Key

There is a new era dawning...

He's taken his first steps... He's survived being on his own in the big bad world... But from September he will reach yet another milestone.. My son will get his own front-door key!

Yes, with the advent of secondary school, and the careful positioning of our new home so as to be in walking distance, there only the small matter of giving him the ability to actually get into the house to be faced. But am I worried? Of course I'm blinking worried! He's eleven! Not only does he have to remember to take his key with him he will also need to remember not to lose it! And I was eleven myself once!

Actually, for a while it wasn't an issue as my mother didn't work when I was first at secondary, making that long walk back home so as to pocket my bus fare (See 'Intervention'). But when my sister went off to college my Mum decided also to go back to work and for the last few years of my school life I too became a latch-key kid. Difference was that I didn't take a key with me. Instead we had one hidden outside the house.

Rather than the old faithful 'flower-pot beside the door' or the 'on a string through the letterbox' methods we went for the less conventional one of 'in a plastic tub at the bottom of the chest freezer at the back of the garage'. Freezers were just becoming popular then and I'm not even sure your could get upright ones for in the house at the time. Either way what we had was a vast, coffin-like box that would open with a sucking crackle and "Whump!", followed but a rising mist of frozen air that any Sci-Fi film maker would have given their right, rubber tentacle for!

I'd arrive at the house, open the garage door and then close it behind me so that no one would see what I was doing. Then open the freezer, retrieve the key from under the animal carcasses and choc-ices and then wait. Why? Because to my way of thinking any would be burglar spying on what I was doing would think that the process of key retrieval was a far more complicated affair, involving the deactivation of several deadly traps.

"Cover over the snake pit... retract the poisoned spikes... power down laser grid... and lash back giant stone boulder..."

Certainly sounds better than "Lift up Arctic Roll and grab Tupperware!"

Satisfied that the ne'er-do-wells had been put off I would emerge with the key and go to the door. The key itself of course would be freezing cold and one day I decided to see just how cold it was.

Now, there are certain things in this Universe that just cannot be avoided. Moments of destiny which will happen again and again. For decades people have unknowingly attached suction cups to there foreheads only to be immediacy scarred by a perfectly circular bruise that lasts for weeks. Thousand of curious young men have wrongly become intimate with a vacuum cleaner! But one such event surely goes back as far as the Bronze Age. An ancient alumni which I joined that day. The grand order of the "I'll just see how cold this piece of frozen metal is WITH MY TONGUE!"

At first there was no pain. Just intense cold followed by realisation that this very cold thing on your tongue wanted to stay there and just get colder! Picture me if you can, key stuck in mouth, standing at my front door which was still locked! Now this was a Yale key and the round head of which was attached to me so for the merest of moments the thought went through my mind that I could unlock it with my tongue.

I was still yet to have a girlfriend at this time and what kisses I had experienced were of the good old-fashioned English variety and in no way Francais. So my tongue muscles were sadly not up to the task. There was simply nothing for it. I would have to pull it off. Thing was that by now there seemed to be very little difference between the metal and the flesh. You could feel the fusion of ice to tongue. But regardless I gripped the key and pulled...

And did it hurt I hear you sak. Lets just say that any burglars still holding out in their hidey-holes would most certainly have fled from the screams of pain that rushed from a mouth now stripped of a layer of skin and burnt as if by a scalding pop-tart!

So, on second thoughts maybe a nice sturdy key-chain would be the best thing for my son. Welded to his under-crackers, naturally...

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Snag

"The city looks so peaceful from up here."

"Anything is peaceful from one thousand, three hundred and fifty-three feet."

'Ferris Bueller's Day Off'

I am a great lover of heights along with the process of reaching them. I never got into climbing itself but I did scale the odd seaside cliff-face in my youth and when working in the theatre the best place was always up in the fly tower. But for me nothing beats climbing a tree. Is it an inherited gene that makes me want to do the meercat thing and find a high vantage point?  Or is it like all good mountain climbers just 'because it's there'? Or am I simply a chimp at heart? Whatever the reason those limbs of delight have always tempted me.

