The Meaning of Life

1996 - a Bon Jovi concert that I didn’t want to attend. Jon Bon Jovi swaggered in tight trousers. He smiled at the crowd and they waved and whooped. He gave a sigh and wiped sweat from his Botox brow. His smile flashed from screens either side of the stage. Thank you. It’s great to be here. Thank you. Yeah. Alright. And now – he chuckled – here’s one that you should know.

I was baffled, as I had been for most of the concert. My girlfriend had wanted to go and it became apparent that there no way out of it. Two hours into Bon Jovi I was wondering when it would end. I’d been confused and hoping no one spotted me as a fraud even though I had bought a book with me. The crowd fell silent as Jon stepped forward and took a breath. I leant over to my girlfriend and said, louder than I intended - What is this song?

I looked around and saw 30 pairs of eyes staring and scowling at me. Fortunately before anyone could think to hairspray me to death Jon started wailing about his steel horse and I managed to shrink into the back ground. The folk in the crowd adored him, screamed for him, applauded him. One girl, draped in black and smelling of patchouli oil, screamed out – This is the meaning of my life.

2 hours plus of poodle pop was the pinnacle of her week, possibly even life. Others seemed to agree, lighters were waved, lips were kissed, couples embraced, pendulous breasts exposed with badly drawn tattoos smudged onto them. An overwhelming scent of sweat and flatulence filled the air - this was the girl’s moment, her “meaning of my life.”

And that meaning, that purity, she found in Milton Keynes of all places.

Being atheist means I don’t care for a meaning of life. From my view there is no meaning, nor is there a higher purpose. You’re born, you grow, drink and eat and sleep, get older, make jokes, and see your hair turn grey. Along the way you try not to offend more than a few and come the long dark cup of camomile you try and expire before it gets cold. But I've realised that there is a meaning to life beyond my anti death penalty and ethical atheist views.

It began in 2004 with an argument with my wife. We were well into our white wines, a Killers album and a pack of Marlboro Lights. We were arguing about Prince Harry painting aboriginal art and for one of the few times in my married life I won the argument. Drunk and joyous and joyously drunk the night faded away and I passed out. The next morning I woke up unaware that my wife was now pregnant.

A week or so later she met me in a café near work and the following transpired (this is not word for word - the jokes have been changed to make me seem funnier.)

WIFE

I’m pregnant. I did the test this morning.

ME

Pregnant? Uhm - do we get you a doctors appointment? Get your uterus scanned?

WIFE

I know my body, I know I’m pregnant. Do you even know what a uterus is?

ME

I know your body; I didn’t know you were pregnant. And of course I know what a uterus is.

WIFE

Do you have anything to say?

                                                                                     ME

I love you?

WIFE

About me being pregnant. Since when is I love you a question?

ME

You’re really pregnant? This isn’t a joke? Of course it isn’t, you never tell jokes.

WIFE

I am really pregnant.

ME

Why do you never tell jokes?

WIFE

OK – joke - what happened to the couple who decided that life was going to fast and they should have a baby?

ME

They drank lots of cask wine. Cask wine arguments and a cask wine baby making. This baby will be born hung over.

WIFE

They got pregnant. With a baby.

ME

Pregnant. With a baby - pregnant. That’s not very funny.

WIFE

PREGNANT.

ME

Wow.

WIFE

What do you think a uterus does?

ME

Uhm – sucks up all the stuff, uhm? Kinda like the Alien Queen laying eggs, but backwards?

And we were pregnant - there was now a clock and it was counting down from 9 months to Birth. That night, as she slept with cells dividing and growing I lay wide awake in panic. Outside the window 2 girls were peeing -

GIRL

Stop.

GIRL 2

Why?

GIRL

I need a widdle.

I listened to the sound of water.

GIRL 2

Gross, it’s on your shoes.

We lived on a short cut between the pubs and hostels. Some nights we’d be serenaded by vomiting, others by fighting or copulating, tonight it was urinating.

                                                                         GIRL – (farts wetly)

That’s better.

There were so many things we needed; things that I figured you couldn’t be a parent without. Like a car. How were we going to get to the hospital without a car? We couldn’t catch the bus to delivery ward.

We needed clothes. The last 3 pairs of jeans I’d had came from a gay friend in London who worked in fashion. They were nice but not really made for my kebab friendly physique.

We needed a bigger flat. The place we had was a cockroach nest. At night the floor was seething with six legged egg carrying insects. In the morning roaches were in our air tight muesli containers. Several times that year I chomped down on roach eggs and roach legs.

Somehow with all of this stress my wife could sleep. I churned and turned over issue after issue. Beyond anything else what were we going to call it? At the time I liked Daschell.

WIFE (in her sleep)

That’s a stupid name

But Daschell was a stupid name. Who would we tell? Where would we have it? Was there a hospital nearby? I realised there must be a hospital nearby. Of course there was. We weren’t the first people to be pregnant. But what would I do if my kids bullied? I have always been crap at fighting, how was I going to beat up the scaffolding father of the kid that bullies my kid.

Parenting was going to be a nightmare. I’m speculated on karate. Something I could learn quickly. Wax on and off, paint some fences. I realised that if we had a car I could skip the karate and just drive away. Really fast. My tyres would spin and I’d race away. Hopefully without forgetting my wife and baby as the last of the V8 Interceptors headed out to the horizon.

