Red and green

The chairs, in this Italian restaurant on a Caribbean island, are red and green. As far as I can see, they are arranged alternately red and green. A waiter comes and immediately reorders them so when a group of stereotypically loud Americans leaves. They leave to the evident relief of the restaurant’s other customers, although they too all seem to be American.

After a day, it seems clear to me that we, the two of us, are the only non-Americans in this place. I consider what I can do to make it clear to the waiters and other hotel staff that I am not an American, and that I am on their side.

Dinner finished, we move on to a bar which has a piano in it, and which is therefore a piano bar. We drink rum and coke and ice, and then when we are tired of the coke, rum and ice. Across the way a squad of inexperienced drunks are being made to go through an inept dancing ritual in front of, and for the amusement of, their peers, urged on by a Social Director – and who ever thought such a job title could exist?

We continue drinking. We drink too much. Not just here, specifically, but in general. We know we drink too much, although that does not stop us. We drink too much on birthdays and anniversaries. We drink too much at weddings, christenings, family parties and funerals. We mark any special occasion by drinking too much. We drink too much on ordinary days, the days in between. When we go out we drink too much, and we drink too much when we stay in. We also drink too much at office lunches, staff parties and tedious evening receptions when we are supposed to be convivial and interested in the mundane opinions of strangers, when drinking too much helps us get through them. We drink too much because it is the weekend, and we drink too much because it’s Monday and going back to work has been hard. We drink too much on holidays. Then, perhaps only the specifics change: here, Red Stripe and rum rather than bitter and whisky.

Recently we have admitted to each other that really we do drink too much. Some modest steps have been taken. We now have drink free days, sometimes up to three in a row, each harder than the last, until the routine reasserts itself. On holidays, there will be no drink free days. We are on holiday.

Across the way, the Social Director concludes her evening’s work, thinking probably of the pay packet or the better role to which this might be a stepping stone. Soon our space, on the terrace outside the bar which has a piano in it, space which we have come to think of as our own, is invaded by different, louder Americans. While inside they sing along to ‘American Pie’ – honestly, this happens – then outside hold a shouted conversation about their favourite cocktails. One tells the world:

“Give me tequila and I just wanna dance and party all night. I’ll hug anyone. But give me vodka and I’m am evil bitch who’ll scratch your eyes out.”

I briefly consider getting hold of some vodka to put this claim to the test.

Instead, over my next rum and ice, I indulge in an idle and shameful fantasy about this complex we are in being overtaken by some group with a grievance who hold the holidaymakers hostage, occasionally executing some innocent tourist to make a point. Perhaps they’d start with tequila girl. How could I draw their attention to her while hiding myself? An occupation would surely prove an effective tactic. Headlines would be grabbed. The TV adaptation would be almost instant. We are so detached from this country here, isolated from consequence. Providing I would survive it, I almost want it to happen.

Would it shake us, though, I wonder, or once the emergency was over, would the relentless momentum of the holiday reassert itself? Would the ripples fade and we resume our daily routines, unruffled? Perhaps. Would the next resort along even be interrupted, or would the people there decide, damn it, that they were on holiday and they would not be stopped? Would they even know?

Eventually the Americans leave and the bar winds down towards midnight. We return to our room, where the air conditioning has to be maintained at polar temperatures at all times, or the room starts to sweat from every surface. There is probably a good reason for this, although it eludes us. We sit out on sun loungers in the night and drink minibar beers. I can now give serious attention to the scratching of my insect bites.

I have been on this island for about a week and you can read my story in bites. Intriguing constellations of bites spatter my body. They occur in the unlikeliest of places, in remote outstations that I was until now only vaguely aware I possessed, and they have laid siege to and eventually conquered my right arm. This was to be expected. Wherever I go in the world, insects love me. I am a banquet eagerly awaited. My flesh is a rare and succulent feast. Insects gorge on my blood. As soon as they intuit my coming they rub whatever insects have instead of hands together in gleeful anticipation of my arrival. They circle the plane even as it lands. I am lucky to make the passport queue unscathed. The insects will waddle around replete by the time I leave. While I am on the island, everyone else is safe. The insect magnet is here. Throw away your repellent.

