How to iron

And that was the end of week three.

Week one:  plenty of stuff to do what with finishing up the old business and settling into the new routine, ie no routine at all

Week two: missus on hols so I took a holiday from the retirement and we did stuff together. Just like a proper holiday

Week three: er…pass. Everyone back to work except me.

So Monday,. I am down to my last shirt. I have a confession to make. I have NEVER done any ironing.

Ever.

Ages 0 – 18 my mum did it

Age 18 – 21 at Uni so of course no one did it. When I say no one, I mean not one of the 35000 or so students in the great Manchester / UMIST /Salford University student population, girls or boys as far as I recall. Having said that, I was always regarded as a regular Beau Brummel at the time, which reminds me of an absolutely true incident. In those days, mid 70’s,  my two items of clothing that set me apart from the sartorially challenged crowd and drew gasps of admiration and jealousy from the blokes, and swoons of lustful yearning from the girls were my two velvet jackets: one brown, one blue.

Imagine my horror therefore when I discovered a one inch tear in the sleeve of my brown jacket. Not an easy thing to mend, velvet, but I had noticed a little shop on the Wilmslow Road called "The Invisible Menders".

In I went. No one there, but a voice said, "can I help you?"

Now, I do not believe in the supernatural, be it fairies, psychics, astrologers, alien spaceships, raiki healers, colonic irrigation, ghosts, religious leaders, magic of any kind, the Loch Ness Monster, the possibility of Arsenal winning a trophy this year, or any other ridiculously unlikely and clearly made up nonsense designed to prey on the minds of the simple, but I admit that, for the first and last time in my life, as that Invisible Mender leaned over the counter and said, "can I help you?", I did have a momentary wobble in my, up until then, absolute and unshakeable conviction that the world was as laid out in the science books, no more and no less.

One second later, the guy popped up from behind the counter where he had been looking for something, and the world once again came squarely back into focus.

I've often wondered, if he had stayed under the counter a few seconds longer, if I'd have started a conversation with an invisible person, and I cannot, in all honesty, say that I would not have. I guess that makes me no better than the Archbishop of Canterbury and his invisible friend.

My only excuse would have been that, real or imaginary, if it got my velvet jacket mended, I'd have believed in anything.

Where was I? Oh yes.

Age 21 – 58.75 I am ashamed to say, the missus did it.

Age 58.75 (ie now) – I am going to have to do it.

Found the iron (see Blog 1). Now I do know that you have to put water in them, so I get the iron, and honestly, it’s got more dials, levers, flaps, gauges than the space shuttle. So I just opened all the little compartments and put it under the tap for a bit, turned it on, propped it up on the ironing board and stood well back.

After a few minutes it starts gurgling and smoking which I take as a good sign. I put the first shirt on the ironing board and flatten it as best I can with the iron. BLOODY ARMS. BLOODY BUTTONS.

After about 10 minutes of pressing down and trying to smooth out the lumps, I take a good look at it. The wrinkles are all still there, but now have razor sharp edges, randomly zigzagging about the entire shirt.

ARSE

I hate the countryside

So this week, the missus had a few days holiday.

We live in London, and our idea of getting away from it all is to have a few days out IN LONDON. The thought of actually going outside London into the back of beyond like, for example, St Albans or even worse (shudder) the countryside fills me with fear and dread.

For a start, the countryside stinks, and is full of selfish, greedy, small-minded,  ghastly Rotarians, or whinging layabouts who think the world owes them a living, and blame everyone else for their troubles. I cannot recall ever meeting a single friendly person in the countryside. They are all obsessed with their own little lives and the bloody view. View? What view? It's just full of trees, mud and angry huge beasts. And if you manage to find a pub, the bartender is some miserable homophobic drunk who's going out of business, and no we don't do bloody cocktails you big poof.

 And at night, it is the most terrifying place to be. Pitch black, and the eerie silence is only punctuated by the maniacal gibberings of some inbred cretin locked in an attic, or the crack and splinter of wood as the local axe murderer, crazed by the lack of a decent independent cinema, attempts to gain entry to an isolated farmhouse where the occupants, driven half mad by the total absence of experimental theatre companies, cower behind the dreary Welsh Dresser in the freezing damp with their mangy slavering black labrador that smells of sprouts.

Anyway, I digress. So I put my retirement on hold for a week, and we went for a wander round Mayfair on Monday morning, going into the galleries pretending to be eccentric billionaires looking to buy a Gaugin or two. The missus looked perfectly respectable, but I on the other hand, looked a bit like Mussolini after the invasion of Sicily. Great fun to watch the gallery owner prancing about, not sure whether to kick us out or fawn over us.

In the afternoon, to the Curzon Mayfair to see August, Osage County. Unbelievable. Not the film, but the audience. I thought we’d have the place to ourselves: Monday afternoon. Not a bit of it. I realised in a few seconds what I have to look forward to. There were thousands of them. Old wrinklies in various states of decrepitude, stumbling about the foyer, advancing on the luckless assistants and sucking on polo mints with their toothless gums. It was like Night of the Living Dead without the teeth.