Shortly after the long long night of the Dad to Be I got in trouble for complaining that I wasn’t threatening. We had a trainee midwife who followed us through the pregnancy, and the first time we met -

TRAINEE MIDWIFE

Thank you for doing this.

ME

It was a pleasure. Cask wi -

WIFE

Will you stop calling this a cask wine baby?

ME

Well, what can I call it?

WIFE

You could call HIM by HIS name

TRAINEE MIDWIFE

You know the gender? And you’ve named Baby already?

ME

Boy baby. Named it after my dog.

TRAINEE MIDWIFE

Your dog?

ME

Beautiful dog. Bassett hound.

TRAINEE MIDWIFE

I don’t think I have met anyone who named their child after their dog

ME

I’ve never met a trainee midwife before.

TRAINEE MIDWIFE

How are you finding it all so far? The appointments going as you expected?

ME

Midwives are mad.

WIFE

They are not.

ME

They all have these thousand yard stares. Like mannequins with rubber gloves.

WIFE

They do not.

ME

They only notice women. A man walks past, not a flicker, show them a women and they light up like arcade machines.

WIFE

You think this should be about you?

ME

Well I’d like a little more inclusion; make the occasional bit of eye contact. I am Dad Man Walking.

WIFE

So you want them to talk to you? Even though you hate people?

TRAINEE MIDWIFE

You hate people?

ME

I don’t hate all people. Midwives are just weird, that one we saw today had Alien Queen hair.

                                                                         TRAINEE MIDWIFE
                                                              That sounds like Jess, she’s lovely.

WIFE

What the hell is Alien Queen hair? I don’t even know what that means. You said my uterus was like an Alien Queen.

TRAINEE MIDWIFE

Your uterus?

ME

Ignore her, she has placenta brain.

WIFE

I do not

ME

She can’t remember the word for window.

TRAINEE MIDWIFE

That’s not unusual during pregnancy.

ME

It’s great; I’m winning arguments ‘cause she can’t remember half her vocabulary.

TRAINEE MIDWIFE

This may not be the best time to be arguing.

ME

But I’m winning.

TRAINEE MIDWIFE

So what is this about the midwives ignoring you?

ME

Ignoring may be too strong a word, but they seem way more woman focussed then me.

WIFE

He’s upset. When they asked me in the early meeting if he ever hit me I laughed.

ME

Laughed!

TRAINEE MIDWIFE

That’s not a bad thing. That’s lovely.

ME

Pregnancy is neutering enough as it is. Can’t I have a bit of threat about me?

TRAINEE MIDWIFE

Pregnancy is neutering? Surely it’s anything but?

ME

Nope. Obviously it shows I was virile but that’s all past tense now.

TRAINEE MIDWIFE

Past tense?

ME

Now I make tea and massage feet.

WIFE

When do you do that?

ME

I fluff pillows and watch romantic comedies.

WIFE

You like romantic comedies. You get fuzzy over Sandra Bullock

ME

I do anti-man things.

WIFE

Anti-man? Being a father to be is anti man?

ME

I haven’t killed anything since you announced you were pregnant. No bears, no rhinos

WIFE

What did you kill before I was pregnant?

ME

It’s not what I killed; it’s that I could kill.

WIFE

Why am I having your child?

ME

Cask wine, candles and The Lost Boys soundtrack.

TRAINEE MIDWIFE

So to get over this lack of killing you want people to think you beat your pregnant wife?

ME

At least a slight concern that I may beat my pregnant wife? I have tattoos. Facial hair. Testosterone.

TRAINEE MIDWIFE

To be seen as a wife beater, let alone a pregnant wife beater, is not a good look.

ME

I was a Goth once, now I’m white jumpers and home furnishings

WIFE

We do not own any white jumpers. And what home furnishings?

ME

We just bought a washing machine

WIFE

You hate going to the laundrette, we’re having a baby, we need to do laundry.

ME

When I was a Goth I never did laundry.

WIFE

No, your mum did it for you. You were the softest Goth I have ever heard of.

ME

I’ve saw Def Leppard in concert.

TRAINEE MIDWIFE

(Laughs) That’s not heavy metal. Or Goth. Actually that’s quite sad.

ME

See, even the trainee midwife thinks I’m harmless.

TRAINEE MIDWIFE

No, I just don’t think Def Leppard are heavy metal.

ME

With the next baby I want to be so threatening that the midwives don’t even ask, they just place a big tick in the Potential Wife Beating Bastard box

Time contracted and me wife became huge. We stock piled nappies, we did classes on knitted uteruses and got to know other people who must have argued about Prince Harry. When my wife hit the 9 month mark we had The Chat. The tabletop was covered in tin foil containers. My wife was ploughing into her food, not batting an eyelid at the strength of the curry she was eating to try and scare the baby into birth. I swigged a beer in a manly style.

WIFE

I don’t think you should drink any more.

ME

You don’t think me what now?

WIFE

I might go into labour any time.

ME

You’re never going into labour. You’re just going to get bigger and bigger and I’m going to have to learn to cook curry to save us on take away.

She started crying. I looked from my beer to my wife to my beer to my wife and I realised, possibly for the first time, that she was really pregnant.

And then we were there, in labour. And the cervix wasn’t ripe.

MIDWIFE

The cervix isn’t quite ripe

Told you so

WIFE

I – I – I - can’t.

