Diary of a Somebody Page 5

We who nurse feelings of envy

  towards the red marker pens that run out

  before we ourselves can.

  For we are the awayday trippers.

  The brainstorm troopers.

  The boiled sweet hoarders.

  The bored onboarders.

  The project deep-divers.

  The flipchart survivors.

  I’ve read somewhere that for those people who, by nature, are rather introverted and uncomfortable with the prospect of public speaking, the strategy of imagining your audience naked is a popular one.

  For me, this was where things began to go wrong; the thought of Janice unclothed was problematic enough but by the time I’d summoned the strength to conjure up a vision of the exposed paunch and unsheltered nether-parts of Head of Customer Engagement, David Stentley, I was a gibbering, stammering wreck.

  The phrases which had seemed so compelling when copying and pasting them from the Harvard Business Review website – ‘peeling the onion’, ‘lipstick on a pig’, ‘where the rubber meets the road’ – frankensteined into something awkward and insincere the moment that they tumbled from my mouth. In corporate parlance, I had become a Meanderthal. A Great Big DisaPowerPointment. A Nontrepreneurial Nonentity. Janice finally put us all out of our collective misery a mere ninety minutes into my thirty-minute presentation.

  I sought solace in a shortbread finger.

  At dinner, the talk turned to post-awayday golf. Plans are in place for a quick round tomorrow after the final session – and it’s clear that I am not part of them. As relieved as I am not to be invited along, it’s a sure sign that my corporate star, which had once shone so briefly, is now beginning to fade and die. Already I can feel my outer layers burning up, as I begin the process of collapse. One day I may be no more than a very dense white dwarf.

  Wednesday February 21st

  I found myself running out of the room at the end of the awayday as if it were the end of a school year. If I’d had a satchel on me, it would have been thrown up into the air with joy. At least I’d managed to let off a stink bomb in the meeting room; well, at least that’s how it seemed my presentation yesterday had been received.

  I watched them all move noisily away to the golf course, like a herd of corporate hippopotami. Next week, when everyone’s back in the office, the awayday will be advertised to have been a big success: there will be tales of the day’s swaggering stroke-play, the eagles and albatrosses, and near holes-in-one. Unmentioned will be the wild swings out of the rough and kicked-up sand from the bunkers.

  Awaiting me is a meandering train journey home. Ordinarily, this would be prime poem-writing territory, but I have another, more pressing commitment. It’s book group tomorrow evening and Voltaire’s Candide is calling me, in the way that only a late-eighteenth-century French Enlightenment satire can (i.e., faintly and with little hope of being heard).

  It is mildly embarrassing to think that this will be the first time in three years that I’ll have finished the book ahead of the meeting.

  Thursday February 22nd

  John Travoltaire

  Well, you can tell by the way I break the rules,

  I’m a reason man: no time for fools.

  Progress checked, our freedom scorned,

  We’ve been kicked around since we were born.

  But it will be all right, it’s not too late

  For separation of Church and State.

  We can try to understand

  With science to lend a helping hand.

  Dictionaries and dancing, poems, plays and prancing,

  I’m spreadin’ the light, spreadin’ the light.

  Despots are a-quakin’ and institutions shakin’,

  And I’m spreadin’ the light, spreadin’ the light.

  Ah, ha, ha, ha, spreadin’ the light, spreadin’ the light.

  Ah, ha, ha, ha, spreadin’ the light.

  Lining up at the bus stop, with The Best of Disco shimmying and bumping in my earholes, I was struck by the sudden thought that if John Travoltaire did not exist, it would be necessary for The Bee Gees to invent him.

  This fanciful notion was given short shrift at book group, where the talk was of Leibnizian optimism, Bildungsromans, and the symbolism of gardens. I struggled to keep up, having dropped off to sleep on the train yesterday, which meant I arrived this evening with the book half-unread (or as Pangloss might look at it, half-read).

  My main contribution to proceedings came with the purchase of a round of drinks and a packet of honey-roasted peanuts. The bar was completely out of pistachios AND wasabi peas. If this is the best of all possible worlds, what then are the others?

  Friday February 23rd

  This is the second Friday in a row that the Man at Number 29 has failed even to attempt to put his refuse sacks out. He has either become stoically resigned to his fate (a form of predustbination, perhaps), or he’s trapped inside his house, held hostage by his own bin bags.

  I, though, had other domestic chores on my mind – a bathroom to clean, cat hair to hoover up, a recipe to seek and some books to refile in ISBN order (those recent bookshop trips had taken their toll). Ordinarily, these tasks would be prime procrastination territory but I need my house to look its best because . . . Dylan is coming to stay tomorrow!

  Stuart is taking Sophie away for the weekend on some sordid romantic tryst, no doubt involving oak timbers, complimentary pink champagne and spa foot treatments, possibly for the removal of unsightly corns and verrucas. With some reluctance, Dylan has been entrusted to my care.

  Whistling vigorously, I went about my jobs and imagined him reporting back snippets of his weekend to Sophie:

  ‘Dad cooked this amazing dinner last night.’

