April Powers

Of all those who saw this bloke,
Who would remember him,
In lines on the screen?
Of evenings of languor and laughter and pause,
Internal applause, and fear and frustration
To boot?

Those who do
Might be writing of him in return
With salacious kind words,
Lascivious smiles,
And wicked lips crook’d in a curve,
On chat shows where nations can learn of their stars -
The ones that they’ve no chance of meeting.

Discreetly we learn of our place in the book
The right look, where and when, who and how ...
And wow! Doesn’t it all
Just fall into place,
While our sisters and brothers,
Younger and sharper,
Fall on their faces?

At last it happens and we don’t know quite how,
Everything just as wrong as before,
Conscious of the boring stream of crap we produce:
As loose in tongue,
And constricted of mind,As ever we were.



April Fools' Day. Or should that be April Fool's Day. And, if so, who is he? Or she? Me?

7am. The alarm's just gone and I've switched on Radio 4, and we're listening to Evan Davis, the new anchor for the Today programme, the one who squints a bit and is relentlessly chirpy - at least he was when he was economics editor and worked for Newsnight. He never seemed to mind the late nights then. Now, well, maybe it's the honeymoon, but he's relentlessly chirpy at seven in the morning too, only you can't hear the squint.

I get up to go to the loo, open the door and "WAAAAAAAHHHHHH!" perforates my eardrums. It's Jac, and I no longer need the loo.

"I think you'll find that's Hallowe'en, darling," I say, "today's more about tricking than scaring - convincing Daddy you're the new prime minister, maybe, then going, 'Ha! Got you! April Fool!'"

*****

I'm in a café reading the paper, waiting to do the school pick-up run. There's an article about a guy who broke his back falling from a tree while working up there and his optimistic message about life going on. Ha, I think, I'll save the article for Ian - my childhood friend who had a car accident and also relies on a wheelchair to get about (or one of those new super-dooper motorised ones that's more like a Ferrari than a hospital-corridor-negotiating device).

"Ahem. We don't do the mail." I look around to see what I've misinterpreted as Post Office signs, but can only see wistful scenes of French bucolic grandeur that look like they've been painted by someone to look like they'd been painted by Monet, or is it Manet? I can never remember the difference.

"The Mail," she says, pointing at my paper.

"Sorry, not with you."

"We don't allow fascist newspapers in the café."

"But Lord Whatsisname only supported Mosley for nine months, before he came to his senses - I mean, before the Lord came to his senses, not Mosley, I'm not sure... anyway, that was in 1935!"
"They attack Ken, that's racist!"

"But Ken's white ..."

"Some of the journalists there might be black ..."

"Ah, yes," I say, "that's terrible," suddenly realising she might assume I mean that it's terrible some of the Mail's journalists are black. I decide to demur. God, that's a good word, I wish I'd thought of it at the time.

I put the paper in my bag and bring out the Spectator magazine, the first copy I've ever bought - because I like Rod Liddle's writing.

"Boris Johnson," she says crisply, pointing the magazine back towards my bag.

"I've got the Sunday Times travel section?" We're thinking of renewing my contact with Derek, personal assistant to the Governor of the Seychelles, who complimented my rear when we were in a bar in Mauritius. Perhaps we could get invited to some choice dinner parties if we holiday on the islands? Hat doesn't seem the least bit worried about the possibility of Derek getting me drunk and whisking me away to a quiet idyll. Is it because she completely trusts me, or just doesn't care?

The woman shakes her head. "Rupert Murdoch."

"Here look," I say, catching on, "the Independent magazine from Saturday!" And I flourish it in expectant triumph.

"Perfect," she says, "for next time - you can't actually be in here with that other stuff." The "be" was accompanied by a sneer that wouldn't have shamed Simon Cowell.

*****



Had the most diabolical cold last week - worst for ten years, completely out-for-the-count, no protein shakes or fish suppers on the menu. The kids made me keep the driver's door window open, even in the driving rain, so I could sneeze out of it. And they had to wait for Hat to get home for dinner to be made - although Haughts did give one a go: lentil burgers, home-made, which Giles nibbled at, Jac "got four points" at (a refusal) and I "ate" very quickly then spat down the toilet (by running out looking like I was going to have a gigantic sneeze).

*****


The knocker goes. "I'll go," pipes up Giles. He opens the door. "It's Mantu," he shouts.

"Do you mind?" I ask Hat.

"Go for it," she says, and I gather my jacket and a brolly and head off to The Clock.

"Haven't see you for a while," I proffer.

