The cafe with five faces, p.17
The Café with Five Faces, page 17
“Oooh, I can see where this is going!” Lois spotted far more potential embarrassment in this story than anything likely to happen on a train.
“And this time, you’ll probably be right,” Matthew continued. “They really should have suspected something when I had so much trouble getting my ski boots on, but they carried on regardless, and the next thing I knew I was in a ski lift, which went up and up and up. I got out at the top, noticed it was a ‘black slope’, which even I knew meant very, very difficult, and promptly got back in the lift and returned to base level.”
“How delightfully embarrassing,” enthused Lois.
“I then spent a lovely hour or so on the nursery slopes before the owner’s wife, a lovely woman, called me over to have lunch with her. Horse-meat sandwiches and vodka.”
“A tee-totalling vegetarian’s nightmare!” Mark couldn’t go too far wrong in this estimation.
“A quarter of a bottle of vodka later and fortified by some surprisingly nice butties, I took the ski lift back to the top of the black slope.”
“What an idiot!” Lois, despite the mild criticism, was clearly enjoying this story.
“And I came all the way down on the snow; the first few hundred metres were mostly on my backside, granted, but once the slope got less steep and a lot wider, I actually really enjoyed it.”
“Helped no doubt by a quarter of a bottle of Kazakh vodka!” Mark’s verdict was acknowledged as correct, albeit with some admission of stupidity. “I can’t compete with that,” he went on. “I’ve been horse racing in Lebanon as well as South Africa, a rather all-male experience in which every race has five horses, no greater and no fewer, for reasons I simply don’t know.” Lois saw no potential for the humiliation of friends in this story and deflated quite rapidly. “And I went to the Green Point football ground in Cape Town before South Africa rebuilt it for the World Cup – it was a dilapidated excuse for a stadium with the ‘crowd’ of a couple of hundred only allowed to occupy one small part of the stands. Bruce Grobbelaar, the ex-Liverpool goalie, was managing the visiting team. Drab game, though.” As an anecdote, it wasn’t the most engaging. Lois was hungry for more examples of stupidity.
“Well, I went walking in Hong Kong once,” offered Mark, on the assumption walking could be classified as a sport. “It was organised by a hiking club and we were recommended to prepare well and take loads of water. I hate carrying things when I’m walking, so I drank all my water within the first half-hour and then passed out on the top of whatever hill or mountain we were climbing. I had to steal water off the other climbers and then virtually drowned myself in beer when we reached the bar at the end of the day.”
“Both of you – first-degree idiots – confirmed!” Lois was happy, but from that point on, the evening returned to train-level interest and I slowly drifted away to listen in elsewhere.
It was tough to choose a single picture for this chapter, but equally difficult to resist showing a certain bike in Hanoi!
2018: 31: Cape Town: Strange Paths Indeed
Nardy is a game perhaps better known in most of the world as backgammon, but I got my board in Armenia, a gift from a friend in Yerevan, where it is quite definitely nardy, or perhaps nardi, nard, narde or, in Arabic, nardshir, a list of alternatives which questions my use of the word ‘definitely’. In fact, Internet-based research suggests it originated in Persia (modern-day Iran and Armenia share a border) and it is like backgammon, rather than another word for backgammon. As I’m a raw beginner at backgammon and my experience of watching Armenian friends playing nardy requires slow-motion action replays to work out what’s going on, I’m not really in the best position to answer my own mental wonderings. However, I let favoured customers use my board – and supply them with a link to the rules for nardy – or just let them play backgammon, which most do. Mike, James and John are among a very small number who avail themselves of this minor privilege and they do try to play it the Armenian way, albeit at a fraction of the speed and intensity intended.
The game, on this occasion, as always, was accompanied, not by the required focused concentration and rapid hand movements but by the trio’s usual idiosyncratic brand of chat.
“I think I might finally have to accept Pep Guardiola really is a good coach,” said James with a semi-stifled yawn, as he was sitting out the current game.