Or, as the charming girl on the desk at the first hotel put it:

“The more go for you, the less I have to worry about.”

And I felt somewhat flattered, perhaps even proud, to have performed some kind of purpose. My journey had not been entirely with point.

When we unpacked, we discovered left behind in a drawer a number of items: one heavily padded bra; one heavily padded swimsuit top with matching bikini briefs; two small strappy tops; one pair of small denim shorts; two skimpy thongs. I build my own picture of the previous occupants – I assume a couple – of this room. It must have been all going so well until the padded stuff had to come off. Not wanting institutional hassle so soon in our stay – we had come here seeking calm, after all – we neglected to hand them in at the front desk. (In a hotel in Athens we once found a pearl necklace left in a corner of the room’s safe. We entrusted it to the care of the receptionist, who couldn’t be bothered to pretend he might do anything other than have it himself.) The failure to act immediately means we never will. When we leave here, we will put them back where we found them, ready to be discovered by the next temporary occupants of this room, who will use them to draw erroneous conclusions about us. It is possible that this has been happening for some time.

After a couple of days in this resort, I feel thoroughly dis-evolved. On arrival they gave us a strange-tasting drink, and I now strongly suspect this contained a sedative. I would swear I arrived here as a sentient creature, with interests, passions and opinions, but these I have since shed. While I seem to have maintained, indeed increased, my long-standing interest in drink, to these have been added leisure and food. Nothing else matters. My days are structured around mealtimes. The next meal is always the most important, and meals now no longer seem complete without desserts. I get a sense of unease if a few hours pass and I have not eaten anything.

And yet, within this institutional celebration of food, something strange is happening. The place is suddenly awash with an American film crew making an American programme about very fat American people trying to become slightly thinner. Presumably bringing them to this shrine of consumption and denying them access to the feast on which we unthinkingly graze is part of their punishment, and the audience’s subsequent entertainment. They are also, while we slump and lounge, forced to take part in strenuous exercises in scenic locations. I resent being cast as an extra in all this, but at the same time of course I watch absently just like the others.

The same night as this, as I have a drink I watch a beautiful Japanese girl – okay, doubtless American-Japanese – dully and automatically play the slot machines. She has two white bands down her chest which commemorate her beachware straps. I am attracted to her but also scared. She is one of the dead-eyed people, and I have seen enough zombie films.

But then back in our room I undress and stand before the mirror. After a day in the sun, I am wearing a pair of long, particularly elegant scarlet evening gloves. They contrast beautifully with my alabaster curves.

The next day, at breakfast, reflected in the bowl of my spoon, I notice, small, creepy, endlessly turning, is the ceiling fan. I could become hypnotised here.

By now we are feeling sufficiently institutionalised to want to rebel. So we decide to break away from the complex and do something involving the world outside. This is not easy. The resort is a long way from the town and a taxi is required. The front desk are suspicious when we ask for one. They want to know what we intend to do, and when we might be expected to come back. Is it shopping we want, or sightseeing? They organise their own tours, and we are expected to want to book these. They are nonplussed when we say we just want to walk around, see what happens. They make it hard to leave, before reluctantly agreeing to book a taxi at four times the local asking price. The driver asks us if we want to go shopping, or offers to show us around, or to leave us in the hands of the owner of a local souvenir shop. We gently but insistently decline these offers. We feel good. We have broken out of the institution. We feel the thrill of school’s out.

Truth be told, we do not do very much with our freedom. It is enough that we feel free. We walk on a beach, a different beach. The hassle is persistent but low level. People observe the form and play their roles, but not wholeheartedly. But I am disturbed when, while walking the beach, a man offers me first the use of a jet ski and then, when I decline, some ganja. This cannot be, I feel, a combination to be encouraged. I worry about this, until my partner points out that there was logic to the offer. The would be vendor was honing his pitch. My first response marked me out as an unsporty type, at which point he switched to something apparently more suitable.

