Life is Healthy

I am not dead yet! Here are some things I have been doing:

1. I saw this man on the tube:



He is one of those human statues (I think he works at Covent Garden) going home for his tea. He actually got off at my stop - oh yes, it is like Bloomsbury around here - human statues, moderately successful children's TV scriptwriters...

2. And at another station on another day I saw this:



You will have to perhaps take my word for it that up on the roof are one medium-sized trainer and an English-French dictionary. There's a story there, isn't there? My money is on a rather unhappy secondary school child hopping home, worried that he won't be able to do his homework. Unless anyone else can come up with a better explanation?

3. And most excitingly of all, as a legitimate part of my job I have just made a tetrahedral paper hat and am now wearing it on my head. Who would have thought that 19 years after graduating with a first class engineering degree (and this was before the days of A*s - the exam grade that goes up to 11) and starting out on a proper non-parent-worrying career, I would be sitting here with a self-made tetrahedral paper hat on my head?

And there are cold shoulders
But there are no old, cold shoulders

By which I mean that despite last weekend's milestone birthday, I don't have a frozen shoulder (the scourge of the elderly), but a rotator cuff injury (like a young, physically fit person might get whilst doing something like rock climbing or going out in the semi-finals at Wimbledon).

My physio sessions have been going well, and I can now make a big circle with my arms, with only a small amount of discomfort. I am now in a special shoulder class, where up to 10 of us do individually tailored exercises for three minutes at a time before moving on to the next piece of equipment.

The session ends with some warm-down exercises, like passing a basketball around a circle. But at the end of today's session, the physiotherapist said it was time for something fun. He got us into two lines, then we had to pass the basketballs backwards over our heads to the person behind, with the person receiving the ball at the back coming round to the front and everyone else shuffling backwards before starting again. And whichever team did it first a certain number of times won. You know - like in PE at school.

The physiotherapist was right - it was fun. Even better, I was at the front of our line at the beginning, so it was designated "my team". I was the captain! I have never been the captain of any sporting team before, but I clearly had the leadership qualities that Steven Gerrard lacks, because my team won!

What with being unable to sleep on my left side for months, having to take half a day off a week to go to hospital, plus of course being unable to make a big circle with my arms, this shoulder injury has been a complete pain in the, well, shoulder. But it's a pretty great silver lining, and a testament to the physiotherapy team, that despite always being last to be picked for games at school I am now the captain of a winning sports team. The fact that the other nine members of the class are geriatrics, most of whom can barely lift their injured limbs, makes no difference. A win is a win, and I didn't even need any dodgy refereeing decisions to enhance the score.

But as all great sportsmen know, this is where it gets tricky. Next week I have to defend my title. I'm going to have to take great care as to whom I stand next to near the end of the session, because if the physio thinks I'm having the old woman with the stoop, or the elderly Indian gentleman with the limp, or the white-haired lady I just call The Dropper on my side he can stick it up his bollocks.

My left shoulder has been hurting recently. I can't remember injuring it, and it doesn't hurt a lot, but for several months it hasn't shown any sign of getting better, so I go to see my doctor.

The doctor makes me move my arms in various directions. I can do all of the movements with various amounts of pain, until she finally asks me to put my arms down straight then lift them both up in a big circle. I am surprised to find that I can lift my right arm OK, but not my left - it sticks out as though I can't get a mobile phone signal and am trying to send someone the letter 'J' in semaphore.

Perhaps if I were leading some kind of music and movement class I might need to make a big circle with my arms on a regular basis, but my usual activities don't include making a big circle with my arms. I suppose I assumed that I would be able to make a big circle with my arms should the need arise, and it is slightly disconcerting to find out that I can't make a big circle with my arms, that I probably haven't been able to make a big circle with my arms for months, and that I never realised that I couldn't make a big circle with my arms.

I sometimes feel a twinge in my shoulder when driving if I change gear from fourth to fifth, but living in London this doesn't happen often. The only times I really notice that it hurts is at night when I often wake up to find I've raised my arms up on to the pillow in my sleep. Perhaps I was dreaming of making a big circle with my arms, and my subconscious is telling me to give up the writing and instead become a leader of music and movement classes.

