Tag: Threadmash

The Phone Call by Nashmash, Royal National Theatre, 27 February 2024

“I can’t talk now, darling, I’m performing at the National”

Yes, this was the night that I and several others from Threadmash performed at the National Theatre.

Threadmash Begets NashMash

Threadmash is one of Rohan Candappa’s bright ideas. We have been meeting on and off for five years now, writing short pieces to order and then performing them to each other (and occasionally also to invitees). Here is a link to my write up of the first event, which includes my first Threadmash piece:

The Rohan Thing, My Short Performance Piece As Part Of Rohan Candappa’s Inaugural Threadmash, Gladstone Arms, 5 February 2019

The idea needed to morph into ThreadZoomMash during the pandemic and now seems to have retained the capital M for mash. If you are a real glutton for this sort of thing, this link here is a tag for all of the ThreadMash pieces on Ogblog, which will include this one.

Anyway…

…Rohan decided to try the National Theatre foyer bars as a venue this time around – cunningly timed with two quite long plays at the Olivier and Lyttelton both starting at 19:30. That gave us ample time to perform in the relative quiet between the start of the plays and the intervals.

The relative quiet was rather noisily broken by the bar staff hoovering up around us, very early in the reading of Geraldine’s piece, but we’ll put that temporary disturbance aside. The venue worked.

And we can all honestly claim now that we have performed at The National Theatre.

Rohan threaded our pieces together, as is his way. In this instance, with the topic “The Phone Call”, Rohan’s thread covered Alexander Graham Bell‘s innovation, the practical telephone. Also the contribution of the lesser known but colourful Florentine, Antonio Meucci, who largely invented that communication method before Bell, but was too polite to patent the critically novel elements of the technology he had discovered.

Geraldine’s piece came first. A charming throwback to 1973, Geraldine recounted her mother’s almost infeasibly regular long-distance calls to Geraldine (who had escaped to New York). Geraldine’s mum persistently tried, in vain, to persuade her daughter to return to “Hicksville” and resume the “normal” life into which Geraldine had, to her mother’s perception, been born.

Rohan then reminded us all that Alexander Graham Bell’s first phone call was to an employee who awaited his call…

Mr. Watson—Come here—I want to see you

…starting the mighty tradition of bosses using such devices to issue instructions to underlings.

Rohan was rather sniffy about my ability to follow a simple instruction – i.e. to write a story about a phone call. I cannot imagine what Rohan’s beef might have been.

The Phone Call by Ian Harris

We don’t go out so much anymore. Not since the pandemic. It’s not a fear of infection or anything like that.  It’s just that we have got out of the habit.  It now takes something especially interesting or unusual to lure us back to the theatre or concert hall. 

One such interesting concert caught our eyes recently – a concert of African chamber music at the Wigmore Hall, led by Tunde Jegede, who is both a virtuoso kora player and a classically-trained cellist. The kora is a large West-African 21-stringed plucking instrument, sometimes described as a cross between a lute and a harp. 

Janie and I like the Wigmore Hall. It is one of the few remaining public spaces where we still normally bring down the average age of the audience quite significantly. But we soon saw, on arrival at the Wigmore Hall for the kora concert, that this audience was different. Only sparsely populated with “the usual suspects”, the average age of the audience was, horror of horrors, below ours.

The front row still had a comfortingly senior look. Next to Janie was a beaming, white-haired woman you might have got from central casting had you requested “a left-over hippy”.  The woman was very friendly and chatty – clearly not part of the regular front row mafia. Familiar with the kora – she had spent time in West Africa when younger – she was a fan of Tunde Jegede’s playing but had not previously managed to see him play live. She was, as the young folk say, super-excited.

The first half of the concert was truly magical. Tunde had brought with him a posse of chamber musicians from Lagos, together with a wonderful percussionist. We were transported by the music, not least the entrancing sound of Tunde’s kora-playing. 

During the interval, our friendly neighbour said that she was delighted with the live music experience and thrilled that we had enjoyed it. She recommended and wrote down the names of a couple of Tunde’s albums for us to follow up, which we did. 

I wondered what those silky-sounding kora strings are made of. Our otherwise-expert neighbour didn’t know. More or less at that moment, Tunde came on to the stage to rearrange the setting for the second half of the concert. As he was standing, with his kora, about three yards away from me, it seemed only polite to ask him about the strings.  

I was expecting the answer to be something along the lines of, “skin from an antelope’s anus or a sitatunga’s scrotum“. But instead, Tunde simply said, “Nylon”. “Just Nylon”, I asked, hoping for more enlightenment. “Just Nylon”, said Tunde, gently.

The second half of the concert was also good but less to our taste. Tunde didn’t play his kora – instead he demonstrated his skills as a cellist. The fusion theme was retained, as the pieces were arrangements of traditional African music, but to us the real magic had been the kora.

I tried to work out the common theme in Tunde’s unusual choice of devices for his multi-instrumentalism.  I concluded that Tunde likes making music while holding his instrument between his legs.

525 WORDS

I smiled to myself as I hit the save button and e-mailed my piece to Rohan Candappa for review.

Ninety minutes later, my iPhone buzzed.

It was Rohan.

“Ian, old chap”, said Rohan. “A charming vignette, but it has nothing to do with the subject and title – The Phone Call”. 

“I beg to differ”, I said.  “The piece is absolutely about The Phone Call”.  The introductory story about the kora concert is a MacGuffin. The main story is about the phone call.

“Well”, said Rohan, “I did consider e-mailing you, but then…”

“…never explain”, I interrupted. “You and I have collaborated on and off for over 50 years now, Rohan. Many things don’t need to be said.”

I pressed the “end call” button.

Koras Of Approval: Tunde Jegede & Friends At The Wigmore Hall, 17 February 2024
AKA “The Phone Call”

Returning To NashMash

It seemed that everyone else was able to understand and obey a simple instruction from Rohan…even Jan.

Strangely, Jan, like Geraldine, had set her story in 1973. Without conferring. The central conceit of Jan’s story, which revolved around an uprooted little girl whose family had recently moved to a different town, was a troubling phone call aimed at one or both parents, inadvertently picked up by the little girl.

Similarly strange was the structural similarity between Jan’s and Julie’s story, which was also about a troubling phone call picked up by someone other than the intended recipient of the call. Julie’s was not set in a particular bygone year, but the details within the story suggested 1970s as well.

David’s story was about a character who bought a vintage GPO rotary telephone through the internet and, as a result, got a phone call more than he had bargained for.

All of The Phone Call stories were charming, thought-provoking and enjoyable to hear. It was also very pleasing to spend time with the ThreadMash gang again, even though we were a somewhat depleted group on this occasion.

