Читать книгу Stretch, 29 - Damian Lanigan - Страница 8

£14,273

Yes, it was pretty straightforward really. Frank Stretch, underachiever, flop, relegation contender – outclassed by his friends. Now, you may think that you’re less successful than your friends, and you may well be right. The difference between us, however, is that I have a system that proves it.

If you feel as if you’re under-achieving, perhaps you’d be tempted to read a self-help book. Don’t, because I’ve tried them, and the thing about self-help books is that they are all wrong. They make it easy on the reader and tell him from the outset that he’s really a wonderful, successful human being. They refuse to acknowledge the hard and heavy truth, which is this: people who read self-help books are less successful than their friends, that’s why they read self-help books. My approach to the whole issue is a lot more rigorous and a lot more honest. It goes like this: ‘Admit it, you loser, you’re less successful than your friends, and not only that, you can prove it.’

According to this inclusive and elegant system of classification of success in life, my best friend Tom scores 73, and my (ex) flatmate Henry 59. Lottie, his knitwear fanatic girlfriend, scores a moderate 46. Bart, my dear boss, weighs in with 68. I score a lot less than any of these people. In fact thanks to the system I am now able to make a broader statement about my standing in the world: ‘Stretch, you’re less successful than everyone you know.’

I’m aware that I am open to the accusation of being self-pitying, but I’d like to point out that it is closely scrutinised, finely calibrated, judiciously-arrived-at self-pity. If you were me, and thank Allah you’re not, you’d be self-pitying too.

I call the system The Maths, as in, ‘Ooh he looks as if he might put in some really good maths’, when applied to a new acquaintance, or ‘Pretty abysmal maths there’, when applied to myself.

The principle is quite simple, really; scores for the ten important areas of life, out of ten. Let me talk you through it.

ONE: MONEY A more complex dimension than you might think. When you’re doing someone’s money score, make sure you ask all the difficult questions. The first golden rule is that people under the age of fifty always claim to be poorer than they are. (Whereas, men over fifty like to pretend they’re richer than they are, particularly to their friends, but I don’t meet them very often.)

The second golden rule is, don’t forget family. A friend of yours, let’s call him Henry, might complain that he’s underpaid and over-mortgaged, and can’t afford to go on holiday this year. You may feel entitled to a momentary moment of superiority. But hold on a second. You then find out that his dad’s a sales director of a small slipper-making company in Preston. Still feeling chipper? Well, Henry Senior has share options worth £150,000 and pension rights running to two-thirds of his annual £48,000 salary. On his demise, that dough is only going in one direction, and that’s to Henry Jun. This is by no means the worst example I could cite. I once shared a flat with a bloke who ate Safeway cornflakes with tap water for Sunday lunch and smoked Berkeleys. He was trying to get into the movies, like every other fucker. He chose as his mode of entry to this rarefied world working the late shift at the Brixton Blockbuster video store. It transpired that he had an obscure great-uncle who spent his days strapped into a leather wing-backed armchair in the Carlton Club, pissing himself with rhino force inside his tweed britches. When he finally had his coronary over the fashion pages of the Telegraph, my flatmate inherited half a million, as well as a sizeable tranche of Herefordshire and moved into a loft apartment in Clerkenwell. What looked like a dead-cert dowdy 1 turned out to be a big, airy, sky-lit 9.

Guess what? He’s now in the movies.

In 1994, the year before all this started, I earned £14,273.00 and had no expectation of ever inheriting anything. My mother died fifteen years ago, and my dad had gone AWOL in the Mid-West or the West Midlands, where his last known employment was self-unemployment. Another half-arsed Thatcherite dream gone tits-up. I could go on, about postmen uncles and dinner-lady aunties, but any way you look at it, I’m skint and likely to remain so pretty much forever.

I’ll just give you a ready reckoner:

Rupert Murdoch down to the Queen Mother	10
Michael Heseltine down to Jeffrey Archer	9
Alan Shearer down to Cherie Booth	8
Some of my friends down to Preston slipper company director	7
Ken Livingstone down to your local GP	6
Most of my friends down to most of the rest of my friends	5
Car salesmen down to articled clerks	4
PAs to the MD down to binmen	3
Me	2
Over two-thirds of the UK population	1

TWO: LOVE Compared to money, this one’s a cinch. From where I’m standing a half-hearted Christmas card from an ex-girlfriend scores you at least a 3. Look around and you’ll see that most people beat this score, just don’t look at me. I scored another 2.