The doctor tells me that it is probably a torn rotator cuff. I like the sound of a torn rotator cuff. It is the sort of manly injury that a young sportsman or rock climber might get. Maybe in physio I will get to meet Roger Federer, and I will point to my shoulder and say "This? Torn rotator cuff. You know what it's like", and he will nod knowingly: "Ah yes - nearly had to pull out of Wimbledon with one of those" and we will both think ourselves lucky that we don't lead music and movement classes for a living. The torn rotator cuff must be the music and movement class leader's biggest enemy.

The doctor has one more suggestion though: apparently it might instead be a frozen shoulder. I have not heard of this, so after I have made an appointment with the physiotherapist and picked up my anti-inflammatories I go home and Google it. I am dismayed to learn from the NHS website that "Most cases of frozen shoulder occur in people between the ages of 40 and 60".

I'm not a medical man, but I'm going to have to write to the General Medical Council and have my doctor struck off for making such a ludicrous suggestion. Clearly I must have a torn rotator cuff, like all those fit and virile young sportsmen, not some old man's disease, which surely I can't get as I'm still 39 for a few more months.

If you disagree, raise your left arm.

Bus shelter glaziers have two options: glass, which vandals smash. Or perspex, which vandals scratch graffiti on to. It must be quite a depressing job being a bus shelter glazier, continually seeing your Sisyphean efforts spoiled, forever repairing these memento mori, a task which will only end with the sweet release of death, or the invention of personal jet-packs (whichever comes first).

But as I walked past my local bus stop the past couple of mornings I noticed that the cold weather has turned the loutish scrawlings into a winter wonderland. The depth of the graffiti groove combined with the orientation of the perspex panels means that the "tags" (as I believe they are called on "the street") are the ideal place for large, intricate ice crystals to form, making the whole bus shelter look like it has been decorated with real fake spray snow.











The close-up pictures aren't great (the woman waiting for the bus was looking at me a bit strangely), but what would ordinarily just make me tut and consider switching to the Daily Mail instead put me in a much more postivive mood. Is there a name for the phenomenon where something ordinarily ugly is temporarily beatified beautified? And can anyone think of any more examples?

I’ve been reading a lot of books to my Lovely Son. A recent favourite is Das Bäumchen, which came from a friend who remembers it from her childhood in East Germany.

It’s told entirely in pictures and is about a man and a little girl (presumably father and daughter) who plant a tree. The girl swings on one of the branches, breaking it, but they look after the tree and it eventually grows apples for everyone.

It’s a charming tale, but given its origins I can’t help looking for communist messages within its pages. With widespread censorship and propaganda in the DDR, a children’s book would be the ideal place to promote socialist ideals.

For instance, is it significant that it is the right-hand branch which breaks, whilst the left remains strong and bears fruit? Does this represent a break with the Nazi past? Or a proof of the innate superiority of the left?

The taping up of the broken bit of tree and then just carrying on – is this a refusal to acknowledge the obvious shortages in the five-year plans, where everyone just lied about how productive they were being?

And who are the other children who also eat the apples at the end? They don’t look related to the little girl – is this simply a sweet moral about sharing, or is it promoting the collectivisation of agriculture?

The children also queue very obediently for their hand-outs, which must be good preparation for a life of empty shops.

And what about the fact that there are exactly enough apples to go around at the end – a message that the state will always provide?

Whatever the subtext, it must have been difficult creating art or literature under a totalitarian regime. I will try to remember this the next time I disagree with the myriad of BBC execs’ notes – at least I’m not getting direction from the Stasi on top of this (though I think they had a hand in Horne and Corden – haha look at me jealously slagging off other, more successful writers). But I am going to have another look at that clause that says the BBC can shoot me for trying to escape to The Other Side (ITV). That looks a bit worrying.

My name is Sam Tyler. I had an accident and I woke up in 1973. Am I mad, in a coma, or back in time? Or did I just go on holiday to the Isle of Wight, where orange juice is still served as a starter?