As already mentioned I've recently moved house and although our new garden is wonderful I was met in it the other day by a very grumpy faced daughter.

"What's up?" I asked. "Don't you like the garden?"

"There are no good climbing trees" she said. And she's right. Although we have five or six trees not one of them stands out as a being particularly good for scrabbling about in.

When I was a kid in my first house in Benfleet had much the same problem. My second house in Thundersly on the other hand was just smothered in good trees. There was an old oak tree which I used to ascend in the company of ants, who were forever trooping up and down. Then there were two large ash trees which protected the front of the house and if you had the bottle seemed to go on up forever. And lastly a laurel that not only had a natural seat at the top (plus a second spot for friends) but also included a glass-bottom-boat style viewing gallery halfway up that overlooked the footpath by our house.The temptation to drop things on people's head was only overshadowed by the exhilaration of seeing without being seen - like the Predator but without the dreadlocks.

But in the first garden in Benfleet I had the choice of only one tree, a silver birch. Now I love silver birch trees as they seem almost magical with their white bark and silver-green leaves. There is something particularly mystical and elf-like when seen together as a woodland group. Unfortunately their beautiful trunks are very slippery so not good for shinning up and the branches, certainly on ours, started higher than I could reach at age 5. Luckily for me the tree grew right next to our fence which was a good sturdy one, not like the wafer thin things you get today. The fence was made of diagonal wooden beams which were easy to climb and once at the top you could sit on the fence and reach the first branches of the tree. There were no perfects spots but I could wedge myself between any one of the branches and the trunk and merrily sit there for hours listening to the wind in the leaves.

Getting down again was more complicated. Once back on the fence I'd have to execute the one manoeuvre I didn't enjoy which was turning from sitting to climbing position. I would end up either skinning my knees or scratching my stomach or slipping too soon altogether, scrapping down the fence and grazing any number of things in the process. One day I decided that the time had come to simply jump down. I sat on the fence as usual and shuffled along to be clear of the trunk. Then one... two... three... I slid my bottom off the fence and miraculously stopped, just hanging in mid air!

I could fly!!!!!

Well no, obviously I couldn't but my brain was unable to immediately deduce exactly what had happened. In actual fact the belt loop on my trousers was caught on the top of the fence, resulting in my unlikely levitation. Again, it's a credit to the workmanship of the age that the trousers held my weight with nary a rip nor a tare. However, this also meant that no amount of wriggling would release me. Thankfully being a nice day my Dad was seeing to his self-sufficiency vegetable patch. He responded to my pitiful cry for help by making his way from the between the rhubarb and the runner-beans to see what was going on.

"You can fly!"

Actually, I don't think he did say that. But being the excellent Dad that he is he would have given me a conspiratorial smirk at my predicament, collected a step ladder from the shed and unhitched me.

Thankfully there were no scars mentally, physically or arboreally. I continued my tree climbing throughout my childhood, then also at Drama School (there was a particular tree that several Thespians in training made use of) and so on into adult and parenthood. The time may now finally have come to leave it to those younger, more nimble and carrying less weight than myself. And in particular my own kids. To which ends I have my eye one tree in the garden which may not be a climber from the ground up but with some work has another more exciting possibility... tree-house!

But that's a project for another day and possibly another Random Word. In the meantime if you're able I urge you to go climb a tree and let it give you a boost... 

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Radical

As I mentioned in a previous post (see 'Evil') the lexicon of Playground Language throws up some interesting definitions. The word 'Radical' takes me back to my school-days once more and in particular all things BMX...

"Wow! Radical wheels!" "Radical moves!" "That is just soooo radical!"

Sad to say I never owned one of these "Radical" icons myself, asking instead on my eleventh birthday for a silver Raleigh Grifter. On the morning of my birthday it was standing in the hall of my house like something out of a Yellow Pages advert. I remember it was a school day so the bike stayed there until I got home. As soon as I was in the door, and still in my school uniform, I straddled it. As I did so the Blakey on my shoe scratched the paintwork on the hefty central bar leaving a scar which would forever be there to remind me of my bike's arrival.

