David Charters: Had my life thus far lacked purpose?

Jul 15 2008 by David Charters, Liverpool Daily Post

THE grey sky was as sad as an orphan’s limp. But I was sitting in the warmth of our conservatory, sensing an unexpected growth spurt in the nail on the big toe of my left foot.

A butterfly on the garden wall closed her wings against the weary drizzle.

And I rubbed chin stubble with the plastic edge of my elderly person’s bus pass to help stir the old brain cells into consideration of a most tormenting subject.

Had my life thus far lacked purpose?

Do I stand as a thinning-shadow beside those thrusting types in charge of dynamic organisations, whose appearance in a doorway makes the ornaments tremble and the pot-plants wilt? Do I cower behind papers when the leader hums into view, looking for someone to sting?

It was then my gaze alighted on a small fly swimming ever-so gamely towards the rim on the cup of my wife’s lightly sugared coffee.

“Breaststroke?” I cried, as she lifted her yearning eyes from an Italian beach romeo, whose contours she had been following across the glossy pages of the weekend magazine, spread to the right of her cup.

“What was that?” she sighed dreamily, while staring through me to some distant paradise, where beautiful people frolic in silken gowns.

“Breaststroke,” I repeated, looking warily at the handsome dog on the photographs, wondering idly about his tan and the marital status of his parents.

“Whorrr, breaststroke,” said my wife, returning her gaze to the glisten of the young fellow’s gym-hardened chest. “Give me some of that.”

“A holiday in Birkenhead would soon dim his flesh and sag his muscles,” I muttered darkly. “Look at his shorts. They’re too tight for pockets. There’s something wrong with a chap who doesn’t have pockets in his trousers.”

For a few seconds, my mind settled on the second most important difference between the sexes, after shopping. Men have pockets and women have bags.

“You can appraise a bloke by the shape of his pockets,” said my friend, the Philosopher, at our cafe meeting earlier in the week, as he shut his eyes to view his subjects.

“Those of us who have stopped trying to impress others appear like a bag of spuds, bulging all over the place,” he said. “We stuff our pockets with apples, pens, old tobacco tins wriggling with maggots for fishing, maps, pickles, handkerchiefs left to us from the estates of impecunious uncles, compasses, breath freshener, constipation-easers, Moroccan oranges, aspirins, blister-pads, woolly hats, cheese sandwiches, notebooks, bandages, packs of cards, puncture repair kits for the auld tricycle, dice, tumblers, snorkels and the Common Book of Prayer (just in case).

“Those fools still hoping to make their way in the world have flat pockets on their newly pressed suits. But they quickly learn,” he added with a knowing wink.

I reached for the menthol inhaler, kept in the inside-breast pocket of my newest jacket, which has, at last, started to crumple in a sympathetic manner – that wonderful purr of mature corduroy.

Back in the conservatory, the exhausted fly was perching on the cup’s rim, panting, while shaking the moisture off his wings.

“Ah, God bless the wee chap, he’s made it,” I said.

“What’s that?” said my wife, sharply.

“You know, I have been trying to tell you about the fly doing the breaststroke in your coffee,” I said.

“Have you been watching a fly swim in my coffee?” exclaimed my wife. “Well, you’d better get me another one at once and clean the cup thoroughly.”

Then the gentle turquoise shone in her lovely eyes again. “The fly is all right, isn’t he?” she asked.

“Oh yes, I think he will live,” I said, remembering the creature’s remarkable determination. “I fear that many of us, faced with an equivalent challenge, would simply have given up the ghost.”

Yet, there have always been people who wish to conquer Everest from the hard side. Are they mad? Isn’t the death toll on the other side sufficiently high to satisfy their sense of adventure?

As a young reporter, I wrote a story about a globe-trotting granny, whose ambition was to shoot the rapids at Swat, on the North West Frontier. The enthusiasm was admirable, but I couldn’t help wondering if an interest in embroidery or gooseberry wine would not have eased her more gently into the bathchair years.

The snowy wastes are also a magnet for those who can’t adjust to the simple pleasures of Lower Bebington. Soon we’ll have the Olympic Games with desperate young people trying to run faster, jump higher and punch harder. Meanwhile, I smile and rub the chin stubble with my bus pass.

LISTEN to David Charters on his picture podcast at www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk