ROAD MAP OF A MID-LIFE CRISIS (4)

RMOAMLC (4)

WORDS OF ADVICE

It’s Tuesday morning and I’m on the school run. Ask any parent and they will tell you, modern day education is a minefield of cliques, gangs and bullying. And then there are the kids.  Suburban schools are no longer governed by teachers instead they are run by mothers who control their domain like Chicago gang bosses. Fathers are treated as non-combatants, tolerated and allowed to drop off their offspring just so long as they make sure not to attempt to involve themselves in any aspect of school life.

After several years of regular drop offs I had earned the occasional peremptory “Hello,” or glacial smile from the other parents. That was, of course, until I committed the ultimate suburban sin of leaving home, news of which spread like herpes on a Club 18-30’s holiday. Ever since I have been treated rather worse than a pariah and so, as far as possible, I try to stay away from school.

This morning I am late picking the boys up and I’m in a rush to drop them off. There is an air of tension in the car. “If it’s alright with you I’m going to drop and scoot,” I say trying to sound upbeat. There is a non-committal grunt from the back of the car. “Only I Have a meeting to get to,” I add as if they might be remotely interested. When, finally, we near the school every possible parking space is taken. “Just drop us off here,” says Emil. I do as he suggests and pull onto the pavement where the kerb drops to allow access to the staff car park. The boys collect their bags and get out of the car. I am so busy saying goodbye and waving as they exit from the passenger side of the car that I don’t notice the figure that appears at the driver’s side window and knocks sharply.

My head snaps round to see the stern face of authority. I say “stern face” but in reality the visage gurning at me through the window looks like Mr Potato Head let himself go a bit. I say “authority” but as I wind down the window I notice that what I took to be a police uniform has the tell-tale blue flashings that denote  I’m dealing with a police community support officer. “Good morning sir,” he says in a world weary monotone that manages the neat trick of injecting the word “sir” with total disrespect.

“Morning,” I respond.

“You know what I want to speak to you about?”

“Parking?” I venture apologetically.

“Correct. We do not park on the pavement outside a busy school.”

At this moment I have 3 options:

A          Apologise and point out that I am somewhat pushed for time so could we please take it as read that I am fully contrite, won’t do it again in order that I can get on with my day.

B          Moral outrage that in these lawless times my time and taxes are being expended in this pointless charade.

C         Suck it up.

I play it safe and opt for C.

“I’m not going to issue you with a penalty notice,” says Potato Head and my heart lifts momentarily until he continues, “instead I will be offering you words of advice which I will record on this ticket.” With this he produces a carbonated form about 1 foot long which he proceeds to write upon with all the urgency of a dyslexic with writer’s block. From time to time he asks me to provide some vital information such as my name but for the most part he paces around the car examining it from all angles with an air of grave suspicion while at the same time he talks into his radio.

By now I am acutely aware that this particular piece of theatre is playing out in front of all the parents dropping off their charges to school and that they must think I am involved in a jihadist terror plot or at best am peddling drugs to their children at the school gates. While I’m writhing with embarrassment Potato Head appears once more at the driver’s door. He continues his meticulous written record of our encounter and as he writes I notice a pattern of criss-cross scars on the inside of his left forearm running from his wrist to his elbow at which point his arm disappears into the sleeve of his shirt.

Finally he finishes writing and leans down until his face is level with mine. “Just one more question sir; Are you happy with the way this stop has been conducted?”

I ponder the question. Am I happy to have been publicly humiliated by a charmless cretin who self harms in front of a group of people who need little encouragement to think badly of me for the trifling offence of parking for 30 seconds on the pavement and the now I have to do a customer satisfaction survey? “Yes,” I respond.

Potato Head records my response mechanically before tearing off one of the copies of the ticket which he hands to me. “Have a good day,” he says with no hint of irony.

“Thank you,” I reply in a tone dripping with it but I’m pretty certain it’s wasted effort. 

I HAVE A DREAM

My new found home is reminiscent of the flats that that people who have spent a lot of time in institutional care find themselves in after release. The walls are a uniform magnolia and the carpet, which is fitted everywhere save the kitchen and bathroom, is a suspicious blue that could be hiding any number of grubby secrets. The curtains, which hang limply at the windows, are the colour of old ladies’ support hose and in the bedroom the central lightshade appears to have been fashioned from human skin. It is a dirty yellow colour and at night, when the light is on, it bathes the room in a deathly hue. Perhaps the landlord picked it up from a garage sale at Hannibal Lecter’s place.

 To date I have not done a great deal to make my surroundings more comfortable. I have an inflatable mattress for a bed and a blue, nylon camping chair in the front room. This tends to be where I do most of my deep thinking. Given the Spartan surroundings I am unlikely to be coming up with a new General Theory of Relativity any time soon.

It is unsurprising that I try my hardest not to be at home. Nevertheless, and much to my irritation, the place still gets dirty; especially the bathroom. I strongly suspect that when I lock the door on my way out a hairy tramp climbs in through the window and spends the time I am away sleeping naked in the bath, rousing himself only to scratch furiously. When I return home the bathroom is ankle deep in hair. Things have got so bad that I have given serious thought to buying a vacuum cleaner. Speaking as a man who doesn’t have a TV I am worried that my priorities may be seriously out of whack.