I somehow equate that bike with taking a step towards manhood. This was no toy but rather a solid and study steed with a twist-grip-handle-gear-change-thingy (with three gears!) With it I made my first solo cycle trips around the streets and paths of Thundersly. I even went as far as taking it to the wooded playground of my youth - The Glen. It would have been there that I discovered the first big drawback of the Grifter. Its rugged frame and big, thick tyres gave it the look of an off-road vehicle but unlike the BMX a Grifter was much, much heavier. It was therefore "Radical" going down hill and "Reasonable" on the flat but "Ruddy Ridiculous" trying to go back up again!

Most of my friends at the time lived at the bottom of Bread and Cheese Hill or beyond (see 'Intervention'). Therefore I wouldn't normally take the Grifter with me when I went round to play as the trip back would no doubt have killed me. However, I did have one friend who lived near by who was a couple of years younger me and one day he told me to come round and bring my bike. When I got there I found that he and some other younger kids from his school were all cycling around the driveway of his house, being a large concrete affair, as well as in and out of the road, which being off the main drag was always relatively quiet.

A game of two wheeled Follow-My-Leader began with each of us trailing along in a line copying the route of the person in front. The bikes in use by the others were either small kiddie bikes with one or two BMXs thrown in. Finally someone in front swung out into the road, turned back to the footpath and pulling up their front wheel bumped back over the curb. The trail of bikes duly followed with myself currently towards the rear. As I approached the curb at speed I lifted my body and pulled up hard on the handle-bars to raise the front wheel but the Grifter refused to move even a millimetre. My front tyre hit the curbstone and my body, already standing on the pedals and off the seat, was thrown violently forward!

Luckily the Grifter was designed with a soft foam rubber cover between the handlebars which my chest bounced off harmlessly. Unluckily the two inch diameter bar between my legs had no such padding to cushion the similar blow to my testicles! My younger, prepubescent biker pals stared in confusion as to why a little 'knock' had somehow left me with a stunned, red face and open mouth from which issued a note to make Aled Jones proud. This was in no way "Radical" but rather a word previously heard but not yet endured - "Rupture!"

I can remember carefully dismounting before laying down in the garden. Eventually, when I had recovered sufficiently, I made my apologies and walked my bike homeward with watering eyes and a stilted gait. In retrospect I wonder if the Grifter wasn't looking to get a little payback for the time I'd scarred it. It certainly marked a change in the relationship between us. It may not have been a "radical" change but where manhood was concerned it was certainly less of a "step towards..." and more of a "swift kick in the..."

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Doggerel

What the heck is doggerel?
Is it quite big or only small?
I've researched every chronicle
But nothing can I glean.

And are its jokes all topical?
Politic views all marginal?
Its manner flash and prodigal,
Or introvert and mean?

Does it move in ways methodical,
In tree and bush subtropical?
Or more at speeds impossible?
Or somewhere in-between?

Do you find it at the carnival,
In trousers, hat and monocle?
(Undeniably improbable,
And is, no doubt, obscene!)

Experts they differ one and all,
In almost every article
But not to split the follicle
I'd guess it's olive-green!

So, as I lack the wherewithal,
To catalogue damn doggerel,
I’ll finish up this canticle
And take one, sight unseen!

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Chicken

"It's Movie Quiz Time! Movie Quiz Time! Movie Quiz Time!"

 (Do you like the new theme tune?)

Yes, it's Movie Quiz Time once more. But even if it is a lazy way of blogging I still love setting them. So see if you can deduce the ten movie titles in this Poultry-Packed-Picture-Puzzler!

...Floating across America with a handful of balloons a purple, chicken-loving, bent-nosed freak sings about going back there someday, wherever 'there' is...

...In the distant future a man out of his time, holding a stick of celery and banana, runs away from a big chicken for fear of being pecked to death...

...While liberating hostages from Iraq a would be Rambo has to resort to using a chicken when he runs out of arrows...

