuts ever since I can remember, have been in either style 2 or 5 from the poster above.

I’ve stepped away from the North Korea barber book only a couple of times. Before austerity was all the rage round these parts, and early in our marriage, Mrs E decided to save the £3 that I frittered away every month on haircuts by buying some clippers which would ‘literally pay for themselves in a year’. The cutting normally took place on a Friday night, and she had to have a couple of drinks to steady her nerves. As a result, I had a good couple of years of the worst haircuts imaginable, while she tried, and failed, to master the art of fading from a number 1 to a number 4. Had I travelled to North Korea around 1985, I would almost certainly been convicted of crimes against the state.

The other time was in the early eighties, when I mistakenly assumed that the ideal cut for a wannabe blues singer was a flat top. A flat top is very much like a crew cut, but with the top bit, well, flat. Draw a line on top of #15 above if you want to get the general idea. In order to maintain the cut, it needs to be trimmed once a week, otherwise it will start getting a bit messy, so it’s important to find a barber who a) can cut an accurate flat top and is b) cheap.

Fortunately, round the corner from where I lived at the time was Ted (known, unsurprisingly, as ‘Ted the Head’), who ran a barbers shop from the front room of his house. There was one chair, next to which was normally a assortment of kids bikes, lawn mowers and hifi components that he would offer to sell you as part of the barbering transaction. Ted had a range of two cuts – short back and sides, and flat top, which he’d learnt by cutting the hair of US airman during the war. To cut a flat top, you need a client who could keep his head completely still, a flat top comb, which laid on top of the hair, a set of clippers, and two very steady hands. Ted was getting on a bit when I met him, and he couldn’t really manage even one steady hand, so the cuts were a bit hit and miss, but we got there in the end.

A well cut flat top is a thing of wonder though, and quite the style for a rock and roll weekend. I decided to move on partly for maintenance reasons, and partly as during a particularly cold and rainy walk to work on winter morning, I found that a small sheet of ice had formed on top of my head. The next haircut would have to be able to accommodate some sort of hat.

Which brings us neatly back to #4. I guess things will work out in the end. He’ll do his own thing, with or without a hat. And things could be worse; he could have been born 40 years earlier and be trying to fit in with the fashion then….

Taking a punth

~ kevinrevell ~ Leave a comment

For some time now, I’ve been interested in the trend for renaming perfectly good months to repurpose them. My extensive research for this blog tells me that this practice has a name all of its own – these new months are called ‘punths’ – which is actually vaguely clever – it’s a word describing a pun, which is actually a pun. Sadly, that’s about as impressed as I get.

It started off with Movember, where men were encouraged to grow ridiculous moustaches in order to show their support for male health issues, but which gradually morphed into a competitive exercise when the vainest of the vain would place pictures of Terry Thomas, Jimmy Edwards or Windsor Davies on their mirrors, and groom themselves accordingly for a month. I’m all for increased conscious of health issues, although I do struggle with how my next door neighbour trying to look like Nigel Mansell for four weeks is going to heighten my awareness. About the only great thing about Movember is the first week of December, where we all collectively laugh up our sleeves because the comedy moustaches that we’ve been pointing at for weeks weren’t, after all, being grown as a joke.

Movember is preceded by Stoptober, when lots of people who don’t really smoke very much stop smoking. It’s followed by December, when all bets are off on doing anything worthy, unless you want to take part in Decembeard, in which case you can throw away your razor entirely and thus magically increase awareness of bowel cancer by looking like Brian Blessed. Then comes both Dry January, when people who don’t really need a drink make a big fuss about not having one, and Veganuary, when you get your ear bent by some twit in the pub drinking orange juice telling you how much he really misses cheese. We’ve just enjoyed Februhairy, when, possibly inspired by Movember and Decembeard, women have thrown away their razors in order to raise awareness of gender-based violence. You can insert your own comment about cause and activity here as you see fit. 

So, with the world of the punth in mind, I would like to suggest an alternative alternative approach to the calendar. I appreciate that these things will take a little bit to organise, and that you’ll all have to set up your crowdfunding and charity donation sites, so I’ll start the year in April….

Which will be re-named Staypril. As I write, 1st April is only a couple of weeks away, and marks the point at which we should (depending on your point of view) break free of the schackles of the EU or dramatically shoot ourselves in the foot and overtake the USA as the laughing stock of the rest of the world. Staypril will allow everyone who is keen on the whole EU thing to pretend that none of this actually happened. Expect an influx of artisan German sausage makers and French cheesemongers in your local market place, EU flags flown proudly from the windows of Renaults and Citroens and BMWs, and an unseasonal enthusiasm for bistros serving mange-tout, bouillabaisse and crepes.

