A funny thing happened on the way to the Forum

[Serial_Apologist]

A Cha Cha recording was on as the band assembled on-stage. "Right", the pianist bandleader said, grabbing the mic, "Can anyone tell me who that recording was by?" Silence. "Edmundo Ros?" I ventured. He stared at me in bemusement. "OK, OK", he said, "I can get that. No, it was Duke Ellington, actually, with a great soloist, Coleman Hawkins, on tenor saxophone".

[Lat-Literal]

Part 3 of 4

There is only so much of an impression that anyone can leave before unconventional dialogue seems very routine. Mild tensions were beginning to arise in the repetitive patterns of the twice-weekly dialogue. Each was born in the same year of the 1960s. One spoke about writing on forums, unspecified, and his elderly parents. The other enthused about birds who lived in caravans in Essex. Birds who fancied both him and his main wife and who were expected to travel across Greater London to see them. The money had always been an issue. I had, though, accepted that the fee was more reasonable than that which would be expected from a business which was recognised by the main relevant professional association in this country. However, further pressure arose with the introduction of a conversation about feet. It was not one I wanted and eventually I said so several times. There was also an emerging phrase. That phrase which was meant to be inoffensive was "strange man" as in "now it is time for the appointment of that strange man; come on in Lat". I didn't like it and it seemed as a description close to role reversal although I wouldn't have instinctively thought of him in those terms unless feeling defensive. Towards the end, I recall sitting on a bench outside the supermarket ahead of an appointment and eating a pasty of some sort. It seemed to me that there were an awful lot of police vehicles in the vicinity. One, without question, slowed immediately in front of the premises before moving on. There wasn't anything in it but it seemed to symbolize I was in the wrong place.

I could not have anticipated what was in the deal long before I chose to conclude it. Was the treatment actually helpful to me? This will always be an unanswered question. Early on, the researcher in me went digging and even found the nerve to be his interviewer. On that basis, I was in no real doubt about his qualifications. The centre he had worked his way into was a leader in alternative therapies. He had moved into osteopathy via examinations and he had been endorsed by the professional association in the past. And he was still endorsed by the American equivalent although that was of little use to him in Britain. It was probably true that he had once, as he insisted, had businesses in several parts of the country. I was told that the reason why he didn't have the logo of the key professional association here was that he refused to pay its extortionate sums just to prove that he was worthy of endorsement. Given that I had hit a similar stumbling block in relation to professional gardening and the RHA, I had more than a little time for that perspective. However, I was also aware that there had been other issues. It wasn't clear whether they were linked to tax or divorce but the divorce had mattered. It had been costly to him.

Wife One may well have claimed to have had a significant role in them both becoming millionaires. The decision to investigate the most up-to-date research in foot support across the Atlantic had led to the knowledge that it was far ahead of anything being offered on the NHS. That in turn meant that they then imported the new technology in bulk. While much more expensive than it needed to be, it was sold on the basis that it would be a major help to people in pain. The key, he said, had been in its promotion. Adverts had been placed not in silly little places but the national broadsheets. Such was the rapid turnover that the tax people had questioned it only to find that while it was a sharp business model it was fair and they accepted it should be congratulated. Subsequently he had while on a treadmill in the gym written two books in his mind. One concerned improving the health of feet and the other was on how to become a millionaire as he had. I saw those books in published form and they were well written. But there he was in the shabbier part of town working long hours. Somewhere in that labyrinth he still had imported goods which no doubt is why I was asked to remove my socks and told to be concerned about imbalance.

[Lat-Literal]

4 of 4

As for the muscular-skeletal elements, he put right a difficulty in swallowing caused by anxiety - or and it really saddens me to say it individuals in the public health sector - in the first or second appointment. There was no pain after the first appointment as he had suggested there might be and there wasn't any after-the-appointment pain for as long as the appointments continued. It was an odd thing. I'd walk out of there to get my bus and it was as if I were walking more squarely. I joked that it might be a permanent fix for anyone who had minimal thinking and hence never wished to write on a computer. He said that I had a curvature of the spine which I accepted. There was massage from the back of the shoulders to the legs which may have been help beyond the manipulation of bones or merely an antidote to it. Given his way with women, I did ask him if his professional approach was different with them and he said that it was what all his male clients asked him. "Funnily enough, no, it is exactly the same although as soon as they are leaving the room I think wow, look at the arse on that - I was after all an escort in my early twenties for rich women who had nothing better to do". Later, when pressed, "oh, we were young".

