The Old Man and the Sea

This is a very short short I wrote yesterday afternoon. Just click and the pdf will miraculously appear: The Old Man and the Sea

Alternatively, here’s the oddly formatted version:

The Old Man and the Sea

He preferred the blunt simplicity of New York. Walk. Don’t Walk. It was simple. Here, however, the red man simply recommended that one remained stationary. Jaywalking was not a term the populace of North London understood, let alone refrained from. Lionel tutted under his breath, shaking his head imperceptibly as a young mother pushed her child between two parked cars and into the road. The screech of brakes, the scream, the shouting, the cunting this and cunting that, and Lionel knew the child’s fate. It may have been wrapped in blankets to guard against the cold of November, but there was nothing that could be done to protect it from the sheer stupidity of its mother.

  • What you lookin’ at, heebie?

Cried the woman, stick thin and gaunt, spitting her hatred in his face.

Lionel didn’t reply.

  • Well fuck off then, yid.

She had seen the shake of the head and maybe even heard the tutting, but in truth she was simply deflecting her guilt onto the nearest available hate figure. Lionel didn’t much mind. He wished for a better class of hate, however – the vitriol he received from such insignificant, idiotic people was habitual hatred. He much preferred the opprobrium of the educated. It seemed so much more proper. Being despised by those for whom the pushchair was designed to stop traffic for their benefit was almost embarrassing.

Lionel was somewhat past middle-aged, and at 5 feet 3 and weighing sixteen stone, he was hardly what one would call a fine figure of a man. He limped slightly from the gout which was his primary inheritance from his father, and carried a cane to support himself. Winter, to Lionel, was something of a double-edged sword. The cold suited him, as he would sweat and wheeze in his suit during the summer, but the occasional patch of ice made him wary of walking too far in one go.

The green man lit up, and Lionel walked slowly across the road, ignoring the cyclist’s expletives as he almost barrelled into him after ignoring the red light, and the cars which thought that when the lights flashed it was ok to edge threateningly towards the broad, behatted figure as he traversed the final few yards to the pavement.

He walked to the park’s entrance, and held the gate open for a woman pushing a big, old-fashioned pram. Nana Goldberg was the daughter of an old family friend, and greeted Lionel warmly.

  • Shalom, Lionel.

  • Shalom. Beautiful day for a walk, Nana. How is your dear father?

  • Not so well, Lionel, not so well. He must visit the doctor again this thursday.

  • More tests? Ay.

  • More tests. You off to town?

  • To the bookstore. I have some business to attend to. Regards to Manny.

They parted. Lionel carried on walking. Past the empty pond. Past the derelict play area, avoiding the dogshit which peppered the pavement. As he looked up he caught sight of them. The three youths who had almost run him down on the pavement earlier in the week. He had shouted at them. They spat in his face and cycled off, laughing. This time they were sitting on a bench, smoking and drinking cider, their bicycles sprawled over the pavement in front of them. The two boys leaned back aggressively, arms and legs apart, and he approached. He heard one of them hawk. He heard him spit. He stopped. The mass of sputum landed a foot in front of him. He began to walk on.

  • Not so mouthy now, eh, old man?

Sneered the elder of the two. The girl sat next to him pulled a line of chewing gum out of her mouth, winding it round her finger and then starting to chew it again. She had her other hand on the youth’s thigh, just below his crotch.

  • Yeah, stupid old fucker. Not so mouthy now?

It was this lack of imagination that he deplored more than anything.

  • Can you boys not think of anything more original?

  • Wot you fuckin’ say?

  • I said, can you boys not think of anything more original?

  • Piss off, cunt.

They laughed.

  • You see, that’s where you go wrong. Petty, foul-mouthed, pig-ignorant child that you are, you’ll be in prison by the time you’re old enough to vote.

  • Who d’you fuckin think you are, fucking jew boy? Fuck off back to your own country.

  • Ah, would that I could, would that I could.

Lionel picked his way through the bicycles and carried on walking. He heard the sound of breaking glass behind him. Raised voices.

  • Didn’t you fucking hear me, yid fucker?

Lionel carried on walking. The boy suddenly appeared in front of him, his bike skidding round and coming to a stop in front of him.

  • I said, Didn’t you fucking hear me, yid fucker?

Lionel stood still.

  • I’m sorry, I’m a little deaf.

  • You’re fuckin thick, that’s what you fuckin are.

  • Now why don’t you go back to your bench and drink some more cider.

  • Because I’ve drank it all, cunt. You give me all your cash and maybe I will.

  • Maybe?

The boy put his face directly into Lionel’s

  • My dad says you fuckers should all be sent to fuckin Yidland, let the arabs fuck you all up.

  • He sounds like a thoughtful man, your father.

  • Don’t you fuckin take the piss, or I’ll fuckin cut ya.

