Hoarded

Tuesday

At work. Zoomed into the regular start to the week: the gathering that, in those desperate first-lockdown ‘So What The Hell Do We Do Now’ days of late March/early April, was awarded the urgent title of ‘Community Hub Mobilisation Meeting’. Six months in, the mood is no longer panicked- but still serious, occasionally bordering- like this morning- on sombre, as sixteen Monday morning faces (people who run Community Centres, foodbanks, and the like; or people like me, who attempt to co-ordinate that sort of stuff from their spare rooms in the next borough) listen to a no-nonsense briefing from Jo, the breezily professionally confident Council Executive person who runs the show. The talk is of the Second Wave. No serious person doubts it’s coming. Along with dark early winter nights. And Brexit (remember that?). And rationing of the most popular/ heavily-hoarded items on the supermarket shelves. We discuss volunteer capacity- how many do we have signed up and ready to go? How many of those who answered the call to sign up, back in the ‘we are all in this together’ Springtime have now gone back to work, or just faded away? Does anyone still have the list?

Back home. Items presently hoarded (or as it is called when you are referring to your own entirely-reasonable apocalypse-readiness squirrelling, as opposed to the eye-rolling hysteria indulged in by Other People, ‘stocked up with a few extra, just in case’): tinned tomato, pasta, toilet roll. Stocks of these have been quietly building up for months, filling up the nooks and crannies of kitchen cupboards, as well as places that weren’t previously earmarked for storage of anything at all, like the floor underneath the futon in the spare room, which close inspection reveals to contain two sixteen-packs of superstrength Andrex. To add to these usual suspects, Charlotte comes in this afternoon with a new one, in the form of a catering-size tub of margarine. I’m instantly taken back to the skint summer of- when?- 1974? 1982?- the day, anyway, when we packed up the family car with a half-ton of homemade ham and pease pudding sandwiches and headed up to sell them at the Miners Picnic, innocently hopeful of a tidy profit to keep the wolf (or the Council rent arrears man, anyway) from the door. Owing to some unforeseen difficulty (A poor pitch? Rain? A rival seller purveying a higher quality of pease pudding?) the enterprise was not a notable success, and we drove home at teatime with three-quarters of the stock-in-trade still in the back of the car, unsold crusts curling up in the heat. My mam and dad weary, but philosophical. Me and my sister- blissfully unaware of the home-economic-imperatives surrounding what for us had remained some kind of impromptu Northumbrian Sunday adventure- just exhausted and giddy; playing in the back seat with some kind of cheap fluorescently-coloured magnetic ‘jelly bean’ toys that we had picked up on a neighbouring stall for handfuls of coppers each, and were ridiculously pleased with. If we had stocked up on them for the drive North, we’d have cleaned up.

The girl who sells the Big Issue outside the charity shop on the corner, who had disappeared from neighbourhood view for the duration of the ongoing madness so far (God knows to where) has returned. You have to buy one, whether you’ll read it or not, unless you want to withstand her baleful gaze every time you go to the Spar shop for a pint of milk from now until Halloween. Actually, this month’s one is OK. A set-piece interview with Kevin Rowland, once (and indeed, still) of Dexys Midnight Runners: ‘A letter to my Younger Self’. Apparently he forgot to properly savour his Top of the Pops moments of fame- too insecure and focussed on what was coming up next. ‘I’d just tell myself to be present’. Finding I identify with the advice, I squirrel it away, Andrex-like, in some obscure nook and cranny inside of my head where there appears to be space for it. Funny times we’re living in. You never know when stuff could come in handy.

Wednesday

‘Jonathan Working From Home’, it says in my work calendar- a recurring Wednesday all-day appointment. I should probably delete it, now that spending office hours tapping away at the laptop keys barefoot in the spare room has become the everyday norm, as opposed to a treasured midweek oasis from the neuroses of office life. Top Three Neuroses of Office Life, by the way. 1- ‘Kitchen Conversations’ (the ones where you go to the fifth-floor kitchen to make a cup of tea and find yourself elbow-to-elbow at the sink with the Director of Finance, and are obliged to make small talk, and neither of you is quite sure what the etiquette is around sharing the milk bottle/ the teaspoon); 2- Lift conversations (exactly the same as kitchen conversations, except with uncertainty about the etiquette surrounding who presses the floor selection buttons, and the remote but none-the-less mutually unspoken fear of the mechanism failing, and the two of you being trapped in there forever/ plunging to your instantaneous and simultaneous deaths). 3: Meetings (enough said).

