And so this is Christmas

15st 13lb, 4.5 units (reels back in amazement at own self-restraint in Christmas Day alcohol consumption, though sadly not in calorie intake and resultant avoirdupois).

An almost total stranger e-mailed me the other day with a simple question: “Whither Bloke in the North?”

Yes, I checked. There was a question mark at the end, and a second “h” in “wither”.

It seemed a reasonable enquiry, given the comparative lack of activity on this blog in 2011. Though curiously it still seems to receive more visitors than my other blog, keithhann-whyohwhy.com, which I faithfully update every week. And to which I devote far more care and attention than I ever did to this, because each entry is also a newspaper column published in that great daily paper of the North East, The Journal.

Perhaps I inadvertently created a memorable brand in Bloke in the North. Or maybe “bloke” is just one of those words, like “porn”, that people simply cannot resist typing into search engines.

Dear faithful reader, I apologize for the lack of attention to your needs.

The facts are that I started this blog a little over four years ago when I was a confirmed bachelor (though not in the usual sense of “screaming queen”) of 53, largely unemployed, and contemplating a solitary decline towards an early grave. Starting it was a way of whistling to keep my spirits up, while in the back of my mind was the completely insane idea that it might catch the eye of a publisher who would commission me to write something more profitable.

I know. Ridiculous, isn’t it?

I also used it for a time as a surprisingly effective way to discipline myself into losing weight. By the time I gave up I was two stone lighter, though still about 21 pounds above my theoretically ideal weight. I felt much better about myself, though kind friends later told me that I looked bloody awful. There is nothing like a bit of fat for filling out wrinkles. So at least I must look terrific now that I have put every ounce back on, as fat bastards always do.

But before I did that, something completely unpredictable happened. My low profile presence on the internet caught the eye of a young woman, who got in touch to introduce me to a less particular friend who was in the habit of going out with older men. My correspondent had an unusual name, which looked like two spectacularly bad hands in a game of Scrabble. Only the fact that she gave the name of her employer, and that her chief executive happened to be an old friend of mine, prevented me from immediately consigning her message to the trash.

I never did meet her friend, but the young woman and I are now married with a two-and-a-half-year-old son and another boy due to be born in February, though the groans from Mrs H on the sofa last night did make me wonder whether we were going to have to revise our plans and call him Noel rather than Jamie.

So never believe those wiseacres who assert that blogging is a sad waste of time. This one literally transformed my life.

In so doing, it made me immeasurably busier. Not just because of the presence in my life of the aforementioned wife and children (almost) but because of the additional work I have felt obliged to undertake. This being my admittedly not particularly successful way of trying to support them in the style to which they would like to become accustomed.

Not only do I have less free time in which to write, but my natural subject matter has changed, too. From what were supposed to be hilarious tales of my pretty consistent failure to get my leg over with attractive young women who subsequently turned out to be clinically insane, to heartwarming “kids say the funniest things!” anecdotes of the kind so effectively parodied in Viz, and which were once (and, for all I know, may still be) the staples of the letters pages in the Sunday Sun, Sunday Post and People’s Friend.

I would be happy enough to post these on a much more regular basis, but I worry that doing so under the heading of “Bloke in the North” would be so far removed from its original prospectus as to put me at risk of prosecution under the 1968 Trade Descriptions Act.

On the other hand, perhaps it is the reader’s responsibility to keep up? Is Martin Sorrell regularly upbraided, at the head office of WPP, because he cannot supply callers with wire shopping baskets?

***

As an indication of what I am up against, the narrative was interrupted at that point so that I could answer two-year-old Charlie’s first question of the morning: “Where my Advent calendar gone?” (The answer produced tears, as he had got used to a fix of chocolate before his morning milk.) Then my laptop was commandeered so that he could watch three episodes of Chuggington while Mummy prepared breakfast.

Christmas Eve morning, and The Boy knows he has an important date with a chocolate Santa

“Would you like some eggs, Charlie?”

“Yes.”

So Mrs H cooked delicious scrambled eggs while I carved some wonderful smoked salmon from Swallow Fish in Seahouses, and toasted and buttered a couple of slices of bread.

“There you are, Charlie. Eggs with pink fish. Your favourite.”