All of this is a long winded explanation of why it is I find myself on a Sunday afternoon in Homebase looking at bathroom accessories.

I am weighing up the competing aesthetic claims of various toothbrush holders. There is a smart if somewhat dull, white, china cup, a shiny black receptacle which I imagine appeals to the type of person who has silk sheets and an unhealthy penchant for leopard print, and then there is a very stylish brushed steel tube. This is without doubt the toothbrush holder for me. It speaks of a certain understated style. It is masculine without being macho, functional and yet it communicates something positive that I can’t quite put my finger on about its owner. It is the Audi of toothbrush holders. I reach it down from the shelf and look at the base to check the price.

And that is when I see it! My toothbrush holder has a name. On the sticky white label alongside the bar code and the seemingly random jumble of numbers is the word “aspirational”.  “Aspirational!” I feel insulted; belittled. Do the people at Homebase really believe that my life is so small, that my horizons are so narrow and my ambitions so limited that I lie in bed at night dreaming of owning a toothbrush holder? When Martin Luther King proclaimed that he had a dream was it that his toothbrush should be contained in a stylish metal cup? No it was not, and while I don’t claim to have such lofty ambitions as MLK I flatter myself that my sights are set slightly higher than the bathroom shelf.

I imagine the chino wearing designers grasping espressos as they clap each other on the back at Homebase HQ. “Oh I think we’ve cracked it this time guys!” they say to each other. “Absolutely smashed it! This is most definitely the toothbrush holder for anybody with the faintest desire for self improvement,” they assure each other. “What shall we call it?” they ask. Then almost simultaneously the same word occurs to each of them and rises from the group as one utterance, “ASPIRATIONAL”. They applaud themselves and decide to nip off to Nandos for a celebratory lunch.

I look at the toothbrush holder. I suppose it is rather neat and if I scrape of the label no-one need ever know that my horizons are defined by my toothbrush holder.

Back home I enter the bathroom. Small balls of hair are rolling across the floor like tumbleweed.  I curse the hairy tramp and put my new toothbrush holder on the sink. I put my toothbrush and toothpaste in the holder and stand back. There is no denying that it looks good. It is a small step on my upward trajectory.   

ROAD MAP OF A MID-LIFE CRISIS (2)

ROAD MAP OF A MID-LIFE CRISIS (no.2)

DEBT CRISIS

Sunday morning chez Pwëngl. I am luxuriating in the folding camping chair while reading the papers. A mug of black tea nestles in the chair’s cup holder. The absence of milk is not an attempt to mimic Californian health fads but rather an unwelcome result of finding that the pint of semi-skimmed in the fridge door is having an identity crisis and thinks it is cottage cheese. As I scan the news it appears that for once I am in tune with the wider world. I do not have two pennies to rub together and live in constant fear of the postman’s arrival. The same appears to be true of much of Europe.

Greece, Ireland, Spain, and Portugal all have to hide behind the sofa when the milkman calls for his money. Their reaction to the crisis is illuminating of national character. Greece behaves like the occupant of a crumbling stately home, possessed of all the hauteur generations of aristocratic inbreeding bestow and all the debts that accrue from centuries of upkeep and death duties. Now, with the day of reckoning at hand and payment due, Greece dismisses talk of money as vulgar and insists it simply must be allowed to carry on spending in the manner to which it has become accustomed.

Ireland’s response is the polar opposite, like a dog who finds the Sunday roast cooling and unattended in the kitchen and does what comes naturally. Ireland knew deep in its heart that it should never have had the money it spent on building homes nobody wanted to live in and now, when it has been caught with its muzzle deep in the chicken’s breast cavity, it slinks off, tail between its legs.

Spain’s response will be familiar to those who have seen the film “The Hangover.” The nation woke up after one hell of a party to find a tiger in the bathroom and with collective amnesia about what happened. The only significant difference is that in the film they found someone to hold the baby.

Many of the papers forget to mention Portugal; enough said.

It is tempting to view the default candidates on Europe’s fringe as feckless idiots who given the keys to the sweetshop gorged themselves on borrowing oblivious to the consequences. But that would be to ignore some fairly unpalatable truths. We in the UK did not watch this happen and canvass caution or warn of the perils ahead. No, quite the opposite; our government and economic commentators lauded an economic miracle. Now reality must be checked, belts tightened and financial reason restored to its throne, all under the stern eye of the German governess.

And most recently Italy…..

Italy is like the fat girl who is constantly announcing she is about to embark upon a diet while she takes another doughnut from the Krispy Kreme box. Most nations balk at the prospect of ceding their national sovereignty but Italy has in the past shown its admiration for the firm smack of Teutonic authority. It is pleasing to imagine Italy, pink faced and flabby, being put through its paces by the chiselled, buzz cut, German personal trainer. Whether financial austerity has the same attraction as high shine jack boots and well tailored field grey we must wait and see.