ME

D’you need more gas?

WIFE

Not working

MIDWIFE

Breathe through it, come on.

TRAINEE MIDWIFE

You can do this.

ME

She’s been awake for 2 days solid now. Do you want the epidural?

TRAINEE MIDWIFE

You can do without it .

WIFE

EPIDURAL!

ANAESTHETIST

OK, I need you to understand the risks and give consent for this procedure.

                                                                                   ME

I do, I read up on this during the pregnancy. You don’t need to explain anything.

TRAINEE MIDWIFE

You read up on Epidurals?

                                                                         

                                                                                    ME

Nope. She’s been awake for 2 days, she’s exhausted and I wanted things to move a little quicker then your man looked like he was going to move.

TRAINEE MIDWIFE

I have no idea what to say to that.

ME

Me neither. I’m fucking terrified.

TRAINEE MIDWIFE

You’re doing fine.

ME

I’d be doing better if I wasn’t hung over.

TRAINEE MIDWIFE

You’re not are you?

ME

Nah. But I can feel that hangover I am going to have when this is over.

And then he was born – well that’s 27 hours of labour condensed into a few paragraphs but you get the idea.

Our son was born.

For 6 months after his birth time slowed. Every day was so detailed, so exact. He grew fat and chewy. He pee’d on the carpet. He gurgled and loved lights being turned on and off and at some point I thought of the patchouli smelling girl at Bon Jovi and hoped she had a baby, even if she called him Jon and bought him Botox for his birthday.

The closest thing to a meaning of life that I have found is parenting. I know in about 4 or 5 years my son will stop letting me hug him, stop curling up on the sofa with me to watch The Iron Giant but for now he curls into me while his sister curls into the other side and for a few blissful moments they don’t fight.

They are the warm centre to everything we do. We’ve taught them to swim, to ride bikes, to read and write and chew their food and wipe their behinds and laugh at farts.

They’re everything.

They're beautiful.

They're ours.

If they're not the meaning of life they certainly give life meaning.

Hear me discourse

There weren’t any atheists parenting in 1970’s England. The default setting was Christian and families followed that line, it was almost like being union members, to be a non member would have sparked off rumours about you being different and therefore a bit untrustworthy.

There were Jewish and Catholic kids in my school but the majority of us loved the nativity and the baby Jesus was a hard and fast fact, even if some of his super powers were a little uncertain. We prayed every morning, sang hymns about dancing with the devil on our backs and ate chocolate eggs at Easter to celebrate dentists and agonising crucifixion.

The local church was running the Summer School during the 6 week holiday and I went along one year. We were welcomed by beaming adults with guitars chairs and scraping on wooden floorboards. The room was decorated with cartoon pictures of a smiling bearded Noah and happy giraffes about to go for a jolly bob on the ocean.

The supervisors gave us all a picture of Jesus to colour and we did bible stories and games. Towards the end of the day members of each table would go to the wall to colour in the large rainbow that showed the points we’d scored during the day for knowing about frankincense, Eden and how 5,000 hungry party attendees got fed back in da day before frozen party pies.

At the end of the rainbow was a starburst and the aim was to be the first colour to reach the explosion. I coloured in the yellow band for my table and thought I was having fun.

One of the supervisors, in a shirt and tie armed with a clipboard and thick scent of belched Nescafe, came and knelt by me. Hey. He smiled and I smiled back, Jesus had me for a rainbow. Having fun? I nodded. Can you bring a Bible with you tomorrow? I said I would try. I wasn’t sure if we had one. He smiled and burped more Nescafe.

I went home and asked for a Bible. The only one we had belonged to my mother and was something she had since school when she’d been the Virgin Mary in a nativity. It was too precious for me to take to Summer School so we dug up a book of bible stories that I had.

Next day at Summer School I sat back at the yellow table. The supervisor came over during the good morning happy sing-along and asked us all to get our bibles out. I pulled out my big book of bible stories and he stopped, picking it up and looking at it. No bible? I said I didn’t have one. He thumbed through the book, looking at Samson standing between the two pillars and Moses parting the Red Sea and he made a tsk sound. He led me over to another table and I sat with a few other kids there. There’s a special job we need doing that you guys can help us with.

For the day we made paper chains while the kids with bibles ran around and shouted the answers to quiz questions, guaranteeing their place in heaven and – to my frustration – coloured in the rainbow. I really liked colouring in, actually I still do.

After 5 hours of making paper chain decorations we were allowed to sit with the other kids and listened to bible stories, all of which I knew from my bible book. Hell and damnation, pestilence and famine, drowned animals and big boats. Then we prayed and went to get our coats to go home. The supervisor stopped the paper chain gang and asked us again if we could bring in a bible tomorrow, we all said we’d try.

Next day, I still had my bible stories and a note from my mum explaining that the bible at home was a precious family object hence I could not bring it. 2 of the 4 kids I had been making paper chains with now had dusty old dog eared bibles they had found down the back of their families faith. That day 3 of us made paper chains.

I handed in my mums note and the Supervisor read it and said only A bible is a precious object indeed before walking away to the coffee.

I watched someone colour in the rainbow and spent the day with the taste of adhesive gum in my mouth. We joined the group for bible stories again and we went home. I finished out the week, by the last day there were only two of us left without bibles, and we got a special thank you on Friday for all our hard work making paper chains. The kids clapped us and I felt happy again until I saw each and every kid clutching their bibles had smiling sun stickers on their t shirts. I wanted a smiling sun sticker.

