A Monday. At the start of lockdown.
In the utility room. I’m gazing, not for the first time of late, at a blank expanse of pristine wall. Then looking back along the long straight space, towards the opposite wall, where the boiler is attached. Calculating the distance. Got to be a good eight and a half foot. Would that be enough? What’s the regulation distance again- seven foot nine? And anyway- this is a dividing wall, this one. Will it even take a long screw?
Charlotte walks in.
‘You know, I was thinking about what we could have up here. I mean, only if it would fit..’
‘I know what you’re thinking, don’t worry. A dartboard’.
‘That is what I was thinking! How did you know?’
‘Oh, I know, you know! I just know!’
....
This Monday.
A long day in the zoom-room. The light’s fading earlier now, I’ve had the lamp on for the last half-an-hour. And the little portable radiator. Makes it snug in there though, you can lose the track of time.
I come downstairs, to find Charlotte in the kitchen. She turns round to see me coming in.
‘Yes, you have.’
‘Yes I’ve what?’
‘What you were about to ask. Time. To give your mother a ring. Dinner won’t be ready for half-an-hour’.
‘Ah fair enough. That is what I was about to ask actually. Oh, and- ‘
‘No, I haven’t. Not yet.’
‘Not yet what?’
‘What you were about to ask next. Booked the hotel tickets for Newcastle. I thought we should maybe wait until tomorrow- see what they say about this Tier Three thing- see if it looks like we’re allowed’.
‘Yes, that is what I was wondering about. Good idea. Have I got any more questions, for now?’
‘No you haven’t. Go and ring your mother. You’ve still got twenty-five minutes’.
We’ll have been married twenty years in November, by the way. Just in case you were wondering.
....
Tuesday
Late at night. The usual choice- tune into something erudite on that new Sky Arts channel which has suddenly appeared on Freeview, or retreat to the utility room and get the arrows out. The usual outcome.
Keeping the scores in my head. I used to sometimes write them down, then one time Charlotte came in: ‘What are you doing here, playing against yourself?’. Which was a surprising and rare failure of her well-documented mind-reading abilities, since, in point of fact, I was playing against the wily Canadian veteran Cliff Lazarenko, in the quarter-finals of the 1983 World Championship. Anyway, now I generally keep the scores in my head. Works wonders for the mental arithmetic, and probably helping to stave of dementia, while we’re about it.
Tonight, it’s a tougher one. A semi-final. Up against Jocky Wilson, the Scottish Number One. Mind you he’s erratic, as is known. So a steady Eddie like me, if the arm’s in, I’m not saying I start favourite, but I’ve got a chance. And the arm’s in. 149 on the board. Wilsons way back, somewhere in the high two-hundreds. I throw a couple of solid enough single twenties, but the second one lands at a rakish angle, covering the treble. At this point, my dad joins me and Jocky in the room, his voice coming across quite clearly, considering he’s speaking from 200 miles away and thirty-five years ago. ‘Down for nineteens here if I was you, son. Play it safe.’
It’s the right call. But it’s a bad dart- a flyer. Clashing against the wire- not even in the nineteens, but somewhere daft, like treble eight. And then dropping, needle-end plumb downwards and at sickening velocity, like a stricken World War Two airplane, ending up lodged behind the radiator. On the way down, it bounces off Frankie’s bike. Somewhere around the front tyre area. A wince from Jackie. It’ll be OK, I reassure him. Just a glancing blow.
..............
Wednesday
Lunchtime. I walk into the utility room and nearly trip over Frankie. He’s down by the radiator, at knee-level, muttering to himself.
‘What’s up, Frank?’
‘This bloody tyre keeps going down, that’s what’s up! How can it have got a slow puncture anyway- just leaning against the wall? It’s never done that before’.
‘That’s bikes for you, love. Probably something to do with the valve. What time you got it booked in for?’
‘Three o’clock. But I’ll never get there now. I can’t ride it from here to Halfords. Not like this’.
‘Tell you what love. I’ll have finished my meetings in half an hour. If you can get the wheel off, we can stick it in the car and I’ll drive you down.’
‘Oh- cheers Dad’.
Well- it’s the least I can do. I mean you know, in the circumstances.
.................
Thursday
Charlotte’s birthday. So- an early finish in the Zoom Room, and by 7PM we are ensconced in the Jolly Sailor, where we’ve got a table booked for four. It’s the last night before we are to be plunged, alongside the rest of the population of Greater Manchester, into the lockdown-limbo of Tier Three, so the place is packed with the suburb’s more well-heeled millennials, making the most of the for-now-still-legal opportunity to purchase a pint/ a glass of prosecco unaccompanied by a government-sanctioned Substantial Meal.
