Thirds: Time, Senseless Things and Waiting in the Wings.

Hard times breed strong men and women. Strong men and women make good times. Good times begat weak men and women. So the narrative goes.

Today, we’ve gone from living in ‘good times’ to live in hard times, or at least interesting times – it seems the Western world is divided. Even Dear Old Blighty is in a state of dislocation and it might be said that weak men and women are part of the reason – either through their action or inaction. Government has of late too often pandered to rich elites in banking/finance, big media and multinational corporations while ignoring the concerns of those in society struggling to come to terms with or keep up with life in modern Britain; while government opposition has fallen into civil war, losing touch with the mood of the nation. The relatively affluent middle class, meanwhile, has become complacent and/or ineffective as a political movement against injustice. Cue Brexit. Cue Trump and the differing reactions to his election in the UK.

But what about class? Although class remains a thing in Britain today, as well as in the US - and the confusion and dissatisfaction around Brexit and the Presidential Elections we’ve seen in 2016 can be considered on class terms - class has also proved a reasonably shiftless, immovable ideology for centuries that is not perhaps most useful in providing a medium through which to discuss how the divisions clearly present in the UK, US and indeed beyond can be overcome. Overcoming and closing the gaps between the so called and/or self-styled ‘haves’ or ‘have nots’ has to be the order of the day.

Age has and is proving a major factor in explaining the tensions that exist in 2016 Britain and the US.
 

People are living longer – there are lots of elderly people. In the UK this not only puts added pressure on social services and the beleaguered NHS - already struggling in face of austerity measures, from the capitalist ideology of speed/efficiency over quality of care, as well as (arguably) immigration – but importantly creates a sizeable group in society that are simply not comfortable with modernity and the frantic pace of change both in the workplace and in the cultural/social sphere.

Technology and its sudden ubiquity has seen jobs requiring manual skills eroded, it has changed the way work is organised, in many instances undermining job security; for those out of work, technology has added yet another element of complexity to the chaotic benefits system (you have to know IT to negotiate the benefits system in the UK at any rate).

At the same time, technology has facilitated the spread of new ideas about race, sex and gender (among others), all with a particular vocabulary (or political correctness), ideas that have penetrated into nearly all walks of life regardless of how they are communicated. And then there are new ways of paying for things, and the increasingly depersonalized aspects of how we live out and administer our daily lives. What to believe and what not to? How does this work? Can anybody help?

Many people of the generation that grew up before the Second World War, during it or in the decade or two afterwards are struggling to come to terms with modernity. Government isn’t helping them. But these people make up a sizeable enough group in the UK/US today to be influenced and thus to be influential. The alt right succeed in reaching out to / exciting these people – cynically and clinically. The left has to learn. It has to start listening.

But the young are also struggling to keep up with modern Britain, so too in the US. Again technology, while in many ways a great accompaniment and sometime facilitator in the lives of young people, is also the source of consternation and confusion, not to mention the platform for bullying and related crises in self-confidence.  What is true? What isn’t? Who/what is real? Where is something I can trust/believe in?

Again, the influencers in society need to listen.

Brexit (and Trump's success) were cries of 'stop!', 'things have gone too far!', 'pay us attention!', pleas for some kind of order.

To me – generally speaking – one of the things people of all ages seem increasingly useless at is in understanding and best utilising their freedom: the nature and parameters of it in 2016 Britain/USA. It may be too far to claim that technology and its binary impositions/inability to account for 3/5ths of reality is a straightjacket on freedom and independence of thought, but it isn’t a stretch to say it engenders a muddying of the waters when it comes to information and to understanding what is reliable/relevant and what is not.

Social media which, it seems, in part accounted for the election of Donald Trump (see Brietbart News’ propaganda and the fact Steve Bannon will be in the White House from Jan 21), earlier in the year proved a strong influencer in the Brexit referendum. There is simply too much information on Twitter and Facebook for one person, young or old, to absorb, so people search out one or two news havens and largely accept what they are fed (the same goes for print media, including newspapers, it is true).

But it shouldn’t be too much to except for people to be able to understand the inherent bias in what they are reading, and to recognise they are being fed not feeding/nourishing themselves.

In his 1997 song ‘Law’, David Bowie intoned: ‘I don’t want knowledge, I want certainty.’  He was satirising intellectual culture (curiosity or lack of it). Nineteen years on it’s a lyric that belies an attitude that seems relevant to both Right and Left in the context of a fractious 2016. Most of us would prefer certainty, and on the eve of Brexit and the US presidential elections there was plenty of it around, when we should really have been/be thirsting for knowledge over and above straightforward (and with the internet – vitriolic and potentially never ending) confirmation of our views  - especially at the time of writing.