Sadly, Kay, who was going to join us, was unable to attend due to the recent death of her mother. Yet Kay made a charming contribution to the collection of stories by e-mail a couple of days later:

“Here is my belated contribution to “The Call”. In the endless process of clearing out my mum’s house, we found the tin in which I used to save my phone money when I was a kid. Like many others, I was expected to pay for my calls!”

They say a picture is worth a thousand words and my goodness that picture of Kay’s is worth at least that many. But Rohan had instructed us to limit our stories to a maximum of 800 words. Honestly, some people can’t comply with the simplest of instructions from the ThreadMaster.

The Postmodern Deadline: ThreadMash, Performance Piece, The Tokenhouse, 15 March 2022

Unable to muster the time or energy to write an 800-900 word piece on the topic “The Deadline” in the genre “Fiction” for our first live ThreadMash in two years, I instead submitted the following 920 word letter of apology.

Dear Kay

I regret to inform you that I shall be unable to submit a ThreadMash piece on the theme “The Deadline” in the genre “fiction” by the due date.

Normally I’m good with deadlines. I’m nothing like the writer Douglas Adams, who was so lousy at deadlines, publishers knew not to bother setting them for him. Adams famously said:

“I love deadlines; I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by”.

Although I am relatively good at meeting deadlines, naturally I tend to leave written pieces until the last minute; who doesn’t? 

At the turn of the century, having foolishly agreed to write a charity textbook, I managed to meet the deadline only by dint of arranging to have some wisdom teeth removed and thus being forced to stay home for two weeks of convalescence for which I set myself a 2,000 words per day target to get the last 20,000 words of the book done on time.

It was on that occasion I learnt, for the first but not the last time, that book publishers don’t expect the authors to meet deadlines, so I was met with five weeks of silence until the editor picked the thing up at their appointed time. The same thing happened when my co-author Michael and I submitted the first draft of “The Price of Fish” on deadline; five weeks of silence because the so-called deadline isn’t a true deadline.

You don’t want truth, do you, Kay? 

You want fiction. 

Our first book, "Clean Business Cuisine" was fiction. We wrote it without a publisher and therefore without a publisher’s deadline. Once we had a publisher and a production schedule, I arranged the first book signing with what seemed to be plenty of leeway for the production deadline. But of course we ended up with a race against time to get copies of the book to the book signing location, Halifax, ahead of the event. That “skin of teeth” deadline was met, just. I even turned up at the venue on time myself; but in my rush to change into my dinner suit that evening, I forgot to take a pen with me to the venue. That’s right, I turned up at my first ever book signing without a pen. As the venue was a youth theatre where the narrowest writing implement to hand was a permanent marker pen, this was an existential crisis for the book signing, until a customer showed up with a pen to lend me for the evening.

I could have fleshed out that deadline story, but it is a true story about fiction…not in itself fiction.

Actually I have a bit of a problem with deadline stories in fiction. They tend to follow a predictable pattern, whereby suspense is generated through the device of a deadline, often, especially in thrillers, through convoluted circumstances. 

The Perils Of Pauline is a classic example of ludicrous deadline, or cliff-hanger thrillers. For bizarre reasons, villains in this type of story seem compelled to condemn their potential victims to a death that will scare them for several minutes before killing them, allowing time for the victim to extricate themselves from danger, or for a hero to arrive and rescue the victim. Bond villains are another example of fiends with this monstrous flaw. I find these fictions implausible and not to my taste.

I did consider writing a topical pastiche of the thriller deadline story, in which the villain tries to construct the cliff-hanger scenario, having tied the potential victim to a railway track, but the locomotive-driven demise is confounded by excuses from the track and train operators apologising for delays caused by Brexit, Covid and latterly Putin. Meanwhile the hero’s efforts to rescue the potential victim are similarly impaired by Brexit, Covid and Putin excuses from would-be suppliers of motor vehicles, horses and rope cutting equipment. The risk of the victim dying of neglect becomes an interesting additional angle to this otherwise simplistic, predictable storyline. 

I should add, parenthetically, that The Perils Of Pauline never did have the heroine tied to a railway line; that specific scenario was used several times in the copycat series The Hazards Of Helen.  

Joking apart, my dear Kay, this whole business of people being unable to set a sensible deadline and then meet it is no longer funny. It is inundating me with needless tasks and starting to get me down. The worst example of this Brexit, Covid, Putin (or BROVIN syndrome, as I call it) is the “temporary” pipe which has been dangling around our Notting Hill Gate home for more than two years, while the flat above mine awaits a not especially complex plumbing solution. An elephant gestates in fewer than two years. The entirety of our street, Clanricarde Gardens, including the shops adjoining each side of the main road, was built in the 1870s in fewer than four years. I feel like going onto the Bayswater Road and protesting about it, but a large bunch of other protesters have beaten me to it and taken root there.

No, the real truth, Kay, is that BROVIN syndrome has finally got to me. Due to circumstances beyond my control, I am unable to generate 800-900 words between now and the deadline.

Sorry about that.

With love and very best wishes

Ian

PS You may complain in writing to the ombudsman, ICAT (The International Court for the Arbitration of ThreadMash – Justice R Candappa presiding). But don’t expect a response from ICAT before the deadline.
“Temporary” trailing pipe since December 2019
Clanricarde Gardens – whole street constructed 1869-1873
Local protests about other matters, more pressing than trailing pipes

The Evening Itself

We had a good time at The Tokenhouse – a venue that Rohan booked in quieter times; we suspect that they will seek larger groups henceforward.

It was wonderful to see many members of the gang in person again after so long. Unfortunately several were unable to attend – Kay’s last minute Covid indisposition reminded us why we hadn’t been together in 3D for so long.

Kay did join us via Zoom, however. Her story had a dystopian past quality to it that was only tangentially about deadlines…

…contrast with Jill’s dystopian future story about existential deadlines.

Several of the stories (Jan’s, Flo’s & Adrian’s in particular) managed to weave romance into the deadline scenario; in two cases ideas around internet dating and social media flirting were front & centre.

Rohan and David can explain for themselves what their stories were about, while Adrian probably couldn’t provide a logical reason why he ended up in a pantomime lion costume at the end of his performance piece.

Jan, Julie, Flo & Jill, keen to pose rather than look natural
David posing as his natural self, half capuchin monk, half capuchin monkey
Adrian, no longer donning his lion outfit (don’t ask)

Three Vignettes From The Adverb Colander, December 2021

Rohan Candappa’s Adverb Colander

In a month during which almost everything was cancelled, apart from work, charity, exercise and political shenanigans…

…the adverb colander has literally (did you see what I did there?) helped to keep me sane. This relative sanity, despite the fact that the adverb colander is one of Rohan Candappa’s crazy ideas.

