"But I Digress ..." (6 page)

Fridges and fantasies

SUNDAY INDEPENDENT, 22 OCTOBER 2000

H
AVE YOU EVER
bought a fridge? Well, of course you have. If the readership profile of the quality Sunday newspaper is to be believed, you are probably an educated, employed professional with a respectable income. Congratulations. Such pillars of society as your good self generally do buy refrigerators. Indeed, I shouldn't be surprised to learn that you have bought more than one refrigerator in your time. Perhaps even several, which seems a little profligate, but no doubt you had your reasons.

I raise the subject because, like a saint going marching in, I have recently joined your number. Not so much the “employed professional” part; more the fact that I have myself recently bought a fridge. No big deal for you perhaps, but a harrowing experience for a man who has never given much more thought to the refrigerator than to wonder how to move it closer to the couch without damaging the carpet.

Refrigerators are substantial items. They represent many things. Food, mainly, and ice for the bourbon, but also a home. More than that: a home you are making for yourself. My previous fridges have been other people's fridges. They have just been there, white and humming and uncertain of origin, like an ageing folk musician. This one is all mine.

There is so much to consider when buying a refrigerator. Top freezer or bottom? Sticky-out handle, or handle recessed into the door? What is a crisper? And most agonising of all: should the egg caddy be built-in or detachable? The egg caddy conundrum haunted me through umpteen department stores and too many late-night conversations, even after I had recovered from the discovery that egg holders are officially called caddies.

I don't eat eggs, but a fridge is for life, or if not for life at least for the length of an average marriage, and no man wants to lie awake for the next seven years wondering if he was too hasty in the egg department.

I have plenty to say about my fridge, and indeed my new home, but I shall confine myself to this announcement: I welcome all house-warming gifts, with the firm exception of those rotten magnet-poetry sets, in which small magnetised words are scattered about with the implied invitation to visitors to arrange them in bursts of lyric poetry. No such set shall sully my fridge. No limply suggestive soft-porn phrases shall insult my eye when seeking morning milk for my coffee; no grisly metaphors or vapid aphorisms shall arrest my appalled attention while dashing for another six-pack at half-time. There are few things more loathsome than other people's ideas of poetry. Fridges are for making beer run cold, not my blood.

That is quite enough about fridges. Forgive me, dear reader, but I have been lingering with good reason: firstly, because instead of watching television this week I spent my evening with hammer and ratchet and grease-stained overalls, trying to repair the little light inside the fridge. (It went off when the door was opened, and on when it closed again, and don't ask me how I know.)

Secondly, because buying a refrigerator, or perhaps reading about one, is precisely the kind of domestic drudgery that drives a certain kind of reader into the arms of fantasy fiction.

Gormenghast
(M-Net, Tuesday, 8pm) is a remarkable series, but it is not my cup of mead. The kind of perfectly realised alternative world that underpins Mervyn Peake's trilogy, as with Tolkien and to a lesser extent CS Lewis, is immensely attractive to many people.

They find comfort in it, and freedom. A world limited only by your imagination (actually, someone else's imagination) is just what they're after. And I am not only talking about the losers at university who wore capes and organised role-play games and drank mulled wine at their parties. There are perfectly decent citizens who find pleasure in fantasy. Not me.

Well-wrought fantasy fiction arouses in me a sensation approaching terror, a feeling of being perched on a ledge at a sheer cliff face above an abyss in the howling darkness. The opening hour or so of
Gormenghast
captured the experience. Gormenghast is a kingdom somewhere, sometime. It is big enough to be everything, or so it feels when you're inside it. On screen it throbbed with the terrible quality of a dream – the colours too vibrant, the scale too impossibly huge. “Welcome to the vastness,” murmurs the mad Earl of Groan to his new-born son Titus, and the words sent a dark echo through me.

I dislike dreams because I am always small in them. Not in the svelte sense (those are waking dreams), but in the sense of the world being too big, beyond my ability to understand or be understood. So it is with Gormenghast.

Early in the episode the hero-villain Steerpike escapes from the purgatory of the castle kitchens and scales the roof of the world, walking along a narrow rooftop with his head in the sky, seeing Gormenghast for the first time, aghast. It exhilarated Steerpike; it horrified me.

The sets and costumes are a clutter of styles and artefacts from all cultures and times, thrown together without outward order or logic, as in a dream: Siamese
wats
and Viennese frock coats, Ottoman drapery, moustaches from the Raj, Copernican beards and Dickensian libraries, a throne from the Versailles court of Louis XVI … together they seem to make a sense that can't be apprehended: the most frightening sense of all. I am fearful of worlds I cannot understand.

Gormenghast
has its conventional weak points. The acting at times is too broad – all shouting and facial expressions and accents so thick you could cut them with a bicycle, as though the Two Ronnies were performing
Alice in Wonderland
, or the cast of
Big Okes
had wandered onto the wrong set. But the vision is whole and complete. It is vast and strange.