Staypril will be followed by Brian May. I’ve resisted the temptation to celebrate Theresa May, as May is my favourite sunny month, and every time I look at a picture of our PM at the moment I’m chilled to the bone. Instead, Brian May will be celebrated by loose perms for all, and re-runs of The Sky at Night for astronomy enthusiasts. If you have a partner, make sure they have a matching perm and don’t mind answering to the name Anita for a few weeks. If you want to really celebrate, make a high profile biopic of your life, describing your career as a series of events in which you were almost too lovely to be true.      

Flaming June will encourage awareness of the word flaming as a substitute swearword. There’s a bit more opportunity here than you might think, if you consider the word ‘flaming’ to be an entry point to the lost art of cursing. We seem to have sadly settled on very few swear words in our vocabulary, and you very rarely hear the more imaginative words that we used to use, largely to avoid going straight to four letters. So, during June, we can have flaming, pillock, flipping, knob, blimey, bellend, bint etc. And for every nostalgic swearword used, a pound in the jar for the plain English campaign.

After all that blasphemy, it’s time for Julielo, in which the entire populations, both criminal and non-criminal can spend the whole month staying indoors, keeping a low profile. Staying below the radar in the way will allow the police force to all take the month off as holiday, returning refreshed in August to start hitting their arrest targets.

And what a series of arrests they’ll be making, as the nation celebrates the sizzling summer with the month of Orgyust, when normally straight-laced couples throw their car keys onto the coffee table, and nurture the pampas grass in their front gardens (apparently). I’m quite excited about Orgyust, because, in the past, I’ve only ever found out about orgies after they happen. Apparently there was a thriving swingers scene conducted from the touchline of one of my boy’s sports teams a few years ago, and I didn’t even notice. So it will be nice to have this on the calendar.

Sepptember will announce not only the start of the new football season, but by honouring Sepp Blatter, an opportunity to cram all the season’s financial irregularities and blatant cheating into a single month. This will allow the rest of the season to concentrate on actually playing football, but Sepptember will be a feast of stories of cash handed over at motorway service stations, Far East syndicates linked with huge bets on the number of corners in the second half of non-league competitions, drug cover-ups and exposes on the business activities of pretty much every premiership chairman. Expect to spent most of this month tuned into TalkSport for the incisive wit of Alan Brazil and Ian Abrahams. 

 

Doctober is very much a month to honour the poor sods who choose to train for years to be good at making people better, just so they can be worked to breaking point, trying to fix the unworthy, the ungrateful and the unhygienic. For just a month, patients will be prohibited for taking their internet printouts of their ailments to their GP appointments, and to limit themselves to no more than 3 ailments at a time. All patients should bathe or shower before asking a Doctor to examine them. Patients will be encouraged to keep a small supply of paracetamol in the house in case this is the prescribed cure for their illness. Also a selection of plasters for the little cuts that otherwise seem to find their way to A&E. If you have an urge to celebrate Doctober with me, you can borrow my soapbox.

Lowvember. When David Bowie passed away in 2016, Mrs E wore black for a full year, and the (very) many albums that made up Bowie’s body of work were on strict rotation in the kitchen. There was the odd exception, eg she’d be out on a dog walk and return to me listening to some early Elmore James, and without even asking ‘what’s this nonsense?’, she’d pop on the first Tin Machine album before she’d even fed the dogs. Partly to stir things up a bit, Lowvember will aim to celebrate the Dame in a more measured way, by playing a different album each day of the month. I have to be a bit careful here, and make sure I’m not in the same room as Mrs E when she’s reading this, but I don’t quite go along with the idea the DB was a creative genius for every single minute of his life (Mrs E, incidentally, has an encyclopaedic knowledge of each of these minutes, so I know I’m on shaky ground). In fact, I’d go as far as to say that Bowie was pretty good until 1970, utterly brilliant until 1977, then, with a couple of exceptions, fairly average afterwards. And the 1977 demise happened towards the end of the first side of the Low album (which, in Lowvember will be played around the 11th of the month). It’s just my opinion, and as I said to Mrs E only last night, opinions are like arseholes – everyone’s got one and they all stink.

Kiki Deecember follows, and we can enjoy the runup to Christmas dancing along not just to ‘Don’t Go Breaking My Heart’ but also to every other Elton John duet. Sing along with EJ and Josh Stone on ‘Calling It Christmas’. Wipe a tear as George Michael croons his way through ‘Don’t Let The Sun’.  Ask yourself what planet you’re on, as Ru Paul reprises Kiki Dee’s role on ‘Don’t Go Breaking’.

