Service Not Included

Wednesday

Frankie’s been to get his hair cut.

‘Very sharp. Did you give the guy a tip?’

‘A tip?’

I realise that I have been remiss here in a section of the ‘educating the boy in the rudimentals of about-town-service-appreciation-etiquette’ curriculum, and so we improvise a brief role-play in which I play the part of the barber, leaning over the till (ably represented here by the coffee table) to extract change from a proffered ten pound note (bright yellow post-it note).

‘That’ll be six pounds fifty son’

‘There you go. Just give us two quid back, cheers’.

‘Ah, thanks very much, very kind. Have a great day now’.

It is a sharp cut, mind you. I suspect the six-pounds-fifty barber in Stockport Old Town only does the one variety for teenagers, perfected at the height of the early 80s Ska revival. Number three blade (number two?) on the sides and back, just the suggestion of a quiff at the crest of a crew-cut flat-top. The boy looks like Suggs of Madness in his pomp- or in other words, how I fancied that I looked when I used to get that haircut myself, round about 1983. He (I imagine) probably fancies the style as affording him the image of the tough-college-boy-around-town. Maybe that is the effect- to his peers/college girls at the bus-stop (which is the audience he cares about, of course). I just think he looks cute; the absence of stray locks draws attention to his still-just-about-pretty boy-face. I’m not going to say so out loud (obviously) so instead I make do with giving the back of his head a quick stroke. He shows no reaction to that- which I can be thankful for, as the response to parental displays of affection these days can just as easily come with a side-swipe of a long right arm: ‘Gerroff!’. It’s like fondling the mane of a tiger at the zoo- not at all to be advised, but lovely when it works.

This morning. He’s off to college, rummaging in his rucksack to check he’s got his keys/ his phone/his change. I’m standing in the front-door-way, barefoot, not in any particular hurry to get on with my home-working day. A neighbour who I vaguely recognise (so- that places her anywhere from next door onwards, I’m not the expert in who the hell the neighbours are/ what their names might be etc, I leave that to Charlotte, who seems to have built up quite effortlessly an encyclopaedic knowledge of their collected lives and times) happens past. She’s trundling along a pushchair carrying two infants: a baby inside and an open-faced, curly-mopped toddler riding the rear foot-plate- and looking exhilarated at his precariously-balanced transportation option, like an Indian peasant hanging on to the back of an Express-train-carriage. I catch the woman’s eye, then, nodding in the direction of the departing Frankie:

‘Mind, enjoy it while it lasts. You blink, and the next day they’re both the size of this one here’.

‘She smiles and lets out an ‘I can hardly imagine that!’ sort of gasp.

I know what I’m talking about though. Those Early Days- they are behind you before you know it. I go to wave Frankie off, but he’s off round the corner already. I shuffle back indoors, locking the latch on the Autumnal chill of the neighbourhood, and on its mysteriously interchangeable citizens. I’ll find out from Charlotte which one I was talking to, when she comes home.

Thursday

Late at night. I’m about to go to bed when a last-flick –through-the-channels reveals a re-run of Abigail’s Party on BBC4, just twenty minutes in- part of a retrospective ‘Play for Today’ season. I WhatsApp my mam to let her know: ‘Oh God, they’re putting the Demis Roussos on. This is not going to end well’. ‘We’re recording it’, comes the reply. ‘Stick with it. It’s worth it’.

I do indeed, largely because, as in the previous five or so times I must have watched this early Mike Leigh classic set in the desperate claustrophobia of a Home Counties suburban house-gathering, the unfolding action is so excruciating that I can’t actually take my eyes off it. The hostess, played by Alison Steadman, swirling across the pile carpet in a multi-floaty-layered ankle-length dress in shocking Angel-Delight-red, as she tipsily holds court, dialling up the brazenness-levels on the public taunting of her stressed-out-henpecked-businessman husband as the night wears on and the successive gin and tonics take hold. The husband, pent-up frustration at the living hell of his miserable marriage coming to the surface as he sweeps the Demis Roussos LP off the turntable and demands that the gathering join him in Appreciation of the Higher Arts; brandishing aloft a prized, bound volume of Shakespearean prose before putting it back on the shelf with the deathless words: ‘Of course, it’s not something you can actually read’. The near-monosyllabic alpha-male half of the neighbour-houseguest couple, tough-guy comfort-in-his-own-skin demeanour awakening the self-declared-sex-starved longing of his now-embarrassingly inebriated hostess, who, slapping a last Tom Jones number onto the gin-splattered turntable, lures him onto a living-room dancefloor space (facilitated by the shifting-back by the menfolk of the most ugly leather sofa in the history of humanity) to indulge in several never-ending minutes trapped within her maudlin slow-embrace-grip. You know the evening cannot end well- but your money is not on a heart attack, played out agonisingly to the closing bars of ‘It’s Not Unusual’. You can go on I-Player (I imagine) and find out for yourself who bites the pile carpet dust (they probably all deserve to). They don’t make them like that anymore though- that’s for sure.