We drink Red Stripe in bars, importantly in different bars, and enjoy the novelty of handing over scarcely used local notes for the privilege. We even go on a pointless boat trip, out from the shore, to a featureless islet, then back to the shore, and do not even mind our slightly over-attentive guide who tells us repeatedly that the English are his favourite people.

Of course we head back as the light fades. We do not take rebellion too far. But still, as the doormen are puzzled by our appearance from that world outside in a non-institutionally-approved vehicle, and seem in two minds about letting us back in, it feels like victory.

The last full day before we leave, we dutifully attend a bar where it is considered compulsory to watch the spectacular sunsets. The bar is full of people who are not wearing enough clothes. The women wear only bikinis; the men tend to wear shorts of variable, often quite long, length, but no shirts. The bar only accepts American dollars, and makes us throw away our incidental bottle of water before we are allowed in. T-shirts are available in the integral shop, as well as a range of other leisurewear, with the sizes extending to generous. As it happens, the day is changeable, cool, the evening overcast. There is no sunset to speak of, although this does not stop people looking up at the sky intently, as though they have spotted significance. They take multiple photographs of greyness.

Disappointed, we take a taxi back to our hotel. On the way back our driver, who we like, criticises us for staying in a large, expensive, isolated, international hotel when we could have been staying in a local, friendly beach hotel where the money stays closer to the people. We agree with him completely. We feel ashamed about our choices.

Then we get back to the hotel. We’re hungry, so we go for something to eat. We sit down. I sit on a red chair. My wife sits on a green chair. We peruse the starters, hoping there will be sufficient room for dessert. We wait for the loud Americans to turn up. As far as I can see, the chairs are arranged alternately red and green.

Hair

2007 was the year that I became obsessed with ageing. My fury about getting older is of course only matched by my powerlessness in the face of it.

This morning I found myself simultaneously trimming my excessive nasal hair while worrying about my thinning head hair.

On Bethnal Green station

Sometimes it’s a person under a train, an expression I think they need to do some work on. I feel special contempt for the inconsiderate suicides who disrupt the movement of those of us who choose to go on living, and believe official terminology should reflect this. Sometimes it’s over-running engineering works, which usually attracts sceptical enquiry about late-finishing sporting events the night before. Once, recently, it was explosions – that’s how they described them. But usually it’s signal problems.

It was signal problems today. Peak time, and no prospect of arriving at my desperate job ahead of the unnecessary meeting I was expected to attend. My absence would be noted, and I was this close to getting another patronising pep talk from my younger and stupider line manager. Then I’d have to tell him to fuck off, then I’d get sacked, then I’d be unemployed and then I’d take the first, even shittier job that came along and be unhappier still. All because of signal problems at Shepherd’s Bush, and the butterfly effect of this fluttering down the line to this cold and damp East London morning.

I could only do what everyone else was doing, and try to do it quicker than a fair percentage of them: push my way to the surface, instinctively seeking air, and in an equally animal fashion try to elbow onto any bus heading west. I turned my music player up and found something suitably aggressive and uptempo to fuel the surge. Head down, I made for the escalator.

Then I saw him, stood at the platform’s edge. I saw him from the back. Stooped, shabby, looking nowhere in particular. Thin grey hair scraped across piebald scalp, all his clothes dark grey as well. Hard to guess from the back the number of layers he might be wearing. But as the only still point in a theatre of selfish movement, he looked peaceful, and this is what made me pause and take note. Then, of course, as the crowds thinned around him, I saw the white stick and the dog.

You never know what to do about blind people on the tube. Are you supposed to help them, or respect their independence? Just the sight of them makes me nervous. Approaching a platform, I’ll find a burst of speed to elude them, or suddenly slow down to avoid falling into step in case I’m expected to help them get on the train. I won’t sit next to one in the carriage for the same reason. I’ll stand in preference. I use my sightedness to my advantage.

I suspect what it comes down to is that I know people who have something wrong with them are unlucky and I don’t want their bad luck to rub off on me. Misfortune is surely contagious. And then of course I feel guilty about thinking this.

Guilt makes you do strange things. So I found myself going to help this man. Clearly, there could be no liberal dilemma here. Everyone else was moving, he wasn’t, and so he needed my help. I could score some quick points here, maybe enough to cloak myself in virtue for the rest of the day. I could trade the points for drinks in the evening.

