David Charters: Sadly, steady work and red wine make uneasy partners

Aug 5 2008 by David Charters, Liverpool Daily Post

SOME people accept us for what we seem to be. Others want to know what we really are. The second group are the more important and dangerous, for they have a better understanding of human nature.

Such silly thoughts were somersaulting through my few remaining brain cells the other day, when enthroned in our lavatory, where I have spent rather a lot of time lately – reading Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, which, though abridged, is still a hefty tome.

“They’ll be singing carols in church before you’re out of there,” said my wife, breezily, as she sprang lightly over the boards on the floor outside.

“Tell Dad to hurry up, I’m desperate,” came the bellow from our 12-year-old son, who was in the lounge, twisting his legs like a trainee contortionist in the Bulgarian state circus.

Outside, the roses bloomed and fell.

This always happens after I have dined handsomely on spaghetti Bolognese. It is true that I can whirl the fork in the bowl with the expertise of the T-shirted men seen sweating in momma’s kitchen in the Mafia movies – bringing to my lips perfect coils soaked in steaming sauce.

Sadly, this meal, which I love, has a habit of lingering and clogging-up my inner workings.

But there is a solution.

“Don’t tell me your problems, bring me your solutions,” as some American bore once said, providing British bosses with one of the most irritating remarks in their extensive repertoire.

Anyway, the solution can be found in a little bottle and a teaspoon.

So, I entered a chemist’s shop deep in town, where nobody knew me – eyes darting from east to west, collar high, the brim on my hat low.

“Have you a light laxative?” I mouthed, conspiratorially, to the assistant behind the counter, whose face had the complexion of a freshly dunked Garibaldi biscuit, highlighted by the glints from her vulgar jewellery.

“Hey, there’s a fella here, who needs a laxative,” she called to the pharmacist, brewing potions in the back.

“Yes, I have the blocks,” I cried, doing a swift jig before the other customers, sitting in rows, awaiting their prescriptions. “Yes, indeed, the blocks is my melancholic condition. Why don’t we tell the whole world?”

In sharp contrast, during my crazy years of linked-arms, high hopes, poems and sweet fellowship, you could have set your clock by me.

I was as regular in my habits as the keeper of minutes on the committee at the local history society, who only once reported for duty flustered, panting, and steamy-eyed – his regimental tie tucked into his Terylene trousers and the tail adrift on his white shirt.

The blame for that lapse was laid on the full-lipped and splendidly buxom barmaid, of whom much was whispered, as heads nodded knowingly and eyebrows arched in quizzical style. Particularly, it was said, with saucy voice, that she enjoyed rewarding those who helped her change the beer barrel in the dimly-lit cellar. But the keeper of minutes soon became a dull chap again, timing his every activity with the precision of a Swiss watch.

Anyway, I still attribute my inner regularity in those giddy times to the copious quantities of peasant wine, which I consumed with carefree abandon beneath my floppy hat on the dusty road of song.

Sadly, steady work and red wine make uneasy partners. One has to bow, if the other is to advance.

So I adjusted to the new circumstances.

However, in life one should always seek the ray of sunshine.

And the most obvious blessing of being trapped for hours in a small room is that it gives you more time to think about the ways of the world.

For example, my friend, the Philosopher, widely noted in town for the cut of his thoughts and his willingness to express them in the rooms of the bogus and self-regarding, was confronted by a group of people, hauling letters after their names between futile committees and pointless conferences.

“Do you think I’m an intellectual?” he asked. There was much shuffling of feet and quailing of souls, before the chairman offered a diplomatic “yes” on behalf of them all.

“Well, I am not,” said the Philosopher, “but I do know more than you.”

It was a terrific response, which could only come from incarceration in a small room. From this, we may conclude that all the great philosophers – Aristotle, Plato, Sartre, Aunty Gwladys, Wittgenstein, Bertrand Russell and Co – were martyrs to constipation. Discuss.

Of course, red wine soothes the mind, the soul and the stomach. How we enjoy that pop when the cork is pulled in triumph from the first bottle.

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