Chapter 1

"Bang!"

"Wake up, you lazy pig!" she screamed from the kitchen.

I would probably have woken up anyway because the neighbours had left their halogen security light trained on our bedroom window again, like a Colditz search light probing around for unauthorised activity across the compound. There was certainly a din going on downstairs, and this turned out to be a dropped bowl of corn flakes on the lounge carpet, followed by loud recriminations and protracted sobbing. I hated great shows of emotion, and yet this seemed to be the primary method of communication in our house, as people swung freely from delirious mirth to cold silence without a second thought, or probably a first.

"Will you please eat your breakfast!" my wife implored.

"It's my turn on the piano!" my youngest answered.

" ... grandmother strangled in her own home..." contributed the man on T.V.

"Where's Dad?" said my eldest, followed by the sound of scampering footsteps coming up the stairs, and what sounded like a mumbled insult from my spouse in the background.

"Crash!" went the door as it bounced off the wall, and I received a loving hug, followed by a garrulous report of current domestic disputes downstairs.

"Okay petal, I'll be down in a minute" I said, trying to gather my wits together, as my sinuses tightened their hold on my forehead, and my rumbling bowels notified me of their overnight load. With little option, I swung my spindly legs over the side of the bed, inadvertently broke wind, and spotted the old 'Triang' toy crane sat on top of the wardrobe; its black bucket hanging over the side like a man on the gallows.

Yawn, belch, fart.

A short history of humanity.

I hadn't been sleeping well for weeks, going to bed dead beat, waking up in the early hours, and then remaining awake until four or five o'clock, when I would descend into a feverish stupor until the alarm went. I was constantly tired, sluggish and irritable, finding it harder than usual to concentrate, and carrying around a variety of aches and pains as I waded through the day like a Great War soldier waist dip in mud. At different times over the last six months, I'd had colds, aching joints, upset stomachs, sore throats, a vague dizziness and a woolly headed tendency to forget messages, or acquaintances' names, or the toast. Some days I would have to write out a list of reminders in the morning, to ensure that I didn't overlook something important, and even then I would occasionally mix up my shifts at work, or forget to attend a meeting. Worse than that, I'd sometimes experienced strangely delirious thoughts as I'd drifted off to sleep, or when I'd woken up in the middle of the night; something which altered the shadows and forms in the room and took a whip to my imagination. Something like acid flashbacks.

I couldn't put my finger on any one reason why my health was deteriorating, largely because there was a variety of leading contenders. For a start, my mother had died earlier in the year at the age of 79, and this had opened up a Pandora's box of conflicting emotions. We'd been reconciled for the last few years and there'd been regular visits, outings and set-piece celebrations which had brought us closer together as a family, but the past had been a long hard road. It was impossible to abolish history and no matter how generous and attentive my mother was towards the end, I simply couldn't throw off my old attitudes of resentment, wariness and distantly recalled pain. I was caught hopelessly between the present and the past; an inward struggle with no winners.

Carol and I had also provisionally agreed to divorce, although we both seemed reluctant to take practical steps towards it. We had never recovered the romance of those years before the interloper appeared, and had gradually replaced love, friendship and trust with the soft cement of parenthood, financial partnership and inertia. Most of the time we rubbed along together, but we were both sensitive to anything that reminded us of the year we separated, and the ugly issues which were then exposed forever. Relationships seem to thrive on a mutual ignorance (or disregard) of each other's weaknesses, and this was no longer the case for us, as we fenced and boxed through the days, strangely uneasy in our nearness, like familiar strangers.

We were basically very different in our outlooks now, with my wife becoming a fully paid up consumerist, while I maintained an interest in 'down shifting' and a simpler lifestyle. She was theatrically sociable to gain supportive friends, while I was studiously anti-social to preserve independence and fleeting quietude. She was a happy-clappy born again Christian buying a stairway to heaven, and I was an inveterate cynic critiquing the world with monotonous grumpy old man intensity. We quarrelled incessantly yet avoided one another where possible, and when we agreed to approach the solicitors one day, we probably knew we wouldn't the next. Family visits to stately homes alternated with personal visits to estate agents, while heated exchanges vied with electrical silences to see which could have the more stressful effect. My wife spoke more to the guinea pigs than me, and I thanked them for the distraction. The only thing that remained of our hippy heydays, was a split cane rubbish basket next to the toilet.

Still, continuing romance had its price too and I cheered myself up by remembering the man who told his wife to excrete daily in the public lavatories rather than the domestic loo, because her bathroom activities were spoiling his idyllic view of sex.

"Morning" I said, when I arrived downstairs.

"Hi" said two out of the three present.

"Mum's going to take us to see 'The Three Tenors' tonight" said my daughter.

"Oh, we're not that poor" I quipped. "I've already got four twenties and a fiver in my wallet, if you want to see them."

(silence).

"And I'm doing a presentation at school today".

"A presentation!"

"Yes, a presentation on 'what it's like to be a child in the 21st century'."

"But I thought everybody was an expert on that these days. Surely we don't need any further explanation. Ha ha ... ha ... er..."