And it’s into the new year, with even more retro-enthusiasm. I’ve been around for long enough now to see some interesting fashions that lose their appeal with age. I don’t mean the age of the fashion, more the age of the wearer. When I was a kid, some of the funniest people I saw were Teds in their 50s, still wearing drape jackets but with really thin quiffs. A few years ago I ended up at a skate-punk gig next to a guy who was spilling out of his anarchy t-shirt and trying desperately to coax his male pattern baldness into a mohican. All very sad. So expect more of the same in The Jamuary, where mods of all shapes and sizes will pour themselves into their tonic suits, sta-press trousers and mohair sweaters, and bounce along to Woking’s finest.

And from Woking to the World Wide Webuary. WWW, as it will confusingly be known, will be an opportunity to enjoy life as it used to be without the world wide web, and thereby appreciating it all the more afterwards. So, assuming we can get the necessary permits in place, we’ll be switching off the internet for a month, and thereby also allowing some upgrades to take place. Let’s face it, the internet hasn’t been powered down for ages now and it must be getting ever so tired. For four short weeks we’ll celebrate by going shopping in shops, talking to people without feeling the need to copy in the world or shouting, and by reading books. We’ll not stop people taking pictures of interesting cats or every single meal they’ve ever consumed, but they just won’t be able to share them for a month.

And so, into our last month. For those of us of as certain age, enjoying the music of the Smiths has been a bit of a roller coaster exercise of late. Chronologically, the story goes 

  • The Smiths burst onto the scene playing music that was unparalleled
  • Step above the copyists and write some more fantastic songs
  • Morrissey becomes spokesman for generation
  • Generation largely responds by going vegetarian and hanging on his every word
  • Band splits up a bit
  • Band splits up a bit more
  • Morrissey continues ‘spokesman for generation’ role
  • Generation still tolerates Morrissey despite some awkward moments
  • Morrissey produces several wonderful solo albums
  • Generation confidence is restored
  • Morrissey produces ‘Autobiography’, to ‘polarised’ reviews      
  • Generation is confused
  • Morrissey starts spouting on about race, rights, politics, immigration and anything else that he seems to find entertaining
  • Generation says enough is enough, please please please can you stop sounding off at us

So, my suggestion is that we all enjoy listening to the music of the Smiths for a month in the full knowledge that we’d feel guilty if we tried to align ourselves with Morrissey. Instead, we’ll just say that we’re enjoying Johnny Marrch. 

 

Tune in next month for more Puntastic fun x

The Curse of the Numskulls

~ kevinrevell ~ Leave a comment

I like my dentist. He’s a friendly man who seems to take very little delight in exerting the sort of pain that only dentists can deliver. He’s kind of the opposite to the Steve Martin character in Little Shop of Horrors. And if you’re not familiar with this, or just need a reminder, here you go….

If you watch the clip, take note at c1:30. We’ll be coming back to that later.

Despite his friendly persona, my dentist does have alarmingly strong forearms, which hove into view just after one of his glamorous assistants puts on the strange safety sun-goggles that are all the rage in dentists these days. On me, not him or her, you understand. In the good old days, I don’t think we had these glasses, and ostensibly they’re to stop odd bits of drilling debris flying into your eyes, and also to protect you from the full size  5000 watt follow-spot that is pointed towards you. I think in years gone by I must have kept my eyes closed. Or maybe previous dentists just used a bit of natural light and the odd Ever Ready torch. Who knows. Anyway, I always find the sight of these forearms slightly concerning, particularly if they’re holding a needle, a drill, or one of those spikes that dentists use to punish you for not flossing. They’re the sort of arms that, if they were attached to a fist in a busy pub and travelling in your general direction, you’d not fancy your chances of slowing them down by, say, offering a replacement pint.

Anyway, a few weeks ago, I pitched up for an appointment and after a certain amount of probing about from said forearms, was told that I needed some root canal work. I’d had this sort of work done in the past, and had spent a lot of time worrying about it. ‘Don’t worry’, said people who were in the know, or not really interested, like Mrs E. ‘You’ll be fine, ‘cos you’ll have loads of anaesthetic’. And come the day, I did have loads of anaesthetic, but possibly in the wrong part of my mouth, because I can remember a jaw-jangling pain part way through the procedure which neither me nor my dentist were expecting.

So I can be forgiven, I hope, for feeling a bit nervous when I pitched up for the next appointment.

‘How are you?’, said the owner of the big forearms.

‘A bit nervous’, I said, staying true to the narrative of this blog.

‘It’ll be fine’, he reassured me, ‘we’ll get you nice and numb before we go right into the tooth’. Words which managed to jar with his calming intentions.

