Waking on a Saturday without a hangover is an unsettling experience. I needed an extra hour in bed while the nausea subsided.
More strangeness was to follow. Porridge-Spoonful-1 had just successfully taken off and was climbing steadily mouthward when the bastard phone rang.
Damn. The flight was nearing its destination. What to do? I had to think fast.
Only two people ring on Saturday morning: one is my wife’s mother. She is, it need hardly be stated, wonderful, but at that very moment, let’s face it, a dessert spoon groaning under the weight of raisiny porridge had an allure unmatched by any human being, or any mother-in-law.
The other serial-ringer is my very own wife, who sportingly feigns sleep as I slide out of bed and creak down the stairs, but who then calls me on the internal phone as soon as she calculates that the kettle must have boiled, to demand tea and the blood of two freshly-strangled oranges. Consequences follow if I don’t co-operate.
Scared enough to abort the breakfast project, the spoon u-turns and crash lands. Farewell. I may be some time, says Captain Oats.
Reach for phone.
But instead of that familiar “Yoohoo! It’s only me!” trilling down the line from Sussex, or the unwarranted grumpiness from Her Majesty Upstairs, it was a call from somewhere slightly further afield — Tasmania.
Yes, it was the great Midlife Crisis Man himself, pulling off the information superhighway for a brief comfort break. The painting in the attic had sprung to life.
The shock subsided. Brass tacks were scattered everywhere, and all had to be got down to.
The news was good. The Galloway run-walk method is breathing new life into the ageing cadaverous dingo, leaving the Australian medical profession stammering apologetically. All will celebrate. It’s called March for a reason. Everyone – back on the road. Now!
We discussed The Curious Case of Seafront Plodder in some depth, but our deliberations must remain confidential.
I seem to have invited myself over for the Ashes series in 2010, and the cultural exchange will be completed with the arrival of MLCM for the 2012 London Olympics.
Crikey. The Future. We look at the calendar and get excited about isolated patches, but these are just excursions on the bigger trip. It’s all wondrous. Every tiny, unturned stone on that road. The holiday of a lifetime. I spend half my time thumbing through the brochures, dreaming of those warm and sunny days on Tomorrow Beach. The other half is consumed mooching round the past: some disgruntled phantom, trying to rearrange that which I know can never change.
I really should spend more time unwrapping the present.
But it’s a bad time to tell myself that. This is a big nostalgia week, so as Prophet Bob decreed, let me forget about today until tomorrow. Forty years ago, something momentous happened…….
I’m there somewhere.
Downhill ever since, but that’s life.
This weekend, at Loftus Road, at half-time, I’ll be applauding the eight survivors.
Nine, if I include myself.