Mike made the kind of noise which I can’t actually transcribe into graphemes, although it was, apparently, one of begrudging agreement. “It’s taken time, but I can’t really argue. I always thought it was all success handed to him on a plate. When he took over at Barcelona, he had Messi, Iniesta and Xavi all at their peak; I said at the time my grandmother could have won La Liga with that side and she’d been dead since 1974.” He paused to give James and John time to visualise this scenario while he took his next turn on the board. “And then he went to Bayern when they’d just won the treble and although he won league titles and cup competitions, mainly by buying all the German opposition’s best players, he never won them the Champions League. He proved money couldn’t buy instant success by winning nothing in his first season at Manchester City, but since then…”
“Can we try not to think about that?” John, like his friends, supported the red half of Manchester, so this was not a favoured topic and his tone suggested inner pain. “Your turn.”
“He started it,” said Mike, nodding at James, who was now lost in his beer.
“Uh? Oh sorry,” muttered the accused instigator of discord. “My bad.”
“I’ll bar you if you say that again.” I hadn’t said much to that point, but I was quickly inflamed by the previous utterance.
“What? Why?” James was now feeling doubly persecuted, to say nothing of confused.
“There’s bad English and there’s really bad English and then there’s that expression – ‘bad’ is an adjective, not a noun, not now, not ever!” My customers are used to my strong feelings about language and therefore decided not to leave the café on the basis of this verbal tirade.
“Oops! You’re right, of course, but loads of people use it.” Deciding, on the basis of my glowering expression, that resorting to descriptive grammar was not the best means of defence, James decided to cut his losses and change the subject. “Interesting-looking new beer, Kal. Tell me more about it.” He clearly knew how to alter my mood and I was happy to impart what I knew about my latest South African import from the Woodstock Brewery based in the district of Cape Town bearing the same name. What little I could report inspired him to order three bottles of their wonderfully named Happy Pills, which is, not surprisingly, a Pilsner lager.
“How do you find these beers?” asked Mike appreciatively.
“I was in South Africa recently and just happened to walk past this brewery-cum-restaurant on my way to visit friends,” I said. I got out my phone to show them pictures of the brewery exterior and the restaurant interior. It was the unintentionally displayed next picture, however, which raised more interest and caused some hilarity.
“Which of these problems is, or are, yours, Chaelli?” John had a wicked grin and looked around the bar to see if there was anyone else he could share the picture with. Other than one stranger, leaning over a wine barrel and absorbed in his own phone, there was no one.
“Sorry?” I feigned forgetfulness so John, kindly, read the photographed poster out at an unnecessarily loud volume. I had no prior knowledge of his desire to be a town crier.
“‘Penis enlargement, lost lover, financial problems’,” he quoted, noting the stranger looking up at the word ‘penis’, “followed by one phone number. Do you think this is one person with three specialist areas?”
“They could all be related,” suggested James. “If you have a penis enlargement which goes wrong, you lose your lover and if you lose your lover, you have financial problems, at least if your way out is to drown your sorrows.”
“Or you have financial problems so you lose your lover and decide penis enlargement is the only way out?” Mike offered an interesting alternative.
“More likely the penis enlargement caused the financial problems which led to the lover walking out,” John hypothesised.
“Yeah, that’s why I took the pic,” I said defensively. “Not because I needed one of the advertised services, but just because I was intrigued about the links between them.”
“Yeah, yeah,” said one or more of my cynical customers.
The beer and my photograph had the combined effect of diverting attention away from football and language, but, rather inevitably, respite from controversy was fairly short-lived.
“Education’s a funny thing,” mused John, when a few brief seconds of silence allowed a new topic to be broached, although what inspired the choice was anyone’s guess.
“Not sure it’s meant to be,” countered James.