He introduced me not only to his assistant, but the assistant’s assistant, who’d come to see the procedure for herself. Maybe they were selling tickets, I don’t know. I was surprised to see that by the time I sat back in the chair, all four of us were wearing safety goggles. A large needle came into view, attached to a long syringe, held by that trusty right arm. Conservatively speaking, I think there was about two pints of anaesthetic in the tube; it took at least a couple of minutes to get rid of it into my mouth, so he’d obviously taken the nice and numb bit to heart.  After poking about a bit with a bit more metal, and being assured that I couldn’t feel a thing, he fired up the drill, and started work. The first couple of minutes sailed by. Radio 2 was playing some saccharine country and we were all (at least mentally) whistling along. And then it happened.

Before I describe what ‘it’ was, I need to to cast your mind back to days when you read the Topper, the Beezer and the Beano. In the unlikely event that you didn’t read them (what on earth were you doing in your youth?), then you should know that you missed one of the great cartoons ever – the Numskulls. The Numskulls story revolved around a boy, and the five Numskulls inside his head that controlled him.  As you can see from the picture, Brainy took care of the brain, and was chief Numskull. Blinky controlled the eyes, Radar was in charge of hearing, Snitch controlled the nose, and Cruncher was in charge of the mouth department.

I’ve been surrounded by medical professionals all of my life, but despite their patient efforts to explain to me how the human body actually works, I still think this is almost exactly what goes on inside my head.

Where me and the medical profession do join up, however, is on the points of communication between the different departments. I think it’s something to do with nerve synapses, and they happen very very quickly. And for the purpose of this blog, it’s necessary to expand something that happened into a very short space of time into the rapid inter-departmental messages that went on after my couple of minutes of pain free dentistry.

Brainy: How are things in the mouth, Cruncher?’

Cruncher: ‘A bit awkward, but nothing too bad to report’

Brainy: ‘Roger that’

Cruncher: ‘Oh, hang on, that’s….ow ow ow’

Brainy: ‘Sorry, lost you there for a moment, are you in some kind of trouble?’

Cruncher: ‘This Is The Worst Pain I Have Ever Experienced. I Am Capitalising My Comments Accordingly. It Feels Like Several Thousand Volts Are Going Through Lower Left Seven. Repeat, Lower Left Seven.’

Brainy: “Do You Have a preferred response?’

Cruncher: ‘Well, what options have I got on the blasphemy front?’

Brainy: ‘It all depends. On a scale of 1-10, how serious is your pain?’

Cruncher: ‘It’s off the bloody scale’

Brainy: ‘Hmmm, let’s have a look. If it was 9, I’d suggest the F word, which you used when you put your back out, and when Norwich missed a penalty against Preston last week. If it was 10, then you could go to the C word. You last used that in November 2005, during the Orleans marathon.’

Cruncher: ‘I’m sorry, Brainy, it’s worse than that. Do you have anything for 11?’

Brainy: ‘I’ll have to look it up. We’ve not really been here before, we’ve spent the last 56 years trying to create an aura of pleasant calm and common decency. Ah, here we are. It starts with the word Mother. Ready to go?’

And so it was, that the Radio 2 infused calm of the dentist’s room, and that of the waiting room next door, and the delicate ears of the dentist, the dentists assistant, and the dentist’s assistant’s assistant was disturbed. I’m not especially proud of the expletive that came out, but came out it did, together with an instruction from Brainy to my right arm knock Mr Muscle and his drill out of my mouth and some way towards reception.

A still calm came over the room. I was embarrassed, and possibly not the most embarrassed one there.

‘That didn’t go as planned’, said the dentist, recovering his composure, together with his balance. ‘I think we need to take a different approach’

The different approach was to send me to another dentist on the other side of town, who specialised in difficult root fillings. Also, putting a good three miles between us might mean that he’d not hear me next time the drill went in. All was fairly well in the end, and years of working as a business consultant meant that I could fairly easily read my own patient notes at the new dentist, upside down on a screen across the room.

‘Mr Revell is a lovely man’, the notes said, ‘but rather apprehensive of dentistry’.

As Cruncher might say: ‘No Shit, Sherlock’…

 

Oranges and Bananas

~ kevinrevell ~ 2 Comments

Apologies for the lack of posts of late. The second half of 2018 was dreadful for a couple of reasons, and I guess I’ve not wanted to be bending your eyes with either triviality or darker thoughts. Now that the year is out of the way, there’s a bit more perspective on things, so I’m hoping to post some vaguely measured stuff fairly soon.

In the meantime, here are some words about Seville, which Mrs E and I came back from a couple of days ago. But before we get to Seville, a bit of background on Mrs E’s relationship with Christmas.