Of course, education is key here.

In a modern world driven ever onwards at increasing speeds by the advance of technology and all that it manifests from one week to another, perhaps (in the UK at least) we place too much emphasis on educating people to fulfil a very narrow remit in the early stages of their development and indeed in further/adult education (rigid curriculums, empirical testing, overly specific training for the very few employment opportunities available). Modernity wants order and simultaneously wishes to limit or put controls on freedom. Capitalism, in the context of globalisation, is where speed/efficiency rules, divides and subjugates. And if you can’t keep up as a pupil-in-class-then-school-leaver, a graduate, someone trying to change career, or as some poor soul trying to get back into the world of work, you are worthless and surplus since binary targets and money/profit rules.

Careerism does not go hand in hand with individualism.

This said, the UK (with the US) is also one of the world’s leading nations for start-up businesses. There is an entrepreneurial spirit around which presumably stems from a certain freedom/flexibility of thought and a desire to create something new and something better than that currently in existence/on the market (this aside from low corporation taxes!). Where does this entrepreneurial spirit arise and how is it fostered by education? This seems an important question to answer and to learn from. We all can benefit from entertaining better (with due consideration and discernment) a wide variety of ideas and options for improving the common good (as well as our own!).

But not everyone is predisposed to being this way, encouragement is needed.

For starters - and to make possible encouragement - the barriers to entry to becoming an educator/involved in education (overly long and sometimes expensive training) and the lack of incentives for staying in the profession need to be addressed with sufficient vision, courage and investment once and for all.

Educators are currently rushed off their feet, indeed, everyone is struggling or failing to keep up – governments, opposition, pollsters, commentators, young, old, straight, queer, left and right. Before the next general election, before Trump’s inauguration in mid-January, maybe we should be telling and teaching ourselves initially to slow down, log off/step away from the havoc of 2016, the forward march of modernity and the determinist idea that 2017 will be ‘dark’ and consider how/where the light can get in to our dim and cracked heads. There, almost invariably, is another way. I say: ‘be free’ – entertain other ways. Then come back to the air.

Seconds: Deep In Your Room – Hurting Through The Gloom.

Caleb finishes his desk job for the day at A1 design offices around 5.30pm. He cycles home and chains his steel frame bike to a lamppost outside. The first thing he does when through the door of his two bedroom maisonette, bought with help from his parents, is walk into the living room and boot up his MacBook Air. Then he turns on the house lights, takes off his rucksack, removes his shoes and puts the kettle on before settling down in front of his Apple to catch up on the day’s news.

He revisits his favourite Twitter accounts and from there hyperlinks to a selection of articles that have been shared and ‘liked’ over the last 12 hours, including The Guardian, New Yorker and a BBC website feature (as well as a YouTube video of a rare David Bowie interview which he streams in the background). His eyes settle on the opening paragraph of the first article he chooses to read, then his gaze follows the first line of the next paragraph and the next for more pertinent information; he half reads the whole of paragraph four before scrolling to the comment section at the bottom – what am I supposed to think? The pattern is repeated for each of the three articles he mulls over.

After checking his personal emails, deciding he can’t go at short notice to the Momentum organised march to emphasise the need for safeguarding the NHS over the coming weekend (he has casual family commitments), he gets up from the sofa somewhat discombobulated and prepares dinner in the adjacent kitchen - leftover Saag Aloo from Sunday night takeaway. He warms it up and while on the stove uses his iPhone to air a podcast to accompany his eating. Saag Aloo tastes even better the following day – and what was that about deforestation in the Amazon... ? Later the same night he'll fall asleep to Newsnight and the bleating of Evan Davis (or two hundred unaccounted for sheep).

By day, Caleb presents himself as a conscientious Millennial. He works in a creative environment where ideas bounce around, some of them political. His carbon foot print is good, he recycles at home and work (although he buys branded bottled water at lunch). He cares about the environment, likes the outdoors. To him it 'matters' what happens to society and he engages in political conversations – he’s even a paid-up Labour member (£5 per month). He likes Corbyn, doesn’t understand Tories, shares views with both Liberal Democrats and Greens, is depressed by UKIP followers and Brexiteers. He thinks Trump is a looney and America has lost its shit.

