Sogger’s Blog

I ate a pizza last night and it had olives on it. I don’t particularly like olives. These were de-stoned, and I squashed one, only to feel a wave of revulsion when, as it split in two, I had a particularly nasty flashback. The squashed black olive, with the light catching it perfectly, looked like a tiny cockroach. If it had started scuttling round the plate, I would not have been surprised, and I would have been found running, screaming like a child, to the farthest place possible just so I wouldn’t have to look at it. My fear of cockroaches is not just psychological - I feel a physical revulsion which may seem childish, but let me explain its roots and see if you can forgive me.

I don’t think I ever saw a cockroach as a child. That was until I left home to go to the paragon of cleanliness that is Manchester where I lived in a student hall of residence. I had the corner room; the room which had the hot water pipes passing through it on their way round the building. This had the unfortunate consequence of being a particularly comfortable breeding ground for cockroaches. In the evening I would return, with a student-ess if lucky. Any amorous possibilities would soon be ruined, when, after turning the light on, a hundred cockroaches would scatter in every direction, ultimately making their way back to the water pipe, where they would, like firemen called on an emergency, slide down out of sight.

It was a revolting sight, and God knows what they got up to in the evening as I slept. Of course, I didn’t like to make a fuss and merely signalled the fact that the university, might, if they had the time, want to get rid of them. What I should have done is screamed, parked myself outside the headmaster’s (or whatever they call them) office, refused to move, demanded another room and refused to pay. Of course, I didn’t do any of that and spent a full academic year with the constant thought of what was happening under my bed, or, worse still, on it; reluctant to turn on the light and generally spending as much time as possible elsewhere (luckily, it being university, this was possible). A shameful existence, and something I find hard to believe I tolerated for such a long time. So now maybe you understand where the fear comes from, and I hope you can forgive me.

The winter after leaving university, I was invited to a friend’s house for the weekend. Irish, and with a fairly bohemian family (read, not particularly attentive to hygiene details), it was a great weekend - his extended family was over from Ireland and there was whiskey galore. All was going well and, for some reason, I was seated in the comfy chair. The lights were down and I think some kind of card-game was underway when, slowly, very very slowly, a cockroach crawled up the side of the arm, and onto my leg. This is not a particularly comfortable position to be in. What do you do? Scream and run away, putting a slur on the cleanliness of your host’s house? Or say nothing, sweat, grip the sides of the chair and hope it’s all over soon? Guess which option I went for? Remember that it’s a physical thing - I wanted to be sick. I couldn’t swat it off and risk it landing on the floor in the middle of the card game so I let it crawl right over my lap, down the other side and disappear into the depths of the chair. I quickly made my excuses, went to the bathroom and had a sit down for quite a long time. When I came back down, I sat down cross-legged on the floor where I sipped my Bushmills slightly too quickly with obvious consequences.

Need I say more? Yes? Well, how about the time I stayed in a dodgy hotel in Toulouse, only to find the biggest cockroach in the world slowly making its way across the bathroom floor in the morning. The only option was a smart smack with a shoe - a lovely crunching sound and a large stain on the floor are memories I still hold dear. I was booked into that hotel for 2 nights, but made my excuses and left. I decided to book into the Ibis: soul-less but clean. The fact that on arrival I had to report to the reception that they might want to move the guy from in front of their garage door because he was injecting something into his lower arm with a syringe (can’t think what) and might be blocking cars is neither here nor there.

But that’s a whole other story and here I rest my case (after checking inside for the presence of small black objects that resemble cockroaches).

How many real friends do you have? I am talking about the type of friend who you might not see for 5 years, but, as soon as you meet, you pick up right where you left off. This is the friend, who, if you were to turn up on their doorstep late at night, suitcase in hand, tears streaming down your face, would invite you in, put the kettle on, and not ask questions or look slyly at their partner/watch/TV.

Chances are, you won’t have many. In fact, people can count themselves lucky if they have any friends like this. Friends come and go: “we used to go mountain-biking together”, “he was a good laugh”, “we went to the football together”, that sort of thing.

I reckon I have 3 friends of this “calibre” - I’m a lucky guy. The problem is that because I live in France, seeing them once every few years is a reality. In the spirit of “New Year, New Resolutions”, I decided to call one of them over the holiday period. He’s as phone-shy as me, so it wasn’t our best medium. However, I gathered that he hasn’t had a great year. Some of the details I will omit (even though he will never read this) ,but some of them, viewed from the outside (i.e. by you), are quite amusing and ironic.

My friends wife is great; off-the-wall and extremely funny, although often it is unintentional. She has a sister. Her sister is nothing like her and they have always found it difficult to get on. Her sister is extremely career-oriented and became a highly paid management consultant. It was at work that she met her husband, another highly paid management consultant. Unfortunately for both of them, getting to the top invariably entails sacrifices. In their case it was the ability to relate to other human beings on a personal level.

However, once they had a child, her husband changed and realised that maybe there is more to life than downsizing other people’s businesses (or whatever it is that management consultants do). Given that they were rolling in money, at the age of 35, he decided to retire to look after their child. From then on, weekdays were spent playing golf, punctuated by, no doubt, inconvenient school runs. However, it seems that after a couple of years of this, the school runs became more and more interesting to him: so much so that last year he left his wife for one of the mothers that he met every day at the school gates. He’s now gone back to work as a highly-paid management consultant and his new partner has taken over childcare duties during the week. Ironic don’t you think? I do.

Anyway, my friend’s wife’s sister (still with me?), as I said, sacrificed the ability to express herself. This has left her incapable of coping and she has, over the course of the year phoned my friend’s wife for at least 3 hours a day. This is OK - everyone needs a shoulder to cry on. However, 3 hours a day for a year can get tiring for the person who has to listen, especially when is is a single-subject monologue. My wife has now started phoning her on a regular basis in order to let my friend’s wife let off steam, something she appreciates - the chance to talk to another female about her problems and not somebody else’s. Ironic also, don’t you think? I do.

A second, and completely unrelated event happened during the year as well. After 45 years of marriage, my friend’s mother met up with an old boyfriend, left my friend’s father and went to live in Canada. Devastating I would imagine. He seemed quite phlegmatic about it, so I ventured the question, “Did they meet on Friend’s Reunited?”. “Senile Old-Age Pensioners Reunited, more like.” he replied.

All-in-all, it was what the Queen would call and “Annus Horribilus” (which doesn’t translate from the Latin as “an ugly backside”. At least, I don’t think so).

To finish, writing this, I struggled with the question, “If these are such great friends, how come you could never envisage telling them that you have a blog?”. Maybe, like my friend’s wife’s sister, I am unable to connect to people on a personal level and can only express myself anonymously? If this is the case, like my friend’s wife’s sister, it would have been nice if it went hand-in-hand with a successful career. Ironic don’t you think? I do.

I’ll keep this one short…
We are moving house on Saturday, so what is one of the most stupid things that you can do? How about falling off your bike on the way to work, spending the afternoon in hospital and having a sprained wrist that means that you are unable to lift boxes? Yep, that’s what happened to me yesterday!
More news about the move, my hospital visit of yesterday (they had just installed a new patient management software which meant that I got lost in the system and no doctor was assigned to me and I spent 5 hours in the waiting room…) and next week’s hospital visit where I get to undergo an EEG.

No more posts until I can write without wincing.