Christmas is one of those areas where we don’t entirely see eye to eye. Given my way, December would kick off with an elaborate advent calendar, door bells playing sleigh bell music, heavy pudding construction, impractical candlelit card-writing sessions, and generally work its way into a frenzy of cheese, port, frozen cold dog walks, and close harmony carols at the end of the month. Then a quick wind down to a debauched New Year, a series of light regrets and promises, then pack all the decorations away for another year. 

Mrs E’s take on the festival is rather different. It’s not that she actually hates Christmas, it’s more that she wants to spend as little time on it as possible, and then get it out of the way really sharpish. To be fair, some of this humbuggery (very much like normal buggery, but when you don’t know the words) dates back to the time when there were four small children with stockings to prepare. This meant there’d be around 80 presents all needing to be wrapped late on Christmas Eve, which was often the time I’d arrive home a little bit too full of festive cheer, enthusiastically slurring my season’s greetings. As a result, we’ve always played a game of ‘decoration chicken’, which involves choosing the right moment to put up any decorations to finally admit that Christmas has arrived. Mrs E’s starting point in the game is that she’d accept decorations going up on 23rd December, and down on 26th. Given that I’d probably prefer a full month, any minor extension of her window tends to be a bit of a hollow victory, but it’s celebrated nonetheless: ‘Mum’s let us put the tree up with a week to go’ broadcasts the family WhatsApp message.

Well, this year, the decs were all packed away on the 28th, we had a very mildly debauched New Years Eve, which was largely spent wondering where our children were, and then took ourselves off to Seville on the 4th for a few days. 

And found ourselves in the run up to Christmas, which, given the above, was a bit of a disappointment to Mrs E. 

Our preparation for the break was woeful, extending only to flicking through the guidebook (welcome to Seville, home of bullfighting) and learning a couple of phrases (‘Yo no halo espanol’; ‘peudo tomar una cerveza’), and didn’t take into account checking local customs and festivals, which in Spain, means we missed the whole point of Christmas in January. 

As far as I understand it (now), the Christmas festival in Spain goes something like this: 

  • start getting excited and a bit of light carol singing in mid-December
  • Big celebration and lots of food on Christmas Eve, followed by midnight mass
  • Wander the streets playing guitars and shining torches after midnight
  • Lots more rich food on Christmas Day
  • Wait until 28th, when the ‘Dia de los Santos innocentes’ (a bit like April Fool’s Day) gives you permission to play hilarious tricks on innocent victims (I’m really glad Mrs E missed that)
  • Go mad on New Year’s Eve, including eating 12 grapes within the 12 strokes of midnight for a year of good luck (ditto)
  • Then start ramping up for the really big bit of celebrating Epiphany, which is the big event, lots of nativity scenes, loads of models of wise men in shop windows, children getting excited about the 6th January, when they get all their presents, and parades like you wouldn’t believe…

I’ve not seen a decent parade for a few years, and it seemed like most of Seville had turned out to see what was going on, on both Friday and Saturday night. The general theme seemed to be to get anyone who could play a brass instrument or ride a horse, find some uniforms or costumes, and send them through the streets of the city throwing out sweets to the spectators. Writing it down like that underplays it a bit, because the crowd was so enthusiastic, cheering, shouting and being pretty athletic whenever a shower of sweets came their way, that it had a carnival atmosphere that you don’t get at too many religious events. 

Slightly disturbing was the several hundred people following the procession in blackface – something that we weren’t prepared for at all. There’s quite a bit of reaction to this on the web at the moment, so have a look some time and see for yourself. I can’t imagine the sort of reception that this would get at home, and there seemed to be a complete ambivalence to it as a ‘tradition’. A couple of days later, I managed to blag a ticket to Sevilla FC, who were at home to Atletico Madrid, at a stadium that was beyond awesome.

I had my bag searched on entry, and had to go through three levels of security before I was allowed to take in a banana, which I thought was a little odd. I tried to explain that it was my lunch, rather than a weapon, which got no response at all. I understood a bit more about twenty minutes into the game, when little sections of the crowd started making monkey noises every time Thomas Partey got the ball. I thought that we’d said goodbye to that sort of behaviour at football about twenty years ago, but apparently it was still ok in that neck of the woods.

Anyway, aside from that, and the other odd tradition of ritually killing dumb animals in front of thousands of baying spectators, Seville seemed nicely civilised and full of reasonably jolly people. Lots of medieval streets, big old catholic statements, lots of water and bridges, and seriously fruit-filled orange trees everywhere you looked. 

We stayed on for a couple of says after all the Epiphany fuss had died down, and the city felt like it was starting to settle down to a sunny normality. Even the sugar had been washed off the roads and paths, meaning that you could walk along without your feet sticking to the ground – we’d seen people be separated from their shoes after the parades as their heels stuck to the sugary mess of several thousand trampled sweets.