The smiling shirt and tie with clipboard held the door and looked forward to seeing us next week. I didn’t go back.

In 2007 Bear and I sat on the headland watching the moon. He was 18 months old and the moon  was turning blood red during an eclipse. He was coo-ing at the moon as I told him I would make it change colour. People were sat around us having picnics and sipping wine. A man in a tie with a clipboard stood and started shouting about God’s wrath, about the end of days. He pointed skywards and then at the sea side town I live in. He railed about the faithless and heaven. I covered Bears ears for a moment and thought about making paper chains and watching other kids colour the rainbow.

Mate, I have a kid here. He pointed at moon and shouted again about hell. Mate, please, take it somewhere else. He promised us brimstone.

A dreadlocked backpacker walked over to the devout man and whispered in his ear. Pointed to Bear and I. Pointed to the crowd. The man took a deep breath and opened his mouth to continue his tirade. The dreadlocked man jolted, as though raising a fist, and the pious penitent man did verily...fuck off. A small cheer went up amongst the godless astronomers, wine drinkers and parents and we went back to watching the moon turn crimson as I kissed Bears ear.

Now I wear a tie and a shirt. I carry papers with me and surround myself with children every Wednesday morning. I go to Bear’s school and in the playground I feel like a Christian, like I should pull out a guitar and start singing that Jesus loves my Calf Muscles and wants me for a paper chain maker. I don't sing, I teach Ethics as the alternative to Scripture. I sit with a class of 8 and 9 year olds and chat philosophy.

I am the anti faint instructor, hear me discourse.

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What do you want?

In Teneriffe I walked from a night club reasonably depressed about my choice of holiday destination while the folks I was on holiday carried on dancing to Rolf Harris songs. I’d given my money to my flat mate as he’d run out for the night and had nothing on me other than a packet of Marlboro.

A girl came up to me.

What do you want? You want a good time?

No thanks.

C’mon, come have a good time.

Nah, it’s ok.

It’s cheap.

I shrugged - I have no cash on me at all, I gave it all to me mate.

She smiled at me and nodded - You have cigarettes?

I do.

I offered her one but she shook her head - I suck for cigarettes.

I think I laughed. I’m really not sure. I was half drunk and sleepy. The sentence sounded musical, almost poetic.

C’mon, come with me.

I shook my head and turned away.

Wait - She put her hand on my arm - I suck for one cigarette.

I had a brief moment of believing I must look pretty damn dapper and hell, maybe she really did think I was cute at 2am on the empty road leading back to my villa. I held the cigarettes out to her again.

No worries, you can just have a cigarette.

She shook her head and frowned at me - Suck and then we both smoke. She was pulling me toward an alley. I glanced up at the right time to see two figures step back in the shadows. She saw me notice them and took her hand from my arm. She smiled as though I’d stumbled upon nothing more than a comedy prank rather than an attempted mugging. She took a cigarette from my pack, shrugged and walked away.

A year later a colleague said he was going to Malaysia with a mate and asked if I wanted to come. Being in my twenties and having a disposable income for once I booked a ticket. My colleague had given me his e mail address, which I had written down incorrectly, and his flight number. At Kualar Lumpar airport I failed to find them. I stood for 4 hours waiting at Arrivals and they hadn’t appeared. Eventually I had no choice but to head into the city and find a place to sleep. It turned out my friends were metres from me at a bar waiting for me to appear but I didn’t know that until I found them 3 days later, by which time they had reported me missing to the British Embassy.

For those 3 days I’d eaten boiled chicken sausage and not liked it. I couldn’t fathom how to order anything else, I tried mime and pointed to other plates but I always ended up with another plate of white sausage.

I finally tracked my friends down and we arranged to meet through a mutual friend in England by e mail. I told them my hotel and they knew it and said they’d be there. The hotel was across the street from the café I was in so I crossed the road and thought I’d sit on the steps and wait for them. I couldn’t miss them; they would have to walk right past me to get to the bar. What I didn’t know was they had been in the café next to mine, were already in the hotel and already at the bar. I sat, and I waited, and I waited.

A cab pulled up and the driver leant out of his window - Young man young lady?

I really don’t know why, but I thought he was asking my gender. It didn’t occur to me that I had a goatee beard and a grade 2 hair cut. I thought he was a confused cab driver who had pulled over with no more intention than asking what sex I was. So I shouted back in moderate annoyance YOUNG MAN OF COURSE.

He looked delighted and sped off. I carried on scanning the street for my friends, who were at the bar scanning the lobby for me and on their third beer. Moments later the cab reappeared and pulled up and the back door opened. Inside was a young man. He was wearing only a t shirt which he lifted to show me his penis. He was gesturing to me with one hand and with the other he was caressing himself. My jaw fell as the jigsaw in my head fell into place and I realised what was transpiring.

Young man young man, you come now. Come come quickly. I stood and backed up, saying No repeatedly. The young man was still smiling at me, still stroking himself, still beckoning me. I stumbled for the door of the hotel and saw my friend at the bar. I sprinted inside and heard the cab screech away.