...In mid-west America two teenagers stop dancing for a bit to play 'Chicken' with tractors in which the hero only wins because he can't get his 'foot free', or something like that...

...In the wild, wild west both a Dude and a Duke have been a one-eyed Rooster...

...In a 'Depression' hit New York a Rooster along with his sister and girlfriend sing about making it to somewhere called Easy Street...

...On a Mediterranean Island in World War Two an enterprising Mess Officer finds a way to make money from eggs - so what's the catch?...

...In the Music City a fragile County and Western singer finally has a very public breakdown in the shape of a chicken impersonation...

.. In the frozen Yukon one prospector becomes so hungry he imagines his little-tramp of a partner to be a giant chicken...

...In a Moroccan city one of three brothers tries to speed things up at hotel by saying - "If a customer asks you for a three-minute egg, give it to him in two minutes. If he asks you for a two-minute egg, give it to him in one minute. If he asks you for a one-minute egg, give him the chicken and let him work it out for himself!"...

Answers

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Evil

"...I feel in a sense that the Devil's had a very bad press, you know. After all, I mean, what is bad? I mean here we are in Lambeth... I think modern Christian's should have a bit less of the "Get thee behind me Satan!" and more of the "Come in me old mate and have a cup of tea"..." 

The Rev Mountjoy, 'Not the Nine O'clock News'

I have to say, and hope that those who know me would agree, that I can safely be described as a good person. No dictator nor despot am I. No amoral maniac. No psycho killer. (Ooo, what is this that this is?)  But we all know that evil lurks in the hearts of men and mine is no exception. I would never openly hurt anyone but as a kid, if I got angry, well let's just say you wouldn't like me if I was angry... 

Once again it comes back to shyness. I found it hard to share emotions, any emotions and so instead would bottle them up inside me. Of course anything stored under pressure is in danger of exploding and once in a while these pent up emotions would finely flare up. In the playground language of my day this was described as "Having a fruity". Lord only knows why.

Playground sayings have a microcosm all of their own. Sometimes restricted to a single district or even as localised as a single school. I was therefore amazed to learn recently that the expression "Jimmy Reckon" and "Jimmy Hill" (combined with the stroking of the chin) as an expression of disbelief was used almost nationwide in the late seventies and early eighties. I wonder if the saying "Cherub" and the tickling of the other persons chin as an alternative to shouting "Gutted!" ever made it out of my part of Essex?

But I digress... 

A bit like David Banner before me I had no control over when I'd turn mean and fruity. There was no Jekyll and Hyde style catalyst to help search for the evil inside myself. Rather it simply happened at the random dropping of the last straw. The red mist could having been growing over a matter of days, until finally I had to lash out. As a result I could easily find myself venting my anger on the wrong person, either because theirs was a relativity inconsequential crime or because they would turn round and beat the sh*t out of me! I could write a whole post on the ill-judged fights I have picked over the years. But the two most evil ventings were not fights at all but rather all out attacks!

My first transgression occurred when I was about four years old.  My big sister had her friend Ruth round to play but rather than let me tag along decided they wanted to leave me out - possibly because I was younger or maybe because I was a boy. I probably persisted which pushed the two of them into teasing me. Both were standing just inside her bedroom and saying that I couldn't come in. Before I knew it I had a weapon in my grasp, I could feel its weight as it nestled in my palm. One final taunt and I snapped! Before I could stop myself the missile was away. Granny Weeble flew through the air and struck Ruth smartly on the head! 

Now, throwing a Weeble is not to be confused with 'Throwing a wobbly'. For one thing it's far more affective. It would be nice to say that Ruth wobbled and then did fall down, but she didn't. Instead time froze for a moment until broken by Granny Weeble hitting to the floor. This was then closely followed by Ruth's screams of pain and a dash by me to my room. I'm glad to say that Ruth, myself and Granny all lived to play another day and that my punishment was either lenient enough to be forgotten or so traumatic I've locked it deep inside....