We stepped onto our flight home out of an unwashed blue sky, and a couple of hours later, stepped into the grey drizzle of Stansted, and drove home talking about how we could wish away the rest of the winter, and when we’d next see a decent sunny day. 

The next day, metrosexual man that I seem to have become, I tracked down some Seville oranges and made some marmalade. Well, every little helps.

Judgement Days

~ kevinrevell ~ Leave a comment

As I write, my youngest child has just gone into an exam hall, scraped his uncomfortable chair noisily into position, put a few pens and pencils out in front of him, and, in common with thousands of kids across the country, prepared to do battle with a brand new GCSE exam.

This afternoon’s challenge is Physics. In common with most of his cohort, he’ll not have a lot of use for  F = k x e or a = F/m in later life, and if he does, he’ll be able to look it up, rather than try desperately to remember as he walks into the exam hall. So we should probably forgive him if his mind wanders occasionally into the realms of ‘is this really worth it?’

At almost exactly the same time, several hundred miles north, his eldest brother is walking into a similar hall, but this time in a group of twenty-somethings, to take his final written exam, after five years of pretty serious academic and practical study. Months and months of revision have gone into just this one 3 hour event; 8 in the morning until 10 at night, day after day, seven days a week, just to put himself through a series of strenuous mental hoops, to qualify for a specific job. In which, incidentally, he will suffer astonishing levels of stress and anxiety for an entire career.

Just up the road, #3 will be sitting an exam to mark the end of his first year at Uni, and hopefully allowing him entry to the second, where, assuming there isn’t a repeat of the university strike action this year, he might actually get some tuition.

And finally, another few hundred miles to the west, at 9am, #2 has been handed a topic on which to write a 24 hour assignment; his final assessment of his degree. He’ll work on it all day, get some sort of finished paper this evening, get it proof read, and then work through the night fretting and finishing and fining until he hands it in tomorrow morning.

As a parent, this combination of events delivers a level of stress that has to take second place behind what the boys are feeling, but is nonetheless, very real. At 1330 this afternoon, when #4 hears the words ‘Turn over your papers’, I’ll be feeling physically sick. That’s not because it recalls any horrible past experience particularly, although like many people, one of my recurring nightmares is being put in an exam hall, hearing those words, and not being able to function. No, this nausea is about the consequence of success or failure, and what it means for the future of the ones I hold dear. All over the country, I imagine parents are all feeling this way, feeling awful for the ones whose hands we stopped holding years ago, but, who for a few hours at a time, really are completely and utterly on their own.

The point of writing this down is not particularly for any empathy, certainly not to justify any vicarious living through our kids. It’s to challenge why we go through all of this as either parents or young adults, as an accepted way of measurement. And to do that, we need to look at what’s at stake. For our family, the consequence of #1 screwing up this morning’s exam would be a re-run of year 5, on the assumption he fancies a sixth year of expensive study and pressure, and a bid goodbye to the job he’s already accepted. For #2, there’s about a 2% tolerance in his marking of this exam to distinguish between a very good and a very very good degree; something that will matter enormously in the daunting challenge of career prospects for arts graduates these days. And for #4, he’ll either get the qualifications to get to his college course, or he won’t. And if he doesn’t, then his plan B isn’t especially palatable.

And all of this is hanging on a couple of hours of assessment, when you might not be on your game, when you’re entirely at the whim of the examining board in which part of the syllabus they want to quiz you on, and, most importantly, when you might not be able to remember stuff.

Because pretty much every exam that my kids are currently sitting through still requires them to remember things that they’re unlikely to need either now or in the future. And the tests are a bit light on proving their abilities at (say) reasoning, or logic, or any other measure of what we might call intelligence for later life. That’s important because we just don’t need a lot of that stuff in our heads any more. I’m not saying that facts aren’t useful, but they’re all available, at the touch of a button, through that thing called the internet. Which is a much better reference point in most cases than the half remembered facts in your brain. For example, the last time I went to my GP, we had a quick conversation about why I’d come in, a bit of a poke about in the relevant area, then he went straight onto Google to confirm his thinking and choose the right medication. And rightly so; at a guess, the last time he’d been fully tested on his memory for medical facts was over twenty years ago.

I can’t help thinking that life would be a bit more sensible for everyone taking these exams these days if the focus was on reasoning, analysis and the ability to seek out relevant information rather than the regurgitation of facts and figures. The most intelligent people I’ve ever met have these sort of skills in spades; and they don’t necessarily have a detailed knowledge of stuff to make them any more functional in their lives. They also tend to have a high level of what them psychologists call ‘emotional intelligence’, which allows them to interact by recognising their and other people’s feelings.