Last year, Rohan wrote and narrow-casted (within our little ThreadMash writing community) an adverb-inspired vignette each day during advent, having asked the ThreadMash community to send in three adverbs each. Rohan would draw that day’s adverb from the colander depicted above.

This year, Rohan again asked us all to chime in with adverbs, but this time the colander randomly allocated out those pesky modifiers for all of us to have a go…or two…or three.

I offered up:

Undeniably, Infrequently & Tediously.

The colander responded with the following adverbs for my inspiration:

Deeply, Rigorously, Nerdily.

Here are my three vignettes.

Deeply

An Spailpín Fánach, Tuckey Street, Cork by Mac McCarron, CC BY-SA 2.0

I don’t much like soccer football. I’m certainly not one to be deeply affected by a football match. But one match is deeply embedded in my psyche.  The Republic of Ireland v Albania in May 1992. 

Bobbie and I went to Ireland for a week at that time. My first proper break since my back injury two years earlier and my first ever visit to Ireland.  I didn’t take a camera and I didn’t take a notebook, making it the least documented trip I have ever taken abroad.

That football match between Ireland and Albania dominates my memory for two reasons. 

Firstly, I remember that, in the build up to the match, the Irish media was full of news about the visiting Albanian team.  Initially RTÉ news worried, on behalf of the visitors, because the weather was unseasonably cold in Ireland and the visitors reported an insufficiency of warm clothing. Two days later, RTÉ news appealed to the people of Ireland, asking them to stop sending jumpers, cardigans and the like to the Albanian team’s hotel, because the visitors were now inundated with warm clothing.

A deeply charitable nation, the Irish.

Also a nation deeply passionate about their sports teams.

The Republic of Ireland had done unexpectedly well in the 1990 Football World Cup. This May 1992 match was at the start of the qualification campaign for the next World Cup.

By the time the night of the match arrived, Bobbie and I had moved on from Dublin to Cork. Bobbie is a keen football fan whose dad was Irish. We resolved to watch the match in a suitable-looking pub near our hotel.

As usual in Irish pubs, Bobbie and I were warmly received as guests.

There was much genial chatter about the warm clothing news items. The vibe was also charged with keen expectation. The throng expected their now-successful Ireland team to win a qualification match against Albania.

At half time and beyond, with the score still at 0-0, the atmosphere in the pub became tense. Bobbie whispered to me that we should make a hasty exit if the match failed to go Ireland’s way.

Mercifully, Ireland scored a couple of goals in the last half-hour of the game, turning the mood into a memorably shebeen-like party, with plenty of drinking, singing and dancing, until late into the night.

Rigorously Draft v1.0

Not SARS-CoV – other coronaviruses are available…

Sally was super proud of her efforts over the past few months. The Advercol plc Covid Protocol Guide: DRAFT v1.0. Fifty carefully crafted pages, cross-tabulated with government guidelines, referencing journal articles on Covid protocol best practice and in-depth consultations with diverse Advercol stakeholders.

Last Friday, Sally had finally submitted the fruits of her labours for internal review to her boss, Jonathan, The Human Resources & Organisational Development Director.

Around 11:00 on Monday, Sally received a meeting request for a Zoom with Jonathan to discuss the Draft Guide.  A 15-minute slot on Thursday afternoon at 16:45. Jonathan must be pleased with her work, otherwise he would have scheduled a longer session to go through the document with her in detail. Sally clicked the accept button with a satisfied grin on her face.

Over the ensuing days, Sally imagined the reaction her diligence might have engendered. A nomination for a National HR Award, perhaps. Her work would fit well in the HR Innovation category and/or possibly Health & Wellbeing.  A Best In Show award, even, would not be beyond the bounds of possibility.

Yes, this Covid Guide assignment might well turn out to be career-defining for Sally. It had required attention to detail and boy had she deployed her trademark rigor. No wonder Jonathan had chosen her ahead of “Sloppy Simon” for the task.  Simon had acquired his unfortunate epithet before lockdown, when Jonathan had described Simon’s attempt at a revised Diversity and Inclusion Policy as “sloppy”, in front of the whole team. Poor Simon.

Thursday afternoon couldn’t come soon enough for Sally. She clicked the link as soon as the clock on her computer clicked from 16:44 to 16:45.  It seemed to take an age for Jonathan to arrive, just after 16:51.

“Afternoon, Sally”, said Jonathan. “Let’s try and keep this brief.  I need to take the kids to their after-school activities at five. OK? Great. Covid Guide. You’ve clearly put a lot of effort into this.”

“Thanks, Jonathan”, interjected Sally, “I’m glad you noticed”.

“Yes. Right. Thing is, Sally…”, Jonathan continued, “this Covid rules business is a bit of a moving target, don’t you think? I mean, the government changes tack more often than most people change their undies…”

“…indeed, Jonathan”, said Sally, “that’s why I have written protocols to cover so many eventualities…”

“…so we don’t want to over-complicate matters ourselves, do we, with too many in-house rules and stuff?”, continued Jonathan. “We could do with something a little more high-level and generic, don’t you think?”

“…umm, well, I thought…”

“…yes, indeed. So I have asked Simon to come up with a couple of pages. Quick and dirty. That should do us for now. This more detailed material might come in handy later, if or when this whole Covid thing ever settles down. OK? Oh, and Sally – let’s have a little chat about time management and proportionate effort at your next appraisal. OK?”

Nerdily

Oxyman / Covered walkway leading to Ladbroke Grove Sainsbury’s

“I’m leaving you”, said Emily.  “It’s the final straw. Everything I do, you criticise and redo nerdily.”

Stuart was taken aback. “But all I did was rewrite the shopping list in logical, aisle-by-aisle, item-by-item sequence. That’s basic logistics. It saves loads of time at the supermarket. Who wants to trudge back and forth in that crummy place, wasting valuable time?”

“I do”, Emily yelled. “I want to wander aimlessly around the aisles if I choose to do so. Sometimes, I want to spot and buy goods serendipitously.  I want to live – I want to be free”.

There was a long silence. Emily looking for signs of reaction on Stuart’s face. Stuart studiously avoiding Emily’s glare.

“Get real”, said Stuart. “Anyway, there’s no such word as nerdily”.

Emily jolted, then asked, “how the hell do you work that out?”

Stuart explained. “Nerdily is not in the Microsoft spellcheck and, more importantly, it’s not in the Scrabble dictionary. No. Such. Word. As. Nerdily.”

“Be that as it may, Stuart”, said Emily, “but everything you say and do, you say and do nerdily”.