“He’s got a point, though,” said Mike. “I’m not sure if we’re on the same page here, Johnny boy, but while I don’t think anyone can deny the benefits of a good education, it’s surprising where different paths lead us.” James and John offered questions in the form of glances, so Mike continued, which he would have done in any case. “For example, I’ve got a friend who left school, a comprehensive, at sixteen but has the perfect combination of hard work, business acumen and the golden touch to be a millionaire. At the other end of the spectrum, or at least in a different part of it, there are the Old Etonians and the like, students who ‘achieve’ by some so-called status in society rather than through academic ability or guile. I never understand why the government, right or left, is filled with so many of the latter. I went to a very good school, at the time with the best academic record in the country, and got a very good education, but I don’t feel I could run the country because of it. It takes a special skill to make a success of government and being educated at a school like Eton or going to Oxford or Cambridge University alone doesn’t provide that.”
“Are you saying your millionaire friend could do better?” asked James.
“Not at all, actually, or, at least, not necessarily; I mean, Trump filled his government with billionaire businessmen who had always been mega-successful and we’ve seen what sorry states many aspects of that country are now in.”
“Rees-Mogg is one of the old Etonian brigade, isn’t he?” John’s falling intonation clarified that this question was a conversational one rather than a real query.
“Proof, if proof was needed,” said Mike, as if the argument was now irrefutable. “He talks about what’s best for Britain, but how much of Britain does he actually know?” An answer was obviously not needed, so he continued. “I mean, would Jacob Rees-Mogg actually know an ordinary person if he got slapped in the face by one? You know, someone who actually works? I don’t know! He’s unfit and unqualified to talk about ordinary people. Mind you, that could also be said about some members of the parliamentary Labour Party.”
Deep sighs followed the last remark, particularly from James. “Well, does privilege really prevent you from being a socialist?”
“Seemingly not,” answered John, “although it often seems a little hypocritical.”
“Socialism is often seen as trendy, though,” commented Mike, “and Conservatism with a capital ‘C’ as old-fashioned. And privilege and wealth often lead people into popular trends rather than individualism, even if that seems a little counter-intuitive. It’s a bit Common People-esque, you know, the rich kids trying to look good with those less fortunate.”
“I don’t think Jarvis Cocker would share your Conservatism, though.” James laughed.
“Indeed not, but that wasn’t the point,” argued Mike, not seeing the funny side. “You pointed out a few weeks ago that my politics might be down to loyalty; I’m just saying that others’ politics can be down to jumping on bandwagons and trying to fit in.”
“Yeah, strange influences lead us to really big decisions sometimes, don’t they?” The room seemed laden with rhetorical questions.
“Sure do,” agreed Mike. “I’ve supported Manchester United for decades now just because my next-door neighbour who, at the age of seven, knew so much more about the world than the six-year-old me thought he ever would, told me they were the best! And I’ve believed it ever since!”
“Talking of strange paths,” said John, “I only mentioned education because I was watching a rerun of Educating Yorkshire last night – how did that lead into politics and football?” There was no answer to that question either.
The comments brought the conversation full circle. And it was an apt moment for Mike to suddenly declare victory at nardy. I wasn’t sure John had been concentrating as he looked surprised at the game’s end.
“Loser buys,” said Mike, with pretend glee, watching John searching in vain for his wallet.
Nardy set up and ready to play in Armenia.
2018: 32: Budapest: The Right to Unhappiness
There seems to be no future. I stare into the sea. Waters swirl, dark, bottomless. It’s a deep way in with no way out. There’s futility, there’s a hopelessness which penetrates so deeply inside as the waves drive forward, on and on, and time moves inexorably forward, but never back. It’s an ever-decreasing circle of despair as I gaze into the waves, knowing the tide will go out as surely as it will come in, but not knowing or even caring if my despair can ever be swept away so inevitably. The sea could carry me away with one simple leap into oblivion; or maybe it could draw my pain and take that into its unfathomable depths, allowing me the chance to rebuild and move forward. But I have this image of what was and while this persists, I am tied to the past, thinking only of what I had and not of what I could have. As long as that image continues, I know I can’t let go, I can’t let go.
