I tried to make myself relax. It didn’t help that I was probably going to be rubbish at this, and thus make myself look like an idiot. I took a deep breath. There was no man in sight. Instead there was the weak but encouraging-looking sun of an autumnal, early lunchtime casting dewy shadows on an English bowling green.
‘Pint, anyone?’ offered Short Tony, motioning his head towards the big pub that stood looking over us like a comforting older brother appearing with a towel after the rough beating-up kids have been dispersed.
This seemed like a good idea, but I was cautious.
‘Are we allowed?’ I asked. ‘To take drinks onto the green, I mean.’
Short Tony disappeared off to buy beer.
The grass was soft and earthy, with well-worn patches from a season’s play. I padded around guiltily in my clandestine trainers. Big Andy handed me two of his woods; I tossed them down carelessly and they made small indentations in the surface. I drew breath sharply, but no shout came. He then disappeared into the small shed that adjoined the green, re-emerging seconds later with a white ball. Disappearing into a shed! Some people have all the self-confidence. If illegal walking on a bowling green wearing incorrect shoes merited a shout, I was sure that shed-disappearing would warrant at least something cruel and unusual.
The bowls police failed to leap out from behind a hedge and charge us with electric batons.
I picked up a single wood. It was wet from the grass, but felt comfortable in my hand, warm and smooth, not the wood of a guitar body, but a pleasing object nonetheless. I have nice dainty, nimble hands and I suspected that it might be slightly too large a size for them, and perhaps a little heavy for me to be totally sure of control. But I did not say anything for fear of bowls ridicule.
Big Andy, my tutor, lobbed the cott ahead to the other side – it bumped and bobbed on the grass. He then knelt and expertly pitched his wood, which rested intimidatingly close to the target. I watched Short Tony reappear from the pub, ambling up the short hillock and across the gravel car park with a tray of beers the colour of bowls shoes.
And then it was my turn. It is always good to give new things a try. But I couldn’t honestly see it being my sort of thing.
New towels for the old ceremony
‘Excuse me?’
There is a voice. I turn, surprised, from the post box to locate its source.
A man is ambling over from a small four-by-four thing. He is demonstrably from a town somewhere – it is one of those designer jobs that no genuine country-dweller from round here would dream of possessing. The engine chugs over, chug chug chug chug chug. He is clearly the source of the ‘Excuse me.’ I allow my letter to fall from my hand into the post box’s receptive womb, easing my wrist from its slot and giving my new acquaintance my full attention.
Silver-haired, he is wearing immaculate cream pressed slacks, which reveal that he is comfortably off and retired, and probably has a wife named Pat.
‘I don’t suppose you know where these agents are based?’ He gesticulates towards the ‘For Sale’ sign on the bungalow over the road.
A number of houses around mine are for sale – I do not know whether to take this personally or not. This particular one right opposite has been on the market since about Wednesday, 14th March at 11.32 a.m., and I am excited that I might be meeting a potential new neighbour. New people! I study his face closely. I will need to remember, so that I can report the details back to everybody at the village pub.
I give him the information he requires, waving my hand in the general direction of the coast. He asks me what living in the village is like, and I offer him long examples of how we all know what each other is doing and just pop into each other’s houses to say hello at any time of day or night, sometimes when we have been drinking heavily. It is a neighbourly community like that. He looks a bit less enthusiastic after this, and glances over his shoulder several times as he retreats to his car before accelerating off at some speed, doubtless to catch the estate agents before the shops close for the evening.
He did seem like a pleasant chap, and I am determined to stick by my parting words to him: that I would be quite happy to give him a hand with carrying all his stuff from the van when he eventually moves in.
Before he disappears around the corner, I make sure to take the number of his car. He is not from round here, after all, and he could have been looking at houses for sale with a view to committing some crime. I remember it all the way across the road, all up the path and into the kitchen, where I scribble it on the corner of some newspaper, along with ‘Old bloke. Silver hair. McJeep.’
There is no more excitement, but it will be good to have something extra-interesting to tell the LTLP when she gets home. Time is getting on – I need a bath and something to eat before I go.
I can’t remember exactly when I gave up.
It was probably on a platform at Harringay Station. Perhaps and probably it was raining. Harringay Station in the rain, fighting with hundreds of others for a modicum of shelter under the narrow footbridge, the loudspeaker broadcasting crackling messages of doom from a British Rail announcer based hundreds of miles away in a secret bunker buried deep beneath the Cairngorm mountains.
‘We apologise for the delay to the seven forty-four service to London Moorgate. This service is running approximately fifty-two minutes late. The first train to arrive will be the eight fourteen service, also to London Moorgate. Due to a short train, this service will consist of half a coach only, which will be of convertible open-top design, have no seats, and will be powered by passenger-manned oars. We apologise for any inconvenience that this might possibly cause you. To cheer you up, here is some music by the Stereophonics.’
When I say ‘a platform’, that implies a multitude of the things. In fact, there are but two platforms at Harringay Station. Standing, boxed in, elbow to arse with frustrated Key Account Executives and Change Implementation Managers and Human Resource Officers. Waiting, worrying if the tingly electricness of the rain is a genuine cause for concern as it drips from the overhead power lines onto your face. Pacing, irresistibly tempted to bolt for that footbridge, to leap aboard one of the frequent empty and invariably on-time trains returning north from the City, and head for the overwhelming excitement and vibrancy of Enfield Chase, New Southgate or, at a pinch, even Potter’s Bar. But of course you don’t. The train arrives and you fight for any form of nook, stuffing yourself frantically up against your fellow passengers like a veal calf undergoing sardine-replacement therapy.
Yes, it must have been then that I gave up. Then.
I’ve never given up on the music, however.
OK, I’m a bit older now. But Debbie Harry was already thirty when Blondie was formed; she was thirty-five when they released ‘Atomic’, which would have made her almost as old as I am. And yet she was famous and successful the world over at this late age, becoming an icon and achieving sales in the millions of millions, with men becoming physically sexually aroused – literally sexually aroused – whenever she sang or appeared on Top of the Pops. I’ve almost got there once, having supported the Sultans of Ping on one key date of their seminal 1992 UK tour. But Debbie Harry is one hell of an inspiration, and a lesson to anybody who thinks that exciting popular music can only be made by teenagers. Given just one small lucky break, there really is no reason whatsoever why I should not be the next Debbie Harry, but with women.
I call her ‘the LTLP’ for the purposes of the narrative.
I