Where the fuck have you been? they asked as I sat down. I tried to figure in my head how I would explain I had just accidentally hired a male prostitute but the words wouldn’t come. On that same trip I took a photograph of the air traffic control tower as I thought it was a temple and left my passport in a toilet.

Years later in Phnom Penh, while my wife was at Kampong Cham, I was walking to the Western Union to get money. I was a single western male so I expected a certain attention and wasn’t surprised when a moto driver pulled up beside me.

You want girl?

No thanks.

You want boy?

No thanks. I was proud of myself for that one. I wasn’t falling into the nude young man trap again.

You want smoke smoke?

No thanks.

You want……. – he smacked his arm repeatedly as though raising a vein.

No thanks.

You want shoot gun?

No thanks.

You want throw grenade?

No thanks.

You want fire rocket? – he made a whooshing sound – Blow up cow?

No thanks.

He stopped the bike and blocked my path.

What do you want?

Monivong Boulevard hummed past us. The air was dusty and hot; I had travelled three hours by coach and coped with a town called Scun where everyone on my bus bought carrier bags full of fried giant spiders that were handed through the windows. They devoured them, bursting abdomens on their lips and slurping innards like cream eggs. For once on my own overseas I knew where I was, where I was going, how to get back - and there was no sign of any nude young men waving at me. I was quite pleased with myself.

What do you want? He asked me again after allowing me time for internal reflection.

I want to buy my wife some dumplings and go home. He waved me off and swerved back into traffic as another driver shouted at me. Mister, mister you look like Beckham. You have big nose. You big nose Beckham. I waved my thanks for his astute observation, got money, bought dumplings, and took my Beckham good looks back to Kampong Cham.  

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Divorcing my wife

For Christmas I may give my wife a divorce. She tells me that marriage is embarrassing and is contrary to who she feels she is so if the tax office and Department of Immigration have no issues we might get a divorce. Nothing will change, me wife will still celebrate the rock and the roll of me and I’ll still buy her cookbooks, I just won’t be able to call her me wife any more. It also occurs to me that if we do get divorced we can possibly reverse the nonsense that was our wedding.

This week as a workmate has become engaged. When folk tell me they are engaged I stumble over what to say – congratulations on still being with the person you were with last week doesn’t seem to quite cut it. She has the ring and the smile and the discomfort of folk saying Ohh and Ahh a great deal as they ask for details. I wandered past the discussion and heard someone point out that I was one of the few happily married people they knew.

It’s hard to find happily married people but he’s happily married.

I nodded and shrugged at the same time - I am, I guess I am.

I was asked what marriage means to me and without thinking I said Socks. Marriage is having socks.

When I was single. I’d have maybe 4 functional pairs, 3 dysfunctional pairs and a few random lonely mismatching socks that I’d had since school. One morning I found my housemate had yanked my laundry from the machine after the rinse cycle rather than the spin and scattered my clothes on the clothes dryer. This was one of the many reasons why my other house mates and I trained the cat to throw up in his room by feeding is tinned salmon and shutting it in his room until we heard the Greeecccc Greeecccc sounds of its stomach coming up. His boasting that his girlfriend had a perfectly symmetrical vagina, his taking money from the bill bowl for his food and cigarette needs, never flushing his deposits down the toilet and my wet clothing, lead us to feel that second hand cat salmon on his pillow was a reasonable consequence.

My socks were unwearable but movies came to the rescue, as for me they often have. I remembered Uncle Buck microwaving laundry and dashed my socks onto a plate. High power for 15 seconds should do, but when I popped the door a cloud of foot smelling steam belched out. My socks were now both hot and wet so I put them in for another 15 seconds. This lead to more foot steam and my socks being molten, but dry. I pulled them on and felt my feet burn, jammed on my shoes and left for work.

On the walk to work I felt something give, a powdering around my toes. At my desk I pulled off my shoes and found on both feet my sock extremities had disintegrated. The tips of all my toes were showing and I could see more crumbling happening before my eyes. My black socks were turning brown and in a moment of unutterable stupidity I grabbed a stapler and closed the holes with 5 staples on each sock and sprinted off to a meeting.

Since marrying I have always had socks. I don’t credit this to my wife; there is just something about being in a couple, especially when you have kids, that makes something as basic as socks achievable.

To the newly engaged girl I also said that marriage is embarrassing.

My wife asked me to marry her while sat on the toilet. I was in the bath. She was only sat; I didn’t give a tearful Yes to the romantic sounds of pee. Our reasoning for marriage went no further then my need for an Australian visa. Her proposal was a shrugged we may as well just get married then huh? Pleased with our decision, my to-be-wife wearing a green plastic ring that was on the cistern (was it God placing it there to bless our love? - .no, it was a relic from Christmas and a testament to our housekeeping) we went out and got drunk on Veuve Clicquot. Drinking lead to phone calls and soon Australia knew about our engagement while English family was left in the dark. Australia seemed safe to tell as we didn’t think they would come to the wedding.

They did.

It got out of all control, weddings stop being about the couple and become about everyone and everything else. Everyone wants to come, to stare, to eat, give advice, take photos, giggle, dance and drink. We were lean with our invitations but we still ended up with considerably more attendees than intended.

Our original plan was 2 witnesses and a curry afterwards. We ended up with 50+. As soon as people knew the wedding grew. And grew.

After socks and embarrassment I said relief.