He and the other people in that world were mainly kind to me in their own way. For example, it was acceptable not to have been to the bank beforehand as long as I went to it later and placed the money under the door of the appointment room. On my arrival, Steve Wright may have been playing "Africa" by Toto as he has done since the early 1980s. As soon as I walked through from the lobby area, there was a loud blast of Iggy Pop's "Lust for Life". I was shown a bewildering collection of punk rock badges and invited to join all the residents for a birthday bash. Fortunately I decided against the latter. On the spur of the moment, they went to London instead. There was a further invitation to join his gym which needed personal recommendation. "Build your muscles up and then go to the dentist to sort out your teeth". But that invitation was withdrawn when he became wary of me. There were, I know, reasons why the gym required a personal recommendation. I was also asked whether I would like to take the yapping dogs across the hills as "it would be good for you and it would save us a job". Window cleaning work was offered although it amounted to nothing. That was before his mind finally moved towards wondering "are you a bit intelligent then?". I could have attended the arts event where his main wife was to be the princess while he was to be the security guard. And if I had been prepared to arrive a quarter of an hour earlier, I could have met the drummer of a famous Scottish indie rock band, stated, who was occasionally on the couch before me. There was mostly humour during all those months albeit somewhat bleak: "I have had to go to the doc today as I have a lump on my bollocks. He says it is over-activity. Friends say "serves you right"."

There are no worldly conclusions here. Much of it is what it is but it is remarkable just how one can stumble into these things in the most ordinary of roads. During that period, television seemed very boring by comparison. About a week after leaving, my ears began to scrunch and the neck issues followed a short time later. That was eighteen months ago and they are permanent changes. They would not have occurred if it hadn't been for a service into which I like others have paid promoting whatever the opposite is of good health. None of the people in the bureaucracy are likely to have wound up church wardens by ringing bells for one half of one hour. That doesn't mean they are more right or responsible.

[Lat-Literal]

?

It's all true of what took place from my perspective.

Love the picture, though.

[johncorrigan]

This one is completely true...sometimes the Universe conspires to line 'em up and it is your job to knock 'em down. Apologies for the language...hope it translates - you just have to imagine a kind of Glasgow accent. Anyway here's what transpired.

A good number of years ago one of my former colleagues, Bob, was retiring. So following a final team meeting with him we all went out for lunch to a bar in Forfar. The waitress came round with the drinks and then took our orders. I asked for the fish. After a while the main courses started to arrive on the table. Everyone started tucking in, but mine was nowhere to be seen. Two or three minutes later passed and a waitress approached the table, looking a bit agitated and said to me, ‘Are you Cod Mornay?’ I replied, ‘Naw, ah’m cawed John.’

Cue much spluttering and choking from my compadres.

[french frank]

‘Are you Cod Mornay?’ I replied, ‘Naw, ah’m cawed John.’ [/I]

Yes, oh yes. Works in Aberdeen, too. I was helping the landlord's small son with his spelling homework. 'Ornithologist, Derek, or-ni-tho-lo-gist'.' 'Eh, A-W-N … ' I decided I wasn't helping

[Serial_Apologist]

This one is completely true...sometimes the Universe conspires to line 'em up and it is your job to knock 'em down. Apologies for the language...hope it translates - you just have to imagine a kind of Glasgow accent. Anyway here's what transpired.

A good number of years ago one of my former colleagues, Bob, was retiring. So following a final team meeting with him we all went out for lunch to a bar in Forfar. The waitress came round with the drinks and then took our orders. I asked for the fish. After a while the main courses started to arrive on the table. Everyone started tucking in, but mine was nowhere to be seen. Two or three minutes later passed and a waitress approached the table, looking a bit agitated and said to me, ‘Are you Cod Mornay?’ I replied, ‘Naw, ah’m cawed John.’

Cue much spluttering and choking from my compadres.

On the works canteen menu board was written "Poached Cod in Mornay Sauce". It was easy for the mischief maker to change the C to a G.