  ‘I haven’t laughed so much in ages!’

  ‘Yeah, he’s sorted. He just seems so . . . at peace with himself and the world, somehow.’

  ‘Dad’s vegan now, you know.’

  The cat noticed me smiling to myself. She gave me one of her worried looks in response.

  Saturday February 24th

  Do not go, lentil, into that good pie

  Do not go, lentil, into that good pie

  Lest it should burn not bake upon the tray,

  Rage, rage against the oven turned too high.

  The soybeans and chickpeas may also die

  For the pulses quicken upon their way,

  Do not go, lentil, into that good pie.

  Its pastry turns crisp and as black as night

  And the legumes scar and darken to grey,

  Rage, rage against the oven turned too high.

  When comes my turn in the furnace to lie,

  Grieve not my remains of charcoal and clay,

  Do not go, lentil, into that good pie.

  Do not go, lentil, into that good pie.

  Rage, rage against the oven turned too high.

  As I was throwing the blackened remains of my lentil cottage pie into the bin, Dylan told me that I needed to devise some better coping strategies to help me deal with adversity.

  He told me that I needed to be more positive about the world around me.

  He told me that I needed to have more confidence in my own abilities.

  He told me that I really shouldn’t feel lonely, not when each of us has the whole universe inside ourselves.

  I asked him what made him think I needed to devise better coping strategies. He made reference to my sobbing and the repeated banging of my head on the table.

  I pointed out to him that, admittedly, I may have over-reacted to the demise of my lentil cottage pie. But it was only ruined because I’d spent the last two hours on the phone, waiting in a queue to speak to someone in New Delhi about getting the Wi-Fi fixed, which – with impeccable timing – had decided to go down just as we were about to watch a film on my laptop. We were watching a movie online because – half an hour previous – one of the shelves above the television had given way, and the subsequent avalanche of books had knocked it off the shelf, th
e screen smashing into several thousand fragments on the floor, among the rubble of un-ISBN-ordered volumes.

  It was a lot of adversity to cope with in a very short space of time.

  I asked him what made him think that I needed to be more positive about the world around me. He pointed to the latest Well Versed magazine, which was pinned to the kitchen wall and open at the winning poem, to which I’d added my own graffiti as well as the three darts which were sticking out of a photograph of Toby Salt’s face. I wondered whether now was the right time to mention the rather ingenious scoring method I’d devised to accompany this activity but thought better of it.

  I asked him what made him think that I needed to be more confident in my own abilities. He pointed at my pedal bin, which was crammed full of scrunched-up half-written stories and abandoned poems. I didn’t say anything in response to this either.

  I didn’t ask him what made him think that I was lonely.

  Sunday February 25th

  Today was an improvement. We breakfasted late, played Scrabble and listened to some records. But still I couldn’t help thinking that Dylan seemed more relieved than disappointed when Sophie came to pick him up this afternoon.

  I watched them walk off down the path and approach the car parked outside my house. I could just about make out the figure of the man in the driver’s seat. He was wearing sunglasses and pounding the steering wheel, presumably in time to some music. As Sophie and Dylan opened the doors and climbed in, I heard the sound of ‘The Power of Love’ by Huey Lewis and the News.

  I went back inside. I had intended to do some more research for my Well Versed poem but, with the Wi-Fi still down, decided upon an early night instead.

  Monday February 26th

  I’ve taken Dylan’s advice and decided to establish a growth mindset for myself. In this new spirit of positivity, I have declared there to be no problems, only opportunities.

  Today was spent in trying to resolve all the opportunities that were awaiting me in my email inbox. There was also an opportunity with the vending machine at work which led to its retention of my pound coin when I attempted to purchase a Twix.

  I taped a haiku to the glass:

  Snack machine notice:

  The light inside has broken

  Yet I still function.

  At home, I continue to deal with the opportunity of having no Wi-Fi.

  Tuesday February 27th

  Lorde’s Prayer

  Our Father John Misty,

  which Art in Hanson,

  hallowed be thy James

  thy Kinksdom come,

  thy will.i.am,

  in Earth, Wind and Fire as it is in Heaven 17.

  Give us Green Day our Motörhead.

  And forgive us our Travises.

  Aswad forgive Them that Travis against us.

  And lead us not into The Temptations;

  but deliver us from Emo.

  For Ride is the King Crimson,

  T’Pau, and the Gloria,

  For Everly and Everly.

  Shamen.

  Dylan must have told Sophie all about my series of disasters last weekend because when I turned up for 27th Club tonight, the first thing that Darren did was to ask me for my recipe for lentil cottage pie. He seemed to find this most amusing. I told him to shut up and watch the band.

  They were called Zut Alors and infused ballads of partially requited love with the atmosphere of the Champs-Élysées. Berets were worn saucily. Accordions were played jauntily. There was on-stage Gallic smouldering and sultriness as befits a band born and bred in Merthyr Tydfil. Darren was charmed by the band’s faux-Frenchness and came away from the merch stand at the end of the night clutching a copy of their latest album, Je Ne Regrette, Rhian.

