79. Give me an 'L'

In January 2011, I wrote a piece titled “Discomfited?”.  In it I recalled the one or two times in my life when I have been embarrassed.  I’ve never been so embarrassed that I wished that I could just disappear.  Mostly, they have just been of the, “I didn’t really say/do/ that did I?” kind of thing.

Yesterday, however, something happened that could have been (and may still could be) unbelievably embarrassing.  I didn’t do anything and I certainly didn’t say anything.  Throughout the whole incident I was seated, still and silent.  But I blushed deeply and looked around feeling self-conscious and extremely uncomfortable.

Almost two years ago Caroline and I applied for Olympic tickets.  We knew it was a lottery and as neither of us have ever been successful in any kind of sweepstake, raffle or game of chance, and as we had heard that the demand for tickets was going to be huge compared with the supply available, we applied for as many as we were allowed.

On a Saturday morning many months ago we each sat with our laptops on our knees and went through the Olympic calendar making our application.  We both applied for two tickets for the same events.  

If we had been completely successful we would have become the lucky recipients of 80 tickets for twenty events and as we believed that we hadn’t the slightest chance of success, we applied for quite expensive seats too.  Why not?  We might just as well fail to get a £750 pound ticket as a £35 pound one.  After the application had been sent off I calculated that with a 100% success in our submission, we were looking at a bill for £24,000.

You probably won’t be surprised to learn that we were not 100% successful but actually our rate was around 6%, which we thought was pretty good.

Yesterday we went to our first event – Beach Volleyball!

As I wrote in “Calm down!” in February this year, Caroline becomes wildly excited and enthusiastic very easily.  I can’t begin to imagine what she must have been like as a kid on Christmas Eve.  I doubt that she ever slept at all.  She could hardly sleep on Monday night and “We’re going to the Olympics tomorrow,” was the last thing I heard before I eventually got to sleep.

On Tuesday morning she was up very early and packing a rucksack with items that would cover every possible meteorological event.  No, not snowshoes but if it had been February and not July, they would be in there too (I’ve still got the shovel and coarse salt in the boot of my car from the very cold spell in December 2010).

We went to London by train and then got a cab from Euston to Horse Guards Parade where the competition is taking place.  On the train we sat in a ‘Quiet Zone’ carriage.  This means that using mobile/cell phones and personal stereos is prohibited and even though the carriage was almost full, nobody spoke and it was eerily quiet.

Quiet that is until Caroline’s bubbling excitement got the better of her and she suddenly blurted out, “We’re off to the Olympics.”  Forty people looked up from the books, newspapers and magazines they were reading and looked at her.  A lot of them smiled and Caroline beamed back happily.  I stared out of the window.

The temporary stadium at Horse Guards is a wonderful thing.  There is comfortable seating for 15,000 people and there are four lifts or elevators to get people like me, with mobility problems, to their places.  The soldiers on security duty were charming, funny and helpful while the uniformed volunteer helpers were desperate to be of assistance.

At 2:30 pm we were ready for the first game, which was between two men from Venezuela and two Latvians.

“Who do you want to win?” Caroline wanted to know.

“I’m not bothered.”

“I’m supporting Latvia because that nice waitress at the Cracked Conch in Cayman was Latvian,” Caroline told me.

You will almost certainly never have been to a Beach Volleyball event but let me tell you, it is different.  I suppose that according to my personal definition of a sport – if it can be done while smoking, drinking or sitting on a chair and it isn’t possible to work up a sweat, it’s not a sport - then beach volleyball is a sport.  But it is absolutely nothing like any sporting experience that you have ever been to.

The crowd is encouraged to be noisy and rowdy and if they ever go quiet they are yelled at and cajoled to shout, stamp their feet or clap in unison.  At certain points in the procedure the crowd is ordered (not asked) to stand up – and unbelievably they all do! 

Caroline joined in everything.  She clapped and she yelled.  She shouted, ”Olé,” after the trumpet call and she stamped her feet and hammered on the advertising board in front of our seats and at set point she stood up and did everything at once.

The television cameras were at Horse Guards yesterday and for all I know there was live coverage at the very time I became seriously embarrassed.

The crowd’s rendition of, “We will rock you,” had fizzled out.  A Latvian was about to serve.  Before the MC could exhort us to yell again like maniacs there was a fleeting moment of peace, quiet and calm.

That was the moment that Caroline chose, in front of 15,000 people and the world’s press, to yell at the top of her voice those three little words that I am sure she had never previously even thought of saying and I am fairly certain she will never say again, let alone bellow at full volume.  Those three words that were heard all round Whitehall and could possibly have also been heard in China, Lesotho, Bhutan and Russia:

“COME ON LATVIAAAAAAAA!!!!!!”

50. Losing it?

I worry a little these days that I may be ‘losing it’.  How do you know when you start to ‘lose it’?  I suppose that other people know before you do and I guess that, because there is not much that can be done, they just keep quiet about it and you never get to know. 