“What If this Adverb Colander Thing Goes Viral?” I Hear Many Readers Ask

We’ll need a bigger colander…

…like this FoodCycle one which Janie and I helped rescue from the Greenhouse Centre kitchen – but that’s another story:

Let Them Eat Cake & The Tennis Court Oath, ThreadZoomMash Performance Piece, 18 November 2021

A few weeks ago, I played an especially close and exciting real tennis tournament match at Lord’s, emerging victorious – in straight sets but by the narrowest of margins in each set.

Exhausted but happy, I stopped at Porchester Waitrose on my way home, to pick up bread and other comestibles for my supper.

But I discovered the in-house bakery covered in tarpaulin, with signs reading, “No Entry” and “Due to a leak in our ceiling we have had to close down this area…”

Opposite the bakery were mostly bare shelves, where normally the bread would be. But one shelf was fully stocked, bulging with packs of brioche loaves and brioche rolls.

“Qu’ils mangent de la brioche”, I said to myself. In the circumstances; who wouldn’t?

The English expression. “let them eat cake” is, in fact, a loose translation of the phrase, “qu’ils mangent de la brioche”.

I don’t like the loose, English translation. Brioche is, in my opinion, a rich form of bread. Classified as viennoiserie, brioche is almost pastry, but not a piece of cake.

Bread, pastry, biscuit, cake; these distinctions might seem trivial or inconsequential. Yet, in the early 1990s case of McVities v HMRC,  the very VAT status of Jaffa Cakes hinged on whether that particular delicacy should be defined as a cake (zero-rated) or a chocolate-covered biscuit (standard rated). The tribunal ruled that the product had nine characteristics, some cake, some biscuit, but on balance determined it to be a cake.

Two hundred years earlier, Marie Antoinette’s place in history was determined, formally, at the hands of the French Revolutionary Tribunal. Unfortunately for Marie Antoinette, her informal reputation is entwined with the phrase “let them eat cake” or “qu’ils mangent de la brioche”, despite the fact that there is no evidence that she ever used the phrase and a great deal of evidence that she couldn’t possibly have originated it.

Marie Antoinette – say what?

Jean-Jacques Rousseau coined the phrase in his Confessions, attributing the anecdote to an unnamed “great princess”.  Rousseau wrote Confessions between 1765 and 1769, when Marie Antoinette was still a nipper and before she had ever been to France.

Rousseau might even have made up the anecdote. Another possibility is that the anecdote originated with Marie Theresa of Spain, about 100 years earlier.

Marie Theresa being “handed over” to Louis XIV

Marie Theresa was consort to Louis XIV, The Sun King, during an extremely lavish era – when Versailles was transformed from a hunting lodge into the opulent palace we now associate with Versailles.

Marie Theresa died in 1683, before the Versailles tennis court was completed, but her son, Louis, The Grand Dauphin, played an inaugural game on that court in 1686. 

Louis The Grand Dauphin

Roll the clock forward a hundred years again, to 1789. The Versailles tennis court played a crucial role in the French Revolution. In June 1789, the Third Estate or National Assembly of commoners, found themselves locked out of the chamber by order of the King.

Dr Joseph-Ignace Guillotin

Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, suggested that they congregate instead in the nearby Royal Tennis Court of Versailles, where they swore a collective oath, similar in style to the US Declaration of Independence, “not to separate, and to reassemble wherever circumstances require, until the constitution of the kingdom is established”. 576 of the 577 members of the assembly took the oath.

The Tennis Court Oath was a seminal moment in the progress of the French Revolution. Ironically, though, the tennis court oath neither benefitted the reputation of tennis nor that of Joseph-Ignace Guillotin.

Jeu de paume, as the French call real tennis, virtually died out in France in the aftermath of the French revolution.  In tennis’s 17th and 18th century heyday, there were hundreds of courts in Paris alone. 

Joseph-Ignace Guillotin was a doctor who opposed capital punishment. He advocated the use of a quick, painless blade mechanism, but only in preference to the more torturous methods of execution commonly used.  It was much to the doctor’s chagrin that the deadly mechanism acquired his name. There is an urban myth that Dr Guillotin was himself thus decapitated during the reign of terror. It is true that A Dr Guillotin met that fate, but not Dr Joseph-Ignance Guillotin, who was imprisoned, but survived the reign of terror by the skin of his teeth.

I mused on all these matters that evening, a few weeks ago, while munching my brioche and reflecting on winning a tennis match by the skin of my teeth.

The oath I had heard on the tennis court that evening was the single expletive, “shit”, used by my opponent so many times, he got a warning from the marker (umpire).  I wondered how many of the 576 subscribers to the original Tennis Court Oath were reduced to such lesser, expletive oaths, soon after their revolutionary gesture.

Changing the social order, like brioche, is not a piece a cake.

Pas un morceau de brioche

All Mixed Up: Age Is Just A Number, ThreadZoomMash Piece, Performed 30 September 2021

My Grandma Anne died 40 years ago, just shy of 90. If you went to central casting to get a balabusta/babushka for the role of family matriarch…

…with her shock of jet black hair, presumably from a bottle for most of her life, plus her heavily-Russian-accented voice…

…Grandma Anne Harris would have fitted the bill perfectly.

Grandma’s outstanding involuntary comedy moment was in 1972, when she solemnly announced, as we drove on a family outing, away from Streatham, along Bedford Hill, that I shouldn’t play on the common any more, as bad things happen to people who go there. Someone had cursed the place. It took us a while to work out that she had heard a radio programme, not about Tooting Common, but about Tutankhamun, which was all the rage in London that year.

By 1981, Grandma Anne was in and out of hospital all too regularly. Her age had never previously been a topic of discussion. But my mum was concerned that every time Grandma was taken into hospital, the age she stated on admission was going down. 87…86…82…

…on what turned out to be her last admission to hospital, mum went ballistic when she first looked at Grandma’s notes.

“Look at this”, hissed mum to me, “72-dash-80-plus-question-mark. I’m going to get this put right straight away”. Mum was a numbers person and as far as she was concerned you don’t mess with numbers.

Don’t mess with numbers

A senior nurse assured mum that the hospital team was fully aware that Grandma Anne was in her late 80s, pushing 90, and that she was receiving appropriate care…

…which might well have been true, but sadly, Grandma Anne died in that hospital bed.

————————————————————–

Roll the clock forward 30 years. My mother was just shy of 90. Unfortunately mum’s grasp on numbers and much else was all mixed up by then.  The onset of dementia, which had been gradual for some time, kicked in and kicked on in a rush. Three months before her 90th, my mum went into Nightingale; the care home at which she had volunteered for many decades.

Janie and I made a big fuss for mum’s 90th birthday, inviting mum and the family over for an afternoon party at our house.