[Lat-Literal]

The train driver hasn't returned. There is no sign of Ben. We used to have a cat. Our cat was black. Black is the colour of pets that sell most slowly on the internet. That is because pets are now an important part of the selfie culture. Pet owners want a cat, a dog or a horse that photographs well when alongside them. The eyes of black pets stand out but little else. It seems extraordinary that Lucky died over a quarter of a century ago. That was during my first trip to Geneva as a UN delegate. She was loved and so the name I gave her was far from inappropriate. She wasn't, though, especially lucky on that day. Lucky often behaved like a dog. She would wait to hear the sound of my father's car and run down at speed to the block of garages to meet him. She would then trot beside him and his briefcase towards the house where the dinner was on the table for him at precisely six o'clock. In those days, the men of the house were also the boys of the house. Being unable to veer from their earliest biological clock, their strength depended on having time-specific demands about when they were to be fed. Self-responsibility in the service provider ensured there was no rebellion although the body language suggested rebellion could always occur. Conflict arose but only on who hadn't hammered down the lean-to window until we saw Lucky lifting it with her soft paw for one quarter of one hour before it flew open.

They were the days before Greg had his brain injury on account of riding his motorcycle wickedly. It was also the time before some of my other friends had a series of unexpected turns. Darren has dangerously high blood pressure, Mark acquired excema across his entire body, Simon now has diverticulitis, Richard has become housebound because of a neurological condition, Mark has had a serious stroke and Nigel died. As for the wider family, it was a longer-term mixture of ignorance and knowledge. For example, Lucky would be told off for being "naughty" whenever she arrived with half a head of one mouse. But Mary, my aunt, would observe when Lucky chased her tail that a storm was on its way and she was always right on that point. That was when my Mother's brother would say "Time to get up on your hind legs, Mare" and in the moment they would be off in their car.

There was never a time when my uncle uttered that phrase that it ever triggered any thoughts in me of horses. I rarely thought about horses at all until many years later when I saw that there was a Memorial Stakes in Nigel's full name. These days, I like to walk through the woods to see the horses's faces as they look over the fences and enjoy their meals from their bowls at 1pm and 5pm. I don't know if you have seen it but there is also a television station called E4. I mention this television station because there is a programme on it called The Big Bang Theory which is sponsored by Hungry Horse. Three men sit on a settee. They might have chopsticks or it could be forks. I can't recall. In front of them is a lot of Chinese food. One man says to the other two men something like "I wouldn't enjoy my meals if you two weren't here". The film which is shown before the programme has nothing to do with the programme. But the programme is good because there is very little swearing and any mild sexual content takes second place to fun with flags and astro-physics. There is a different Hungry Horse at the far end of the local town. That's the town which also has a Russian burger bar and a pub that falsely claims it has a garden even when its claim is tested. The pub at the far end was originally called the Midday Sun. Then it became the Hungry Horse and now it is the Hungry Horse at the Midday Sun. I might walk to it from the town centre but I won't be going in it. It is never possible to know what is really in the most ordinary looking places so I will just get the bus back.

My ex-neighbour Danny would have liked the local town. For example, it has an EU based supermarket that is very popular with British people, especially those who don't like the EU. He was very British in that way and even once said that his brother had been Billy Fury. His English girlfriend at the time was furious when I mentioned that Fury's real name was Wycherley and that Wycherley wasn't Danny's surname. Had he been going out with the Thai woman then, she would just have accepted it. The last time I saw Danny outside his flat, he asked me how were my dear old parents doing. I was in my thirties then. They were seventy-one. I said that we had enjoyed a nice holiday together walking on the coast path in North Devon. I asked him how he was and he said that he was about to move into an old people's home. There was a very noticeable look of shock on my face. "Well I am 59, Lat", he said "it seems like it is for the best". I felt it would be the end of him as the rock n roll records that he played at a deafening volume would not be suitable there.