And so as the world faces another economic crisis, the European ship is on the rocks and in danger of sinking. With hindsight it is easy to see how we got to this point. The lack of unified economic and fiscal policy making within a single currency area was always likely to be fatal especially when the norms of financial probity were routinely ignored. But more importantly it is clear that not all the lookouts were at their post. The Head of the IMF was not necessarily on the bridge looking out for icebergs, instead he was below decks brushing up on figures. There appears little doubt that DSK will not face trial in New York but from here in the UK we can only marvel at a political system that will welcome him back as a presidential candidate with genuine prospects of success after his acquittal on grounds that the chamber maid with whom he had sex did so not because of the threat of physical violence but as a result of a financial arrangement.

What will it all mean for me?  Apparently the break up of the Euro Zone will result in untold misery. That things could get considerably worse is difficult to imagine. Perhaps, as the old joke runs, we have to date been up to our knees in the brown stuff and shortly the bell will ring to announce the end of the tea break. Then we will have to revert to standing on our heads. To my untutored eye the prospect of Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy going back to their national currencies holds out nothing worse than the hope that I may one day be able to afford a foreign holiday again.

All this consideration of global economic woes has left me hungry.  I am checking out the vast expanse of emptiness that is the inside of my fridge when the phone rings. Would I like to go out for a pub lunch asks the voice at the other end. I think about my empty wallet, my extended overdraft, the pile of red bills lying unopened on the worktop and then I think about how ravenous I am, how nice it would be to eat thick slices of roast beef and I think “Oh what the hell.” Maybe the IMF will bail me out.

No. 1

RMOAMLC

No. 1

Midweek and I’m meeting Julian in town for a drink. He approaches with two pints and slides mine across the table towards me. He examines his own drink against the light before we touch glasses and take the first sip.

“How are things?” I ask.

Julian statres at the head on his beer before replying, “Good, yes very good.” His eyes flick from side to side as if he is struggling to decide exactly where to start telling me about just how good things are. In the end he settles for a “Yeah….” which emerges as a sigh as his gaze drifts off to the middle distance.

Julian and I go way back, he is my closest friend. Something is very plainly not going well.

“How’s work?” I ask.

“Good,” says Julian nodding in exaggerated fashion to emphasise the point. He takes a slug of his beer and then asks, “How about you?”

I stare at the head on my beer. Julian knows that I have moved out of home. I consider telling him about the arguments, the problems over seeing the children and the misery of living in a one bedroom flat with no television and an inflatable mattress with a slow puncture for a bed. “Good. Not bad at all,” I say.

“The kids?”

“Yeah good,” I say and my gaze drifts off to the middle distance. A silence descends on our table. In an attempt to lift it I mention, in what I hope is a casual tone, that I’m thinking about writing something.

Julian raises his eyebrows, ”Mm, what sort of thing?”

“Oh just some personal reflections,” I study his face, “on the theme of mid-life crisis.”

Julian splutters on his beer. “Mid-life crisis? What do you have to say on the subject of mid-life crisis?” His voice is high pitched, challenging.

I shrug, ”I’m not claiming to be an expert,” I say defensively.

“But you’re not having a mid-life crisis. Good grief, you’ve got a job in the City and you’re free to have relationships with whoever you want.” There is bitterness in his voice and in that moment I catch a fleeting sight of the demons that torment him as if stealing a glimpse into a locked room.

But I want Julian to understand, I want his approval. I want to tell him that a mid-life crisis is not about wearing novelty socks or buying a sports car. It’s the overwhelming disappointment you feel when you accept that you have run out of time to change the course of your life. It is like perpetually living in that moment at the end of teenage discos when the lights go up and you realise that you have missed the opportunity to ask someone to dance.  And as if this were not hard enough to bear, the truly crushing fact is that there is nobody to blame but yourself. You did this to yourself. I think all of this but what I actually say is, “Got time for another?”

Over the second pint we relax and discuss safe topics. We make each other laugh and when new have finished we go our separate ways and promise to meet up soon. An hour later I’m off the train and in my car arguing with my ex over the phone when I notice the blue flashing light in the mirror. The policeman and I play the “do you know why we stopped you” game and I breath a huge sigh of relief when I learn that it was for not having my lights on. Unfortunately the sigh is gently perfumed with beer and moments later I am standing on the pavement blowing into a small black box. In the time it takes for the machine to register the amount of alcohol in my breath I have carried out a fairly thorough audit of the consequences of a positive test and my legs are like jelly when the officer tells me I am fine and to be more careful in future. He gives me the clear plastic mouthpiece as a keepsake and I thank him and get back in my car.

The next morning I wake up with only the deflated mattress between me and the hardwood floor. I roll over and pick up my phone. There is a text from Julian,

Good to see u last night. Love to read that stuff you mentioned. Let’s meet up again soon.

I spot the clear plastic mouthpiece lying on the floor as I text a response. I think of telling Julian about my encounter on the way home. Then I think better of   it because as I lay there stiff and still tired I realise that in addition to the loss of hope and the self loathing, part of having a mid-life crisis is that you face it on your own.