(silence)

I shook the debris out of the long-suffering toaster, took a lung full of lingering smoke, noted that we'd had cabbage the previous evening, and watched the guinea pigs watching me from their luxury winter cage. Seeing some bills hiding behind the ornamental lighthouse, I involuntarily reviewed the household budget which was written in red ink and permanently stapled to the back of my mind. We weren't heavily in debt by any means, but we had a steadily growing overdraft and I was having to run faster and faster on the overtime treadmill, with cramp setting in. I was happy enough with our detached house, black second hand sporty hatchback with pop up headlights, pine furniture, basic computer and weekends away. But Carol wanted a third child, foreign holidays, bulging wardrobes and state of the art gismos at every turn in the house. I counselled restraint, and she ordered store credit cards and mail order catalogues. I avoided shopping centres like the plague, and she treated them as blessed havens of modernity.

This led to extra shifts and plenty of night duties, and for a while I coped well while many of my colleagues just reported sick and ordered 'The Oxford Medical Encyclopaedia' to research their excuses. But then the poor quality interrupted sleep began to wear me down, my chronic sinus problems got worse and I started picking up colds and stomach upsets. I contracted a chest infection and had my first time off work for three years, coughing up bottled fruit phlegm and taking antibiotic bombers, while Carol accused me of malingering and went to see one of my workmates who'd been off for four months with a 'backache' of uncertain origins. I'd never really pulled clear of that, and for two weeks I'd been waiting in freezing school yards, taking the kids to Beavers, Brownies, Scottish dancing and piano lessons in a daze of vagueness, irritability and febrile distraction. One night, I'd even turned back to philosophy for guidance, only to find that postmodernists were now as certain of uncertainty as I was.

In a whole life, we don't understand a single moment.

An Apocryphal Story:

The Future of Madness

1964

Tarp was always a bit headstrong and self-centred, but the impact of school left him in no doubt that the ordinary conventions of life were not for him. He regularly played truant, and was often seen hanging around kiddies play equipment in parks, or listening to rock and roll in the public library. Nevertheless, his egalitarian schoolteachers were quite happy to award him his 12-plus examination (even though his scores plumbed new minima), just to make sure he didn't feel a failure and to give him every possible chance in life. So, at 16 he left the local Grammar with ten (grade 1) 'O' levels, masses of confidence and oceans of self-belief; as well as a noticeable inability to read, write or talk coherently.

While his contemporaries started work, or began A level courses, he opted instead for sitting at home watching 'Rag, Tag and Bobtail' on his mum's telly, or sniffing old balls of plasticine, to see if he could get high. He told the neighbours that he wasn't interested in work, and that he expected to be paid by the government for doing exactly what he wanted for the next fifty years, because that was his basic human right. In the early hours, he was usually seen with a tin of gloss paint and a 4" brush, embellishing the nearby police station with union jacks and pictures of genitalia. The police sometimes came out and had a quiet word, but it was "only natural" for lads to behave that way - what else could young people do? It was 1964 after all.

At the age of 20, he put his football kit on every morning and played with his hoop and stick or marbles in the back alley until lunch was ready, after which he would ride his little red tricycle on the pavements into town, where he would shoplift and swagger. The local university heard about his maverick behaviour and soon identified it as a worthy expression of 'inarticulate social critique'; later offering him an honorary place on their sociology degree course. He refused in fine four-letter fashion, but was less pleased a year later, when his mother died.

Although he didn't bother going to the funeral, he soon noticed her absence by the proliferation of dust and bills in the house, as well as his own unaccountable malnutrition. Passing the big hospital on his roller skates one day, he had a flash of inspiration, and decided to go in and ask for help. The bearded doctor welcomed him onto the couch with open arms, and then began a detailed, trail-blazing psychiatric assessment. At the end of it, he said:

"So, you say you're "dyslergic" to work and responsibility, Tarp?"

"Fucking right, I do."

"Well, this is what we call a 'neologism' in our business. It means that you are creating new words as part of your delusion about life."

"Whatever you say, Doc, as long as I can stay in here for a bit."

"Yes, you can certainly stay. In fact you can stay indefinitely."

"Fucking brilliant – cheers mate!"

With that, Tarp was shown to the bed he would sleep in for the next twenty-five years, while the psychiatrist massaged a braless bust of Sigmund Freud and carefully placed a piece of pink water-marked paper on his leather topped desk. A man born before his time, and a regular contributor to the 'Lancet', he wrote:

Responsibility phobia: the first case in a modern epidemic?

Yes (he thought) the world is going into reverse. Good old Tarp.

"Time to go!"

So, we piled into the car still chewing our bacon gristle, shuddered over the traffic calming humps and joined the other grey-faced parents sitting uncomfortably at the semi-permanent temporary traffic lights on both sides of a big deserted hole. All around us there were children in blue, green and red uniforms traipsing along with dull bestial looks and vast rucksacks stuffed with key stage hieroglyphics, while frothing apoplectics mouthed obscenities at the side roads; their ways barred by stone age rivals. Thirty minutes and two miles later we were at the school, where the usual collection of thick-skinned narcissists were parked once again on zigzag lines in front of the gates, their eyes glinting with gunslinger venom at my well-practiced slow motion ironic applause, while a procession of cold, scantily clad young mothers sashayed by, modelling their latest catalogue purchases. It was here that Carol smiled for the first time today, as she blended seamlessly with the crowd, flicked a switch, and started chattering gaily.