“No, no, no! I don’t want it!” The bowl was flung across the table, though we did not get more tears until he applied his full weight to disentangling the cat’s Christmas present from some obstruction or other, and it snapped and catapulted him across the kitchen.

All in all, a pretty typical morning with a toddler. Or at any rate our toddler.

On Christmas Eve Mrs H took him out to see a local hunt meet, because there is nothing he likes more than horses, dogs, 4x4s and horseboxes. He snored through the whole thing. Then she took her eye off him for a minute or two after lunch and returned to find him holding a strip of tablets that she had carefully hidden on a high work surface in a remote corner of the kitchen. He proudly announced that he had taken one. But had he? Mrs H could not remember whether there had been six or seven tablets left in the strip when she took her last one. Now there were definitely only six. So it was possible, though unlikely as the tablets seemed rather too large for a two-year-old to swallow. And given that it is hellishly difficult to get him to eat anything at all apart from fish fingers and sausages, what were the chances that he would he chew his way through a very unpalatable pill?

“Did you take one of Mummy’s pills?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

On the one hand, it is said that small children never lie because they have not yet learned how to do so. On the other hand we know that he is immensely suggestible and will agree to almost anything.

So Mrs H consulted the internet on what damage taking one of her pills for gestational diabetes might do to a two-year-old. Then she rang NHS Direct, who did clearly did precisely the same thing. They advised that it would probably be all right, but there were some exceptionally rare potential complications, so the best thing to do would be to take him to hospital and have him checked out. The last thing any parent wants to hear on Christmas Eve.

By the time they rang back with this advice we had arrived at church for the Christmas Eve crib service. Since no urgency was suggested, and a spot of prayer seemed appropriate, we went in and joined the packed congregation. Everyone else sang three of my favourite carols: Away in a manger, Once in Royal David’s City and Oh little town of Bethlehem. Charlie sang Jingle Bells and somehow his one small voice seemed to carry through the church more powerfully than the several hundred others competing with it.

Then we drove to hospital and joined the queue in A&E, after asking Charlie yet again whether he had taken one of Mummy’s pills as it was very important and we were all going to have to go to hospital if he had.

“Yes, I did,” he insisted.

We were pleasantly surprised that the reception staff at A&E did not greet us by our first names as we walked in, since we see them so often these days. First there was a consultation with a nurse, who did not think there was anything to worry about. Then I stupidly raised the very rare complications that NHS Direct had mentioned, which sent her off to look them up on the internet. She returned with a doctor, who looked about 13, and that was after he had been prematurely aged by exhaustion. And we had a remarkably similar conversation with him. Then he went off to consult a paediatric specialist and came back with his advice: “Admit for observation.”

“You see, Charlie, you’re going to miss Santa now because you took one of Mummy’s pills. You’re going to have to stay in hospital.”

“No, no! I want to go home!”

“But you took one of Mummy’s pills.”

“No, I didn’t! I didn’t!”

“Then why did you say you did?”

“I don’t know.”

Did you take one of Mummy's pills?

“Of course,” the young doctor said, “If you want to ignore medical advice and take him home, that’s up to you.”

Mrs H asked exactly what their “observation” would consist of, and it proved to comprise waking him up in the middle of the night, checking that he wasn’t in a diabetic coma and measuring his blood sugar. All of which, she pointed out, as a (hopefully temporary) diabetic equipped with a blood testing kit, she was fully equipped to do at home, and bring him back to hospital if the results were unsatisfactory.

The doctor seemed satisfied with this compromise, so we left. As we drove out of the hospital, a little voice piped up from the back of the car: “I did take one of Mummy’s pills. I did.”

Back home, The Boy prepared a spread for Santa. I drew the line at eating Rudolph's carrot.

I don’t suppose we will ever know the truth, but he survived to see Christmas and to open his presents, which afforded him some pleasure. Though I relearned the lesson of last Christmas that one gift brings great joy to a small child, and more than one is really just a distraction. I assumed that he would be most pleased with the ride-on John Deere tractor that I had spent a hellish evening assembling from a kit of parts with the aid of instructions that came in a wide range of languages, apparently including ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, yet strangely excluding English. However, this proved to be a disappointment on two grounds: (a) because he resolutely refused to pedal it, as seeming far too much like hard work, and (b) because I vetoed the use of the front loader attachment to bulldoze a large stretch of the lawn.

