Disgressed

On the tube station, I started to have an odd sensation of being particularly tall. Coming out of whatever daydream I was in, I realised I was actually no taller than usual, but eveyone else had become about a foot shorter. In fairness, everyone was noticebly smarter in appearance than usual, too. There was something quite surreal about the experience, but the thing that persuaded me that this was not, after all, the gradual dawning of insanity was that everyone also appeared to be Nepalese.

It was, of course, Gurkha veterans and members of their families, carrying tiny placards, on their way in considerable numbers to a mass protest in Parliament Square. You may or may not know that soldiers from the Gurkha regiments traditionally retained by the British Army are demanding that they should be paid the same pension as soldiers of British origin. In the past, they were always paid much less, on the grounds that back in Nepal the money went a lot further. The point has already been conceded so far as Gurkhas who served in recent years are concerned; but now the veterans want their pensions upgraded too.
You would need a heart of stone not to appreciate the charm of the Gurkhas and the romantic tinge of Empire they add to the British Army. The neat synthesis of small size and military valour they embody is poetically irresistible, and the claim that equal work should generate equal rewards seems unanswerable.

But I must admit to feeling ambivalent about the whole thing. I said the Gurkhas were traditionally retained by the British Army, but in fact that has only been strictly true since 1948: they are really an institution of the Indian Army, which still retains its own Gurkhas (Or rather ‘Gorkhas’, the spelling having been changed in that way that tends to happen post-independence, as if to suggest that whatever else the former rulers were good at, their spelling left something to be desired. Though I don’t really know why the Indians should be any better than the British at rendering Nepali into the Roman alphabet. Anyway…). I can’t help feeling that however valiant they may be, the prescence of the Gurkhas is a bit of a slight on the natural belligerence of the British. Historically, I tend to assume it’s only people who have become too lazy and effete to do their own fighting who keep units of foreign origin – the Varangians, the Janissaries, the French Foreign Legion (pas vraiment, mes braves!).

The answer to this sort of concern, and to suggestions that British Army jobs should go to unemployed British people rather than exotic foreigners, has always been that the Gurkhas were remarkably cheap. Now that that is no longer really the case, I wonder whether some bureacrat isn’t going to decide that the Brigade of Gurkhas is a much-loved anomaly, which sadly has no place in the British Army of the 21st century…

I went to the optician on Tuesday and was told in no uncertain terms (“I strongly recommend…strongly…”) that I should get some glasses. I’ve been short-sighted all my life, really, but I haven’t owned a pair of glasses since about 1982 when my last surviving pair became effectively unwearable even in an emergency. This means that for nearly 25 years my contact lenses (gas permeable) have typically gone into my eyes at about 6.30 am and come out at about 10.30 pm, as against the standard recommendation of no more than 10 hours wear a day. It turns out that gas permeable lenses are not as gas permeable as all that, and in a desperate bid to secure more oxygen, my eyes have started growing more and bigger blood vessels in a way which isn’t altogether desirable in the long run.

Becoming four-eyed again, some of the time, is not going to be a big deal, of course. I didn’t mind it too much the first time, when I was five, although it was a bit of a milestone then. Before the glasses came along, if I remember correctly, the role of Mike Mercury had always been mine in any game of Supercar that might be taking shape in the playground: once bespectacled, I lost my hero potential and was even invited to consider being Professor Popkiss (Dr Beaker I could just about have stomached – at least he wore fairly snappy 3-piece suits: but although he was a scientist he somehow failed to wear glasses). If I never grew up to be the tough, adventurous, wrong-righting driver of a cutting-edge land/sea/air vehicle, it may well be that Clement Clarke (an optician, not a Gerry Andersen villain) is due part of the blame.

It was a bit of a turning point when I got my lenses, too, following hard on the heels of graduation. Several of my friends had taken advantage of the cheap deals then offered by David Clulow to get contact lenses, and I eventually yielded to the trend. My friends had told me the opticians routinely asked why you wanted lenses – I’m not completely sure why, but I think the idea was that they would then deliver a kind of sales pitch on how great all those benefits you had mentioned were and how it was worth all the effort, in an attempt to encourage you not to give up in the first week (as many people did). I thought it was best, and approximately honest, just to say “Vanity”. (“That’s great, and you will find if you keep on with your lenses that your vanity is really gratified…”)
I had had the lenses for less than a week when, wandering home in the East End late at night, I was set on and given a light to moderate beating during which the lenses flew out of my eyes to land who knows where. I knew they’d always said you shouldn’t hit people with glasses, but was this really what happened when you got lenses? The opticians certainly hadn’t mentioned it (“Oh, and you’re probably going to get into fights now, so would you be interested in our special insurance/judo plan?”) The timely intervention of some policemen prevented my injuries progressing into the moderate to heavy category: but it may well be that my blurred vision, swollen jaw, and generally roughed-up appearance played some role in making my first job interview, shortly afterwards, an unsuccessful one.

I got new lenses, though, so perhaps the optician’s sales pitch was effective after all.

It was Elizabeth’s 13th birthday on Saturday, and we took a party of her friends up to London for a trip on the Duck boat. I don’t know whether you’ve come across these things – they are surviving DUKW boats used for amphibious landings in WWII. The tour comprises a drive around the centre of London (OK for tourists, but a bit dull if you see these streets every day, to be honest – we even drove past my office) and then a thrilling plunge down a slipway into the Thames for a bit of a pootle along the river.