‘Be cool’ is one of his mantras. On the outside he observes and contemplates life from a cool distance. On the inside he wants to improve it for himself and everyone else but can’t make sense of the various 'liberal'/'progressive' propaganda (calls to arms?) he reads, is offended by the ‘right’ or ‘alt right’, and does not prioritise politics or social action. Reading, thinking, watching and playing football is how he likes to spend his weekends. He values 'Me Time' and yet he excuses himself from getting out there politically speaking on the basis of time, or the lack of it, because he’s not even vaguely sure of how he might be of use to someone less fortunate than him, God forbid somebody in any kind of dire situation. He won’t volunteer and while he feels a nagging but easily ignored guilt, to feel aggrieved or to feel anger and to be motivated by injustice is not in his make up – he won’t claim or entertain outrage. In quiet moments alone he idly reflects: What in the world can I do? What difference would it make?

Movements that might define themselves as ‘progressive’ and/or broadly speaking of the ‘left’ – which emphasise the need for a (sometimes) radical rethink of the way society works and advocate for change from the bottom up, with people coming together as agents – in the last decade or two, at least, generally get stuck when it comes to inspiring, motivating, even getting an email response from individuals such as Caleb, whether or not Caleb-types feel they have already done enough (e.g. set up a direct debit to a 'progressive' political organisation). Caleb may RT or comment on FB but he won’t go any further. Again, his concern is genuine on one level (he cried at I, Daniel Blake even if guilt at his own privelege was the main reason for his tears) but on other levels the nature of his concern remains largely unexplored and seldom acted on (save at the time of a general election or referendum – he will at least vote). Ultimately, Caleb is comfortable deep in his room, dimly hurting through the gloom at the injustice of the world or observing passively from behind double glazing as is, in truth, very much his preference.

In the wake of Brexit, Trump and the resurgence of the right, in reply somehow progressives/the left need to galvanise Caleb-types to give priority to politics/social action in their lives, to work it into their daily or weekly remit, get them to engage with other real people either in debate (sometimes with those from the other side of the political spectrum) or in helping people in need – the poor, disenfranchised, the illiterate. Calebs need to become the voice, personification or embodiment of the left out there, at large in situations of all kinds.

Still, it’s hard to do when the middle class, generally speaking, remains (for the time being) reasonably well off and relatively unscarred by the various machinations of government, stagnant or declining real pay, rising rents, ill health and immigration.

But what if the advance of technology and dominant narrative espoused by the rampant strain of capitalism sweeping the UK – that values efficiency above all (save time/money to create more time/money to do more things) – were to take Caleb’s job away from him at A1 design? Sure as eggs are eggs there is a computer already in existence that can do his design work better than him and in a nanosecond of the time. How would he feel then? What then would he do? What difference could it then make?

Struggle against adversity is something that progressive/left-leaning movements of the past have nearly always associated with political action and struggle as being a necessary element in any success, especially in a country such as the United Kingdom which might be described as conservative with a small ‘c’ (even if behind closed doors it can be anything but). In the UK today there remains adversity, indeed a widening gap in some (if not all) areas of the country between rich and poor – and the poor suffer from government austerity measures, an outdated benefits system and unstable working patterns. There is reason to struggle whether affected directly or otherwise. Society as a whole does not benefit from inequality. Caleb needs to be made to see this much and that his fate is linked with those who will or are losing out. Calebs need to represent to others Freedom -  in their independence and the sheer will power of their thoughts and actions.

If, for instance, Jeremy Corbyn’s vision of a more inclusive, compassionate politics is to occur where people are ‘not left behind’ and the left is going to succeed in bridging the perceived gap to them (some of whom are the UKIP vote) then Caleb-types are essential as the agents of change. Not for their money (though this certainly helps), not simply to march or protest (when their diaries allow), but principally for their education, energy, communication skills (at least in IT), and their time - to help organise social wellbeing and cohesion in areas where support is lacking (to run foodbanks, help people fill in benefit forms, help others recognise and articulate their employment rights, and so on). Time is money and money is something even Labour doesn’t have a huge amount of. Rekindle the voluntary spirit among the middle classes that in part characterised Victorian Britain, even the Britain that existed pre-Thatcher and the state endorsed rise of individualism, and things may begin to get better for the poor and Caleb-types may come to realise their purpose.

Time, thanks to technology, capitalism and the dominant idea of efficiency, may soon be something all of us Caleb-types can spare more of and we should use it creatively and unselfishly. Until then even if we can only get involved in small ways, we should aim to make our involvement regular and consistent.

Reconciling 2016: Beginnings - Always Crashing in the Same Car?

We should have understood that when The Starman returned to the celestial heavens earlier this year, on January 11, the world - as we have known it - would come crashing down around us...

David Bowie, as much as any public figure (in Britain at any rate), represented an avatar for the liberal intelligentsia, the quixotic suburban populous and the artisanal working class. He was a source of life, solace; for some a prophet of the future. Perhaps he was also a harbinger of doom!?