Would-be farmer with major capex in equipment

On the plus side, he was delighted with the modestly priced model Land Rover that I had bought him from the Rothbury toyshop that is such a great resource for those with small children obsessed with agricultural machinery.

After we came in from the garden, he became obsessed with (a) getting hold of my box of matches, (b) turning on the cooker and (c) placing his hand on the red hot hob. Perhaps it was these distractions that caused his mother to turn on the wrong hotplate and melt the plastic base of the smart new electric coffee grinder I had unpacked only that morning.

Then we had lunch, where the Boy carried his obsession with gravy to previously unseen heights, demanding that he be allowed to spoon more and more of it onto his already overflowing plate. He wouldn’t actually eat any of his Christmas dinner apart from a couple of chipolatas, once they had been carefully denuded of their bacon wrapping. Then he had a meltdown over the Great Gravy Shortage and fell off his chair. I ate my Auntie’s fantastic Christmas pudding and brandy butter, after which we all had a well-earned nap that was pretty much the highlight of the day.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

Football crazy, football mad

15st 13lb, 2.0 units. I have shared some thoughts on Saturday’s Newcastle United versus Wigan Athletic match in my weekly newspaper column, which I have just posted on my other blog. But the usual constraints of space prevented me from fully conveying my feelings about the sheer strangeness of my weekend.

It all started quite well. My friend’s train arrived on time at Newcastle Central, leaving him with nothing to moan about apart from the repeated announcements that the train was “arriving into” a station, rather than the more straightforward “at”.

I retaliated with a whinge about my own pet dislike, “station stop”, which takes two words to say what could be conveyed by either one of them. If I had been feeling a bit stronger I would probably have gone nuclear with my well-established rant about the use of “train station” rather than “railway station”, though my claim that this is a ghastly Americanism was rather undermined by an actual American pointing out that they traditionally did not have train stations either, but depots. Pronounced “deepo”, naturally, and not to be confused with the places where the British store buses.

Later in the morning I enjoyed a glorious pint of Gladiator and an excellent packet or two of pork scratchings in the Crown Posada, perhaps the finest pub in Newcastle, while my friend pottered around the alleyways off the Quayside, reliving what must frankly have been some pretty dubious memories of his childhood. Then we enjoyed a splendid mixed grill lunch with some other fine chaps, and their offspring, at my Newcastle club.

It was the whole football match thing that seemed a bit strange – though perhaps, given my limited experience, it was my first time at the ground that was odd. It was certainly different, because that time, two and a half years ago, I was sitting in one of the grand corporate boxes rather than on the terraces. It was also a critical relegation match against a local rival, Middlesbrough. I just assumed that the enthusiastic, flag-waving, chanting atmosphere was customary, when on the evidence of this Saturday it clearly isn’t. There wasn’t a flag or even a waved scarf to be seen. No-one audibly joined in when Blaydon Races was blasted out on the loudspeakers. In fact, for want of a better word, the best way I could describe the mood of the crowd was subdued. Which seemed odd to me, when I had been reading that Newcastle were enjoying their best performance for years, unbeaten to date and standing in fourth place in the league.

People turned up at their seats at the last minute, or ten minutes into the game in the case of the couple next to us, who then left again five minutes before the half time whistle. The blokes to the right of us also well before half time, and did not return for the second half. Those who did stick it out seemed, for the most part, disengaged and rather depressed, though they did manage a ragged cheer when Newcastle finally scored, ten minutes before the end.

My friend had loudly observed on arrival at our seats “It’s much more civilized than I expected!” This prompted me to shush him. “Shush? It’s not the opera, you know!” he joshed, setting me off on the train of thought that resulted in my column. I pointed out, sotto voce, that it probably wasn’t a good idea to proclaim at the top of his voice that he had expected to be surrounded by a load of yobs.

