I have always felt like the larger coastal towns had a latent aggression about them, almost as if the inhabitants were still worried about invasion by sea so walked around with broken bottle tops and concealed knives just in case. Because of the prevalence of old people seeking to die with sand in their socks, the young, for fear of being typecast as living in a glorified nursing home, start drinking blue drinks as soon as they finish work and take drugs as if to prove to ‘them London fuckers’ that they know how to have a good time, too.
The sea, however, doesn’t care. No matter what they do to try and impress it or repel its advances, it lurches forward and eases back with comic consistency, as if it is playing a game of chicken with those who live inland; a show of power that one day, if they look like they have forgotten to flinch, it might not retreat as soon as it should.
Of course not all elderly people retreat to the sea in their final years. There is an elderly couple who live on my boring little street in Swindon and that makes me feel sorry for them. It isn’t that we live in a particularly bad area, but just that it isn’t particularly nice either. It was built for people like me who could just about live anywhere, so long as it has four walls to put a bed and a toilet in. If Travelodge made towns, they would make Swindon. It does the job quite happily, thank you. Quite happily. Our local pub is a perfect example of this desire not to exceed sufficiency. It serves beer and has been built with aged beams to belie its newness, but it has none of the soul of a good pub. The ceiling would once have been white but has clearly not been repainted since the smoking ban came into place, and as such carries the trademark yellowy-orange patchiness. Perhaps I am wrong and the patchiness exists because the pub ends each night with a lock-in for selected clientele who sit around drinking ale and laughing heartily whilst smoking cigars, but I doubt it. People go there to do what they need to do, to drown what needs to be drowned and go home. Above the bar are a number of brass plaques engraved with playful re-imaginings of well-known phrases and proverbs.
‘A friend in need is a bloody nuisance’
‘Where there’s a will, there’s a dead relative’
And my particular favourite: ‘If arseholes could fly, this would be an airport’
Then, in the middle of the bar, right above the new and ostentatious pump for a well-known lager, which rises up like a serpent from the bar and seems to point upwards at the laminated piece of card, crudely printed from a computer in a number of different colours now faded with time:
The Customer is always Right. A Right pain in the Arse.
This last one doesn’t even really work – it is simply rude, another way of telling anyone on the wrong side of the bar that they are not welcome here. I don’t know why they don’t just go the whole hog and write ‘FUCK OFF’ in huge letters above the front door. Of course they are jokes, we can enjoy these signs because we are safe in the knowledge that we are polite and generous customers, and it is understood that the staff will be happy to attend to our every whim with a smile. Except that they aren’t, and we aren’t. The customers here are tired and rude, the staff not much better. It takes the gloss off the wit and all that is left is a sense of begrudging service.
Drink here if you must, but know this … I absolutely hate your guts. If you die on the property I will call for medical assistance, as is my duty, but should you fall even one pace outside my front door, I will simply laugh and be glad that you won’t be returning any time soon.
My street has no more character, with nothing to mark it out from any of the others around except for the words written on the signpost at the top of the road. All the streets round here are named after famous wartime actors. Classy. The houses are all identical and this ensures that the happiness of the occupants is entirely down to them. British people talk a lot about ‘keeping up with the Joneses’, trying to match your neighbours’ possessions: cars, hanging baskets, new windows. When the new-build houses are all identical it shaves off another layer of your potential individuality, which is absolutely fine by me.
There are clues as to who lurks behind the walls of the individual houses, if you care to look for them, such as the ostentatious pebbledashing of the retired couple down the road, keen to show that their wealth has not been hit by recent economic troubles. I have no problem with pebbledashing in the right place, but I’m afraid here it simply looks as though a drunk snowman has been sick all over their home whilst staggering back from the pub. Twice a year, at Halloween and Christmas, houses containing young children are made obvious by the volumes of cheap plastic paraphernalia that adorn the walls and front garden. From inflatable waving Santas to witches on broomsticks hanging from the guttering, the cartoon exteriors belie the misery and squabbling going on behind them. The children always look bruised from the inside out and the parents exhausted by what they are sure was once love.
And then there is my house. Plain and grey, there are no plants on the tarmacked driveway since I am never at home long enough to look after them. I have a wheelie bin, thank the council, and a little porch light whose bulb has never worked as long as I have lived there. I don’t get many visitors anyway, so it is of no use really. The point of moving to Swindon was to encourage me to make more of an effort to travel to see my friends and family who are spread out across the country, which I do my best to do, although it seems harder year on year to find time when days off coincide.
Swindon is a place in which I can exist in the meantime, drinking and sleeping. It’s not that I am unhappy here, just that happiness simply isn’t a factor. In the same way that you need the pang of hunger to appreciate full satiety, you need happy days in the park to appreciate the blues. There is nothing like that here, just people getting on with what they need to do and trying not to think about it too much. I don’t mean to make this sound depressing, because it isn’t really – it’s just the way it is. Cavemen didn’t waste their time thinking about whether or not they were happy or whether their lives had meaning; they were out hunting and trying to stay alive. We’re the same creatures – nothing has changed that much. We invented happiness when finding food became too easy and survival became the norm.
Once we could all get through the days without trying, we had to find some other reason to wake up each morning; we had to adopt a scoring system to see who was winning at being alive – happiness! Now we think about it all the time, we talk about it with our partners and we travel the world in search of it. I am playing a much longer game; like good comedy I believe the secret to be about timing. If I am too happy in my youth, then my senior years will surely see me unhappily lamenting the passing of the life I once had. If, however, I maintain a level of enforced melancholy for as long as possible, then I can escape into retirement rather than be forced into it. If the last day of my life is the happiest, that will suit me just fine.
As I ponder this point, a miserable-looking old woman walks by my car with bags full of shopping and stares at me as she passes, distrustful of why I am parked on her street and completely unaware that I live just around the corner. Her latent hatred of me is typical of almost everyone I encounter here. My neighbours, I am quite sure, suspect that I am a serial killer, a view I am quite happy to promote whenever I get the chance if it keeps them from talking to me, be it with a well-timed sinister chuckle to myself, or by making sure that they see how meticulously I clean the interior carpets of my car.
I must point out at this juncture that I am not a killer, though I have often thought about it when in crowded cinema screenings or on public transport – but who amongst us can honestly say that they haven’t? There is no reason for them to think this of me, save for the fact that if you asked them to describe my character they would most likely tell you any combination of the following:
1. I am polite
2. I am hard working
3. I am always well presented and meticulous
4. I keep myself to myself
5. I wouldn’t say boo to a goose
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