Breaking Normal
2026 - a Life Odyssey
The word ‘prefect’ entered the lexicon of discourse tonight, over supper. Prefects were gods. They ordered and ruled your life. They were ethereal beings, high in the ionosphere, floating above a 12 year old like a sultan.
Most of them would have been 14 at the time, but being 14 at the time, imbued them with a kind of genius not available to me.
If you are nice, and I hope you are nice, and you probably are nice or you would not be reading this, you may be conscious that everyone else is in some way better than you. Prefects were on a plane of existence beyond our dreams. And it probably started with prefects. Mine had an enamel badge in the shape of a shield with ‘Prefect’ emblazoned. The College of Arms probably designed it.
Life began with feeling guilty whenever you saw a Police Officer. The best thing you could say in the playground was, “My dad’s a policeman”. The worst thing you could say was, “My dad was a drunken alcoholic who was violent and never there” - which roughly approximates my situation.
The worst news of the day, including wars, Donald Trump and the inexorable self-immolation of this nation through the medium of woke, is the news today that Over 400,000 Kit Kats have been stolen from a truck in Switzerland. What on Earth do you do with 400, 000 Kit Kats?
Is there a fence who specialises in stolen confectionery?
My advice to you, and you can ignore it if you like, is not to buy a Kit Kat if you are offered one by someone in a cheap doubled breasted suit, - a trilby jauntily placed at an angle - and a pencil moustache. Don’t trust that man!
Anyway, Kit Kats are not what they once were. Firstly they are smaller, and secondly you can no longer run your thumb down the centre of the silver paper to open one.
Being normal is hard work. I can be normal for short periods of time. I used to be normal enough to get jobs. I could last a couple of months acting normal and then got bored. There would be a meeting. The latest head-hunted arsehole would present his plans for the company and I would yawn and explain, in carefully articulated invective, that it sounded crap to me.
You are not supposed to tell the truth, but being polite is a curse. One makes too many hopeless friends this way. I hate making friends just because I am polite and a good listener. I am looking forward to going on a cruise soon. My chief fear is making new friends. I will then spend the autumn years of my life being polite to them and inwardly wishing I had been less amenable in the first place. Let’s face it, most people are bloody boring and the interesting ones certainly aren’t interested in me.
That is not actually true. I have a few friends and they are incredibly interesting, but that is down to me making the first move. So the rule is, unless you are prompted by the Holy Spirit to make the first move, ignore all requests for your email.
I have done something very not normal this week. I gave a motor car to a child of mine and it was not even my favourite one. Regular readers will know it is a top of the range, £52,000 Skoda Superb Estate. I do not currently have a car and the feeling is a lot more liberating than you would imagine. Cars are not as important as they once were and certainly far less fun.
I am not going to think about cars until after the cruise. I have never been on a cruise but I shall refuse to make new friends unless they are card carrying frotteurists.
If you are normal, you do not give your child a car, just like that. They rang up and told me that the one they had was dead. What would you do? Given that the Skoda suits them to a T, it was a no-brainer. On the plus side I can contemplate the next one. I never liked the idea that the Skoda sat on my frontage 6 out of seven days a week, just rotting and depreciating. As I see it, the next choice is between an old banger and a wee electric number. I don’t know. When you have money, the temptation to spend it recedes. At least that is what I find after spending four fifths of my life in abject poverty. Since I have done without a TV for 25 years, the idea of not having a car does not seem all that bad.
Another thing about not being normal is that you grow into it. I spent the first 25 years of my life trying to fit in, and a further 25 years fighting normal for the sake of a job.
Now, I can do what I want to. This consists of loving my wife, who still has to be normal at work, and enjoying being eccentric. Today, I am painting another picture. They are not great and I am not that good at it, but there you go. I can lose myself in it.
The weather has been too bad to be in the garden, but soon, soon there will be Spring.
Bugger on. In spite of your health and the leaking roof. Bugger on and laugh at the absurdity of it all.
"Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player / That struts and frets his hour upon the stage / And then is heard no more: it is a tale / Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, / Signifying nothing."