"Been... busy," says Mantu. I've known Mantu The Bantu for a couple of years now, since we met in my yoga class. Ironic that we now only ever meet in the pub. He's my "glass hand", my drinking buddy, just as Hat has Sarah, her friend from Exeter days to go, to go... actually what is it they get up to?

We cross Barry Road into The Clock like we've done dozens of times before, and I've done hundreds (?). I've noticed how Mantu always "kindly" opens the door for me so that I make it first to the bar, and I recently observed that we always seem to sink an odd number of pints.

"The usual?" I say.

"Let's go wild and crazy, a whisky."

"Bells, Walkers?" asks the barman Caz, the sole survivor, amongst the staff, of the disappearance of the previous publicans in favour of the present managers.

"Glenmorangie!"

"Single, double?" I say

"Double." Why did I ask?

"And ginger," says Mantu.

"Glenmorangie and ginger?" I splutter.

"It's more refined."

"But I bet you couldn't taste the difference between Glen & Ginger and Bog Standard & Ginger."

"We could do a blind taste test?" It's a clever bluff. He knows he'll probably lose it, but unless I'm prepared to line up several drinks he's a fifty-fifty chance. Thinking of the cost, and the little incident after our last blind taste test competition, I decline.

"'Sup?" I ask, when we're sat down in the rear, which used to have (under the previous management) a rather dennish aura, with dark green on the carpets, the cloth of the sofas, the panels of the walls, and the plant that was the room's centrepiece. Now it's all pink, with girly squiggles.

"Shall we?" says Mantu, pulling out a chessboard. I grab two of the pawns, one white, one black, spirit them under the table and juggle them between my left and right hands. I put my fists on the table and wait for him to choose. He taps my right hand. I open it and show him the white pawn. "How comes I'm always white, huh? How come I'm always white." He's shouting now. "Are you trying to say I'm a coconut? Is that what you're getting at?" And he upends the chessboard and pieces and storms out of the pub. Wearily, and trying to avoid the baffled gazes of the fellow customers (and where I don't, trying valiantly to pull off a Gallic shrug), I gather up the detritus, sigh at my barely-begun pint, and leave.

I find Mantu creased up with mirth behind the wall next to the pub. "If you keep pulling that stunt," I say, "we'll have nowhere left to go."

*****


I wave a copy of The London Paper triumphantly as Hat walks into the front room one evening after work. "Paris's getting hitched!"

"Quoi?" says Hat.

"OK, OK, I exaggerate a little. Apparently Paris's parents really like this new boyfriend, this, er, Someone Or Other, largely, admittedly, because he doesn't drink, smoke or do drugs. Listen: 'It's a great love match and I've a funny feeling it's going to go all the way'. That was her mum."

"I've a funny feeling she's already gone all the way with him," says Hat.

"Miaoww!" I say. "You're just jealous cos she flirted with me."

"Flirted! Pah! She was just buttering you up." We had Paris to stay when she was trying to avoid the paparazzi after Hat's charity bash for The Mutts' Nuts at The O2. Those Shih Tzus, Iffy, Squiffy and Whiffy (pictured) practically tore the place apart, but we couldn't complain as she gave us a freebie for the do (a very rare thing in her calendar, I don't need to tell you), ensuring Hat got coverage in all the tabs, and a few of the broadsheets. Plus acres in the US too - The Mutts' Nuts has gone global!

"I wish!" I say.

*****


"It's outrageous," says Madame Zoë over coffee with us, one day, "I'm finished." I've always thought Zoë's moniker a little silly, giving evocations of a brothel madam rather than a spiritual medium. "You do know what they've done?" We shake our heads. "They've only gone and repealed the Fraudulent Mediums Act!"

"But that sounds good," says Hat, tentatively. "You won't have to put up with those charlatan rivals." She winks at me, out of eyeshot of Zoë. We've always gracefully (we hope) declined her services, though we did let Giles bring her over to summon up the spirit of Diarmuid after he was run over by the bicycle of a wee girl - who was more traumatised by the whole thing than Giles. In fact it was his idea to "ease her karma" by summoning up Diarmuid's spirit in her presence. There were a few dodgy moments when we all held our breath, but fortunately Zoë managed to contrive, sorry, see that wee Diarmuid was now happily playing hopscotch in Gerbil Heaven.

"No, you don't get it," says Zoë, "the Fraudulent Mediums Act protected us."

"How so?" I say.

"It was practically impossible to convict any of us. I think there was less than one conviction a year since the act came in in 1951. Now we'll be covered by Consumer Protection regulations. And you know what that means."

"I can guess," says Hat, who has to have a cursory understanding of the law for her job.

"We'll have to give a sort of public health warning before each session, something like, 'The operative points out that they cannot guarantee that any persons appearing in this room are actually deceased or otherwise inconvenienced and are not actually recordings that the operative contrived with the help of her aged aunt who smokes sixty a day.'"