It makes me want to curl up and read a crime novel by the soft light of my fridge.

Missouri's living dead elect one of their own

SUNDAY INDEPENDENT, 12 NOVEMBER 2000

I
HAVE NEVER BEEN
to Missouri, but it has always fascinated me. One of my heroes, Mark Twain, was born and raised there, and his finest novel,
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
, is largely set along the banks of the mighty Mississippi. In recent years, though, my interest in Missouri has become more appalled than admiring.

Missouri, like most states in the United States, has its own slogan. In the US a state is sneered at by its brothers if its essence can't be captured in two or three words and emblazoned on a motor car licence plate. Missouri is officially called “The Show-Me State”. Why show me? It is from a speech made by one Willard Duncan Vandiver in 1899. “I come from a state that raises corn and cotton and cockleburs,” said Vandiver proudly, “I am from Missouri. You have got to show me.”

Which is to say: native Missourians are actually proud of having the regional characteristic that they will not or cannot understand something unless it is practically demonstrated. The Missourian takes as his defining feature that he is incapable of abstract thought.

It was Missouri that in the 1990s passed a law requiring that Biblical seven-day creationism be given equal teaching time with the new-fangled heresy of evolution. Schoolchildren in Missouri spend half an hour learning about fossils and the adaptation over millennia of hominids to their changing environment, and the next 30 minutes learning that men and women were made from a handful of dust and a spare rib.

Missouri once had a state law prohibiting women from driving a vehicle without displaying a sign warning other motorists. Ah yes, Missouri. As Bill Bryson once wrote: “It is worth remembering that Mark Twain got the hell out of Missouri as soon as he could, and was always disinclined to come back.”

Why this disquisition on the Show-Me State? Because I am still marvelling at the fact that on Wednesday morning the good folk of Missouri elected to the US senate a man who had been dead for several months. Of course, in 1980, the American people elected as president a man who was dead from the neck up, and in this election have had to choose between two men dead from the eyebrows down, but still.

It was just one bright spot in a marathon session of viewing that is the highlight of my television year so far.
Election 2000
(CNN, all Tuesday night and Wednesday morning) was pure anarchic viewing pleasure.

Ross Perot set the tone in an interview with Larry King. “You know, Larry,” Ross creaked reflectively, like Norman Bates's mother in a ruminative mood, “the Republicans and the Democrats are just like the Palestinians and, you know, them other group over there.”

“The Israelis?” guessed Larry.

“Sure, the Israelis,” agreed Perot. “Just like them, only, you know, not as violent.”

With such an intro, it could hardly fail. Breathlessly I watched as events unfolded like a one-day cricket match. I cheered as the Democrats won Florida. I hissed as the Republicans won it back. I gave a happy hoorah as the recount was announced.

“We're going to be here a long time,” said Bernard Shaw in the CNN studios. I poured bourbon on my cornflakes and leaned forward happily.

What made it the more enjoyable is that Bernard and his presenters were in for the long haul with me. Everyone in the studio had their own turf: Bernie and his team were on the Big Desk, Wolf Blitzer was looking lovably bristly over at the Balance of Power Desk, and one Hal Bruno was forced to stand beside what looked like a weatherman's synoptic chart.

“How you doing, Hal?” asked Bernie at around 10am our time.

“I've been standing for the last 10 hours, how do you think I feel? Back to you at the Big Desk, Bernie,” said Hal through clenched teeth.

As the broadcast entered its 13th hour, Bernie and the gang veered between hysteria and downright prickliness. One Ed Kast – some manner of Florida state election official speaking to the team from ground zero – seemed personable enough, but as far as information went, he may as well have been a Missouri voter.

The Big Desk was not amused. “How long will it take to recount the votes, Ed Kast?” asked William Schneider.

“We'll start as soon as we can,” Ed Kast assured him.

“Yes, Ed Kast, but how long will it take?” snarled Schneider.

“Well,” said Ed Kast, “that will depend on how long it takes to recount the votes.”

In between the election coverage, CNN provided all manner of interesting news from around the world. I learnt that Truck Expo 2000 is currently being broadcast live on Romanian television. A man wearing a paste-on Eastern European moustache appeared in front of a poster of a truck to tell us that it is a great day for Romanian television.

“It is not just trucks,” he said, “but also truck parts and truck accessories.” I was just raising a spoon of cornflakes to toast the fact that I am not a Romanian TV columnist when we were back in the studio. William Schneider was thumping his forehead on the Big Desk, softly keening: “When can we go home? When can we go home?”

“Breaking news!” announced Bernie gamely. “The election is not over. Let me repeat that: the election is not over!”

William Schneider looked up hopefully. “Are you wrapping up, Bernie?” he asked.

“No, no,” said Bernie, “I just wanted to say that before I forgot it.”