Planet Earth in 2016, so we might be inclined to believe from what we see on television news, read online or in the daily rags, has become a Blackstar.

Bowie’s death was followed by Brexit was followed by Trump becoming President Elect, and in between there was turmoil in the markets, natural disasters and a spate of terror attacks in Brussels, Nice, Lahore and Istanbul. People in Canada have even started to dig their own graves.

Hmm.

2016 has been a momentous year and one in which many events transpired against received opinion or upset the odds. Aside from Leicester City winning the Premier League very few of these events has been stuff of fairy tales. But it’s probably fair to say that many of my ‘kind’ - I write as someone of the liberal or left-leaning, British middle class* – have been living in some version of a fairy tale for several decades. Little Wonder (?).

For ‘us’ it’s been a confusing and confounding year. Many of my ‘kind’ are scratching heads or soul-searching. How could ‘we’ have messed up the middle east so badly fundamentalist elements are now out to kill us off? How could ‘we’ have lost the Brexit vote? How could our ‘fellow’ Americans allow Donald Trump into the White House? Where’s Bowie when you need him? Oh no! Boo hoo!

It’s the year hatred may well have become neutral, fascism: ‘alt right’, lying: ‘post-truth’ but in ‘liberal’ echelons/on the left, debating circles have turned into echo chambers, places for people to argue amongst themselves. The conversation has occurred largely online and away from the mainstream press (where opinions are still formed/interpreted and given a/most voice) or, indeed, via protest after-the-fact (see Pro-EU marches in London post-Brexit and consider how many of the thousands who turned out to wave placards and pose in blue and yellow T-shirts actively campaigned for the EU cause beforehand).

We can criticise the political elite for sleepwalking into this mess. Although we elected and kept many of the same myopic/complacent neo-liberal politicians in power, and in the case of the US, our ‘fellow’ Americans didn’t knock on enough doors – either through Clinton apathy or just apathy.

We can say these politicians should have paid more attention to the blue collar working class over the years (when we also assumed the blue collar working class no longer was swayed by the Tabloids, was essentially apolitical, too overweight or drunk to mobilise or be mobilised).

We can blame capitalism – and not realise it is stampeding over our livelihoods too (for example, 80,000 white collar civil service jobs have been cut without even so much as a whisper since 2010 in the UK).

We can say the alt right fly in the face of facts (when we are lost in a maelstrom of them and unable to pick one to reply with).

We can say these people are racists, and slur them with various ists and isms and sometimes with good reason, but other times (when we're being lazy... perhaps too often) we are only contributing to the Us vs. Them narrative which fuels all of this.

We can be dour and become cynical, and while it is our right to be angry, anger needs a channel and it needs a positive kind of energy to channel it best (however you look at it we can't do anger like the alt right - not only because we eschew the rhetoric, but because the blood simply won't boil).

We need to remain outward looking and optimistic, even if it is optimism with a small ‘o’, and bargain with good faith that there is still common decency in society (the UK, America, the middle east etc).

We need to stand up to any of the injustices if/as/when they happen, better still pre-empt them. And to do so we have to drop the bad attitude – stop bickering amongst ourselves or indulging in some navel-gazing, reflexive narrative and learn from Brexit and Trump in particular that the values of ‘liberal’ society and/or the left need to have a more direct and emotive appeal.

We need to supress for now the ists and isms, nefarious factoids, all the cappuccino chatter and define what liberal/left values really stand for - let's say: Truth, Justice and Equality. Three straightforward words understood by everyone but all too often not utilised with sufficient rigour.

And we also need unity. The right, especially the 'alt right' is beginning to homogenise and thus is fast becoming the dominant voice in society and in politics. The left has to get over it's own peculiarities and forget pedantry.  While we can be civil in private when expressing our views, the uncomfortable truth for some (including me) is that we will probably have to shout them (in unison) in public to avoid being drowned out. And, perhaps most importantly, make sacrifices to time and properly engage in social action.

Meantime, the trove of Bowie’s music, his concerts, television appearances and interviews will still be there waiting, at least in one internet galaxy or another, when we’re done trying (or hoarse from shouting).

*using class in somewhat general terms here for purposes of this short piece

a one hundred and twenty ninth poem... 'imagine'

Just imagine if ol' Donald hadn't won...

Just imagine being bossed by a woman!

Eight years of getting nagged to find a job

Thank heavens for ol' Donald, Christ God -

And after Hillary we'd have had a Gay

Ruling this here nation, no sir, no way!

And what if following that we'd got a Trans

Presiding o'er this fair an' pleasant land?!

Just imagine if ol' Donald didn't win...

Just imagine havin' to take it on the chin!