My parents are at a late Valentine's do at the Old People's Club. They are becoming very old indeed and so much younger in spirit that they are younger than me. Now I am on a very tiny pension, they perhaps sense the need to redouble their efforts. Consequently, they battled their way into Croydon yesterday and bought enough ready meals for them and me for a week. This is to prove that when I go out - something on which they insist - I should have no reason whatsoever for going out. It is also to show that they can still carry the heaviest weights and are not to be advised by anyone, especially me, that they should ease up. My mother says that she doesn't like the way it has all turned into a race. She means by that statement that she feels it has become overly competitive as to who first reaches life's final line. She prays that she doesn't live to a hundred as it is the very last thing she would enjoy. But her outlook and behaviour are unalterably instinctive. They are much the same as when she first put my father's dinner down at precisely 6pm. My Dad is still his father and his father's boy in 1933 because he has had his expectations to be so met consistently. He is therefore now 86 and one month plus one half of one month.

[Serial_Apologist]

A cat I just now spotted on my afternoon constitutional managed to scale a 3 foot wall, then a three foot casement window, and scramble through the fanlight at the top, fortunately open, all in four leaps. Without suction pads as far as I could see! A remarkable piece of gymnastics.

[Serial_Apologist]

The train driver hasn't returned. There is no sign of Ben. We used to have a cat. Our cat was black. Black is the colour of pets that sell most slowly on the internet. That is because pets are now an important part of the selfie culture. Pet owners want a cat, a dog or a horse that photographs well when alongside them. The eyes of black pets stand out but little else.

My mother would tell a story about a black man cycling through London at night during the blackout, who was only made visible by his teeth and the whites of his eyes. I'm not sure how it would have been possible for this man's eyes or teeth to have been able to reflect anything, assuming it was pitch dark. And it might have been funny, were it not for my mother's appalling views on race. I'm just so glad that I discovered jazz, or rather it discovered me, at the age of fifteen, my background being as it was.

Another of her little stories was of two Jamaican women opening a hairdressers' to cater for women who wanted their hair straightened for a European appearance, as would soon be made fashionable by, for example, The Supremes. One day a woman passing by stops, and, in that insufferably smug Kensington bourgois accent still to be heard on Made in Chelsea, asks one of the shop owners who is sweeping outside, "Excuse me: doooo yoooo happen to do ordinary people's hair?"

To this day I'm not sure what Mum found amusing about that story - the ridiculous and demeaning tone of the white woman's way of addressing the addressee, or thinking it appropriate, if that was the case.

[french frank]

A cat I just now spotted on my afternoon constitutional managed to scale a 3 foot wall, then a three foot casement window, and scramble through the fanlight at the top, fortunately open, all in four leaps. Without suction pads as far as I could see! A remarkable piece of gymnastics.

Cats are the great athletes of the animal kingdom. I (swear I) saw a cat perched on top of my neigbour's back fence just as it launched itself forward and landed on the fence on the other side of a lane wide enough to drive a car down. With scarcely a wobble on landing.

[Lat-Literal]

A cat I just now spotted on my afternoon constitutional managed to scale a 3 foot wall, then a three foot casement window, and scramble through the fanlight at the top, fortunately open, all in four leaps. Without suction pads as far as I could see! A remarkable piece of gymnastics.

That is more impressive than my squirrel of the year, notwithstanding that it is only February and there might be other squirrels.

My mother would tell a story about a black man cycling through London at night during the blackout, who was only made visible by his teeth and the whites of his eyes. I'm not sure how it would have been possible for this man's eyes or teeth to have been able to reflect anything, assuming it was pitch dark. And it might have been funny, were it not for my mother's appalling views on race. I'm just so glad that I discovered jazz, or rather it discovered me, at the age of fifteen, my background being as it was.

Another of her little stories was of two Jamaican women opening a hairdressers' to cater for women who wanted their hair straightened for a European appearance, as would soon be made fashionable by, for example, The Supremes. One day a woman passing by stops, and, in that insufferably smug Kensington bourgois accent still to be heard on Made in Chelsea, asks one of the shop owners who is sweeping outside, "Excuse me: doooo yoooo happen to do ordinary people's hair?"

To this day I'm not sure what Mum found amusing about that story - the ridiculous and demeaning tone of the white woman's way of addressing the addressee, or thinking it appropriate, if that was the case.

You got the slight "inference" re changing-back-sadly attitudes. I have to say that I loved the appearance of the Supremes but that is another matter. This might not be the moment to talk about my grandmother's genuinely affectionate language other than to note that saying "Morning, Hop Along" and then bursting into warmly intended laughter would not be well received now. I did like "Soapy Bill", though, for the gentleman who never washed. And in the 1980s, Sullivan captured it so precisely in Del he could easily have been there.