For one reason or another, I reckon my kids score fairly highly when it comes to things that matter, like emotional intelligence. But I’m really fed up that they’ll continue to be measured on stuff that matters less, and in a way that tests something altogether different. Anyway, good luck to them, and good luck to everyone in similar boats. (Although I don’t know why you’re reading this, you should be revising, for goodness sake).

They don’t like it up ’em, Mr Mainwaring

~ kevinrevell ~ Leave a comment

2017 was always going to be designated as a ‘milestone birthday year’, albeit not in the way that other birthdays had happened. Quite a long time ago, I remember going out for drinks on my 21st, drinking and smoking my way into a terrific hangover, and thinking that life was unable to get much better than this (I was completely wrong). When I was thirty, I sent out invitations to celebrate, or commiserate, passing into middle age, and we had a huge party, reforming the bands we’d been in a few years before, in the realisation that we were all headed for some sort of rock & roll decline (which we were). Another party for my fortieth, but this time with a more expensive suit, and a further band reunion, but, worryingly, sitting down to play. And then, a few years ago, 50, which, unnervingly, is least clear of all, lost in a haze of extreme running, ice baths and ill advised tequila competitions with kids who were young enough to be my children. Which, of course, they were.

Being 55 was different, but notable in its own special way. Firstly, there were a series of letters reminding me that years ago, I’d suggested that May 2017 would be an excellent time to retire, and I would save every last penny I had to make that happen. I kept my promise on the savings front, but unfortunately others in my life didn’t*, and I found myself woefully short of the sunset retiree lifestyle that Michael Aspel and Gloria Hunniford seem to witter on about, given half a chance.

Then came more letters, the first one the day after my birthday, inviting me to take out insurance for my declining years (with free Parker pen, but only if I reply now!), then offering holidays, to be taken with other over-55’s, probably so we could have long chats about Brexit and the youth of today. A horrible prospect indeed, a bit like an 18-30 holiday but with less energy, less tolerance, and less wet T-shirt competitions (I’d hope).

And then, the letter I’d been looking forward to least. Because, at 55, you get put on a special health screening list. The first letter is fairly innocuous, welcoming you to the world of the NHS, and giving you assurance that early screening of bowel cancer is a fabulous way of getting old gracefully. Or, I suppose, at all. The letter is beautifully put together, with soft words around screening and images and prevention, and makes very little reference to the main point of the exercise, which is to put a smallish camera up your backside, with a longer lead than you might imagine possible.

So what you do is fill in the form, because you figure that you do really really really want to know if you have the other c-word in your life. And you put the appointment in your diary and try not to think for a few weeks, and, largely, you don’t. And then, a couple of weeks before you need to start remembering about the appointment that you’re trying not to remember, a parcel arrives.

I still love getting parcels, especially unexpected ones. A few years ago, I got a book posted to me about great naval battles of the Second World War. Inside, it said ‘To Kevin’. Nothing else, and no clue who’d sent it, other than a Manchester postmark. It remains one of the most brilliant moments of my life. Last week I got a parcel from my parents, just as unexpected, which had two packets of smoked mackerel in it. Not as weird as it sounds, but just as delightful. So when this parcel arrived, I pounced on it like Michael Fallon at a Young Conservatives rally.

I tore the parcel open, and (you might be ahead of me here) was disappointed to see nothing about great naval battles and no sign of smoked mackerel. Instead, there was a tube, a plastic container full of clear fluid, and a set of instructions on how to use your enema.

I’ve never had an enema before, but my wife, a woman with the patience and black sense of humour shared by many in the nursing profession, told me that there was nothing to worry about. In fact (and I should have smelt a rat here), she offered to help administer the enema, to make sure that it was ‘working properly’.

When the diary date finally arrived, I knocked off work a bit early, got home and reread the enema instructions for about the 50th time, and Mrs E kindly suggested that she could help with what she charmingly called the ‘introduction’. For a while, I wasn’t absolutely sure what she meant, and then suddenly I very much was. There was a definite imbalance on the enthusiasm of the two of us taking part. I don’t think she actually shouted out ‘Geronimo’, as she ‘introduced’, but she might as well have done.

If you’ve had one of these enemas, you’ll be fairly aware of what happens next. Not very much for the first 10 minutes and then, fairly suddenly, something that feels like a small volcano in your lower intestine. Fortunately in our house there are only a couple of dozen buttock-clenching strides between the sofa and the toilet, where I realised the true sensation of what I understand is called an evacuation. When, as Lionel Ritchie once said, there was ‘nothing left to give’, it was time to go to the hospital. In a plan that was either macho, naive or stupid, I’d planned to cycle there, but agreed with Mrs E that it might be, after all, worth taking her up on her offer of a lift.

