′Tis the Season

Have you reached the end of your tether?

Do you feel as if you’re hanging by your fingernails to the crumbling edge of a cliff?

Have you been worn to a frazzle?

If the answer is yes, congratulations are in order, says my horoscope in The Daily Mail — I hate their politics but buy it on Saturdays for the weekly TV Guide — and it’s as if the paper’s resident astrologer Oscar Cainer knows me personally.  It certainly has been a tough year, for you as well as me I’m sure, but I’ve done enough moaning in this blog so let me take stock and look at the good things of 2020.  There have been a few.

FAVOURITE ANIMATED CHARACTER:  Brian from Family Guy, for about the seventh year running.

FAVOURITE BLOG:  M. John Harrison’s ambiente hotel here.  Mike and I collaborated on various things back in the day when he was a struggling writer and I was a very amateurish artist, and it’s been a real pleasure to see Mike’s career blossoming since then.  His novel The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again won the prestigious Goldsmiths Prize this year.  His blog is elegant, always interesting and of course beautifully written.

FAVOURITE BOOKS:  I read a lot and it would be tedious to list all the books I’ve enjoyed, but I was pleased to discover the short stories of Miranda July and am currently reading her novel The First Bad Man. I was also delighted by David Nobbs’s autobiography I Didn’t Get Where I am Today, full of hilarious anecdotes about his career in comedy writing, and while sorting through old books with a view to getting rid of some I found myself re-reading Viz annuals, following the surreal footballing saga of Billy the Fish from beginning to end.

FAVOURITE CANCER NURSE:  Jingle: lovely, friendly, funny and super-efficient.  When we were out on our doorsteps applauding the NHS I was clapping louder than anyone — and why did we stop doing it?  These wonderful people are still working their asses off and taking great personal risks to keep the rest of us safe and cared-for.

FAVOURITE CAR:  I hate my own current car and hope to replace it with a better one next year, so my choice of car is my long-term favourite, the Duesenberg Model J Phaeton.  This was Jerry Cornelius’s car in Mike Moorcock’s novel The Condition of Muzak (1977) which I illustrated, and not having access to the real thing and with no internet in those days I bought a plastic construction kit which I carefully assembled and painted in Jerry’s colours (cream and chocolate brown), and drew the car from the model.  The book won the Guardian Fiction Prize that year, but I doubt whether my illustrations had anything to do with that.

FAVOURITE CHAIR:  My Lazyboy, like me very scruffy and fraying at the edges but still more comfortable than any other.

FAVOURITE CHEESE: Wensleydale, but it has to be the real thing made and perfectly matured in Yorkshire.  The plastic-wrapped stuff in the supermarket’s chill cabinet isn’t the same.

FAVOURITE DEATHS:  A tie between those of the Moors Murderer Ian Brady and of Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper. The world is better off without those two, and now we no longer have to pay for their decades-long upkeep in jail.  Also, I wasn’t too distressed by the death of Des O’Connor, who told me to fuck off when I asked for his autograph as a shy and acutely self-conscious 13-year-old.

FAVOURITE DOG:  Lady, next door’s elderly Red Setter, now deaf and arthritic but still a sweetheart.

FAVOURITE DOWNFALL:  Harvey Weinstein’s.  We had some very unsatisfactory dealings with him when I was running my publishing company and we knew he was a wrong ‘un long before news of his sexual shenanigans emerged.  He’s currently serving a 23-year jail sentence, his company has gone bust and he’s tested positive for the coronavirus.  There is a god.

FAVOURITE DRINK:  Heaven’s Door [see my earlier post ‘Heaven and Hell’].  Runner-up: Marston’s Owd Rodger which my friend Bob and I discovered in a country pub we used to frequent, and being less mobile these days I was pleased to find the bottled version for sale in my local Kwik-e-Mart.  Not quite as good as the keg but still a wonderful relaxative when needed.

FAVOURITE DRUG:  Levothyroxine.  A daily dose keeps me alive.