Should I tap him on the shoulder or speak loudly? But blind people have super sensitive powers of hearing, right? I spoke at normal volume, but for good measure gently tugged at his arm so he knew I was there.

“Are you alright mate?” I asked.

“Eh?”

“I said, are you alright?” Silence. “Do you need a hand?” Just my luck, deaf as well. So what heightened sense would he have by way of compensation? Touch? Taste? And how was that going to help me here?

“What?”

“It’s just, everyone else is leaving. Because of the, of the signal failure. Severe delays. Signal failure at Shepherd’s Bush.”

“Right.”

“So, you see, you see…” Bollocks! Still, bet he gets that all the time. Press on. “Everyone else is leaving. To try and get buses. So…”

More silence. Should I do this in Braille? The station was emptying around me. Even the dog was steadfastly ignoring me. What did it have wrong with it? Soon it would just be me, this statue of a dog and my new friend, the blind-deaf-mute. What was the etiquette here? What does one do when trying to help someone too insensible to be helped? Could I just walk away? If I did it quietly, would he notice? Would he have even known I was there in the first place? Had he imagined me?

One last effort, perhaps. Look, if I left now, would I still get the points? Did a failed attempt to be good still count? How much of an attempt had to be made? Just what were the rules here anyway?

“So I don’t think there’s a right lot of point you staying here, mate. Going to be nothing moving for a long time. You’re best of getting yourself onto a bus.”

I realised too late that I had been getting louder and louder as I sought to convey this essential information, building up to a kind of roar as I suggested the option of a bus. It was the echo of my advice around the now otherwise empty station that underlined this for me. Even the dog almost turned to look at me.

“No need to shout.”

“Sorry.”

“So that’s what’s happening?”

Yep. That’s, what…”

“Only I couldn’t bloody tell.”

“Right. Anyway.”

“Couldn’t bloody tell a word she was saying.”

“Ah.”

“Not a bloody word. Can’t speak English half of them. God knows where they come from. Whatever bloody jungle they come from.”

Oh shit! Now where’s the handbook on this? How do I deal with a blind racist? Blind equals good but racist means bad. Do they cancel each other out? Does that make it neutral? Or is racism worse than blindness? What’s a well-meaning liberal supposed to do with this one? Is there some kind of advice column on the Guardian website you can access?

“Err, the thing is…”

“Might as well have been speaking Swahili or whatever they bloody speak. Probably was Swahili. What I say is, if they can’t speak English they shouldn’t bloody be there. Shouldn’t be here anyway. Should all go back to where they came from.”

Clearly, I needed to fight back. I had hoped to earn points from helping a blind man, but now I was in danger of losing them for failing to take on racism. My head was beginning to hurt with this.

“Right… but listen.” A thought occurred to me about how I could win the argument. “How do you know I’m not one of them too?”

“You? You’re not. You’re as white as me. I can tell.”

“Erm…”

“You’ve a bloody funny accent and you’re not from round here. But at least you’re English. I can tell.”

I gave up. There was no fight in me. Sod the points. This wasn’t going to happen, was it? Maybe there was something else I could do later in the day. Perhaps I could help an old lady across the road, providing we could first agree that a conversation about how Enoch Powell had been right all along would not be appearing on our agenda.

“Okay, well I’m going to go now, so I hope you can manage on your own. You and the dog.”

And with that I pushed him off the platform onto the electrified tracks, where he met with a quick but painful death.

Not really, although not a day goes by when it doesn’t pass across my mind even briefly to do this to someone. The station might be deserted but there would still be cameras. The fear of going to prison stops me doing so many things. Plus I wasn’t sure if the dog deserved it. So I just left him there, and swept out of the station with as much dignity as I could muster. I never looked back. Perhaps he’s there still, mumbling to himself about how they can’t even bloody speak English. Perhaps the first black guy who came along pushed him off, and he became a person under a train, causing further delays.

I exited the station. I had a very long wait for a bus. I was late for work. The day did not improve.