Typical Toon fan and owner

In fact our neighbours were for the most part older than us, and rather quiet. I found their shared reminiscences of the old days quite endearing, but no doubt they would pall quite rapidly if I heard them repeated at every home game, as they no doubt are. I was also struck by the number of times that they referred to the amount that the players were being paid to do very little. Although many of those on the pitch were black I never heard a word of racist abuse uttered, though there seemed to be a widespread conviction that a statistically implausibly high proportion of the players were practising homosexualists.

All in all, the game felt flat to me, the spectators uninvolved. There was none of the audience response one might expect at the end of a decent operatic or theatrical performance. I know where I would rather spend my money.

In the evening I took my friend out to supper at my local pub. Having consumed much meat at lunchtime, we both ordered fish and chips. It turned up looking delicious, a beautifully presented plate of nicely battered haddock, chips and mushy peas. I must have eaten about a third of it before I voiced my reservations to my companion: “Is it just me, or did this taste of absolutely nothing at all?” He nodded in wholehearted agreement. The only thing on our plates that had the slightest hint of flavour was the tartare sauce, which tasted as though it had been run up as part of an experiment by the remedial stream in a school chemistry lab. I had thought it must just be me who could taste nothing, as I had had a bit of a cold all week, after a doubtless ill-judged flu vaccination last Monday. We debated whether to mention it to our charming and attentive waitress, but decided against on the grounds that we couldn’t decide how to phrase any complaint. There appeared to nothing wrong with the ingredients or with their cooking or presentation. It was just that somewhere along the line they had been magically deprived of all flavour.

Still, it was at least the perfect meal with which to round off our bland and curiously unsatisfying afternoon at the football. I think I shall suggest that the pub renames the dish “Haddock St James”.

Another World

15st 10lb, 8.0 units. Walking round like a zombie all day after The Boy started throwing up in the early hours, even though I responded in my usual, selfless, hands-on way by retreating to the spare bed well out of earshot in the annexe above our garage. The fact that he has slept for around 12 hours per night for months now has clearly lulled us into a false sense of security. This morning Mrs H was even moved to question the wisdom of putting herself through all this again by having another baby. Perhaps rather late in the day to begin thinking about that, I reflected.

The Boy was deemed unfit to go to nursery so I was commissioned to stay at home and play with him while Mrs H went to the dentist to have a tooth filled. It was all going quite well, with some gentle puzzle-solving and book-reading (I doing the reading, he listening – he’s not that much of a prodigy), until he decided to hurl himself head-first over my prone body on his nursery floor. He enjoyed it so much that he decided to do it again, this time while holding one of his books, which promptly clocked him in the eye and left a nasty red mark on his cheek and forehead. He didn’t cry much. In fact, I have to admit that he seems considerably more stoical at 26 months than I am at 57 years.

After Mrs H returned, jaw numbed, we drove him to his grandparents’ and went to our respective desks, where we each pretended to do some work. We were glad to get away again shortly after 5. Unfortunately The Boy wasn’t glad to see us, and responded to the idea that he might like to go home by grabbing his mother’s spectacles and chucking them onto his grandparents’ stone-flagged patio, where one of the lenses shattered rather impressively. He agreed, during the subsequent discussion, that this was a very naughty thing to do. I don’t remember ever attempting anything quite so heinous in my own early childhood, but feel sure that some form of physical chastisement would have followed if I had. But then they also regularly gave me addictively orange-flavoured Junior Aspirin, so I suppose I just have to accept that it was Another World and they did things very differently there.

Having a baby at 98

No idea, 8.5 units. Reasons for wishing that I could afford to send my son to an English public school (number one in an occasional series): so that he could acquire that irritatingly undeserved self-confidence and air of entitlement that is endemic in their products. My time at Cambridge, and the earlier part of my career in the City, were blighted by a mistaken sense of my inferiority because I did not have this advantage. How a regime of cold baths, starvation, corporal punishment and systematic buggery (thinking of English public schools as they were in my day, rather than how they might be now, Mrs H, just in case you were thinking of lifting your veto on a boarding education) should breed such self-assurance I have absolutely no idea. Maybe it just failed to knock it out of people in whom it had been bred for generations.