(It was actually a lovely holiday, and I had a full-on three-and-a-half decade Proustian rush when for dessert I had some of that neon pink pre-Haagen-Dazs/Ben & Jerry's strawberry ice cream that has been nowhere near a strawberry and is probably full of chemicals that have been banned everywhere else in Europe since before Live Aid, but made me very happy indeed.)

You see the headline "Pop star Stevens robbed at home" and your first thought is "Oh, no! Not Shaky!"

I am on my way to a meeting. For once I am driving as the studio I am visiting is some way from public transport. They know that I am driving and should have booked me a space.

It's for a show I've worked on before, but for this series there have been budget cuts which means a slight reduction in my pay. Not great, but it's fun work and at least they're going to pay me and not go into administration owing me money. I hope.

When I get there I go straight to the main car park. Unfortunately the man at the barrier knows nothing about my visit and suggests I try the main reception. At the front of the studio are a few spaces, but they are all reserved for bigwigs and head honchos so I just park at an awkward angle in a place that is obviously not meant to be parked in and nip into reception.

There I tell them that I should have a car parking space booked and the lovely lady confirms that that's correct and it should be right out the front with my name on it, ie one of the spaces I had driven past, assuming they were for the important people whilst us plebs had to go round the back and take our chances in a numbered spot.

I drive back round and there it is - a car parking space with my name on it. I am a head honcho! I am a bigwig! I have arrived! (albeit in a second-hand Ford Focus that smells a bit of sick). I park and go into my meeting where the first thing I am asked is whether I got my car parking space OK. I say yes, and relate the whole "driving past it thinking I wasn't important enough to get a car parking space with my name on it" story and we all have a laugh.

As the meeting progresses I realise what they are up to though: they think that they can get away with paying me less by giving me something that doesn't actually cost them anything - a car parking space with my name on it. And if they think they can get away with paying me less by giving me a car parking space with my name on it they are dead right. It is brilliant! A car parking space with my name on it!

I imagine it is like the first time you fly first class - once you have seen how the other half park you can never go back. I won't be able to drive to Tesco ever again unless next to the disabled and parent and baby spaces there is a special space just for me. With my name on it. I will settle for nothing less now.

And I will be telling my agent that the requirement of a car parking space with my name on it must be written into all my contracts from now on. Even the ones where I arrive by tube. In fact, especially the ones where I arrive by tube.

INT. CHOCOLATE LOG FACTORY – DAY.

Two Employees glumly inspect their sales figures.

EMPLOYEE 1
Have you noticed that sales of chocolate logs are a bit, well, seasonal?

EMPLOYEE 2
Yes. Yes, I had noticed that. We seem to sell a lot in December, but then the rest of the year is empty and we end up having to throw quite a lot of chocolate logs away.

EMPLOYEE 1
Perhaps we could diversify and make some other kind of cake or confectionary item?

EMPLOYEE 2
But I only know how to make chocolate logs.

EMPLOYEE 1
Really? They’re just chocolate Swiss rolls, covered in chocolate. Are you sure you can’t adapt the recipe and make something else?

EMPLOYEE 2
No. It’s chocolate logs or nothing.

EMPLOYEE 1
But we’re going to go out of business.

EMPLOYEE 2
Maybe we can persuade people to buy chocolate logs at other times of the year?

EMPLOYEE 1
How? They are a completely Christmassy item. They are as Christmassy as crackers, baubles and tinsel.

They sit in silence for a moment.

EMPLOYEE 2
What about an Easter Chocolate Log?

EMPLOYEE 1
Brilliant!



Like most people I don’t have a clue where the chocolate rabbits fit into the crucifixion/resurrection scenario, but this is just a bit silly, isn’t it? However, I’m look forward to Father’s Day mince pies.

The combination of being freelance (not wanting to spend my fluctuating income on luxuries such as new clothes) working from home (where every day is a dressing-down day and some are even dressing-gown days), and having a small child (often no room to wash and dry my own unfashionable clothes, necessitating wearing even older garments from the back of the wardrobe which then also invariably get smeared with food/snot, sometimes not even mine) means that normal standards of dress have been slipping for a while.