Mexican rapists an' Muslim guns

Chasin' around our daughters an' our sons,

Tree huggers every corner of the block

Makin' out we're a stupid laughing stock...

  So thank Christ God ol' Donald didn't lose

Or we'd never have gotten the chance to air our views

Charge your glass, raise a toast, put out more flags

 Tell the Indians next door to pack their bags -

Amen!

a one hundred and twenty eighth new poem... 'hillary'

When the fate of her campaign 

Became clear to Hillary,

Tbf she didn't complain - asked

Bill to steer her to the distillery.

a one hundred and twenty seventh new poem... 'burn, baby burn'

So, Donald Trump has won -

Set the controls for the heart of the sun!

a one hundred and twenty sixth new poem ... 'southern rail'

Southern Rail – the franchise

For your ordinary

Common-sense kind of man,

What’s the point of bloody

Sitting anyway, when we’ve two

Churchillian legs to stand?

Air-conditioning is for

Conchies and working toilets

Should be a treat… but you’re

All a load of fucking whingers –

What else d’you want, passenger

Ejector seats?!

Good old Southern Rail – the

Franchise for you ordinary

Common-sense kind of chap,

Bullet trains, TGVs are all

Foreign made death traps.

What could be better than

Trundling sedately through the English

Countryside, or staring at a

Bramble hedge, a brick

Yard, waiting (hours) for a ride?   

So here’s to Southern Rail –

We decent men hope you make

It through
Your current malaise

To better days,
We few

We very few!  

a one hundred and twenty fifth new poem ... 'bank holiday, newquay'

Grey rain clouds - lost - roll

Across Newquay sound,

No souls around;

6AM silent on the streets

Sticky with spilled Radler

Save for seagulls

Scavenging at tits/bits off a passed
Out Teenage Paddler,

Sicked up shots of Jaeger,

Stilton Cornish Pasty,

The whole drab town vastly

Slumbering smashed in

Lumbering wet dreams,

Broiling, roiling, oiling

Puke encrusted pillows

With grease from fish,

Chips, fingers, unwashed n' braided hair;

A stained curtain billows in

The fetid sea-salt-sweat

Melched air - at the Escape

Surf Hostel Europa

Not a single nostril twitches,

No one has life enough

To care.

a one hundred and twenty fourth new poem ... 'breakfast blubber'

As the camera cut

Back to Studio Boohoo

The two

Whimpering presenters

Were caught hankies out,

Trousers down, in

A piteous metaphorical 

Paddling pool of

Their own bathetic

Blubber.   

a one hundred and twenty third new poem ... 'breakfast sofa'

The puppy weed all

Over the BBC Breakfast

Sofa and then, 

Moments later, did its

Second business on an

Olympian’s shoe.

a one hundred and twenty second poem ... 'owen smith rally'

Owen Smith surveyed the crowd…

Not a bad turn out

He thought to himself,

Faintly proud.

Not many women, no,

But a couple of truant school

Children, a stray goat;

Comrade Stan, who he’d paid

To attend, giveaway free

Ice-cream... his ice-cream van,

A man with no less zeal

Fixing a puncture on the rear

Wheel  

– though perhaps not entirely there

On his own volition… 

Some local

Press, a retired paediatrician,

Well at least one local

Press, 

Owen guessed,

And then a dosed up
ex-Pfizer colleague,
Face twisted

In some kind of

Unfathomable distress. 

a one hundred and twenty first new poem ... 'legacy'

Dave (and Jesus)

Wept as the Commons

Gave

A standing ovation

And the BBC

Ran on rotation

Headlines proclaiming

Him the Greatest Briton in

The history of the nation, since

King Alfred or from whence

Records began

And all fifteen of his

Fans from Prestwick to

Camberwell 

Met up in

Bury St Eds to raise

A toast at the Nutshell,

Little England’s smallest

Pub, featuring a

Mummified cat,

A pig's head in a hat 

And

Severely devalued

Sterling notes

Smeared on

The walls.

a one hundred and twentieth new poem ... 'post brexit'

Post Brexit

Boris Johnson

Was found

Luring cute

Tabby cats and

Andrex puppies

To their grisly and

Premature deaths

With the promise

Of what were in

Reality

Vegetarian sausages.

a one hundred and nineteenth new poem ... 'last days'

Dave surveyed

Number 10

For the last time,

A glass of port

In between his

Rotund forefinger

And thumb - Sam

Cam was getting the

Kids ready and

George, pastry

Faced, was searching

For his BB gun.

a one hundred and eighteenth new poem ... 'chicken coup'

Eagle adjusted her

Donald Trump novelty

Wig with

Nail polished

Pigeon claws,

Paused before

Hastily snaffling

A collection of stale

Bread crumbs from

Betwixt her fake

Pigeon breasts.