 A promiscuous homosexual with a cane

Anyway, I was reminded of all this by eating breakfast in a reasonably posh hotel in Lewes for the last two days, and hearing the 60-something products of assorted public schools braying their weird and wonderful commands at breakfast. Nothing so simple as ordering things that were on the menu, like common Mrs H and I did. No, they needed very specific things, prepared in very specific ways. Rashers of bacon with all the fat cut off. Pots of boiling water with a tea bag brought separately in a dish. Lea & Perrins Worcester sauce (God forbid that they should be offered a generic substitute). My favourite was the 80-something mother of one of the group, encountered this morning, whose volume control had long since dropped off and who delivered her pernickety requests and eccentric opinions in a foghorn voice that could probably have been heard at Glyndebourne, even against competition from the London Symphony Orchestra.

Mind you, it was hard to disagree too strongly with her verdict that Glyndebourne’s Rinaldo was a “silly” production.

After breakfast we drove back to Chester in time for a little light shopping and a visit to a private clinic for a nuchal translucency scan, one of those jobs that gives you a vague idea of whether your offspring is at high risk of coming into the world with one of a small range of unpleasant genetic conditions. When The Boy was in the womb, such things were not available on the NHS in this part of the world and we had no choice but to pay for it (apart from the choice of not having it done at all). Now the test is available on the NHS – but they only provide one chance, so if your foetus is an awkward little sod like ours is (where could it have got that from?) and resolutely refuses to move into a position where the necessary measurements can be taken, you are back to the position as before. So I paid up, the offspring decided to co-operate, and we came away with some more blurry black-and-white images and the assurance that the risk of the abnormalities in question is as low as is statistically possible. Which, given that its parents have a combined age of 98, is terrifically cheering and reassuring.

Whatever happened to Farmer Palmer's llamas?

No idea (of my weight this morning, that is), 6.0 units. For many years one of the incidental pleasures of going to the opera at Glyndebourne has been driving through the pretty village of Glynde and admiring the fields full of alpacas between there and the opera house. I know that they were alpacas, because there was a hanging sign at Glyndebourne Farm proclaiming them to be just that. But in the interests of euphony, I preferred to believe that they were llamas, owned by the legendary Farmer Palmer (“Git orff my laaaaand”) created by Viz comic.

“Would you like to see Farmer Palmer’s llama farm?” I would say to guests as I drove them to the opera, and they always went down well – rather better, in fact, than some of the more avant garde productions at the opera house.

I am sure they were there when we last passed this way. And I have a strong idea that I also spotted a camel lurking in a field by the farmhouse. Maybe that was the Trojan horse that caused the whole thing to unravel. [Pub quiz question: how many other English verbs can you create by sticking “un” in front of the name of an opera composer?]

Because we drove that way this afternoon and there were no alpacas to be seen. The hanging sign was gone, too. I felt sad, even though I am equally sure that I resented the animals as an alien intrusion when they first appeared, muttering about what was wrong with traditional South Downs sheep. I just don’t like change, that’s the top and bottom of it. Unless it is being handed to me by a shopkeeper after a purchase.

On that basis this afternoon’s performance was a top choice: Britten’s Turn of the Screw, in a production that I first saw in 2007. I know this because it says so in my diary. Moreover, one of the guests who accepted my invitation to come along today also saw it with me then, and can vouch for the fact that I was there. Which is handy, because I only booked it this time because I had completely forgotten ever having seen it before. No recollection whatsoever. My diary says that I also went to La Cenerentola the previous evening in 2007, and I have photographs demonstrating that I was indeed in the grounds of Glyndebourne with friends that day, yet I have absolutely no recollection of that production, either.

Operatic amnesia: it is a new one on me.

And odd because the production and the performance were both absolutely terrific, and are now seared on my memory for the long term (if, at my age, there is any long term to be had).

We had an excellent picnic, too, kindly contributed by my guests, and despite the mugginess of the early afternoon and the apparent threat of thunder, it proved to be a magically perfect English summer’s evening.

Even down to a very pretty girl with long blonde hair dancing round the lawn in what I feel compelled to describe as a long white shift. She was doing it as we arrived, right next to where our friends had planted their picnic chairs and rug. Mrs H expressed some doubts about the wisdom of approaching the lunatic. I preferred to think of it as some sort of lawn theatre – perhaps, with any luck, an advertising initiative by Peter Stringfellow. Our companions felt that it was intended to put us in the mood for The Turn of the Screw by making us think of the orphan Flora. I could say what it put me in mind of, but I don’t think it would get past the traditional vetting of this blog by Mrs H.