Hmmmm. I think I can get used to this.

Pomegranates

The thought of going shopping on Monday morning is too ghastly to contemplate. I know I should be revelling in my freedom, but I am as yet uncertain as to the form that freedom will take. One thing I do know, is that the word Londis will not form a part of it...

 So off I go yesterday. At the Morrisons checkout, bloke at the till has four pomegranates that clearly the checkout girl does not recognise. Does he tell her what they are? No.

He just stands there, arms folded, with the beginning of a supercilious sneer on his fat face, just waiting to be asked what they are, so he can no doubt 'educate' her on the subject of exotic fruit, or even better, let her ring them through as something else, so he can presumably really have a good whine about the ignorant masses, and how tedious to have to correct her, waste of his time, busy schedule, must just take this important call zzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Anyway, she finally rings them through and they come up as "loose persimmons £1.29", and he's off: "no no no, these are Pomegranates, you use them in exotic fruit salads, and are of course a key ingredient in Grenadine" he brays at the top of his voice, almost hopping from foot to foot with babyish oneupmanship delight, whilst looking down his hairy nose at the girl.

To her credit, she shows not a jot of embarrassment (or interest), looks on her fruit list, and rings them through. Up comes "Pomegranates: £5.49"

He looks at the price and rapidly shuts up. His little outburst cost him over four quid.

Couple of sniggers from the queue, but not from me. I was too busy counting my change and sheepishly packing up my pomegranates.

Werthers Originals

OK, so on Feb 1st I retired. Two of my employees took over the business and I am out of it. I’m 58, and I haven’t got a thing to do. I also incidentally, don’t have much cash, so exotic hols or highclass hookers are out. Besides, I suspect the missus might have something to say if I sneak off for an exotic hol. In fact, I am going to have to earn a bit of money.


Not from this. This is just for my personal satisfaction, and if some people enjoy reading it then that’s fine.


But let’s get one thing straight.


This is not some smug holier than thou guide to the “third age”. At no point will I be saying, “honestly, I’ve never been busier!!”


I genuinely do not know what the hell I am going to do, but I know what I am NOT going to do:

No charity work

No voluntary stuff

No gathering with other like-minded old crusties to go hiking across the Cairngorns, whatever they are.

No stumbling around Lidl at 10.00 on a Monday morning fighting the other old geezers for the last pack of Werthers Originals

And DEFINITELY not what is on the list my missus rather enthusiastically has given me:
cooking
cleaning
ironing
vacuuming
shopping
sorting out the gas bill
sorting out the gutters

When this was all in the offing, I imagined a diary full of items such as:

Matinee at the National
To the Ivy to discuss publication of my memoirs with Druscilla
3.00pm private viewing at Christies – check out that Georges Grosz sketch!
Deadline for first chapter of memoirs – Druscilla getting impatient!
Arsenal v Man City: Director’s Box
4.30pm Manicure – well why not?
Red letter day! Druscilla’s extended my deadline if you get my drift


I now look in my diary and see the first appointment:
9.30 Podiatrist


I just got back

I mean, come on.

I'm 58, not 68. 78. or 88.

Up until this morning, although I may not be quite the athlete I used to be, although my sixpack figure may nowadays owe more to a sixpack of Leffe than of the muscular variety, although I may occasionally have to leave the nightclub before 4.00am, although my once lush head of curly locks seems now to have more in common with a reflecting convex mirror, I liked to think that I still had the ability to give off a whiff of testosterone, and to display attributes and behaviour of a raffish, dangerously handsome rapskallion, a smooth talking silver fox that still had the power to cause the odd heart flutter and blush of the cheeks in sophisticated women of the world, and I am not talking about defibrillators or the menopause.

Huh.

So I'm sitting in the doctor's waiting room this morning. Only other occupants were an old geezer, flat cap, rattling, phlegmy cough (must have been about 80), and his equally decrepit, liver spotted wife, both leaning like grim death on their walking sticks, even though they were sitting down.

In comes a jolly, 40-something dogooder with a handful of pamphlets, spies the funeral home fodder, and makes a beeline for them.

“Hello” she says breathily, trying to thrust a leaflet into their clenched fists, “I am from Age Concern, and in this cold & wet weather, we are giving out information to the elderly about help & advice they can get with insulation, draft proofing, and other ways to keep warm. This leaflet explains…”

And to their credit, the old geezer looks her in the eye and says, “…actually we have an architect friend who has given us professional advice with regards to our insulation requirements.”

She looks a bit deflated by this, and peers round.

She spots me.

She sidles towards me.

I’m thinking: you cannot be serious. You cannot. Be. Fucking. Serious.

I make a point of looking away. I close my eyes. I feign unconsciousness.

“Hello, I am from Age Concern, and in this cold weather…”

“HOW OLD DO YOU THINK I AM?!?”

She backs off.

Unbelievable.


That’s it for now.


Oh, one bit of EXCELLENT news.

I (accidentally) found the iron when turning on the heating