The first midweek evening fixture of the delayed National League season: Stockport County at home to another of the bookies’ early favourites for promotion contention: FC Halifax Town. The game is being played 20 minutes’ walk away- we could probably see the floodlights if we stood on tiptoes at Frankie’s attic-room window- so in any normal circumstances we would be there. But these are not normal circumstances, so we are tuned in the Club’s official ‘LiveStream’, which is what our season tickets are currently paying for; a YouTube broadcast of the game as it is played out in front of empty stands, the commentary from the bloke we normally hear on local radio competing with the voices of the players, jarringly audible against the echo-inducing backdrop, and providing an eye-opening insight into what the ex-pro pundits coyly refer to as ‘banter’. As a late tackle occasions a brief flare-up of tempers by the halfway touchline, County midfielder John Rooney (younger brother of the much-more-famous Evertonian England international Wayne) squares up to the opposition number eight, provoking an outburst of sparkling repartee typical of the genre: ‘Get away from me, you little Scouse wanker’.

Late at night, a picture arrives by WhatsApp. Actually two pictures, each one a group shot of five blokes round about my age and similarly generally slightly overweight, captured post-game on the five-a-side courts, shoulder to shoulder in front of the goals, the sweat of the preceding sixty minutes of exertion already discolouring their vintage shirts (Liverpool; Aston Villa; Newcastle..) as they grin unselfconciously for the camera, elbows leaning on the rib-height crossbars. It’s Tuesday Night FC- the bunch of ex-workmates who I used to play regularly with (used to organise the games, in fact) until my ankles packed in the best part of fifteen years ago now. The courts have re-opened for the first time since lockdown- hence the photo-for-posterity (and the extra bulk under the vintage-shirt midriffs, and the layers of perspiration, and the happy exhaustion on several of the instantly recognisable faces). ‘Good to be back. Hope you’re well, Jonny’, reads the accompanying message from the photo-sender, my mate Dom (Manchester-Irish, degree-educated-working-class, Guinness-drinker. Number six in my Trusted Ten, although I can’t have spoken to him for the best part of a year, and even then it would have been about something entirely inconsequential). God I miss playing. ‘I’ll reply to this tomorrow’, I tell myself. ‘Maybe tell them I’m available for selection again, if they’re ever short’. I won’t though. I never do.

Friday

9AM Zoom call. The Council employ a half-dozen-strong team of well-meaning and affable individuals, going under the wantonly-vague title of ‘Community Cohesion Directorate; Partnerships and Networks Division’. Nobody has ever been able to work out what it is that they are for. Me and Christina (manager of the Church hall on my patch, repurposed for the duration of this ongoing madness on a shoestring into a last-community-asset standing ‘COVID Response hub’, covering all the vital bases, from food bank, to prescription delivery service, to co-ordination of mental health outreach) are trying to pin one of them down.

‘So, that’s great that you can give us a day a week Raheena. There’s always loads needs doing in Old Trafford. What sort of tasks might you have capacity to take on for us?’

‘Well- as you know we are all about linking the community together- it’s so important right now. So… anything really. I can link you up with things that are happening… make sure the message is getting out there. Help to make sure everything is connected- that sort of thing’.

‘OK, er- that sounds great. So for example our monthly network meeting. Could you come along, take some notes, and help us to get them sent out?’

‘Oh! I can’t commit to taking any actual notes from a meeting. I could maybe come along….’.

Breaking out from the spare room for a couple of hours. Down to the Neighbourhood café. At the door, the usual drill: sanitise the hands; scan the QR code; spell out your name and contact details to a masked attendant wielding a clipboard. The rigmarole complete, he looks up and motions us towards a corner-table.

‘OK, I can put you over here’.

‘That’s great’.

I settle in, then immediately decide the voluble chatter of the two mums at the next table is going to detract my attention from the task at hand, and that I’d rather be at a neighbouring berth, three yards away (and with a plug for the laptop). Too late now though; these days your neighbourhood café operates on the same principle as the Cosa Nostra: Once You’re In, You’re In.