And then I have to return home, to our home, not to one I ever envisaged living in alone. She is everywhere, from the furniture we bought together to the personal possessions which draw the eye, however much I try to avoid them, and even to the used spoons left lying around in the kitchen. My eye roves to the phone on the floor and my hand is virtually glued to my mobile, although neither will ring with anything meaningful. Any calls I make will be as unwanted as I seem to be unloved. The TV is my only company but even then, there are programmes we enjoyed together which now seem like salt being rubbed into gaping wounds in my body and soul.
“That’s taken you a week.” Jen’s reaction, I felt, could have been a little more supportive and sympathetic.
“It’s quite deep,” I commented, pretty vacuously. “In places.”
Jimez looked as despairing as his text, be it due to dissatisfaction with himself or with our rather dismissive comments or, more likely, a bit of both. Unfortunately, discouragement was something he took all too easily.
“How much wine did you drink while writing this?” asked Jen, concentrating more on making sure every crumb of her cake had been attached to her sticky fingers before they entered her mouth. I don’t think she was aware of the possible insinuation of drunken rambling.
“About three bottles.” Jimez had this tortured vision of himself living in an attic in Montmartre rather than the back bedroom of an ageing parent’s terraced house in a small northern English town. And that image included the consumption of copious amounts of red as he sought inspiration in an alcohol-induced haze, rather irrespective of the cash he didn’t really have to maintain this habit.
“It’ll be a bloody expensive book to finish at that rate,” I mumbled, half-wondering where he had been doing his drinking as I hadn’t seen him in a week.
“Oh, there’s a bit more here,” noted Jen, turning the page over to reveal the first verse of ‘I Just Don’t Know What to Do with Myself’, with its pained reference to planning everything with the intention of a partner being involved.
“I think you’ll find that’s called plagiarism,” I said, restraining the sigh in my tone as much as was humanly possible. “You’ve copied it from someone else,” I added, as Jimez looked a little questioning. “It was written by Dusty Springfield, or one of her songwriters, over fifty years ago.”
“Oh shucks!” Jimez’s response was heartfelt but remarkably polite. “I thought it was rather good as well, and original. I wrote it down as soon as I woke up from a dream.”
“After you’d been listening to the song the night before, probably!” Jen’s verdict was delivered with her usual, rarely charming, bluntness.
I was sure Jimez was not the first and would not be the last to create a masterpiece in his sleep only to find he hadn’t. Not everyone can be Paul McCartney, after all. “Perhaps you could try drowning your sorrows while listening to Gilbert O’Sullivan warbling his way through ‘Alone Again (Naturally)’,” I suggested, not altogether certain if this was an attempt at humour or a comment verging on the cruel. While having no particular feelings, either negative or positive, towards the said song, in defence of myself, I actually deemed the tone of the lyrics might be of some minor inspiration.
“Well, the rest of it has got some potential.” Jen, with a plate looking as though it had just been freshly taken out of the dishwasher, now seemed more able to focus on the work before her. “But can you really write a whole book on despair?”
“I’ve had a lot of experience,” Jimez defended himself. I can’t remember ever hearing anyone protesting their right to unhappiness with such belief, but Jimez wasn’t anyone.
“Challenge,” said Jen, a little threateningly. “As 2018 is drawing to a close…” Jimez groaned quite audibly at the passing of yet another success-starved year. “Decide which idea you like the most and focus on trying to finish that one, just that one, in 2019.” Jimez looked startled but almost emboldened. “And try to drink a little less.” The look of hopelessness returned and it was quite easy to envisage the poor sod standing on the seafront looking into the crashing waves with a sense of futility and no sense of direction, knowing full well, with his luck, that if any waves did make it over the wall, they would inevitably land on the spot he was occupying.