Mum, Angela, Janie and Me

Mum liked being the centre of attention and over the ensuing weeks talked a great deal about her big birthday event with her friends at Nightingale.

But mum became convinced that the birthday had been her hundredth, not her ninetieth.

On one occasion when mum was talking to me about her 100th party, I challenged her.

“You are 90, mum, not 100”.

“I’m 100. And I’m your mother. Don’t argue with your mother.”

On another occasion, after I’d taken mum back to her room, I was accosted by a brace of her friends.

“Your mum is driving us all mad. She keeps telling everyone that she is 100. There are quite a few people around here who really are 100. It’s not right. She’s just turned 90, hasn’t she?”

“What do you want me to do about it?” I asked.

“Tell her”.

“I’ve told her…and she’s told me not to argue with my mother”.

“It’s wrong. Sort it out.” The Nightingale Mafia had spoken.

Mum in her role as Nightingale poster child

I discussed the problem with one of the senior care nurses, who patiently explained to me that people with dementia have their own subjective reality which might differ from our own reality and from objective reality. It’s better to join the loved one in their subjective realities rather than challenge them with our own realities.

This seemed a compelling and compassionate argument…

…until I thought about it a bit more and said…

…“I can roll with that…sort of…but what about mum’s friends’ realities. They want me to stop mum driving them potty with her nonsense about being 100. How do I deal kindly with those conflicting realities?”

After a momentary pause, the nurse said, “welcome to our world”, with just a modicum of compassion.

————————————–

Having reflected for the first time on these experiences jointly, my thoughts, like the age claims of both ancestors, are all mixed up.

The family legend about Grandma Anne was that her declining age claims were born of vanity and an unwillingness to accept her antiquity.

But possibly dementia had started to take its toll on Grandma at that age. In her own, disoriented way, grandma was subtracting 18 from her age; while mum added 10 in her confusion.

Should we have accepted Grandma Anne’s subjective reality that she was 72? Might that last hospital stay have gone better had everyone treated her as if she were a 72 year old, rather than a 90 year old? It couldn’t have gone much worse; Grandma Anne came out of hospital that time in a box.

Postscript: About The ThreadMash Evening

Just in case you don’t know what a ThreadMash is, yet want to know, this link (here and below) will explain it to you and link you to some other examples.

Threadmash 5, Rohan Candappa’s Thing Has A Birthday Bash, Gladstone Arms, 5 February 2020

Since the one explained/depicted above, ThreadMash has been ThreadZoomMash; a virtual story writing and telling club.

We had seven stories and one apology (from Terry), the latter being so detailed and heartfelt, Kay read the apology at the start of the evening. It was, in its own way, a ThreadMash story.

Jill’s story was really a piece of philosophical musing about technology, moral dilemmas, decision making with and without machines, governance, government…it was truly mind-blowing. I do hope Jill will allow us to publish her piece more widely soon. If/when she does, I’ll add a link here.

Then my story, echoing the moral dilemmas but not the technology.

Rohan’s piece also seemed to echo at least one of my themes; his distinct yet overlapping stories possibly being multiple realities about the same staircase.

After a short break, Ian T’s moving piece about an ill-fated meal of spaghetti bolognaise with his dad and (yet another strange echo) a central theme of parental dementia.

It really is quite extraordinary how such a simple, three word title, “All Mixed Up” with no further guidance from Kay, led to so many overlapping themes. This does tend to happen at ThreadMash and I find that aspect of the overlap fascinating.

Geraldine read us some fragmentary musings, which are on their way to being a set of elegiac meditations on her experiences during the pandemic.

Kay instead reminisced about her time in New York in the late 1980s. Part confessional…

Dorothy Parker
“Oh, gallant was the first love, and glittering and fine;
The second love was water, in a clear white cup;
The third love was his, and the fourth was mine;
And after that, I always get them all mixed up.” Dorothy Parker

…we learnt that it was Kay who has denied us UK citizens the Marathon Bar, helping rebrand that Mars product as Snickers. Kay is also to blame for M&Ms in the UK, apparently – I shall find forgiveness for Kay in my heart eventually – but not yet…

…partly an ode to Dorothy Parker and partly Kay’s own poetic efforts from that time.

Last but not least was David Wellbrook’s sprawling sequel to his previous post-modern story about a chancer named Myrtle (or is she named Candice?) about whom David is writing rather sordid stories…or is she writing David instead? We met some new characters this time, including Lady Kumquat, the infeasibly young wife of an elderly Knight of the Realm. We were also introduced to an infeasibly hilly part of Norfolk named Bishop’s Knuckle.

There was plenty of time for discussion of our various pieces and general chat too.

As always it was a superb evening. Whether virtual or face-to-face I always get a boost from these ThreadMash events.

And finally…

…just in case the trusty WordPress engine fails to connect my “forty years on” diary piece about Grandma Anne’s last few days and the aftermath of her demise, here and below is a link to that piece.

Twenty Days Of Summer Holiday Work During Which Grandma Anne Died, 10 to 29 August 1981

Hands Face Space: The Shaving Razor’s Old & It Stings, A ThreadMash Performance Piece, 16 May 2021

Rohan Candappa’s brief, for the May 2021 ThreadMash event, was as follows:

All being good, lockdown is scheduled to loosen its collar on Monday 17 May…

…I’m suggesting a theme that encourages us to reclaim some of the things that have been appropriated over the last year and a bit. Things like words. So I’d like you all to recover, repurpose and re-imagine the following words via the stories you write and share:

Hands, Face, Space

Strangely, the subject matter below was already forming in my mind as part of my “Forty Years On” series about my time at Keele.

The Six O’Clock Alarm Would Never Ring, Starting My First Keele Summer Term, 24 April to 9 May 1981

Rohan says, “never explain” and I have in part explained. Let’s allow my story to tell it’s own tale from here.

HANDS

I have two cack-hands.

Kind people, on observing that I play tennis off both arms, describe me as ambidextrous. But the word “dextrous” should not be used to describe me.

The truth is, I am ambi-cack-handed; neither dextrous with my right nor with my left hand. 

For most purposes where only one hand is involved, I use my right hand.  Writing and drawing for example. But I do those things cack-handedly.  Computers have saved me from a teacher-predicted lifetime of illegible handwriting misery.  

I have always brushed my teeth with my left hand. Some experts suggest this means that I am a natural leftie who mistakenly adopted right-handedness for most tasks. But concerted attempts to use my left hand as a child was a bigger disaster than my using the right hand…apart from the left-handed tooth-brushing.

Then along came the need to shave.