When she returned

To the War Room,

Benn was still

Searching for

His glasses and

Hunt sat idly

Leafing through a 

Back edition of

Chicken Whisperer.

a one hundred and seventeenth new poem ... 'ode to the alcoholic'

Another grey, low ceiling day

Headful of beer, I’m feeling my way

Along the verge of an A road in search of an inn

A pint of John Smith's and a chaser of gin.  

a one hundred sixteenth poem ... 'osborne'

George Osborne

Was born of wax

Crucified by press hacks

Made unholy mess, super taxed

Families with two thalidomide kids

Or more, and achieved the fiscal

Equivalent of skull fucking

The poor.

Eventually, he will also die.

a one hundred and fifteenth poem ... 'cameron'

Cameron

Or Dave

Raised

The spectre of

Hitler at a 

Charity dinner

When speaking

About Europe,

Gassed on 

For far too long.

a one hundred and fourteenth poem ... 'johnson'

Boris Johnson walked into a room:

The walls cringed,

And the doors began to sweat,

Tables and chairs attempted to shuffle off,

And the carpet crept

Towards the fire brexit. 

The Intervention

‘We don’t owe him this,’ I said.

‘He’s complicated,’ she protested. Always code for being something of a twat.

Why is it that one episode of bad luck is supposed to make you stronger, but a lifetime of disadvantage rarely propels you to the top? They fuck you up, she’d said in the past – a vogueish notion for the salespeople of parenting books, playing on guilt, but ‘they’ aren’t weighed against the alternative, I always thought.

We were in my uncle’s flat. He was not home yet; presumably he was on the corner. He had always been uncompromising in his view of self-determination. ‘You’re good? Why not great?’ he would say. ‘And if all is not well, why aren’t you fixing it?’ I protested only weakly in these circular conversations. He tended to speak like a stage actor, a ham. My uncle was also uncompromising in his self-delusion. He read books with titles like ‘Feel the Power’ and ‘Don’t Dream It, Do It’, even attending the authors’ so-called seminars from time to time. Arguably, he’d missed the point when he got into accumulator betting. He had the perverse perspective that the longer the odds, the greater the achievement if you won. It was a ‘one man against the system’ mentality. It hadn’t been successful so far.

So this, today, was what my mother called ‘an intervention’.

She sat rubbing her knee where she had knocked it on the wooden bar on the edge of my uncle’s couch. The gap between the two seats in his sitting room invited this. I slouched in the armchair, but felt so ready to fall asleep I stood to move about. I struck my shins on the little table, rattling the cans on there. Bangs and shouts came from the corridors outside, and a dog started up. My mother pushed the heels of her hands into her eyes so hard I was compelled to grasp her wrists and pull her arms away from her face. She pulled back, and we grappled foolishly, like a parody of boxers sparring. My heel kicked out and sent some of the cans over, dregs oozing out and onto the carpet glacially. I let go. The air felt too dense, so I turned off the little gas burner. My uncle’s darts trophy looked at me from the mantle, and his wedding photo.

‘Thanks for coming with me,’ my mum said. ‘He needs his family now – we have to circle the wagons.’

Two wagons were all we had. The other one was on the south coast with my cousin (who wouldn’t ever join a circle with this desperate pair) and had been for months now. My father, for his part, had been gone, lost at sea, far longer.

We heard loud banging from the corridor, then breaking glass. The curses were my uncle’s and it took him two tries to open the door. He came in straight so he wedged himself in the door frame; he noticed us, and just regarded us for a while. He twisted his shoulders free and sidestepped behind the sofa. My mum reached for his hard hand but he pulled it quickly free. My uncle returned from the kitchenette five minutes later with a drink for himself. He was in the first flush of old age, skin drying and wrinkling, but not in a sweet way around the eyes. It was getting ruddy and blotchy, freckles joining up on his forearms and the hair getting thicker and greyer like oxidising wires. His ears, too, were thickening and his eyes were like teacups with dregs.

He put the fire back on as he passed it, deftly dodging the precarious coffee table and slumping into the remaining sofa space, the tail of a dove; only we were supposed to be the doves, or the bearers of the olive branch, or the bringers of a white standard, or who the hell knows. He stared back and forth at us for a time, no-one speaking. I stared at the fire, the carbon monoxide becoming visible before my gaze; a slow yellow cloud spreading from the fake coals. My mother stared at him, with moisture in the eye corners, and that look she slapped on that meant immense pity, the kind of look you’d cast at a laden donkey being beaten in spite of its best efforts by the mean-mouthed driver.