The boy took a paring knife out of his pocket and waved it in Lionel’s face. Lionel doubted he had ever cut so much as an apple with it before.

  • Now fuckin give me yer cash. My dad says you lot are fuckin minted. My dad …

  • Your father certainly has a lot to say for himself.

The boy was beginning to go puce by this point. He pressed the knife into Lionel’s throat, just where his too-tight collar met the increasingly saggy and sallow flesh.

  • Ok, ok. I’ll give you my money already.

Lionel found it helped if he spoke like a comedy jew. It always seemed to diffuse the situation.

  • Haha. Listen to the pathetic cunt!

Lionel reached carefully into his coat’s inside pocket, and pulled out a calfskin wallet. The boy snatched it from his hands, tore the notes out of it and threw the wallet to the ground.

  • Pick it up, yid.

Lionel did as he was told. He had to get down on one knee to do so. As his hand reached out, the boy’s foot clamped down on it.

  • Call it the yid tax.

He laughed. Spat on the ground and walked off. Lionel turned round to watch his antagonist. The girl hung off her hero’s belt as he swaggered off. The second boy pushed the two bikes.

  • Disgusting. I can see their bloody underwear.

Lionel said to himself as he levered himself up off the ground. A blackbird burst into song in one of the bushes. The sun, which had been hidden behind clouds, burst out and bathed Lionel in its glow.

  • Well, I’ll probably find him dead tonight on the way home, overdosed on heroin. No loss.

Lionel walked for half an hour. Along the canal, through the shopping centre, and eventually to the row of shops that was his destination. The bookshop had been on this corner for as long as anyone could remember, and in its time had always supplied something more than just reading matter to its clientele. It was dark and a little dingy. It was difficult to make out people’s faces, let alone the book titles in the rows of close-packed shelves.

Lionel pushed the door open. It was a little stiff, but gave in as he applied more pressure. A bell positioned above it rang out as he did so.

Lionel looked at his watch. It was 11.13. He walked through the shop to the back, lifted the trap door in the counter, and stood by the till. He picked up a bunch of orders and began to flick through them. The doorbell rang out once more and a ravaged looking man with sunken eyes walked to the desk.

  • You’ve been holding a book for me.

  • Oh, yes, of course. Mr, er …

The man hesitated.

  • You’re not the usual man.

  • No. He’s ill.

  • I want the usual man.

  • He’s ill. Mr …

  • Smith.

  • Ah, Mr Smith. A first edition of The Old Man and the Sea. A delightful addition to any collection.

  • Yeah.

He growled.

  • The book. And hurry.

  • Of course.

Lionel reached under the counter and brought out a large packet. The man began to open it. Lionel interrupted.

  • Not in the shop, if you please.

  • Whatever.

He grunted.

  • Oh, and Mr Smith?

The man stopped and looked at Lionel.

  • What?

He sounded aggressive.

  • I have a message for you.

  • What?

Lionel reached into his inside pocket, brought out an automatic pistol with a silencer, and calmly placed a round in the centre of the man’s forehead.

  • We don’t like your sort, Mr Smith.

Lionel took the packet, checked that all the money was there, and placed it in his coat pocket. He pulled the body out to the back of the shop and disposed of it. Then he walked home. In the park, he passed the youth lying on the pavement in a pool of his own vomit.

  • Each to his own.

He said.

And walked on.

© Pete Langman 2011

Suffer the little children

Ok. This is the big one. Forget the repulsive jokes being made about Amy Winehouse. When it comes to pure, untrammelled vitriol, you will do well to come close to Katharine Birbalsingh in The Telegraph . And I truly mean to come close. If Cathy Relf was onto something when she wrote about the astonishing knee-jerk reaction of the Sun in labelling the Norwegian massacre as the work of ‘al-Qaeda’ without a jot of evidence, then bow in supplication to the new goddess of the lynch mob.

She laments that ‘Anders Behring Breivik refuses to plead guilty’, but notes that at least he ‘recognises he is responsible’. It’s a little odd that she immediately declares that ‘he shirks real responsibility’, and takes this as proof of his insanity … I do wonder at her qualifications with regards the declaring of an individual insane. Really, I do.

For Katharine, it is Anders’ father who must answer for his son’s actions.

Jens Breivik says he does not “feel like his father”. Oh really? I wonder whether he felt like Anders’ father when he abandoned both him and his mother to marry another woman?

Coo. Now there’s some serious responsibility.

Much has been made recently of press responsibility, not least their obligation to report in a manner that is at the very least not misleading.

Now, read this paragraph and weep:

Of course, normally neglected children go on to have difficult adult relationships themselves and maybe they see a therapist. Sometimes they have trouble settling at school. Most do not go on killing sprees which result in 76 dead. Clearly, something else wasn’t quite right with Anders Breivik. But his father is deeply confused. “How could he just stand there and kill so many innocent people and just seem to think that what he did was OK?” Well maybe he didn’t have a father when he was growing up to teach him the difference between right and wrong. What I want to know is why his father isn’t feeling any sense of remorse for having failed his son.