FACE

In the late 1970s, an American entrepreneur named Victor Kermit Kiam The Second announced that he was so impressed with the Remington electric shaver his wife bought him as a gift, he henceforward would eschew the use of the wet shavers he had used throughout his life and…

…get this…

…Victor Kiam bought the company that made Remington shavers.

My dad was way ahead of Victor Kiam in switching from blades to Remington electric shavers; by the late 1970s, dad had several of them. Two at the house, plus one at the shop, where dad’s routine required a five-o’clock shave, removing shadow ahead of late afternoon customers (or mostly lack thereof, by the late 1970s). Dad was not ahead of Victor Kiam in the matter of entrepreneurship. 

In my early days shaving, I used dad’s spare Remington at home to remove the odd visible patch of dark fluff from my face.

Vintage Remingtons are still available for purchase, e.g. on e-bay

When I set off for Keele University in autumn 1980, dad lent me that spare Remington, plus lotion bottles (pre shave and after shave) plus an old spare illuminated art-deco-style shaving mirror. The makeshift electrical wiring and plugs for that paraphernalia looked like a physics experiment.

But whereas prior to Keele, my facial hair only became visible once every few days, I soon started to notice daily patches of hair and started to shave regularly.

Increased Remington use combined badly with regular intake of beer, cigarettes and the rest. My face and neck became sore losers of facial hair; itchiness and blotchiness abounded. 

For my second term at Keele, Dad switched my loan from the old Remington to a more modern foil-headed electric shaver…

Another style of vintage Remington still available e.g. on ebay.

…but the skin irritation persisted; possibly it even got worse.

Thus, over Easter 1981, contra-Kiam as it were, dad and I agreed that I would switch from electric to wet shaving. Dad rebundled my loan, replacing the Remington with the Rolls Razor he had used as a young soldier during the war.

Dr.K. 02:46, 5 October 2007 (UTC), CC BY-SA 3.0
Rolls Razor Pictures by Dr.K. 03:53, 5 October 2007 (UTC), CC BY-SA 3.0

This contraption, which they stopped making before I was born, was a metal box containing a strop and a re-useable safety razor. You would sharpen the blade on the strop, then detach the razor for your wet shave. Eventually you would change the blade, which, if memory serves me well, required a screwdriver and a fair bit of dexterity.

The other thing that needed dexterity was the safe use of such a safety razor.

We could not buy the company that had made Rolls Razor – it had gone bust by then – but we should have invested in the makers of styptic pencils and sticking plasters.

Styptic Pencil –  Anhydrous aluminium sulfate seeing as you (didn’t) ask
Photograph by Rama, CeCILL

I recall seeing several horror films towards the end of my first year at Keele; The Amityville Horror and The Shining spring to mind, so I had plenty of suitable similes to describe the bloody bathroom scenes of my early Rolls-Razor efforts. I did eventually get the hang of it and wet-shaved for the next 25 years. Left-handed.

SPACE

But why did a long-haired ha’porth of a student, with two cack hands and a skin-sensitive face even bother with shaving?

The answer lies not in the facial hair itself, but in the space between the patches of facial hair.

It was OK for the youngsters who were blessed with a full growth of facial hair at the age of 18. Simon Jacobs, for example, had five-o’clock shadow from the start at Keele.  But most of us looked ridiculous with sparse facial hair.

I recall Richard Van Baaren naming our Lindsay F-Block corridor’s five-a-side football team ‘Tempted ‘Tache, in honour of fellow undergraduate males’s failed attempts at moustaches.  No, I didn’t play for that team; I have two left feet as well as two cack-hands.

Inadequate facial hair was like a flashing neon sign saying JUVENILE…BOY…NOT YET A MAN.  That tell-tale wispy, fluffy face space had to go, even if the result was bloody carnage, born of cack-hands.

The King Cricket List, A Story For ThreadZoomMash, Performed 1 April 2021

The above logo used with the kind permission of King Cricket

For many years I have written occasional guest pieces for the amusing cricket website, King Cricket. Most pieces are written by webmeister Alex Bowden; a fine writer and good bloke.

My contributions tend to be in the following, especially whimsical, King Cricket categories:

  • Cricket paraphernalia in unusual places;
  • Animals being conspicuously indifferent to cricket;
  • Cricket match reports, which must meet one of two strict criteria:
    • if it’s a professional match, on no account can the writer mention the cricket itself,
    • if it’s an amateur match, the author is expected to go into excruciating detail about the cricket.

I realise that I have just generated a small list; a list of King Cricket categories.

But that is not the list I want to talk about today. No.

I keep a list of my submissions; I call it my King Cricket Article Log.

That’s the list I want to talk about. There are 83 articles on the list at present; 75 published and eight pieces awaiting publication.

I could simply cut, paste and read all the article titles…but I don’t think that would be much fun for you, or me.   

Instead, I have written a highlights list, with explanations, which might be an entertaining story in its own right:

Alex Bowden often publishes my pieces “fashionably late”; not knowing when they’ll be released is part of the fun for me. That’s why I keep a canonical list of my King Cricket submissions.

Review Of The Evening

As the brief for this ThreadZoomMash was to write a story based on a list, I think I owe it to the evening’s central conceit to review the evening in the form of a list:

  • Rohan introduced the evening with some thoughts on what lists are in the grander scheme of things and how they might become central to our stories;
  • Julie read a truly brilliant short story about a very short-lived romance in the form of a series of daily do-lists;
  • Geraldine had us in stitches with story named Stitches, about a trip long ago with her baby and an infeasibly long packing list for an activities weekend;
  • Then I performed my King Cricket piece;
  • Ian Theodoreson then recited a very poignant and thought-provoking piece about to do lists with items crossed off, which was in some ways a stroll through the different types of to do lists that have been relevant throughout his life. Ian has upped his piece, The List, to his own website, Living In Hope – click here ;
  • Jill’s list story was very imaginative; based on the idea that all the things she (or her character in the story) had done to escape an unsatisfactory employment were in the form of theme park activities, which she explored as a list of such things;
  • Jan talked about her love of lists, discussing several different types of list before settling on her “Grumpy List”, a surprisingly short list of highly amusing bugbears. So, we then moved on to…;
  • …Kay, who opened with a Dorothy Parker quote, which led in to her list of the men/boys for whom she has strong and poignant memories of why she was attracted to them. It was a wonderful mixture of charming, funny and dark;
  • Terry’s piece was called The Gratitude List. It mostly comprised a list of the people he’s been closest to and to whom Terry is perennially grateful. It was a very touching piece.

We had a great chat about each other’s pieces after the readings, which made for a very enjoyable gathering, as always.