She said, to him but with an obvious look at me to count me in, ‘This is an intervention.’ My mother explained the plan: to drive south, where her sister-in-law was staying with my cousin and her family. My uncle said nothing, just taking long pulls from his can, until:

‘Fine. We’ll take my car though. I filled it up and checked the oil yesterday.’ My mother blanched, taken aback at how simple it was.

I stood, feeling impatient, and turned off the fire again. My uncle looked at me, then asked my mother: ‘Who put the bellows up his arse?’

I led out, my uncle bringing up the rear so he could lock the damn door.

The building was a brutalist beauty, as it is fashionable to say. I guided us along the walkway and down some stairs, but they stopped before ground level, so I led us along another street in the sky. Around it looped, stairs only leading upward. I heard my uncle sniggering. I couldn’t bear to turn and look at him, so I went on, going back to the stairs we’d come down, only to go up and past his door the other way. Again, though, I could not lead us down ground level, only reaching the first floor. I stopped, looking out at the surrounding, connecting blocks. I could see a down staircase, but no way to get there. My uncle came next to me and flattened his now empty can onto the concrete ledge.

‘This way, you dope.’

We carried on, switched left along a turning I had not seen, and down.

‘My car,’ he said again.

‘You can’t drive,’ my mother said.

‘Fine. Let him drive.’ He passed the keys.

I went to open the driver’s door, but it was no good.

‘Chuck the keys.’ He unlocked the passenger door and got in, having to lean over to open my door.

‘Flip the seat for your mother. I want to lie back.’ I did what he said, before ungracefully getting in myself.

‘How long has the door been like that?’ I wondered aloud.

Turned out my uncle had done it deliberately by squeezing wood glue into the keyhole. He said it bought time if someone was trying to nick it.

‘Time enough to symbol crash them, right enough.’

‘What?’

‘Crush an empty can on each side of their head. On their dumb ears. Symbol, like.’

‘Oh, cymbal. You mean cymbal crash.’

‘Aye, that’s the ticket.’

He seemed relaxed now we were on the road. My mother said nothing; I headed for the motorway. The car wasn’t a total waste of metal and glass. It had a little squirt to it. I amused myself for a time pondering the best way to strip it down and how to package the parts for sale on. I splashed through the fast lane south. My uncle fell asleep, snoring gently. My mother didn’t, she just watched him out of the sides of her eyes. We continued late into the night, until fuel and my eyelids ran low. As soon as I hit the slip road, his head snapped toward me, as though he’d never been sleeping.

‘Petrol,’ I said. He grunted. In his company I could never shake the sense that he was perpetually holding me in judgement, as though he had the right. Then again, I couldn’t tell him, or my mother, about my impending divorce. We were a family who failed privately, catastrophically. Only this time, my mother thought he couldn’t carry on failing, for shame.

Of course, I ended up paying. At least my mother bought us a coffee each, while my uncle stood under a speaker in the shop, listening to the football fixtures and team news. He perturbed me with how quickly he threw back the burning black drink. My coffee burned my mouth, giving me a little flap of tissue on my hard palate to probe with my tongue through the rolling miles. I drove through, at my mother’s behest, until bleak night broke into bleaker day. The rain thrummed down. I ate some crisps for breakfast. My uncle slept on, slept it off, as I’m sure he had so many times. My mother stayed unnervingly alert. She pressed her lips together like the priest if you whisper in the chapel. She was always puritanical. She told me off for drinking too much coffee, for taking a second slice of cake, for spending money on my wheels.

Almost dead on eleven, my uncle muttered, eyes still closed: ‘Sun’s over the ja darm.’

‘Ja darm?’

‘Yes, German, isn’t it.’

I heard my mother sigh. He ignored her. Their relationship was unfathomable to me. It was my gathering suspicion that she had no genuine interest in her brother. She wanted the story to tell the ladies, a reputation in the family of bringing the errant one back into the fold. The vanity of the morally victorious.

We stayed in silence for another hour or so, my uncle’s suggestion hovering there like a speck in my eye. I saw a sign for a town I know, from doing business in car parts there. The guy had taken me for a pint after we’d agreed a supply deal. I felt it would be the kind of haunt my uncle would choose. Bloke reading the back pages at the end of the bar; that kind of thing.

We went in, and it was enough to cheer my uncle such that he bought the round. The football wasn’t even on yet. There was a group of kids sitting in a booth: the place had some remnants of its time as a gin palace. They didn’t look old enough to be there, my mother said.

‘Leave them be,’ my uncle growled.

There were six in the cabal of jealous anxious teenagers, already drinking shots. They also had pints in front of them, scummy surfaces rocking as they banged the table, drawing attention to their own boorishness – a point of pride.