That’s right. Apparently, most neglected children do not go on killing sprees which result in 76 dead. Most. Most. Most, for fuck’s sake! It is astonishing. Cheap point, I concede … but still …

I’m not sure it’s worth going into the regular lapses of logic in this article. Apparently, Jens ‘fought to take him from his mother and half-sister’, which was a bad thing, but then is lambasted thus: ‘maybe he didn’t have a father when he was growing up to teach him right from wrong’. Yeouch. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t, Jens. At this point, I must point out that I don’t condone poor fathership in any way, but without knowing the real facts of the matter, it’s impossible to make any real judgement regarding standards of parenting, either paternally or maternally.

Naturally, Katharine implies very heavily here that a mother is incapable of teaching her son right from wrong. By her logic, Jens merely abrogated his responsibility, even though he apparently tried hard to be allowed to bring up his son. Anders’ mother is the one who failed, by this logic. She even pins blame on Jens’ second wife, who apparently never met Anders.

It is only after this astonishingly brutal, illogical and offensive, er, offensive that Katharine decides to make a point or two that makes any sense, but even these, regarding Jens’ apparent regard only for his reputation and his disregard for the deaths of the 76 victims, suffer from a callous desire to vilify and to apportion blame in the service, one can only infer, of some personal bugbear. Maybe Katharine was once force-fed lutefisk by a Norwegian divorcee, and since then …

Now, it seems from the few ‘facts’ presented that the Breivik family was somewhat fractured, and these sorts of situations always resist simple blame analysis – damn, they usually evade complex analysis.

The final paragraph:

While Anders Breivik is clearly disturbed on many levels, I am certain that the beginnings of his madness started when he was just a small child, when his father abandoned him […] his father’s reaction to this event is disappointing, and demonstrates a lack of humanity that should be there. After so many years, after such horror, would a father not want to speak to his son to find out why he did such a thing? Yet, Jens swears he will not contact his son. It’s not right. Jens’ relationship with his son was not right. And Jens should recognise that.

Phew! Now, I’ve heard of sweeping statements before, but good god.

What’s not right is that this woman is allowed to publish these vitriolic musings – musings which are so violent, bilious and illogical that one can only wonder at the woman’s sanity – in a national newspaper. This article would seem extreme in Spare Rib.

Luckily, from my quick perusal of the comments section, none of the readers of the Telegraph have reacted with anything other than disgust.

Katharine’s byline runs as follows:

Katharine Birbalsingh is the teacher who exposed the failings of the comprehensive school system at the Conservative Party conference last year. Katharine has been teaching in inner London for over a decade and plans to set up a Free School in south London to help to serve underprivileged children. Her book, To Miss with Love, is out now. Follow @Miss_Snuffy on Twitter to see what Katharine’s doing now. Katharine’s personal website is www.katharinebirbalsingh.com.

Christ on a bike. We need to watch every one of those children. They’re bound to turn out badly. Ok, so most of them won’t become Tories, but is it worth the risk? And that’s treating Katharine by her own standards. She may be very good at her job. She may not. I hope it’s not writing …

Whatever you do, do not buy her book, follow her on twitter (Miss_Snuffy? Is this a death-porn badger?), or ever, ever, visit her personal website. She won’t accept responsibility for what it may drive you to.

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Writer’s, er, ennui?

There are times in one’s life when one is caught not between a rock and hard place, nor even between two armchairs, but in that overlapping middle space, one of the interstitial moments that life pops up for you every now and again.

Before you are two, three, sometimes more paths, none of which seem to hold greater promise than the others. The usual pros and cons method leads nowhere. Add to this the fact that each path is dependent on an exterior factor, and the real difficulty becomes clear: how to prepare for three directions at once.

It’s easy, surely? One draws a natty venn diagram, looks to what falls between the three stools, and prepare for that. Would that it were. I suppose that intellectually this is possible, and emotionally it is desirable. But can I do it?

This particular quandary, the quandary over which I have little, if any, control, just happens to have coincided with a great ennui. I seem to be floating through the days, not doing anything particularly but certainly not doing nothing. A sort of intellectual and emotional cruise control. Producing anything meaningful that isn’t actually necessary seems strangely impossible. Indeed, I’m struggling to write this piece.

Furthermore, those few times which see some manner of productivity invariably disappoint. My recent blog for the Guardian’s Mind Your Language, for example, was rather disappointing. It was a nice little piece, I thought – nothing mind-blowing, but a piece which I hoped might stimulate some gentle debate. But no. A couple of characters who felt that one word was all they needed to read, one blog post  which latched onto one particular point and tried to shake it to death like a dog with a rabbit (read the thread, there’s some good, old-fashioned debate going on), but perhaps missed the general point.