Kay Scorah’s Love Letter, From ThreadZoomMash, 4 March 2021

My explanation of the March 2021 ThreadZoomMash, along with my own piece and review of the event can be found by clicking here or below:

The Love Letter, ThreadMash Performance Piece & Review, 4 March 2021

With thanks to Kay Scorah for permission to publish her love letter as a guest piece here on Ogblog:

February 2021

Before we go any further, there’s something I need to tell you.  

I’ve never been in love. 

Yeah, of course, I’ve been in lust. And I’ve been in-fatuated, in-appropriate, in-secure, in-toxicated.

All those other “ins” made me think I was in love. But I wasn’t.

I can’t believe it’s taken me so long to work this out, but lately love has taught me that I have never been in love. 

You see, the love I feel is overwhelming, and year by year it gets more so. 

The narcissi, the daffodils, the crocuses are just opening up in Vicky Park. I looked at them the other day and I began to cry. 

I love them.

Then there’s those 3 little kids that race their scooters down my street every day after school. There they are now as I write, yelling, screaming and laughing.. my heart is ready to burst with love for their voices. 

The café owner up at Dartmouth Park yesterday, she just couldn’t stop talking about the trip she took to South America when she was 21. The sparkle in her eyes when she remembered the fear and the beauty of it all; I can’t get it out of my mind’s eye. 

I love it. 

The opening bars of “I Heard it Through the Grapevine”; I have a physical love reaction to them. Can’t help but move. 

And that’s before I even get started on the love I feel for my son. Looking at a picture of him when he was small or seeing him walk towards me across the park, even writing about him now...

So, the idea of being in love with someone, that I’m supposed to love them more than anyone or anything. Well, that’s too much for me. It’s frightening. 

If I were to fall in love with someone, would that mean that my love for them would be bigger than all the love I already have? If so, then we’d both be overwhelmed. We wouldn’t be able to handle it. 

On the other hand, if falling in love with one person meant that I had to take my love away from the flowers, the children, the music, my son - I would be so sad, and so dependent on them to give me everything that the rest of the world had provided until then, it just wouldn’t be fair. They could only disappoint me. 

My love is such that if I fell in love, in the way I think it’s supposed to be, neither of us could possibly survive the intensity.

So, when your smiling but serious face pops up on the zoom screen, and your soothing voice washes in through my headphones, I love you like a crocus, like a kid on a scooter, like Tamla Motown.  And that’s huge.
Victoria Park
Smiling But Serious Faces From December’s ThreadZoomMash

The Love Letter, ThreadMash Performance Piece & Review, 4 March 2021

I chose to write and recite an impressionistic memory story, in the form of a love letter, about a night at Keele; 6 March 1981 to be precise.

The ThreadMash brief was simply to write a love letter. The resulting writings from the group were varied to say the least. Here is mine.

Dear Nina

It’s been a while since we met. Forty years, to be precise. 

It’s time I wrote to you. Letter writing was my thing back then…but I didn’t write to you…then.

A lot has happened since that night, in March 1981, when Anna encouraged you to spend the night with me. 

That was weird. 

I wonder what Anna was playing at? Just being playful, probably. The way she’d always be sluttishly playful in the refectory whenever she ate…or more accurately…whenever Anna fellated…and then ate…a banana.

Anna might have set us up for effect, of course. Anyone who roller-skates around the campus all the time, the way Anna used to…is prone to doing weird things for effect.

I don’t think she ever fancied me, Anna. I know she liked me, but I don’t think she fancied me. Actually that evening, while the three of us were sitting in the Union, talking about Bobbie Sands and Troops Out…I thought Anna fancied you, Nina. Perhaps she did. I was a terrible judge of signals back then. Probably still am.

Anyway, we can’t revert to Anna and ask her what was going on. Anna died in in 2012. I don’t suppose you knew that. I didn’t learn that news until a few years after the event. I didn’t keep in touch with Anna. But some of my friends did…or at least reconnected with her before the end. Lung cancer, it was. 

In truth, I was a little confused that night. Confused about love. 

I had been carrying a torch for Mandy from Manchester for months. One passionate December night. Agreement to progress. Several love letters…from me to Mandy. Nothing in return. I didn’t understand. 

I understand more now. I know more now. Letters are not always the medium they are cracked up to be. There’s ample opportunity for delay, for mislay, for tapping, for tampering…

…anyway, some three months after that night in Manchester, still I was, emotionally speaking, bearing that torch, for Mandy.

But the flame was flickering, fizzling by then, so the torch I was still bearing, utterly in vain, for Mandy, was not sufficiently hot for me to resist you. The flame was just warm enough to keep me confused.

As with Anna, I can’t revert to Mandy for her side of the story. She died in 2020, having been ill for some time. Cancer, I believe. I had reconnected with and am still in touch with Mandy’s brother.

Who were you, Nina? Who are you?

At one point, in the early hours, you toddled out of my pokey, student room, down the corridor, to the loo. 

You had just a small bag with you. You left the zipper open, with your Irish passport on the top.  

I must admit, while you were out of the room, I had a quick nosey at the passport.

The photo didn’t look like you at all…wait a moment, yes it did. It’s just that you had a shock of platinum blond hair in person, whereas the passport photo was a dark-haired version of you. 

But the name…I couldn’t begin to discern it. 

The forename was one of those bizarre Irish names; I can’t even hazard a guess at what it was. Perhaps it was L-A-O-I-S-E [Laoise], pronounced Lee-sha; or C-A-O-I-L-F-H-I-O-N-N [Caoilfhionn], pronounced Kay-lin. Anyway my young, ignorant eyes merely discerned an unpronounceable, supremely Irish name, the forename being nothing like Nina, the surname seeming like nothing earthly.

When you left, a few hours later, you sweetly but firmly made clear that you were just passing through and that we wouldn’t be keeping in touch or seeing each other again. Just a parting kiss.

No letters. No words. Until now.

Who were you, Nina? Were you simply, as advertised, a visiting political ally of Anna’s; through the student SWP & Troops Out alliance? Or were you Sinn Fein, Nina? Were you IRA, Nina? 

And who are you now, Nina? 

How are you now, Nina? Are you still alive? I do hope so. 

Anna’s gone. Mandy’s gone. But you?

I hope you are alive and well and thriving. 

Wherever you are. 

Whoever you are. 

Whatever you are called.

The story of that night, 6 March 1981, is in some ways a companion piece to the tale of a different kind of all-nighter, a couple of nights earlier:

A Five Day Marathon To Produce Concourse With Dave Lee, The Result Being A Student Union Lock-In & Near Death Experience, Late February/Early March 1981

The Love Letters ThreadZoomMash

Moving swiftly on to the night of 4 March 2021, Rohan Candappa curated and introduced the event. We had all sent our letters to another ThreadMasher, drawn at random. One or two people (David and Adrian) had chosen to write fictional love letters to the actual person whose name they had drawn, while the rest of us did not do that.