To save time in the morning, this look is often combined with my face being in the follicular hinterland between “hasn’t shaved” and “has grown a beard”. This state isn’t helped by the fact that although I have reasonably hirsute sideburns, moustache and chin area, my cheeks always look like they’ve been defoliated with Agent Orange, sporting as they do more bald patches than a monastery.

It was in this state that I went to the corner shop to buy some bread.

On the way I passed a hunched old man looking even scruffier and more stained than I was, shuffling along in flip-flops despite the cold weather. I asked him if he was OK, and he asked me the way to the corner shop. I told him he was going the wrong way and pointed the way he should be going. He looked confused. I pointed again. He looked more confused. After several more points/confused looks I realised that he was blind.

I offered him my arm as I was going that way, and we shuffled along together. He told me that he needed to pop into the greengrocer’s first as he needed to borrow some money from him, so we manoeuvred our way in through the crates of fruit and veg.

Unfortunately, only the greengrocer’s wife was in and she wasn’t going to be lending money to anyone. The blind man pleaded, but she was adamant. He told her that her husband often lent him a few pounds, but she was having none of it.

As the conversation wore on I looked up at the convex mirror that the greengrocer uses to monitor his shop instead of CCTV. In it I saw, to my horror, exactly what we looked like: two tramps begging for money.

I was in yet another socially awkward situation. I wished to help the man, and I didn’t mind being known as artistically, perhaps even eccentrically dressed by my near neighbours. But there is a fine line between “shabby chic” and “hobo” and I had to concede that this line was so far in the rear-view mirror as to be hidden by the curvature of the earth.

So, as the blind man continued his pleas I started trying to convey to the woman, using only facial expressions and my left hand, that I was in fact a middle-class, well-educated professional who was just having a bit of a bad beard day, and that I was not actually with this man. This was despite the fact that we had come in together and he was still holding on to my arm.

Neither of us were successful and we found ourselves back on the pavement, empty-handed. So I offered to buy the man’s groceries for him, and then we began the slow shuffle back to his house. I resisted the urge to casually mention that I was clean-shaven and wearing a pin-striped suit. Instead I listened to his sad story – about the wife in long-term care, the drug-addict son, the loss of his sight. I promised to phone social services on his behalf and tell them exactly about the help that he needed as soon as I got home.

I did, but first I shaved and went and explained a few things to the greengrocer’s wife.

I believe that I have worked out why the financial system is in such a mess. Last night I logged into my internet banking account and tried to move some money into another account. I typed in the amount and it then asked me when I would like to make the payment. As it was about quarter past eight in the evening and it usually complains about having to do anything after about three in the afternoon I selected the next day. I was surprised when it then reported:

Your adhoc payment could not be created: It's too late to setup a payment to leave your account for the next working day. However, you can send this payment now by changing the date to today's date.

Huh? What kind of bizarre logic is that? "Sorry, it's too late to do it tomorrow. Would you like me to do it now?" It's like the Queen of Hearts telling Alice "You can't have jam in three working days' time, you've got to eat the whole jar this instant until you're sick."

Surely with just a small modification to this system the banks can lend each other money yesterday and everything will be fine again.

... to you all, and thank you for reading my intermittent posts this year. If I didn’t have this blog and the feedback from you all then I’d never have finished the half-formulated idea I had about ZZ Top’s lyrics, and Father Christmas would now just be filling the nation’s music/maths geeks’ stockings with coal.

I have been working hard promoting the book. This has included handing out spare Venn That Tune Christmas cards to commuters at Liverpool Street station. I used to work in the City, and was wondering if anyone I knew would see me and go back to their office and say, “Do you remember Salvadore? Thought he was better than all the rest of us and left to “become a writer”? Well I just saw him at the station handing out flyers.” I do hope so.

So, best wishes to you all, and if anyone still hasn’t done their Christmas shopping then I have a suggestion...