FAVOURITE FILMS:  It’s years since I visited a cinema so I have to make do with what gets shown on the multifarious tv channels that I get.

This year I particularly enjoyed How to Build a Girl starring Beanie Feldstein, having read the novel by local author Caitlin Moran.  Also good was The Constant Gardener, viewed on DVD as I’d missed it first time around and was reminded of it by the recent death of John Le Carré.

FAVOURITE FOOTBALL TEAM:  Leeds United, always and for ever.  2020 was their first year back in the Premiership after a very long and dreary absence, and it’s been a huge pleasure to see them holding their own in the upper tier and playing some superbly entertaining football.

FAVOURITE FRUIT: Pineapple. A surprising late entry this, as for my previous 73 years on this planet I’ve had a sort of ‘I can take it or leave it’ attitude to pineapple, but in recent weeks I’ve found I can’t get enough of the wonderful yellow stuff, and when I haven’t got any I’m thinking about how to get some. The recent hormone treatment I’ve been undergoing has done peculiar things to my body and my metabolism, but I wasn’t anticipating such a strange craving. I think I might be pregnant.

FAVOURITE GARDENING IMPLEMENT:  Draper’s telescopic soft-grip bypass ratchet-action loppers with aluminium handles, bought just before the radiotherapy put me out of action for a while.  Next year I hope to be able to use them a lot more.  Lopping is fun!

FAVOURITE GARMENT:  Not much clothes shopping this year because of the pandemic and various misguided online purchases, but a baggy pale grey top by Tu bought on a grocery-shopping trip to Sainsbury’s is very comfortable. I no longer care what I look like.

FAVOURITE HEADLINES OF THE YEAR:  “FA confirm Wembley is NOT being turned into a giant lasagne”;  “Monday Night Toilet Roll Fights: sport in the age of coronavirus”;  “A Man Whose Parents Threw Out His Porn Collection Wins Lawsuit Against Them”;  “Bad Sex In Fiction award cancelled – as people have suffered enough in 2020”;  “Adolf Hitler elected in Namibia’s local council elections – but has ‘no plans for world domination'”.

FAVOURITE HERB: Oregano, now that I grow my own.

FAVOURITE HOLIDAY:  No holidays this year. No big deal as I hate travelling anyway.

FAVOURITE INTERNET MEME:  Wojak.

FAVOURITE  JOKE:  Q. What’s the difference between COVID-19 and Romeo and Juliet?  A. One’s a coronavirus and the other’s a Verona crisis.

FAVOURITE KITCHEN THINGIES: A pair of little rubber grippers, Poundland’s re-invention of the oven glove. They do the job and are much smaller and easier to wash than the quilted cloth things I’ve been using up to now.

FAVOURITE LOCOMOTIVE: Union Pacific 4014, reputedly the world’s biggest working engine. All of the other surviving Big Boy class are in museums but over the course of the year I’ve been avidly following the restoration and testing of this one on YouTube, and the sight of it now running under its own steam is a wonderfully stirring thing.

FAVOURITE MAGAZINE:  Private Eye.  Online magazines don’t count.

FAVOURITE MEAL: A pasta dish — don’t know its name — made by Celia-next-door. Her mushroom risotto was really good too. Much appreciated.

FAVOURITE MUSIC:  I love music and in recent years I’ve been listening mostly to classical stuff, but I’ve always been a bit deaf to the charms of opera.  Finding this on Youtube started to change my mind and I developed a bit of a thing for Elīna Garanča, so when I learned that she’d starred in Carmen I bought the DVD and am entranced by it.

FAVOURITE PIZZA:  ‘Garden Party’ with extra cheese, from Papa John’s.

FAVOURITE POEM:  If I was trying to impress I’d choose something by Donne or Eliot or Larkin, or something really obscure, but ’Jenny Kissed Me’ by Leigh Hunt (1838) has been popping into my head lately. I’ve always found it rather charming, and with advancing age it has taken on extra overtones. Here is someone reading it quite nicely. I’ve had only one kiss this year and was as delighted by it as the guy in the poem.