You can’t just wander up to the bar and order a drink anymore though. Like everything else these days, you have to download the App, and either the internet is playing up, or they are just overwhelmed with thirsty customers, so it takes fully forty-five minutes for a harassed and be-masked waiter to arrive with a tray containing your second pint of Amstel. They’re doing you a favour though, all things considered; you’d only have downed that one before half-time in your pub-gourmet chicken-burger and chips and been in the market for an ill-advised third; and by 8:30 on a school-night, that might not have ended well.
Back at home, the living room a-sparkle with fairy lights. Well it always is, once Autumn is upon us- but on special nights they come into their own, like floodlights for a televised cup replay. Charlotte’s brother (AKA our Exciting Birthday Visitor/extra-household-government-approved-bubble-member) picks up Frankie’s acoustic guitar, and the two of them entertain us with an impromptu melody of popular classics from the Great British Songbook, live and unplugged from the sofa/ couch/settee (delete as appropriate to your self-perceived station in the Great British Class System). Penny Lane. Mr Blue Sky. A request from the ageing indiepopstar in the left-hand armchair: Can they do anything by The Smiths?
Turns out the boy has been learning the chords to There is a Light That Never Goes Out. Me and Charlotte singing along with the words, or the bits we know/ can remember. It’s past midnight by the time we are helping the Exciting Visitor to grapple with the complicated mechanism of the sofa-bed, and the fridge has been emptied of the small but not inconsiderable stock of small bottles of premium European lager which you had pre-provisioned for the purposes of the occasion. Still, and as my dad used to say (and there he is, again): ‘Its a hard life, if you don’t weaken’. There was a time when I didn’t know what he meant.
......
Friday
Just the one meeting today, which is a good job considering last night’s slight over-exertions. Actually, maybe no meetings at all, because by 11:45 the bloke- the newly-arrived-in-the-borough CEO of a charity supporting families of prisoners- is fifteen minutes late, and, just like in the days of Spanish ‘A’ Level, when I used to build up a dread of one-to-one tuition and bolt for the sixth-form-block corridors if the teacher wasn’t there by five minutes past kick-off, I’m beginning to entertain serious hopes that he might not turn up at all. No such luck, though. At 11:47, an email: ‘I’m logged onto Teams, Jonathan- are you here yet?’
I acquit myself honourably in the circumstances, my services extending to a from-memory verbal tour of Old Trafford’s community assets, my own detailed recollection of which I am pleasantly surprised by, given that, Things Being What They Are, I haven’t set foot on my actual ‘patch’ for a good six months by now, and counting. The bloke is a verbose type, so for the most part I let him do the talking, limiting my interventions to the occasional ‘hmm yes of course’ and some tactically spaced-out sage nodding of the head. The bloke seems satisfied enough, and with just under sixty minutes on the clock has got whatever he came for. ‘Very useful, thank you. I think I’ve got a much clearer picture of my options now.’ Well that would be a week’s work well done then, I tell myself. A quick fifteen-minute siesta on the Zoom room carpet here and a last check through the emails, and that’ll be me. The weekend starts here.
Wait a minute here, you mean to tell me you don't know all the word's to the indie Candle in the Wind as Mr. Marr called it? I'm sure i've mentioned (the amount of cannabis ingested can sometimes make me foggy) that the first time i saw Mozza, in my hometown years after i had left, the city where i discovered him, where i once followed around a girl at a carnival because she had a Queen is Dead shirt on (never actually talking to her cuz i didn't think i was cool enough back then) that i was standing in the lobby pre-show, zooted off my face and drinking copious amounts of alcohol while two gay men called out songs and i sang them, basically covering the whole of the Smiths and Mozza catalog while they marveled at my ability to recall every song they called out, though i don't think they ever got really obscure, a crowd formed by the time i was finished and my new friends had bought me three more drinks because i was such a laugh... i'd like to say i was young but i was 36? or 37? oh well the wine of almost youth... nice one on the tyre, sometimes things are better left untold ;)
Posted by: kono | October 26, 2020 at 08:08 PM
That is the calculation I made Kono, and it seems to be holding up so far. He's got a slow puncture on the back tyre now, but that's nothing to do with me, or my wayward arrows, and I'll swear that on Jocky Wilson's grave.
Talking of punctured bicycles..the only time I dared to expose my claim to mastery of the Mozza lyric Book to any kind of public exposure came a couple of years ago, on holiday in Britanny, the campsite bar's regular Saturday night karaoke- a lager-loossened attempt at This Charming Man which, judging from the audience response (rapturous acclaim from the one other obvious lager-loossened ageing indiepopster present, studied disinterest otherwise), I concluded I had just about gotten away with. I also judged I wouldn't be trying it again in a hurry though. It wasn't so much the words that were challenging (well after all they are written up for you on the screen).. but more the pacing. You realise how damn much lyric the son of Stretford fits into three minutes, and if your timing is off then Mr Marr is not about to hang about and wait for you to catch up. It was indeed very nearly a case of 'I've started something I couldn't finish' (there you can have that for no extra charge, comment box special offer)
Posted by: Jonathan | October 26, 2020 at 09:51 PM