[Serial_Apologist]

Three ladies, in their eighties, I'd estimate, meet up weekly, just after nine, to do their Saturday shopping in Sainsbury's. This morning, making their way in, a man with whom they must have just been chatting, turned round and said, in a very loud London voice, "And by the way, you shouldn't have nothing to do with that jellied eel muck - it won't do you no good". One of the ladies beckoned him over, and told him, in full hearing distance of anyone within 50 metres, "Oh but they're very good for the, er, libeedo, you know".

[Lat-Literal]

Three ladies, in their eighties, I'd estimate, meet up weekly, just after nine, to do their Saturday shopping in Sainsbury's. This morning, making their way in, a man with whom they must have just been chatting, turned round and said, in a very loud London voice, "And by the way, you shouldn't have nothing to do with that jellied eel muck - it won't do you no good". One of the ladies beckoned him over, and told him, in full hearing distance of anyone within 50 metres, "Oh but they're very good for the, er, libeedo, you know".

Some say that you should never go back. A second visit is always disappointing. This is possibly also true of repeating a tried and tested method. Last summer I had just finished eating my dinner in the garden of The Harrow when it started to rain heavily. Everyone and their dogs rushed in for shelter. It was just me and the woman with her feet in plastic bags. Partly because our experience in that moment was mutual I decided to help her unravel a very wet map. But it also seemed an appropriate time to share some ramblings with a rambler. She told me that she was a rambler from North London. I was kindly given a folder of fairly relevant papers in case I ever felt like rambling formally. I found it uplifting. It gave me the opportunity to see how I needn't be just an amateur rambler but a social rambler with other ramblers whose shoes were kept dry because of elastic bands.

Fast forward to this month. I am in The Harrow with every breed of dog around my toes, mainly because it was raining when I arrived. I've just finished my meal and a woman stands up. It isn't her but she appears on the surface to be precisely in the same mould. Consequently, I ask her which is her rambling society. She says "The UK-Austrian Alpine Club". Given that it is Surrey, I am slightly lost for words. "That's interesting" I reply. She then mumbles something in German. Well, as it happens I do have two German O'levels of the same grade. But it was the mumble that was her belt and braces. First, her selection of language was designed to ensure that there would be no conversation but then to be certain - not that I look like I can even speak English - she had hoped to seal it on the grounds that I could be deaf. I laughed in a filling the space sort of way, she scowled and then said "what the hell is so funny about that?" I will never know what she said. My assumption is that it was "geschwindigkeitsbeschränkungen" in view of the fact that she made no sense at all and the Council are insisting on introducing 20mph signs without road humps. The residents association are pretending they haven't received a 47 paragraph report.

What that second incident reminded me of was that thing Darren used to say when we walked the Isle of Wight. "When you look at other ramblers, we are not typical", by which he meant that one person didn't fancy stopping off at every pub on the way while anyone accompanying him just mildly accepted it. Sadly, his late father hid bottles. That may just have been the trigger to his long, oft truncated walks. I was more fortunate but am aware that few in any walking or mountaineering group would think today of Sillitoe. Those characters who came back from wars and disappeared into the hills with a compass in the absence of both counselling and any ongoing belief. Many of today's walkers - not all - have stronger personalities in some senses. Their self-belief is sufficiently serious that the footpaths they take are secondary to themselves. Health is a key part of it. It may even dictate their pace just as all the young lycra clad cyclists are on a personal Tour de France. They may live to 37 or 107 given their approach. Oddly, hippies now seem little different from earlier old soldiers - who they opposed - in the contrast. Those groups dissolved in their wider environment, one aided by substances and the other by bad experiences of war.

I still haven't seen Ben. The train driver who was so kind to my family did made a quick return in the week but he wasn't speaking. His collar bone is a fractured. He has a brain tumour and he has been fighting a more serious illness still although none of us in this road are supposed to know about it. Currently he is staying with his sister. He is just 56.

[Lat-Literal]

Hungry House is it. I think of it as the Hungry Horse and always will do. I don't even like E4. It's nowhere near as good as BBC4. And it's the Hungry Horse at the Midday Sun. Yes.