*****


Hat's on a latey so I settle down with the kids to watch Kenny, the Australian documentary about a "waste-management sanitation operative". Jac's been nagging me for ages after she heard me raving to Hat about it, having seen it in a free moment one afternoon at the cinema a few months ago. I decline to look at the rating on the box in case I'm not really supposed to let them at it. Besides, Jac's language is far more colourful than mine could ever be, and the film does largely consist of lines such as:


"It's as silly as a bum full of Smarties";

"They think I'm the poo monster";

[referring to kids:] "They s**t green, the only things that should be green are pears, apples and Martians";

"There's another classic example of someone having a two-inch ****hole and us having installed only one-inch piping".


Jac is howling, of course, prodding Giles at every risqué word. Even The Queen Of Hauteur smirks now and again, though I can see she is making a Boadicean effort not to be the least bit troubled by the infantile, but utterly charming, toilet humour (boom, boom!). If you think such things are "childish", in the sense of for-kids-only (and Haughts would agree with you), I refer you to the year I spent in a rented basement flat in West Dulwich with three friends. Sarah (27) could be reduced to wet-knickered helplessness by a mere mention of the word "poo". Apparently some renegade hangover from childhood.

*****


The word is out on the grapevine: SE22 magazine; the ED Forum; Lordship Laners. Mothers stop other mothers in the street to say, "Have you heard?" and the respondee knows exactly what they're talking about. Fathers snigger with each other in the few moments they steal together in gastropubs over Foie Gras Soufflé with a Yak Butter Coulis washed down with a white Rioja. And posters appear, that seem to have cost a fair lick, as if by magic, on park railings, saying, "Go get 'em, Zactastic!", "Claim back the language!" and "The street is the heat!" I've no idea what the last one means, but seeing as it's written in spray paint on some poor person's fence I wouldn't necessarily expect to.

And what is this fuss all about? Zac Fazackerley is a contemporary of Giles's at St Anthony's. He is rather known for his creative language, which makes our Jac's Anglo-Saxon epithets look like the mutterings of Mother Theresa on stubbing her toe on a leper. Rather more worryingly for Jane and Tom, Zac's parents, recently it's moved beyond the body-part name-checking that is the staple of English swearing, to the more suggestive of violence.

Hence they have taken a writ out on 50 Cent and So Solid Crew alleging corruption of a minor. Jac's not too impressed as if the action succeeds it could jeopardise the output of the Gangsta Rap scene in the UK. She gets up her own banner: "Rite to say wot we werxing want!" and cajoles the lot of us into marching up and down Goose Green on a Saturday afternoon engaging anyone in debate who has the nerve to challenge us. I manage to get in a call to Jane and Tom that it's nothing personal. "We feel it's so important to support Jac in her crusade, just as you feel you'd rather not have a son who says, 'Wossup, motherwerxers? I's smoke you if you don't got no Dorset Cereals's Organic Fruits, Nuts & Seeds every morning."

*****


A woman comes on the radio who dropped her middle and surnames and became known just as Louisa. Just like those singers Marilyn, Jamelia, Robin and so on. Bit of a cheat, really. Amy Winehouse, Boris Johnson, Ken Livingstone and Robbie Williams became known just by their first names by sheer ubiquity, whether that be through relentless drug abuse coupled with an incredible voice, verbal kerfuffling allied to a booming voice, a whiny voice allied to political power, or a decent voice allied to eccentric behaviour. As the presenter points out, if everyone did this, it'd be mighty confusing for the poor souls at the passort office. Apparently the woman did this to get past the Y-chromosome patriarchy of her old surname linking her back to just one line of male ancestors. Funnily enough, both Hat and I had a go too. I switched my names around at 18 after years of frustration of dentists, doctors and new teachers calling me by my first name. But I found my new name order just wasn't me. Frustrating as it was, my awkward name had become part of me, so I switched them back. This caused a few problems for university registration and a family holiday to Tenerife. Hat changed her name at Exeter to this symbol:











and became known as The Woman Formerly Known as Harry (or TWFKAH) which caused her no end of mayhem too, as she refused to put her name on exam papers and so had to repeat her second year after an OCD face-off: "My symbol is my name!" "Well, in that case your real name won't get any marks!"

*****


Found this on Jac's computer. What does it mean?


"..me listning to a christmass songgggggmattyy

"sed that makes me scene haha :

"Plov teh dude :

"Di bet yur realding this :

"Pan laughing :

"Dahahhasum1 tlak IM BORED"












John

Harriet

Hortense

Giles

Jocasta