As it happens, I was first up, which possibly makes me “top billing” or possibly “the warm-up act”…or possibly just “first up”.

Geraldine went next, with a moving paean to spring.

Jill’s love letter was to her husband, telling the tale of their near separation by circumstances.

David’s was to Terry, who he fictionalised as his own former lover Teresa whom he was now stalking, having rediscovered them in the form of Terry.

Jan wrote a letter of devotion to the theatre, which certainly resonated with me, both when I received it through the post and when I heard Jan perform the piece.

Rohan feigned profound hurt at the idea that his wife of 25+ years chose to write her letter of devotion to the theatre rather than to him. During the ensuing interval, Rohan could been be seen trying to sneak out of the Candappa house with a suitcase and a hat to lay elsewhere. Fortunately, he and Jan were reconciled in time for the start of the second half.

Terry’s letter (which Rohan read well in Terry’s work-induced absence) was a testimonial to abstinence and its close relative, addiction.

Flo’s letter appeared to be a confessional love letter about a rollicking love affair, until “the big reveal” that the object of her passion is the London Fields Lido.

Julie’s love letter was very creepy, starting off sounding like a declaration of love but soon turning out to be the ramblings of a stalker to their stalkee.

Ian T’s letter was a eulogy to his former tribe, London cyclists, which evoked Ian’s memories of his regular two-wheeled commute.

Kay’s covered several things she loves, including Victoria Park, Marvin Gaye’s I Heard It Through The Grapevine and her family, concluding deftly that she would struggle to compromise any of those loves for romantic love.

Rohan declared his love for “the wide world”, which I’m sure sparked the desire to travel again in many of us.

Adrian concluded the evening with a bravura piece, which I can only describe as an hilarious homoerotic slapstick [did you see what I did there?] fantasy in which he and David were central characters. Most if not all of us were in stitches. Adrian’s performance was a great climax [did you see what else I did there?] to the evening. A real tonic as we start to emerge from this strange and difficult winter.

As always, it’s not just the stories, it is also the company of this wonderful group of people that makes the evening so special. Viva ThreadMash.

Ian Theodoreson’s The Unexpected Visitor From ThreadZoomMash, 28 January 2021

Photo by Don Stouder on Unsplash

With thanks to Ian Theodoreson, I am delighted to host his story entitled The Unexpected Visitor

The estate agent blurb described the house as ‘A substantial Victorian property carefully restored by the present owners, preserving many of the original features. It is located on one of the town’s premier roads overlooking the golf course’.

What the write up didn’t describe was the fact that the basement displayed yet more original features as it hadn’t been subjected to the same ‘careful restoration’ the rest of the house had.  Indeed it had not been subject to any restoration as the Browns had run out of steam. They had devoted five years of their lives and all of their savings doing up the main house and had decided that enough was enough. The basement became the repository for all those things that will be incredibly useful one day and, amongst the piles of boxes, crates and a well-stocked wine rack, a family of mice installed itself. On the whole they kept themselves to themselves, only occasionally encroaching upon the main living area, and regular assaults with a variety of mousetraps by Mr Brown helped keep their numbers to manageable levels.

A neighbour down the road, sensing Mr & Mrs Brown needed a new diversion from decorating, suggested he introduce them to the golf club, at which point they hung up their paint brushes and instead attempted to master the art of hitting a small ball in a straight line, without much success.  Gary Player once famously said of golf ‘The more I play, the luckier I get’: if he meant that as a generally applicable aphorism then he was wrong with regard to the Browns.  

Their efforts at golf were a disappointment both to the Browns themselves and to the more conservative members of the club, who viewed them with some suspicion.  Not only did they not master the technical aspects of the sport, but they didn’t really fit in with the social elite who commanded the club house either.  The club secretary was a particularly pompous man, Jack Cuthbert who, in his spare time, doubled up as their local Councillor.  His wife Heather, by contrast, was a rather timid woman whose presence merely served to amplify her husband’s sense of superiority.

After a number of years the time came to sell their ‘substantial Victorian pile’ and to move to something smaller. Mr Brown had something of a love/hate relationship with older properties – there was a sense of grandeur living in them but it was constantly tempered with the knowledge that at any moment the decorative ceiling might crash down around ones ears.  Consequently, once they decided to sell, the need to do so became urgent, before some further defect revealed itself that would take time and energy to address. 

A number of prospective buyers looked around but no offers were forthcoming.  The Browns decided that the agent wasn’t doing a good enough job at explaining the potential benefits of living in the house so they decided that they would show the next people around themselves: maybe give prospective buyers a sense of the genteel lifestyle Mr Brown felt the house projected.

It was with a heavy heart therefore that they learned from the agent that ‘a lovely couple, a local Councillor and his wife’, had booked to see the house.  Jack Cuthbert was every bit as pompous looking round the house as he was propping up the bar in the club house however, not deterred, Mrs Brown had arranged to serve tea and cake in the living room after the ‘tour’.

In actual fact the Cuthberts were showing some interest in the house not least, Mr Brown suspected, because its imposing bulk could be seen from the nineteenth green. It was however, at this moment, that an unexpected visitor made his presence known.  During a lull in the conversation Mr Brown heard the unmistakable ‘snap’ of a Little Nipper mousetrap springing into life.  It had been hidden beside the log basket, just out of sight and he had completely forgotten it was there.

Generally when a mousetrap activates, the kill is swift and clean.  Occasionally however it catches the mouse a glancing blow and traps its victim without finishing it off.  This was one such occasion and the unfortunate animal, its head firmly caught but still able to move its hind legs, leaped into the air and onto the carpet directly in front of Mrs Cuthbert’s feet.  There was a moment’s silence as everyone contemplated the vision before them, broken by Mrs Cuthbert’s scream as she threw the piece of cake she was holding into the air and rushed out of the room.  ‘How dare you’, shouted Jack Cuthbert, his face red with rage, ‘my wife is a vegetarian’.

It was at this moment that Mr Brown’s calm demeanour finally deserted him – all the tension of the sale, his general distaste for the Cuthberts and the preposterousness of the situation overwhelmed him.  ‘Well, we were not expecting her to eat it!’ he shouted sarcastically after their retreating forms and watched them storm up the driveway.

‘Well, that went well’ said his wife, calmly. ‘I suspect they won’t be making an offer on the house though’.

‘And you better deal with that’ she said pointing to the writhing body on the floor, still trapped in the Little Nipper, ‘I think it’s got breathing problems’.

The following day the Browns resigned their membership of the golf club.

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