So- making the best of it. Getting the book out, selecting a likely-looking passage, mumbling the text out loud to myself, at what I consider to be approximate published-author-at-his-book-launch pace. Pausing their animated critique of Stockport Grammar School’s Year Seven House-Point-Award System, the mums at the next table cast across a quizzical glance. ‘If they ask’, I decide, ‘I’ll tell them this book has one of my stories in. And it’s the book launch tomorrow night, on Zoom. And I have to select and read out a five minute section of my story. No more than five minutes though- otherwise a bell will go off, and they’ll mute my mike. Serious bloody business, by the way’.

Late at night. A frenzy (well, what counts for me as one anyway) of self-promotion. I drop into a couple of WhatsApp groups containing people I used to play five-a-side with, email the dozen friends and family who make up the membership of the Premiership prediction league I run, and message my longest-standing blog-commenter Looby. The supply of people personally known to me who I think may be even vaguely interested in my literary exploits quickly exhausted, I resolve to reach out to the wider world- in the form of the Stockport County fans’ message board on which I go under the Username ‘GeordieHatter’. My post is teasingly entitled ‘So I am in this book..’..

And it is true. I am in this book. In response to an invitation by another regular commenter on these pages (the super-talented and already-published novelist John Schoneboom), I took on the challenge over a couple of quiet Friday afternoons during lockdown of converting the four-part Crinklybee story which started here:
.. into a hopefully-slightly-more-polished one-off account, centring (as longstanding readers may recall) on the fateful early-90s incident during which, in a state of fourth-Cuba-libre-of-the-night-induced clumsiness, I stepped through an open window onto a Northern Spanish balcony and inadvertently vandalised beyond repair an antique oar belonging to a vengeful landlord. The story- which along the way includes references to the demise of Margaret Thatcher, the early 90s travails of Athletic Bilbao, and The Farm’s debut album- is available for the princely sum of £4.99 per handsomely-bound paperback copy, here:

The launch- by Zoom of course- kicks off tomorrow night from 7PM. All are welcome, including Crinklybee readers/commenters old and new. It really would be absolutely lovely if any of you could make it and cheer me along. Link is right here:

A heartfelt thank you to all of you who have been along on the ride to this exciting point!

Comments

[Dr. Kenneth Noisewater]

You stole your landlord's antique oar? That's not something I hear every day.

[Jonathan Baker]

Well not so much stole it Kenneth as rent it asunder. Which is not something I write everyday...

[MQ]

Oh, man, I am GUTTED that I missed this zoom launch of the book. Or shall we call it this book launch on the zoom? Almost certainly not a book zoom on the launch, of that I think we can be sure. Anyway, my GUTTEDness at having missed the whatever-it-is is placated only, but entirely, by the fact that You Are Back, and I would be lying if I claimed not to have been a bit perturbed and concerned. Anyway, welcome back, glad you seem to be well, and... well, should we buy this book then? I mean, will you get royalties?

[kono]

Every time i read about the drudgery of gainful employment i'm glad i'm not gainfully employed... though the gig economy does make me a bit of modern day serf but more on that later... i now realize the only job i could enjoy would be working in a cannabis dispensary, of course i'd have to keep my hands off the goods at least until i'm off the clock, lol!

[Jonathan]

Kono-.. I am quite pleased to know my continuing accounts of the ninetofive are serving to deliver you from temptation in that direction, you may consider this part of the service. If you're ever feeling too sorely tempted in spite of my contemporary outpourings of workgrief, I suggest a dip into the Crinkkybee archives pre-2008 when I used to work in (and write from) the call centre... Now that was world-class office drudgery as MQ here for one will testify!

MQ.. great to know you're still out there also! The book... Well I will be able to tell you properly when I've read the rest of the stories but judging on what I heard on the night it's well worth your £4.99 + p and p. As for my chances of retiring on the vast proceeds...well I haven't read the small print (on account of how there wasn't any, nor for that matter was there any large print).. but my working estimate for the purposes of offshore accountancy as to personal projected royalty income emanating from my literary effirts would be.. a right royal zero... If anything I suspect I more rightfully owe the esteemed publisher a few bob for his investment in the venture so I am not about to ask! From such beginnings however... I'm sure the Top Ten Waterstones listings are but a manuscript or two away (not really).