This was a more elaborate birthday venture than we have previously attempted, but since Elizabeth opted not to have a party at all last year (I still don’t really know why – not parental pressure, I swear) we thought she was in credit to some degree.

I didn’t really think all that much about the fine detail of the trip to begin with: I booked the boat and a table in Pizza Express for suitable times and checked on the trains from Sutton and thought no more about it. Then, at 3.00 am on Thursday night, I woke up with a sudden vision of everything that could possibly go wrong on a 13th birthday trip with 13 people in the party (11 of them aged 13 and under). Just as a random selection we could have death by drowning, road or rail accident; abduction, disappearance or being caught on the wrong train; choking, allergy or vomiting (several opportunities). The probability of someone turning up late and thereby throwing the entire trip into complete disarray seemed a minor matter.

But it was fine. The guests even seemed willing to overlook the fact that about half of them were, technically, teenagers. When we had to wait for the Duck (I suspect delays are a regular occurence) they went off and enthusiastically used the climbing frames, monkey bars and so on in the adjacent park – something Elizabeth has normally regarded as beneath her dignity for the last five years or so. They sat down in an orderly manner in the Duck, and apart from waving and occasionally shouting at passers-by, they did not lean out or trail their hands in the water (which would have been easy enough – these things ride pretty low in the water). Apart from a wholly understandable insistence on using the revolving door for an extended period, they behaved impeccably in Pizza Express; when they were given the kiddies pack of crayons and colouring sheets, instead of casting them aside with a derisive snort, they carefully completed them in a tasteful range of styles.

On the train home, we were just beginning to run out of luck. Parents of toddlers will know about the phenomenon of the spurt just before bedtime: just as your energy is running out the tiny people get a second wind. It’s as though you’ve been stretching yourself to keep up with a superior runner all day, and now in the final lap they throw in a prolonged, powerful sprint, designed to kill your morale as much as drain your last reserves. Something a bit like that was beginning to show itself in the emergent proposals for singing or a game of hide and seek along the train.

But really the girls were models of responsibility and restraint, and we got back to Sutton without a single untoward incident. I hope it’s like this next year…

I don’t know about you, but going to the barber, something that should be the most casual business in the world, always turns into a bit of a chore for me.

Barber: OK then, sir, how would you like your hair cut today?

Philip of Macedon (for it is he): In silence.

That exchange is said to be the oldest joke in the world, though sadly by no means the funniest. It certainly indicates that some of the minor stresses involved in getting your hair cut go back a long way, though. I know that for a certain section of the human race, having the hair done is a positive pleasure, lifting the mood and gently massaging the ego. But for me the fact that hair grows and has to be cut periodically is one of God’s irritating design mistakes.

When you come to think about it, that sheds some light on the strange 18th century wig business. On the face of it, it’s the height of perversity to cut off all your real hair, and then go round wearing fake hair instead. But I can see the point. The barber would never have to ask you how you wanted your hair done: just everything off once a month or so and then slap the old wig back on.

Nowadays I find it a complicated business. To begin with, you actually have to go to the barber’s. Do I give up a Saturday morning? Try somehow to fit it in during the lunch hour? Take a day off for the purpose? And where am I going to find a handy barber’s?

It has to be a barber, of course, not a hairdresser. Quite apart from the expense (Who, me? pay more than £10 for a haircut? ), and the need to make an appointment (Ha!), I don’t understand what goes on in those places. I’d probably sit on the wrong chair or something. I wouldn’t understand what they were asking me. I’d come out looking like a poodle. I had a colleague once who started going to hairdressers. He’d always looked very normal before, but from that moment on his hair stood up in that slightly bouffant way you used to see on minor characters in American made-for-TV films of the 1970s. Perhaps he liked it like that, but his credibility was seriously impaired. People talked about it behind his back.

At a barber’s, on the other hand, I understand the ritual. I know I’ll be invited to sit down as soon as the previous incumbent has stood up, and before he’s actually paid, as though to stop me doing a sudden runner, even though I’ve been sitting there pretending to read the Sun for half an hour or more. I know that when I stand up I have to wait for a few moments while my back is pounded with a brush, following which the barber will hand me a tissue. I’ve never been sure what the tissue is for (to staunch the blood?), but I wipe my neck with it as though it were useful and smile gratefully.

And then there’s tipping. For years I never tipped: it honestly never entered my mind that such a thing was necessary. Eventually I realised what was going on, and decided I would have to mend my ways. Tipping someone for the first time when you’re still not really sure it’s expected is a stressful business, I can tell you, roughly on a par with offering a foreign policeman a bribe (not that I’ve ever done that, you understand).

My tips have always been accepted impassively. I might just be able to detect the faintest hint of surprise, but it’s impossible to tell whether this arises from incredulity that anyone should try to tip a barber, astonishment that the mean bastard is giving away money for once, or pique that the fat bloke thinks £1 is a reasonable tip just because the haircuts cost less than £10.

No wonder I sometimes let my hair get a little longer than it should. No wonder too, that I’m reluctant to change my habits. I used to go to a barber’s that was handily between the station and my office.  I still do go there: it’s just that I work in an office somewhere quite different now. I pretend it’s hard to find a proper barber in a more convenient place, but it isn’t really. I think old-fashioned barbers, run almost exclusively by people from various parts of the Mediterranean these days, have had the air of a vanishing cultural phenomenon for most if not all of my life, but when I think about it there are probably just as many as there were 20 years ago or more. It’s just the slightly run-down air they tend to have, and the big pictures of men with implausible Elvis-style hairdos that make them seem things of the past.

Anyway, I think I can probably go another week or so…