It’s nice to be married in some ways. Marriage means you have a bosom in your home. I said it was good to be in a team, especially when you have kids. I taught my son to pee in pot plants. My wife taught him to make pasta. I taught my daughter to deride her grandparents, my wife taught her to make them birthday cards. Having a wife means always having someone to talk to about my stool consistency. It’s nicer to be with someone then have a concerned liver and be living on me own aged 38. The marriage part of it matters the least though, it's the having someone that is the great part, especially if they feign interest in your stool consistency.

Knowing then what we know now it would be extremely unlikely that we would have married. If we had, it would have been 2 mates as witnesses and a curry afterwards. More likely we’d have saved the cash and gone to Morocco. It made no difference to my Australian visa or our relationship. We’d still have had the kids we just wouldn’t have that pointless piece of paper – which I signed on the Wife line so technically my wife is my husband.

So yeah, maybe we’ll get divorced, and if we do we’ll celebrate with a curry and 2 mates.

That'll do pig

The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters. God said, Let there be light; and there was light.

Meanwhile, in a dark and moody megalopolis - Bruce Wayne had it tough. He fell down a well and was terrified by bats. His parents took him to the opera and he watched them die in an alley during a mugging. He grew up angry, eager for vengeance. He pulled on a suit and mask and took to the streets to hit people.

God made life. From the elegant to the ugly, from the cuddly to the poisonous, he made it all. The tiny bacteria in our bowels, he made them. The nits in our hair, he lovingly crafted them. The worms that wriggle and tickle and tickle inside us, he made them. Salmonella, e-coli, Ebola, yeast infections, he made them all so thanks be to God for a paritcularly nasty and embarassing rash I had back in the 90's. He forged the fjords, sculpted the savannah, made mangoes, and stingrays and then, out of a clump of mud, he made man. Realising man was lonely he snapped out a rib and created Woman when possibly a wide screen television would have been enough.

Meanwhile on a Chinese mountain - the powers of the Sun and the Moon all worked upon a certain rock - old as Creation, And it magically became fertile. That first egg was named Thought, Tathagata Buddha, the Father Buddha, said, 'With our thoughts we make the world.' Elemental forces caused the egg to hatch, from it then came a stone Monkey. The nature of Monkey was irrepressible!

Woman. Evil nasty woman. Woman sashayed around in fig leaves and tempted man into eating an apple. This made God mad and basically ruined everything. Woman was punished with agonising childbirth, which means epidurals must be the devils work. Out of the garden man and woman were cast and from there it was downhill. God rested on his angry laurels for a while until he flooded the world, killing everyone aside from Noah and the animals.

Meanwhile in grainy footage - a crack commando unit was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn't commit. These men promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Los Angeles underground. Today, still wanted by the government they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them - maybe you can hire…

It got worse. Mayhem and murder. A virgin on a donkey. Dogs and cats living together. A carpenter husband limping his virgin to a stable where the cows (busy lowing), the goats, the chickens, the lobsters and anchovies watched as the baby was born.

Meanwhile you really need to know - you're dealing with an expert in guerrilla warfare, with a man who's the best, with guns, with knives, with his bare hands. A man who's been trained to ignore pain, ignore weather, to live off the land, to eat things that would make a billy goat puke. In Vietnam his job was to dispose of enemy personnel. To kill! – so Colonel Trautmen sums up John Rambo and so John Rambo goes, romping and maiming in the name of peace, for the love of a dead girl with a jade necklace.

The boy grew. He raised Lazarus and fed the hungry with loaves and fishes. He fed his BFF’s with his blood and flesh at the first goth banquet. After irking Rome with his crazy ways he was nailed to a cross beside Barabbas. Barabbas was freed after an X Factor style vote, and Jesus was left to die. He resurrected himself after his blood was caught in the Holy Grail (to give Indiana Jones something to find centuries later) as John Wayne stood at the base of the cross saying Awe, that truly was the son of God. He then rocketed into the sky in a flying Delorian while Centurion Tannen watched in confusion. Christmas followed, along with Coco Cola and a jolly fat man in a red suit with kids on his knee. Amen.

Hero back stories. Batman, Monkey, Rambo, The A Team and Jesus, which one seems the most ridiculous?.

If Jesus were written today he’d be a miniseries. There would be special effects and catchy theme music. There would be adverts for episodes you just can’t miss and twists you will not believe. The bad guy would smoulder and likely be played by Kiefer Sutherland. The show would also be derided as unbelievable but would be a guilty pleasure. Come Season 2 Jesus would be a lifeguard running on water in slow motion with chest hair matted in the shape of a cross. As stories go it has all the components, magic, sandals, brutality and a cosmic vibe.

Jesus the super hero, he’s no Spiderman but that thing with the water and the wine would be handy.

At the start of each episode he would speak in a gravelly voice - You forgave them lord for they knew not what they did…but you made them feel guilty about everything from then on. Every day dream, every moment of jealousy, every extra biscuit, every illicit thought about Lady Diana showing her knickers, every simple moment of basically being human, you gave them guilt. That’s my superpower. I am Guilt Man here to remind you you're not good enough. Don’t make me cross.

*

Fifi Macaffee told Max Rockatansky - People don't believe in heroes anymore. Well damn them! You and me, Max, we're gonna give them back their heroes!

I am doing my bit to create new heroes, while wearing far less leather than Fifi.