I wonder whether we will ever come here again? It won’t be easy logistically in summer 2012, with a three-year-old and a new baby to look after. It may not be easy financially, either. I suppose I should just count myself fortunate to have spent so many truly memorable evenings here over the last 27 years, plus a few that I cannot remember at all. And congratulate myself for having the presence of mind to add my name to the waiting list for membership of the Glyndebourne Festival Society within minutes of walking into the place for the first time in 1984.

A new form of torture

15st 6lb, 4.0 units. I started a new quarter of my financial year in the traditional way by e-mailing a bunch of invoices, with suitably grovelling covering notes, then loaded the reluctant dog into the car and drove to Northumberland. Six and a half sodding hours it took from door to door, some of which was accounted for by going via Alnwick to do a spot of shopping. But most of it was down to the fact that the entire population of the UK appeared to be on the move, and many of them have failed to grasp the concept that they should be driving in the left hand lane of multi-lane roads unless they happen to be overtaking. Though the absolute highlight was the discovery of an entirely new form of torture at Wetherby services, where I noticed when it was just too late to abort my entry to the car park that there seemed to be a bit of a queue to get out of it.

Not to worry, I thought, I’m sure that will have cleared by the time I’ve attended to a call of nature and had a bite to eat.

Ha!

Over an hour I sat there, completely stationary, wondering how the hell Moto had managed to design an almost completely new service area that could be brought to a complete standstill with such apparent ease, and resenting the loss of a chunk of my life that no-one is ever going to give me back.

At least the sun was shining when I finally reached home, and The Dog and I went out for a glorious walk in some of the loveliest scenery on the planet. Though it would have been more glorious if I had remembered to wear a hat. I had forgotten how large the fly population of Northumberland becomes by the beginning of July each year. Note to potential tourists: it’s a fly-infested hellhole. Don’t even think of coming here.

A pain in the forecourt, and the legs

15st 6lb, 11.5 units. Yesterday evening we finally managed to collect Mrs H’s new car from the dealership where it has allegedly been languishing for a full six weeks while they and the DVLA between them made an almost incredible meal of transferring her personalized number plate. Or, rather, my personalized XPR number plate which she is kindly fostering for me until I can resume my retirement from the public relations business and it will once again become a prime example of my wit, rather than just a random series of letters and numbers.

Oliver the salesman at the garage said the paperwork would take 30-40 minutes to complete. This proved as accurate as most estimates in the motor trade. We finally escaped after an hour, and then only because I cut short the spiel about some of the many wonderful features of our new motor car on the grounds that The Boy’s nursery was about to close for the night and he would have to be taken into local authority care if we did not get there pronto and pick him up.

Getting there pronto was not assisted by turning the engine on for the first time and finding that the fuel gauge was on zero.

“We only put five litres of fuel in,” Oliver explained. “But you’ve got plenty to get to a garage.”

So long as you go the garage half a mile up the road in completely the wrong direction, that is.

Here’s an idea: if you’re going to charge £25,000-odd for a car, why not slap another £80 on the bill and fill the bloody tank up? No one’s going to notice the extra, and it would avoid your customers driving off your forecourt with the sense that they are dealing with a bunch of twats.

It was me who did the aforementioned driving, even though it was Mrs H’s new car, on the grounds that we were in a tearing hurry. But it was just as well, as she foolishly volunteered the information that she would never have thought to look at the fuel gauge before setting off, and would therefore have ground to a halt on the dual carriageway somewhere en route to the nursery. Which would, I’ll admit, have made a good anecdote for this blog.

Later in the evening we had a vicar and a churchwarden to supper. There was a certain amount of alcohol involved. I woke in the middle of the night with terrible pains in both my legs, convinced that this was a symptom of heart failure and that I was imminently doomed to life in a wheelchair if not to death in a coffin. The worst thing about the former option, I recalled from conversations with my double amputee mother, is that you continue to suffer pains in your limbs even after they have been cut off.

Maybe I should try going a little easier on the booze and see whether that helps at all. Or should I keep on drinking in the hope that it will blot out all visions of my future?