Friday

Getting the bike out. The combination of physical and mental exertion involved is exhausting, before you even think about riding anywhere. Locate four keys (front door, back door, bike lock, bike shed) which will be handily placed in any one of the half a dozen places where we keep the keys, unless of course (as will always be the case for at least one of them) they’ve just been left on a random surface and covered with last Saturday’s Guardian Review section. Open the back door and step outside- remember which pocket you’re putting the key in, because you’re going to need it again in a minute. Open the bike shed and stoop inside, inevitably failing to avoid brushing your shoulder against its inner upper metal rim and thereby dislodging a half-glass-worth of accumulated freezing cold condensation-water down the back of your neck. Shudder, and utter an oath (‘Every fucking time’). Grip the handlebars of Charlotte’s bike, and attempt to gently back it outwards into the light, still while stooped at ninety-degrees forwards- in the manner of an inexperienced farmhand placating a temperamental pony. Succeed in getting Charlotte’s bike out and leant against the backyard wall while extricating yourself from the shed’s metal innards, sustaining only minor head injuries in the process, along with a further helping of freezing-cold condensation water, this time down the front of your work shirt (but welcomed at this juncture, as a refreshing hydration-break from the ongoing workout). Repeat the aforedescribed manoeuvre to extricate your own bike, lean it against the wall. Wheel Charlotte’s bike back in to the shed, close and lock the shed door. Wheel your own bike out onto the street and lean it against the front-garden wall. Return into the house via the back door, remembering to slide shut the metal latches securing the backyard gate in the process. Replace the shed key in the jar beside the freezer where it is supposed to be kept. Begin to scrabble around in your pockets for the key to lock the back door.

That’s step one to two, anyway. There are another two stages, involving proceeding through the house into the front street while locking doors and turning off lights behind you, then, just after you have locked the front door and are climbing aboard the bike, remembering that you have forgotten to put the bikelock in your rucksack. It’s just at this point this morning that the woman from across the road happens round the corner, on her way back from the Spar shop with her pint of milk and Daily Mail. She’s Sick and Tired Of The Whole Thing By Now, and wants you to know about it:

‘When’s it going to end, that’s what I’d like to know’.

‘I know. At least last time we had a plan. If they could just get this track and trace sorted. They managed it in China, New Zealand. Why can’t our government do it? It can’t be that hard’.

‘Well- you see all these young ones in Liverpool, out on the town. My husband says they should get the water cannon on them. They might sit up and listen then’.

‘Still though, what do we expect if the pubs are open, and no plan for how we’ll get on top of this thing? Now if people could get tested and a result in 24 hours, then maybe we’d get somewhere. Apparently in Germany-‘

‘Oh yes Germany. Mrs Merkel. Mrs Turtle, my husband calls her. He says, if she was in charge, she’d get it sorted. She wouldn’t take any nonsense’.

We part amicably- each of us satisfied that we have put the world to rights, and before the respective prime ministers of the leading nations of the Western World have finished their cornflakes. I begin to scrummage around for in my trouser pockets for the front-door key, then realise that I’ve left it in the lock.

Comments

[kono]

My bicycle is in the back of my garage, i was thinking about dragging it out and getting it fixed up but after reading this i've decided against it, lol!!

The haircut was a right laugh as well since it brought back the memories of the mid to late 80s when us hip Septics used to get all the stylish Anglo-cenrtic cuts. I know a few friends who donned the Flock of Seagulls quiff, one a definite Mozza-do, pictures of which i'm sure have been destroyed. I myself had what i called the Barney Sumner circa the True Faith video, oh to be young and stylish!

[jonathan]

Kono- if I tell you the latest developments you will be properly put off the two-wheel life .. both Frankie and Charlotte's bikes punctured in the space of days and I guess since these things do happen in threes it's only a matter of times before mine succumbs (if I can indeed extricate it from the shed). But I really don't want to out you off the two-wheeled life, so I won't tell you any of that.

Those haircuts, oh my goodness! Quite the selection sported by you and your crew back in the day there, pretty much the full Anglo-indie-top-twenty set. Now if you tell me any of your number extended to the floppy-fringed moptop a la Ian McCulloch of the Bunnymen/ Stephen Pastel of the Pastels, then I will be VERY impressed!

[kono]

Sadly none of the mates when full Bunnymen or Pastels though a couple came close to Bauhaus era Peter Murphy...

My old bicycle is a beauty, 25 year old Cannondale with a fused frame, super light, cost a $1000 dollars way back when but i traded an ounce of weed and $100 for it cuz the guy had won it from a local radio station. Luckily he was 6'4 as well so it was perfect!! Needs new tires or tyres as you'd say, and a tune up but these days getting your bike fixed in the US is a 6-8 week weigh, my kid punctured a tyre and i had to look all over creation for the parts to get it fixed.

[kono]

weigh? wait... seems the lasts nights weed is still lingering!! lol!!

[Jonathan]

I'm not an expert on bikes Kono but I do love them.. that sounds like a beauty all right you've got there. I do love a vintage bike- I've recently sold off my Brompton as a matter of fact (now there is a model that doesn't depreciate, so I got a decent price)... and used some of what I got to purchase what I'm riding now... a 20 year-old British made 'Dawes' road-hybrid in racing green. Basically what I would call a bike-shaped bike.. you can see the direct lineage from the one that Butch Cassidy surprised the Sundance Kid with (or was it the other way round)- which I like. And as iight as hell, which makes a difference from the Brompton as well.

It's been crazy over here getting bikes/ parts for them during these times as well... for a while there just weren't any, I think maybe it's picking up now. I was lucky with the Dawes... I found this place round the corner, a hidden gem sort of social enterprise in an old Victorian mill-building where they divert troubled kids from the streets/ the route to incarceration, by getting them into bikes (doing them up etc). It's apparently been there for years but I never knew. I walked in during the summer and they'd just finished this bottle green number, I was like- 'hang on, what's this?' They were wanting a a couple hundred quid for it, I ended up paying £180 and another £40 for he best lock they had in the house. With a bit of luck (and if the lock is as good as it's made out to be) I should get years out of it.