Last year my wife took the kids swimming. Bear dove in and started splashing around and Toes walked to the pool. My wife was slipping her shoes off and flicking back her hair as sunlight shimmered through the window and caressed her soft skin like oil, sparkling on beads of perspiration as silently she whispered her love for me. She was distracted by thoughts of my calf muscles as Toes jumped in the water and immediately sank, forgetting she didn’t have her floatie on. Bear saw her go under and swam to his 3 year old sister, lifting her above the water line and holding her there, shouting to his mum as he did so. He saved his sister and I love him for it.

Toes saw a new boy start at her pre school. He looked lost and uncertain so she took him a stuffed toy and played with him all day. She called him her Darlin' Andy and Andy loved her.

There’s nothing miraculous about my kids in the grand scheme of things. Their origin stories are not out of the ordinary. Their super powers are nothing greater than laughter, being damn cute and being able to do excellent impersonations of zombies. That doesn’t stop me being amazed by them.

Bear and Toes make the world a better place.

I believe in that and little else, but then that’ll do pig, that’ll do.

Cherry Blue

I was in Spain for work teaching accountancy graduates from across Europe for 3 days. It was my first trip overseas and I hadn’t wanted to go. Overseas was big and I get confused very easily. Not long after thie trip to Spain I would be close to being arrested in Malaysia for accidentally hiring a male prositute - there was always the potential for bad occurances.

The course was based in a hotel and in my room was a note from a Senior Partner thanking me for not fraternising with the graduate intake and behaving in a professional manner at all times. Exactly what fraternise meant I didn’t appreciate until a Russian graduate raised her hand during an exam on Day 1.

As they did the exam I was working on a flow chart that laid out the time travel of Marty McFly and proved categorically that Old Biff Tannen could not return to the 2015 that Marty was in once he had given the Sports Almanac to himself in 1955 and changed the future. I had a red circle around the point in 1955 and I was proudly admiring my work when the girl coughed.

I walked over and crouched beside her.

What’s up?

She leant in towards me and whispered.

What is your room number?

Pardon?

Pardon? What is Pardon?

Excuse me?

Excuse you? I asked room number? What is it?

I looked at the question on her screen which did not need my room number.

I need to pass test. What is your room number?

I was very confused. You won’t need tuition; we’ll cover everything over the next few days. I’m sure you’ll pass.

She frowned at me. I not ask for tuition. I ask for room number. I come to your room, then you make sure I pass test.

Fraternise. The Senior Partner was asking me not to bed the graduates.

I was astounded that to pass a test someone would …I imagined saxophone music, blue lighting, cherries, and the kind of underwear that exists in Charlie Sheen’s world. I’m English; my imagination was educated by Benny Hill and James Bond. To want a career with this company so badly you’d bodily bribe a Himmler lookalike struck me as insane. I couldn’t help picturing the Russian girl twenty years later, sitting in a board room telling the latest intake of grads “the best thing I did was nail my IT trainer during the induction so he’d make sure I passed the entrance exam. You want to be an accountant? Well right here’s where you start paying – in sweat.”

I defaulted to sensible and said that by paying attention I was sure she would pass. She looked furious as I went back to Back to the Future. Another girl made a similar suggestion that day, and 2 guys offered money for me to help them pass.

There have been things I really wanted. I wanted to bring my flying Delorian model from the UK but I didn’t figure that rubbing myself against the post office would make the shipping box any bigger. I wanted to win a novel writing contest a year back and perhaps if I had mailed the judging panel bed based prose assuring them of my prowess as a Nazi themed lover I would have placed higher than the top 5, but I doubt it.

I wanted Boobs McGee (my now wife) to live with me in the UK and made promises about moving to Australia, starting a new life in the sun with mangoes, macadamias and surf. It sounds easy, starting over in the sunshine when you were born in the fog, but it’s anything but. We lived in a roach nest; had no money, no flying Delorian, and I spent too long having my backside squeezed by a rotund woman as she signed my time sheets.

I still live with my wife. We eat mangoes and macadamias, and our kids are fantastic. At heart I know my wife likes being called Boobs McGee so I can happily say it can all work out. I understand wanting something, being willing to do anything for it, but a life with my wife seems appropriate thing to relentlessly pursue.

The Russian girl wanted a job in an accountancy firm, she wanted to be on the corporate ladder and meant to get there after being on the trainers bed while someone played the sax outside and the curtains billowed in the moonlight. Her priorities seem way out of whack to me.

So saying - what would she have consented to for something genuinely important?

Blue blue nights and cherries. She must be a Senior Partner by now.

*

The epilogue was home. After Spain I loved being home, everything was where I had left it and the walls and plumbing were delighted at my return. My flatmates were out and I sprawled on the sofa, television on, can of Stella in hand, cigarette pack beside me. London welcomed me back with a call from my girlfriend to tell me she was walking towards my place. She sounded breathless and tense.

There’s someone following me.

What?

There’s someone behind me, he keeps shouting at me.

I ran out of the flat, hammered down the stairs and along the road, seeing her ahead. I saw the man behind her, leering, saying something and. I shouted as loudly as I could. He veered to the left and vanished down a side street. I hugged my girlfriend and she shook tearfully for a moment. Then she started laughing, and then she started laughing harder. She pointed at me and I looked down.

You don’t have any trousers on.