The other time I flew into a rage was I few years later while in the Infants at school. One day my best-friend at the time, Richard, told me that I couldn't see the puppet show that some other kids were doing. Why I didn't ignore him and simply walk past I don't know. Instead I argued with him a face-to-face. When this didn't change his mind I took what I saw as being my only other option. I grabbed one of his ears in each hand and bit him squarely on the nose!

Being young our falling out only lasted until the end of the day and I'm guessing he forgave me. We still played together after the event but in the days that followed my crime haunted me in the shape of two straight scabs across the bridge of his nose which stared at me accusingly.

Thankfully my emotions came under control in my teens, mostly due to my discovery of acting which proved to be an excellent outlet emotionally. I successfully exchanged nose biting and Weeble tossing for Berkoff and jazz hands! Now that I'm entering the fifth out of the seven ages of man I have far better control of my inner evil. And if all else fails I can always find release within the confines of my iPhone with the help of numerous Irate Avians... 

"Ha! Ha! Ha! (* evil laugh*)  Yes! Three stars! Cherub little green piggies! Cherub!"

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Nuisance

So here are the facts - about a month ago I moved house, so for what seems like forever I have been either putting things into boxes or taking them out again. Everything else went on hold (which is why I've had to step away for the keyboard and hence the hiatus in my world of Random Words). But the end is now in sight and the Randomness may continue.

Although all this packing and unpacking is a nuisance in a perverse way I enjoy it as the only thing that gives me greater pleasure than packing things away 'correctly' (I practically drool my way through the storage section of IKEA) is the arranging and rearranging of my 'things'. So why if I'm in 'sorting' heaven, and importantly in a lovely new house who everyone (including the cat) feel utterly at home in straight away, do I find myself without a sense of closure. Because I have one grand drawback - books!

For the first time in my life I own a property which has enough space to comfortably accommodate all my books (and boy do I have a lot of them). You can blame my father for this as he also is a great collector of the printed word. So I have inherited the 'book' gene that not only compels me to read, hoard and worship these paper-packed-pleasures but also to revere them. It has been drummed into me from an early age never to fold down corners, lick your thumb to turn a page or over-bend a spine (Jeremy Goode I feel your pain) But a personal quirk of my own is getting the books just right on the shelves.

There are two ways of tackling the problem (three is you employ the dewey decimal system but even I'm not that bad!). The first is to adopt a neat-freak approach by either sorting alphabetically (by author or title) or by size or, and some people do do this, by colour! The other is the total scatter gun approach of chucking any book in any order anywhere, as long as they are on a shelf and sometimes not even that. I'm afraid I'm a little too anal for the second approach, but at the same time I love the effect. It always reminds me of a second-hand bookshop, the place in the world were I am probably the most happy. For my fortieth birthday I took a weekend trip to Hay-on-Wye to simply indulge the pleasure of being in in a town where there is a bookshop on every corner and the tomes outnumber the residents 10,000 to 1.

My shelf stacking style therefore has elements of both approaches. I need that slightly haphazard look as a result of just a hint of higgledy with a dash of piggledy. But at the same time I need to be able to find books at a moments notice. Because you never know when you'll need to reread 'Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency' for the hundredth time or the first two stories of  G K Chesterton's 'The Innocence of Father Brown'. Or the poem by E E Cummings that mentions the universe next door. Or remind yourself just how superior Moore's 'The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen' is compared to the crap movie. Or look again for the clues in 'The Murder of Roger Ackroyd'. Or... well you get the idea.

So if I have the will, the space and most certainly the books where's the rub you may ask? The problem is that as yet I just don't have the shelves. We have grand plans for shelving all over the place and I'm already seeing in my mind certain books in certain rooms but as yet, nothing. Apparently there are more important thing to consider such as heating, wiring and food! (Food! Why can't the kids live on beans for a month? Is that too much to ask? Obviously yes.)

So all my ideas will have to remain just that for now and the books will just have to stay in their boxes. As the saying goes "The best laid plans of mice and men... er..."

(Damn it!...Which crate has the quotations book in it?...Oh!... Pants!...)

...well, it probably has something to do with cheese but I'm not committing myself...

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