By that time I was beginning to flag. Twelve hours is a long time to watch someone else's election. Unlike Bernie, I was not being paid overtime. As I staggered to bed, I heard William Schneider's head hit the desk again.

“Wake up, Bill,” begged Bernie, “we've got Ed Kast back on the line.”

A Christmas story

SUNDAY INDEPENDENT, 24 DECEMBER 2000

T
HERE ARE FEW
good Christmas stories. Christmas stories, by and large, are too caught up in their own Christmasness to be any good as stories. Indeed, Christmas stories are similar to Christmas cards – their purpose is not to be honest or to entertain, but to perform a dutiful and imprecise sort of gesture.

They always have a message. Messages do not make for good stories. Messages should either be sealed in a bottle and thrown into the sea, or written in lemon juice in the white space between the lines of the story. If the readers want the message badly enough, let them hold up the page to a naked flame.

(I have tried that, incidentally – faithfully following the good Ms Enid Blyton's instructions. But perhaps the lemons available to English children in the 1930s were of a more subtle sort than those available today. I never had the invisible writing resolve itself into brown lines before my eyes. All I had were scorched fingertips and on one occasion an invisible map of my back garden that went up in a frightening burst of yellow flame. It didn't matter, I suppose. I hadn't buried anything at the spot marked X more valuable than a silver napkin ring, and I had no one to whom to pass the secret map who would have had the slightest idea what to do with a loamy napkin ring.)

Worse than a message is the burden of a Christmas message. Christmas stories are supposed to embody in some way the true meaning of Christmas. The trouble is that no one really knows what the true meaning of Christmas might be, which leads to an awful lot of guff.

There are only so many times that a sensible person can stomach Jimmy Stewart discovering what a wonderful person he really is (
It's a Wonderful Life
) or those two chumps in O Henry's
Gift of the Magi
giving each other overpriced Christmas presents. Closest to the truth was Scrooge in
A Christmas Carol
, who discovered that you can buy the affection of the townsfolk by being free with your cash.

I am dwelling on the problem of the Christmas story, you may have guessed, because I don't feel like writing about television. I feel like telling a Christmas story. I couldn't invent one that I liked, so I turned to real life.

I considered telling the true tale of a girl with whom I went to school, whose name was Carol. We called her Christmas Carol, partially because she was head of the choir, but also because she had a bulbous, shiny nose. The last I heard of Christmas Carol, she had married a man from Qatar, converted to Islam and is now living somewhere in Yemen, where I can only hope she has found a veil large enough to conceal her nose. But the story of Christmas Carol lacked zip.

Let me tell you this story instead. It has no message, but that is as it is in real life. My grandfather was a prisoner in an Italian camp during the last world war. He had been a gunner with the Eighth Army in the deserts of North Africa, and had been captured and interned somewhere in Italy. He was hazy with the details: men of my grandfather's generation seldom spoke about the war. He did tell one tale. It involved Christmas Day, 1943: the day he called and made slam in no trumps while playing bridge in the shade of a pine tree beside the camp's exercise yard. Never before and never since would my grandfather call and make slam in no trumps.

His bridge partner on that occasion was an Italian guard, whose name I have forgotten. If I tell you it was Luigi, you will guess that I am guessing. Luigi was a young man, almost a boy, just like my grandfather. He was friendly and occasionally brought the prisoners chickens. My grandfather taught him English, but didn't bother to learn Italian in return.

They spoke about home, and played bridge and football together. Luigi didn't get along with the other Italian guards, for reasons that can only be guessed at, but thanks to Luigi, my grandfather always said, the day that he called and made slam in no trumps was the happiest Christmas of his life.

After the war my grandfather returned home and played out the remainder of an undistinguished bridge career, pausing only to set in motion the chain of events that led to, well, me. Luigi disappeared into the gloom of post-war Naples.

In 1993 I was living in Cape Town. A week before Christmas, I went to a local picture shop to frame a sepia photograph of my grandfather as a young man. I had recently discovered it in a dusty box in a garage; it would be a Christmas present for my mother.

The framer was an old man. He stared at the photograph a long time. I was anxious to be going, but he told me a story. It was a story about being a young man in the war, and working as a guard in a prisoner-of-war camp, and about a South African friend, a prisoner, who made the unhappy months bearable, and how later he had remembered the stories of Cape Town, and had moved south, and been happy since.

He spoke in perfect English, with an Italian accent. He had never seen his friend again, but hoped he would. Perhaps they would share Christmas lunch together again. Perhaps they would play some bridge.

And there the story ends. My grandfather had died a month before, and Luigi died a few months later. They had lived the past 40 years within five kilometres of each other, and had never stopped playing bridge.

It would have been nice if they could have met that Christmas, and called and made one final slam in no trumps. Sometimes it would be nice if life were like a Christmas story.