I had sprawled in front of the television in my boxers. I remembered now, chucking my trousers on the floor and breaking English wind in English comfort. I was stood in a work shirt, threadbare red boxer shorts and bare feet on Pentonville Road in London.

I don’t think I looked out of place.


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Shit & Custard - 1983

It wasn’t always illegal to let your dog defecate anywhere and as such my childhood was smeared in brown. Every park was land-mined with mess. Pavements had all colours, yellowy lumpy liquid, brown meaty piles, white chalk fingers and worrying red sticky nuggets. If it was possible for it to pass from the behind of Alsatian, Jack Russel or Labrador then it was somewhere on our street.

During the summer of ‘83 we were hot and we were bored. My family had its holiday in September; the rest of the kids in my street went away in August so there was often a hole in my life where kids I played with were in Tenerife or Spain. Friendship, at this time, was based on availability, which meant I ended up playing with kids I’d normally avoid.

Kevin was the boy I would avoid. Kevin scored high on the Thug Spectrum. His favourite sport was ride by punching. He’d race past and land a fist in your back. He’d play football with us and punch during a tackle to make sure he won the ball. He’d kick, he’d throw stones, and he never lost at a game as he changed the rules to his advantage. He’d boot footballs into the middle distance come the end of the day, laughing about it as he went home and the owner went on the walk to fetch their ball.

With no one else around we fell into each others company. That summer we played war games, hiding cap-guns about our person and shooting each other in Nazi accents. We made explosions, lighting caps by ant nests with stolen matches. We used magnifying glasses to burn ants as they crossed the concrete, then to burn worms and watch as they split open. We did all the things boys did in England before the internet, video cassettes and video games were invented.

There are only so many ants you can immolate though and we soon ran out of things to do. We walked out of our street to the grass hill behind and saw the huge Alsatian that lived on the street behind ours starting to turn in circles as it sniffed the grass. This dog roamed around off the leash, chasing cyclists, stealing footballs, barking at kids and being the menace that childhood requires. It stopped circling and squatted for a long time. We stopped in admiration of the size of the stool it was producing.

Shit

Kevin said it first. It was on the list of words not to say. I said it, but at a lower register. Kevin had, in the past, threatened to tell my parents when I had sworn. We approached this mountain of manure where flies were already circling. It was roughly the size of a dinner plate, a rich ox tail colour with peaks and slopes. It appeared to be breathing.

Kevin looked over at me and then at the mess.

Bet I can get closer to it than you.

He dropped to his hands and knees and held his face about 20 centimetres above and inhaled. He rolled back clutching his throat gasping and the burst into laughter. Laughter is the only lubricant a kids needs to do something stupid so I crouched closer than Kevin and inhaled. I rolled away laughing. Kevin upped the stakes by getting closer, so I got closer still. Within half an hour we were both almost touching it, our noses a whisper from the wet mess. Kevin took his turn, flies landed on his cheek. The heat haze from it gathered round his head. His face was above it., nostrils widening when suddenly I remembered school dinners.

School dinners were a rank affair. Piled masses of loose meat and disappointed vegetables in a nondescript sauce. I had struggled through a main and was now faced with a desert of raisin and sponge pudding with custard. Sat beside me was Kevin who turned to me and shouted -

Watch this.

He reached for the salt and tipped it into my custard and shot his hand into the air. The deputy headmaster turned and stalked towards us.

YES

Sir, he poured salt into his custard.

The deputy scowled at me and pursed nicotine stained lips.

WHAT?

Kevin repeated it as I tried to protest and found my voice had ducked out for a break.

THEN I SUGGEST THE SILLY CHILD EAT HIS DESERT.

Kevin beamed as the deputy pulled a chair up and sat beside me.

EAT.

I tried to speak and was silenced with a bellow that caught the attention of every child in the dinner hall. I picked up my spoon and pushed salted custard and raisins into my mouth until the bowl was finished. By the time I had the last spoonful a crowd of kids were watching and laughing. Kevin laughed the hardest.

I remembered this and my mouth flooded with the taste of the custard. I reached out a hand, stared at the back of Kevin’s head, and with custard on my mind I pushed.

I have occasional misgiving about what it must have been like to have a nose mashed into that mess. I remember Kevin bolting upright wiping furiously at his face fingers coming away smeared. I remember him grabbing grass by the fistful and using it to clean himself. I remember the retching sounds he made. I remember one piece stuck to his lower lip, hanging there. Then I remember his eyes as he looked at me in fury. I remember, in the realisation of what I had done, thinking that this might be a good time to cry.

Instead, I ran and the rest of the day was Huckleberry Finn time. I hid in the blackberry bushes. I crouched behind walls. I kept on the move, ducking around corners and skulking in shadows. I came home via the back door. I wasn’t in trouble, there were no parents hammering at the door with their be-shitted offspring screaming.

Days later Kevin found me and I got bruises and scabs. He didn’t tell anyone why he was hitting me and I didn’t tell anyone what I had done. To have done so would have increased his fury through embarrassment.

Time passed and I guess the smell faded. He’d shove me at school. He’d punch me if I was in range of his bike. I know what salted custard tastes like; he knows what dog shit tastes like. Hopefully there aren’t many other people who know either flavour.

We didn’t play together the following summer, he sat on his side of the street and I sat on mine and we likely both crucified more ants.

(enjoy it? why not tell a friend, claim your complimentary hug any time you're in Sydney)