I’ve just seen a BBC news reporter who may have ‘lost it’ already and that’s sad as she’s only in her mid twenties.  She was standing on the beach at Bognor Regis and she was there to report on a partial eclipse that would be visible as the sun rose over the sea. 

“To see the eclipse you need to be as close as possible to the horizon,” she informed us with some assurance and authority. 

That conjures up an interesting scenario.  “Will you sail a little closer to the horizon please, Captain.  I’d like to get a better view of the eclipse.”

When my father was only four or five years older than I am now, he began to lose it.  He became a little vague and forgetful and he struggled with names.  My mother’s name was Pat and my brother is Peter and whenever he spoke to me during those years my father, in his confusion, always called me, “Peter-pat-terry.”

The first time that Caroline accused me of being senile and possibly ‘losing it’ was about three years ago as we were sitting together under a large parasol on a beautiful, hot Saturday morning at the Cracked Conch bar/restaurant by the sea on Grand Cayman.  Ten metres from us was a set of metal steps going down from the outside bar area into the beautiful clear water.  We watched numerous divers embarking on or coming back from their dives.  Two young boys went down the steps.

“Look at that,” I said, anxiously.  “Those two lads are going diving without scuba gear.” 

Caroline gave me a sad look.  “They’ll be snorkeling then.”

Twice in my life though, I have had a moment of insight that made me certain, for a minute or two at least, that I had special mental powers.  The first time was in February 1967 in the kitchen of a flat in Edinburgh.  It was about eight o’clock in the morning and my friend Ian and I had hitchhiked overnight from Durham.  I can’t remember now why we were there but I do remember that there was a pack of cards in the kitchen.

I took a card from the pack, held it to my chest and said to Ian, ”What card am I thinking of?”  He stared at me intently and then after about ten seconds said, “Five of clubs.”  It was!  We tried to repeat that phenomenon for the next hour but never did.

Some twenty-five years later, at about one o’clock in the morning, I was with Ian again but also with Roger and their wives.  We’d been eating and drinking for the previous five hours.  I left the room for a few minutes and when I returned I was told that they had a story and I was to unravel it by asking questions to which they could answer only ‘yes’ or ‘no’.

Does the story concern me? Yes.

Does it take place in Hertfordshire?  Yes.

Is it set in Borehamwood?  Yes.

There it was: “Borehamwood in three.”  Pretty impressive I thought.  I had managed to narrow down the place, out of all the millions places in the world where the story could be set, in just three questions.  Psychic?

No.  They had agreed to answer “Yes” to any question, the last letter of which ended A - K and “No” to a question that ended L – Z and see how the story developed.  Oh how we laughed (and still do)!

Yesterday I said something that produced that same look of pity and concern from Caroline that she had given me at the Cracked Conch. 

“We’re going to be rich,” I told her.  “I’ve had an idea for a gadget.  It’s brilliantly simple, has no moving parts and although no one but me realises it yet, it’s something for which the world has been waiting for a hundred years or more.  All I’ve got to do now is to produce a stereotype and take it on to ‘Dragons’ Den’.”

I put it down to all those years teaching students in the Peoples Republic of Haringey where we always had to actively suppress any thoughts of stereotypes.

It’s a good job that she had left for work and wasn’t at home this morning.  I had installed a new Cable Box for my television and then I phoned the company to ask them to activate it. 

“What can you see in the display panel at the moment?” the woman asked me.  “PL70,” I said.

“OK, that’s good.  Now, it takes about twenty minutes to activate but when it says 999, it’s ready,” she said but forty minutes later I was still waiting for 999.  I phoned again.

“It’s not worked,” I told her.  It says 852.  No, it’s just changed.  Now it says 853.  This is going to take hours.”

She sighed.  “That’s the time you’re looking at.  Press the red button.  What’s it say now?”

“999,” I muttered

I spoke to Mark on the phone on Wednesday. “Did you do that test I sent you?” he asked.

“What test?”

“The one that I sent you a few days ago.”

“Was it an e-mail?”

“Yes.”

A bell was ringing but it was only a little tinkle.  I vaguely remembered something. 

“No,” I said confidently.  “You never sent me anything.  I never got it.  You never sent me anything.”

“Yes I did - on Saturday.”

“No, I haven’t had an e-mail from you for weeks.” 

“Yes I did send you one.  It was about colours.  Hang on a minute and I’ll go to my ‘Sent Box’ and see if it’s there.”

There was a short pause while he must have been looking at his computer screen.  Colours?  Yes, maybe I did remember something about colours but what was it?

“Yes, there it is.”  Mark had left his computer.  “I sent it to you at the same time I sent it to Paul and he told me he’s done it.  You have got it.  I bet you’ve deleted it without reading it.  Look in your ‘Deleted Box’.”

My computer wasn’t on so I kept quiet for about fifteen seconds, pretending that I was looking.

“No.  It’s not there.”

“OK,” Mark sighed.  “I’ll send it again but I bet you did get it.”

“No I didn’t,” I insisted, grumpily.  Maybe I was wrong but I didn’t remember getting it. 

“What’s it about anyway?”

“It’s a test to see if you’ve got Alzheimer’s,” he said.