FAVOURITE POTATO CRISPS:  Vicente Vidal plain crisps.  Quite hard to find and rather expensive when you do find them, but as something of a crisp connoisseur I’ve found these light and fresh and much tastier than other brands.

FAVOURITE PUNCTUATION MARK:  The colon:  I know that I over-use it.

FAVOURITE RADIOLOGIST:  Bridgid. It’s been quite a while since an attractive young woman fiddled about with my dangly bits but she did it chatting merrily the while, then retired to a safe room to watch x-rays of my guts while the raygun did its work, so it’s very encouraging to find that knowing me literally inside-out she still wants to see me.

FAVOURITE RELATIVES:  The Tauranga mob, and not only because they’re now my only living relatives. It’s rather touching to know that a new generation on the other side of the world knows me by the nickname that my nephew and niece called me when they were children. Yay, I’m still Uncle Whiskers.

FAVOURITE RESTAURANT:  I’ve been to only one in 2020 and that was the one at the Whittington Hospital, where the food is rather good with (currently) plenty of social distance between the tables. Their chicken kebabs served with rice and salad are very tasty. No booze at a hospital, obviously.

FAVOURITE SERIAL KILLER:  I don’t actually like them of course, but having written and edited and published several books about them I try to keep up with the latest developments in Serial Killer World, and this year I was pleased to learn that they might have finally caught the so-called Golden State Killer, a particularly nasty specimen.  He’s currently in jail awaiting trial so I’d better say no more except nail the bastard.

FAVOURITE SLANG WORD:  Flart, an old fart who is something of a flirt.  Have I been a bit of a flart this year, particularly in the Radiology Dept?  Possibly.

FAVOURITE SOAP OPERA: Coronation Street, which I’ve been watching on and off ever since it started and the only soap I’ve ever watched. It’s pretty dire these days, relying far too much on overheard conversations which were a cliché in Shakespeare’s day, but a large part of the pleasure is discussing the preposterous plotlines as they unfold with fellow cynics on the Digital Spy forum.

FAVOURITE SOFTWARE:  Photoshop. Yet again.

FAVOURITE TRANSSEXUAL: Darcie Silver.

FAVOURITE TREE:  The aspen at the bottom of my garden.  It was growing rather lop-sided as a sycamore — in my view the weed of the tree world — grew up alongside it, but men with a chainsaw and a digger got rid of the intruder, and over the course of the year the aspen has balanced itself.  I love to see its leaves shimmering in a light breeze.

FAVOURITE STEELY DAN TRACK:  We lost Walter Becker this year but much of the Dan’s music is on my perennial playlist, and I’ve been listening to ‘Deacon Blues‘ a lot recently.   It seems to speak to me personally, as a good song should.

FAVOURITE TV SERIES:  Killing Eve, The Marvellous Mrs Maisel, I May Kill You …  If pressed I might admit that I’ve also watched a couple of episodes of Naked Attraction — purely for its sociological interest of course.  I had no idea that so many young people have so many tattoos.

FAVOURITE US PRESIDENT: No contenders this year.

FAVOURITE WEAPON:  My antique swordstick, probably illegal to own these days but I sleep more soundly knowing it’s by the bed in case another burglar appears in the bedroom in the middle of the night.

FAVOURITE WEBSITE:  Facebook, which I joined a few months ago and which has put me back in touch with lots of old friends and colleagues, and brought some new friends too.

FAVOURITE WORD:  Adomania: the fear that the future is coming too quickly.

Let’s hope that next year will bring more of the good stuff and much less of the bad.  Oscar Cainer thinks that for me it will:  “The Solar Eclipse heralds a welcome (and positive) change. There’s no need to try to hold on to anything or fight against an invisible force. You’ve done enough. You can let go and flow with the tide. You’re being taken on a course that’s heading towards a safe and welcoming destination. Wonderful opportunities arise that are going to energise your life.”

That’s good to know, and I hope that 2021 will be wonderful for you too.  In the meantime may I wish all my readers a very