  While they were on stage, a sudden image popped into my head of Liz in the role of Catherine Deneuve’s Belle de Jour; I folded up the thought, inserted it into an imaginary half-empty packet of mentholated Gauloises, before placing the box in my pocket to take another peek at when I got home.

  Wednesday February 28th

  The lack of Wi-Fi is severely testing my newly avowed growth mindset, not to mention my ability to watch videos of roller-skating cats and read Wikipedia articles on the American Coinage Act of 1965.

  In such circumstances, it is customary for humankind to revert to a former, less developed state and so I turned my new television over to ITV4.

  An old episode of Poirot was on. I don’t know why I have such a fascination with television detective dramas, with all that murder and mayhem, passion and revenge. It’s a far cry from my own quiet half-life, whatever Mrs McNulty might have me believe.

  But I guess that’s exactly the point. Both that and the need to make sense of things. Like the cryptic crossword, it’s a search for answers. If only I could apply those little grey cells to real life, too. The problem is: if I don’t quite know what the question is, how will I know when I’ve found the answer?

  March

  Thursday March 1st

  Confession

  Is there anything else I can help you with today? he asks,

  and I consider telling him

  about my awkwardness

  in social situations,

  and my inability

  to form lasting relationships,

  and my inadequacies

  as a son and a father (not to mention as a lover),

  and my lack

  of Twitter followers,

  and my fears

  of an imminent nuclear attack,

  and my failure

  to adjust to most aspects of the modern world,

  and I say, no,

  there’s nothing else,

  it was just about the Wi-Fi,

  thanks very much.

  While my internet connection appears no closer to resolution, my human connection to the customer-service team in New Delhi is growing stronger by the day. Today, it is with ‘Craig’ that I take part in that long-distance tango known as The Reconfiguration of the Router. We talk about our respective childhoods, the legacy of decolonisation, our favourite types of biscuit and our dreams which have become as dusty and cracked as the wicket at Ranchi cricket ground.

  What we don’t really talk about is when my Wi-Fi will be back up and running.

  Friday March 2nd

  After so many weeks of humiliation, it looks like the Man at Number 29 is losing the will to carry on. His dressing-gowned pursuit of the bin lorry has turned from frantic dash to forlorn plod. Or it could be that his carpet slippers are simply not up to the early morning wet and greasy streets. His last-gasp hurl of bin bags bounced off the back of the truck and split open in the middle of the road as the truck tore off up the hill, whoops of laughter emanating from within.

  In silence, I helped him clear up the detritus.

  Later, I tried to write a poem using a metaphor that might somehow connect the contents of a bin bag to a more profound statement about the modern human condition but I threw it away because it was rubbish.

  Saturday March 3rd

  A Poem of Three Halves

  At the end of the day,

  when the final biro has run out,

  he’s only gone and written

  a poem of three halves.

  With that cultured right hand,

  he could rhyme on a sixpence

  and the lad must be delighted

  at his failure to keep a clean sheet.

  He’s worked his hands off today

  and he’ll be the poet

  who’ll be going home happy

  with three stanzas in the bag.

  Bereft of other ideas as the team went into the break trailing 4–0, Rob Trafford put Dylan in charge of the half-time team talk.

  ‘Teamwork is the fuel that allows ordinary footballers to achieve extraordinary things,’ he told his fellow players.

  There were murmurs.

  ‘If we divide the task, we can multiply the results.’

  There were whoops.


  ‘Losing, like winning, becomes a habit. Let’s go out there and break it.’

  There were fist-pumps and roars. It did the trick: six second-half goals and their first victory in more than two years was secured.

  Rob Trafford has now promoted Dylan to Assistant Team Manager.

  Dylan was delighted. I wish I could feel happier about it.

  Sunday March 4th

  Dessert Island Discs

  1. Sundae Bloody Sundae

  2. Fool If You Think It’s Over

  3. Key Lime Every Mountain

  4. Champagne Supavlova

  5. It’s a Family Éclair

  6. Don’t It Make Your Brownies Blue

  7. In the Gateaux

  8. Brûlée-vous

  I’d been listening to Desert Island Discs and thinking about lunch, when Dave popped around. He’d come to remind me about the all-day revision party they’re holding.

  I don’t altogether understand how much revision can be happening amidst the thirty or so people who have since gathered in their house, the whooping and shouting, and the sounds of ‘Boogie Wonderland’ which are currently blasting out from within it. But I suppose exam-preparation techniques are different to what they used to be in my day.

  Monday March 5th

  Day eleven of no Wi-Fi. I am near breaking point. I have now exhausted all possible household chores, having checked through twelve years’ worth of Well Versed magazines to ensure that they were filed in chronological order (they were). After one last throw of my darts (scoring 140 points for hitting Toby Salt’s right eye, left nostril and upper lip), I removed January’s issue from the kitchen wall and inserted it into my collection.