Mrs E dropped me off at the hospital, arranged to pick me up at some vague point in the future, and I distinctly heard her cackling away to herself as she drove off. Found my way to the gastro ward without asking for directions (always a win), and opened the door to the waiting room. My appointment was for 18:15, and I suppose I expected a small room with 3-4 people awaiting their evening appointment with a sigmoidoscope. Much to my surprise, the door opened to a really large waiting room, with maybe 50 chairs, and almost each one occupied. I sat down at one of the chairs, and looked around. I noticed that everyone else was looking around surreptitiously as well; I wasn’t really sure why until it suddenly struck me – I’d not been in this situation since I was about 15.

Just to be clear, no-one shoved a camera up my backside when I was 15, but that was probably the last time that I’d walked into a room of people of exactly the same age. And then, like now, everyone was looking round, while trying not to catch anyone else’s eye, to see, well, how the last 40 years had gone for everyone else. Slightly different thoughts to the ones when I was 15, perhaps a bit more ‘looks like he had a good Christmas’, and a bit less ‘crikey, where did he get those shoes/trousers/haircut?’, and some new thoughts too, like ‘I wonder why he brought his wife along, particularly if she’s going to look so bloody miserable’, and ‘ there’s an odd place for a tattoo’. And we were probably all having these thoughts as the receptionist kindly matched called out names to match faces. I seemed to get called about 10 minutes after checking in, which did make me wonder how I’d jumped the queue. Maybe this was just somewhere that a selection of 55 year old men go on Wednesday evenings for their own entertainment. Perhaps some of them had enjoyed the process so much in the past that they’d turn up hoping for a cancellation.

Then you’re shown into a small room and asked to undress, put one gown on backwards, another one on forwards, and keep your shoes and socks on, and put your clothes in the shopping basket provided. You emerge from the little room, carrying your basket, and sit down next to the other men who have just been through the same process. Now, I’m not sure if there’s a supermarket scene in ‘One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest’, but if there is, we were reenacting it, sitting there with gowns and modesty barely intact, still wearing unlaced boots and socks, and each clutching on to a shopping basket. It’s not a look I’ll be planning to replicate, but it’s definitely one to remember for a while.

Another call, and this time into a room with a proper door, and serious equipment and people inside. There were four of them, and I was introduced to each one in turn. One was going to make me feel comfortable from the front, the next was to keep an eye on things from the back, the lead role was to be taken by a kindly soul who would be wielding the camera, leaving Steve in the corner who was going to be doing the ‘impressive stuff with the computer’. Well, they all looked very relaxed about the whole situation, especially Steve, who had an especially comfortable looking office chair. I asked if they normally heard or told jokes during this sort of procedure. They didn’t, but would be very happy to hear any material from me. I said I’d not really prepared anything specifically for this event, so I told them a bit about the enema and how it reminded me of a John Cooper Clarke line:

‘Like a recently disinfected shithouse
You’re clean round the bend’

Steve pitched in with his favourite joke, which wasn’t necessarily a gag as you or I might know it, but ended with some sort of a punchline from Dad’s Army’s Corporal Jones ; ‘They don’t like it up ‘em’.

With all parties sufficiently relaxed, a nervy silence crept into the room, only to be broken by the lead role:

‘What you’re going to feel next is my finger’

Which I did.

If you’re lucky enough to have the over-55 invite still to turn up in your post, rest assured, because the rest of the exercise is relatively pain free. In common with teenage sex, watching Norwich City at home and the final couple of Clash albums, the excitement of anticipation isn’t really matched by the following reality. There’s a bit of discomfort; a really disconcerting video stream in front of you showing your healthy pink insides and a phenomenal feeling that you’re going to poo yourself in front of four people. There were a few encouraging ‘please relax’ shoves from behind, and a few calming words from the front, telling me that all would be well, and admiring my resting pulse. ‘Are you a runner?’ said the voice in front, and, naturally enough, the next few minutes passed by in a very convivial fashion, with me talking about my favourite subject to a captive audience.

And in no time at all ‘All clear’ was announced, with everyone in the room aware of the double meaning. I started to move off the table, and was met with firm holds on three sides.

‘We’ll just give that a bit of a wipe’

And I think I would have last heard those words, in that context, about 50 years ago.

Sometimes I guess we all feel a bit nostalgic for the days when we didn’t have to bother about self-dignity. I guess that might be something else to look forward to as we get old.

 

 

* In no particular order, the others in my life who stopped me from retiring were : Nick Clegg, Nigel Farage, and Fred Goodwin, along with the hilariously well-rewarded 2007-8 Risk Committee of the Royal Bank of Scotland.