I mostly wrote it in a pub in Norwich, taking up residence for two afternoons in the same annex, on the same sofa, first rattling it off and then gently massaging it until it fitted nicely. I talked about relationship protocols, 80s synths and Fat Boy Slim with a fellow imbiber. I was mildly propositioned, and ate some good pie. And chocolate eggs. When leaving Norwich the next day, I ended up talking to the passenger of the car to my right … he had also been in the pub the previous day. A talker, and no mistake.

I drove home. I broke down. I was towed to a service station in Brentford that seemed not only to be a hub for various amounts of nefariousness, but also boasted its own japanese restaurant. I got home late.

The world has been rather skewed ever since.

And yet I cannot seem to put pen to paper.

Or decide what to do. Why? Because other people are about to make decisions which will radically change my world … if they don’t simply leave it open.

Well hello there

One can only assume that you’ve clicked on a link from Mind Your Language and found yourself here. You are most welcome. I hope you find something interesting to peruse. As a new blog can be a bit much, all those posts, all that old material, and all that flim-flammery, I thought I’d make life a little easier and just give you a quick run-down.

I’m a writer and academic who happens to have Parkinson’s. These particular facts dominate my output. Here are a few of my favourite pieces.

They also serve – on the great if interminably frustrating game of cricket

BlackBeard’s Last Voyage – what my latest fictional offering looks like

‘What is truth?’ asked Pilate – on justice, and what it means

I think, therefore … ooh, what’s that shiny thing? – on the ironies of writing about not being able to write

Release the inner slut – on responses to my raving over Love and other drugs on the Prospect blog

Cartesian, moi? – on how PD separates the mind from the body

Whole lotta shakin … not going on – on PD and its erasure of the personality

There’s a lot more, and you might like to read my first piece on Parkinson’s for the Independent, a musing on Facebook and death  in Prospect, or maybe just read an interview with Peter HammillJoe Satriani or Richard Thompson.

Thanks for dropping by, and I hope it proved a nice diversion from a damp monday morning!

Small things

Something strange is currently happening. For some reason (I know not whether it’s PD related or not) the very tip of my left-hand index finger is now numb. It’s spreading very, very slowly. It’s very odd.

This is odd, but has strange ramifications.

I don’t teach the guitar any more. This is not because I can no longer teach, but because when I pick up the guitar in front of people, I get a little crestfallen. Every so often, however, I do give a bit of instruction.

On saturday, while waiting to perform yet another short innings, I gave the captain’s daughter a sort of masterclass. She was nervous, and played some barre chords quite shakily. Hey, I hate the things too, and they’re not a lot of use. I gave her a few hints and tips and then thought sod this. I took the guitar and played a couple of things. I couldn’t play a c major chord. My first finger wouldn’t play ball, because I couldn’t feel the string. Oops.

So I retuned the guitar, showed her how to make a glorious sound with minimum fuss and nonsense, and only a couple of fingers. When she finally realised how simple things could be, she simply took off. Rhythm on the money, notes great, lovely sound.

But it was her mother who really summed it up when she looked at me and smiled. The smile of someone watching their child happy.

Now that’s what teaching is about.

An embarrassment of online shopping opportunities

As I have mentioned once or twice, I published a book recently. It’s an academic book, a collection of essays dealing with the negotiations which surrounded the publishing of books in the Jacobean period. Roughly. It’s very pretty, and has some good stuff in it. Like most academic books, however, it is not really for consumption other than by libraries. And like most academic books, its print run was 200.

Now, I’m not one to moan about publicity, but if you google it, you will find this book for sale at:

Amazon, WHSmith, The Guardian Books, EBay, Ashgate, Waterstones, Lundhumphries, Bookdepository, Wordpower, Gowerpublishing, visionhogiru, betterread, overstock, Blackwell, adlibris …

And yes, I got bored. That’s 15 listings without trying desperately hard. For a book with 200 copies in circulation.

I’m sure this says something meaningful about the internet and replication of information leading to the diminution of knowledge, but I can’t tell, because my brain hurts.

Rebekah Brooks – what Freud might have said

So, Ms Brooks was ‘on holiday’ when the whole sorry business transpired. Mobile phones plainly hadn’t been invented, then.

If she had read Freud’s Jokes and their relationship to the unconscious she would have had the perfect defence:

‘Firstly, I never ordered the hacking of the phone, Secondly, the phone had already been hacked when I ordered it, and thirdly, the phone was unhacked when I rescinded my order to hack phones.’

So much more convincing than ‘I was on holiday’, don’t you think?

A prize to anyone who can mix holidays and Freud effectively.

See Freud, Klein and Dr. Seuss.