My uncle eyed them. His face was inscrutable. To me, it looked like he was sizing them up as potential drinking buddies but that seemed stupid so I put it from my mind. My mother sipped a lager and lime, which loosed her tongue.

‘Eric, don’t blow this. I called Tina while you were sleeping. She’s prepared to give you a chance – she’ll at least hear you out. But you can’t show up drunk.’

If my uncle knew the former was a lie, he didn’t let on. My mother had always abided by the illusion that if you believed in something strongly enough, it had to come true; I guess she had this in common with her brother. It didn’t work for bringing dad home from the North Sea, and it probably wouldn’t work now. But still: complicated, as she would say.

Suddenly, an uproar from the booth of youths. There were yelps of disgust and phones came quickly out to take photos and videos. One of the girls couldn’t take the relentless vodka measures, and had vomited down her jacket and onto the polished wood table. The gang jeered and bayed; tears came from eyes rolling back. She lurched from the bench, knocking a half-drunk pint down. This brought snarls and opprobrium more than laughs.

‘Filthy prick, what is the matter with you?’ Another girl stood up.

I hadn’t noticed my uncle get up. He was wide and, of course, had a look of total distain for others and their thoughts. So when he stepped between the girls and pointed, the girl throwing insults sat down.

‘Finish your pint,’ he said.

To the chucker: ‘Come on love.’

He unabashedly put his arm around her shoulders and led her to the bathrooms. Unexpectedly delicate, he led her like he was coaxing a lamb. The table of teens was silent, watching. After five minutes or so they emerged. The girl was leaning on my uncle’s arm. He looked for all the world like a proud father steering his daughter down the aisle.

He brought her to sit with us, even collecting her a glass of water from the bar.

‘This is Erica – isn’t that funny,’ he chuckled. I wondered if he welcomed the saviour to a damsel in distress routine, or was enjoying being distracted from the reason for our trip. Either way, his kindly air was troubling. He chit-chatted with Erica, not that he got much from her. She was vacant company, in her state.

Eventually my mother said: ‘Let’s go. This is getting silly.’

My uncle unwillingly agreed. He deposited Erica on the street outside, telling her not to bother with her companions of earlier.

‘They aren’t your real pals if they can’t handle you when you’re out of your tree.’

‘Ok Eric,’ she said, before reeling off down the street.

~

Later, we sat outside the house, which stood one street back from the sea view. So close! It was dry, with a steely light. We were eating ice creams. Perhaps at first glance we would look like an ordinary family. My mother perched; uncle Eric and I slouched back. The ice creams were my idea. For some reason I wasn’t ready for this to conclude, or else I wasn’t convinced we could see it through.

My mother was strategizing.

‘You need to convince her, Eric. If you go all cap-in-hand, she probably won’t believe you or buy it. That’s failed before.’ She waved her hand dismissively. My uncle gave me a sidelong look – our first moment of unity.

‘But she has to believe that you are going to change and that you’ve already started. Be humble, but be yourself. I think she is ready to forgive you Eric.’

My mother was rarely happier than when giving instruction and guidance. She should get into surf instruction down on the beach here, or sandcastle building classes for cack-handed toddlers. She could correct them at every turret.

‘Ok,’ my uncle said, and opened the passenger door.

‘Break a leg,’ I said. He looked at me like I’d told him to eat his shoes.

He went up to the door and knocked. My aunt was the one who answered. We watched, but couldn’t hear, even though my mother wound down the window as though she was curb crawling. He didn’t go inside, and after a few minutes he was back in the car.

My uncle didn’t say anything, although my mother asked. He pointed forward. Obediently, I started the car and crawled away. He just pointed left and right as I drove slowly through the pastel streets. He indicated me into a parking space by an inn a couple of roads away.

He bought a round again, not that he took requests: Guinness for him and me, lager and lime for mum. He also bought a glass of white wine and set it down at the empty seat when we settled around a little table. There were old fishing nets fixed to the walls and tealights in scallop shells everywhere.

My uncle took a long pull on his pint and smiled surprisingly gently as I grimaced through a sip of mine. My mother pointed quizzically at the glass of wine. Even she didn’t want to break the brittle feeling of strange hope that had alighted over us.

My uncle looked at it too, then smiled again, this time conspiratorially.

‘Oh yeah. She’s just getting changed then she’ll join us.’ He was enjoying his moment.

Mum and me waited, as though interrupting would silence him by breaking some stream of consciousness we were half-expecting.

‘Well, it wasn’t easy to convince her,’ he said, looking pointedly at my mother.

‘… But telling her about the big win certainly helped.’