THREE: SEX Pretty easy to mark yourself, but often very tricky to mark others. Some couples spend their entire lives pawing one another in public, trying to create the impression that when they’re alone it’s an unstoppable gymnasm from dusk till the early afternoon. Very often such behaviour is a straightforward deception. Spend a night at their place and press your ear to the bedroom wall while maintaining a total unbreathing silence. What will you hear? The sounds of a hardback closing, a peck on an already dozing partner’s cheek and the light clicking off. A milky, cuddly, dreary 2.

No, those to watch for high scores here are the ones who barely seem to look at each other at table apart from to exchange black, jaded insults. After dinner they nurse their hostilities at opposite ends of the room, while everybody else inwardly speculates on their imminent break-up. In the sack they’re like a herd of satyrs home on leave to make a porn movie. Look for the flu symptoms: bleary-eyed and all sore and achy in the morning. And then watch them closely. They are already considering their next options: which orifice, which lubricant, which forearm, which piece of machinery. A 9, no question.

You may have noticed that the sex symbol is phallic rather than yonic, if you will. Now, the act of sex for me is a yoni thing rather than a phallus thing, simple as that. That is, in an ideal world it’s a yoni thing. At that time, however, it was very much a phallus thing, and no prizes for guessing whose phallus. I regularly scored a fine upstanding 1, especially in the mornings.

FOUR: WORK Quite easy to score, as long as you remember the key question: Are you happy in your work? The ruddy-faced pinstripes larging it up in the City with their partnerships and directorships tend to score low marks in this system, despite the serial-number incomes. All the ones I know consistently wang on about early retirement or writing their novel or opening a surf shop in Maui. They hate their work, but also define themselves in terms of their work, and it’s all writ large on their business cards. Oh dear. 2s and 3s all round.

Another example. You may think that Bill Clinton has a pretty good job, and most people would agree with you. I don’t. I mean it’s just one thing after another if you’re the Leader of the Free World, isn’t it? West Bank settlers one minute, a Republican majority in Congress the next, some woman broadcasting to the nation about distinguishing marks on your penis the next. Bill’s welcome to it if you ask me. My (ex) flatmate Henry’s girlfriend is called Lottie and she knits sweaters for a living, except that she doesn’t get paid for it. I don’t really want to do that either, but at least I’d sleep at night.

When I left university I had a question to answer. What becomes of a dissolute, immature ex-Maoist (the girls are prettier in the Communist Society), now patrician-Tory, broadly-not-deeply-read pseudo-intellectual when he has to get a job?

I initially took the conventional Oxbridge approach. I applied for jobs in American, Swiss and Japanese investment banks. I considered law, but in banks the girls are prettier. In fact, they’re the Maoist girls, but now in £80 undies and mock-Chanel body armour. Needless to say I failed. I then applied to go on a journalism course in Harlow and succeeded.

A year later, the girls in the pricey underwear were just graduating into their first 3 Series when I took up an eight-and-a-half-grand glamour job on the Streatham Post. While they dealt in issues of world importance, like the exchange-rate fluctuations between the schilling and the escudo, I was scrabbling around with the trivia: births, marriages, deaths – that sort of thing.

I operated in a different world order from my peers. My world ended at Balham, Wandsworth, Chelsea Bridge. Nothing in which I was interested ramified outside this area: Chamber of Commerce Outrage at Red Route Plan, Lady Mayoress Opens New Texas Homecare, Woman Found By Son ‘Had Been Dead Three Weeks’.

On the other hand, the people I knew were obsessing about the fate of the dollar from their striplit hangars at Salomon or Stanley. They were part of that process whereby some bureaucrat in DC says the word ‘nervous’ at a dinner party and six hours later little children are crying in the streets of Nairobi.

Anyway, I didn’t last long. Journalism’s all about getting your face around, cold calling, beer drinking, loud laughing, cock sucking. I just didn’t have the necessary. Most of all it’s about wanting it badly, and I’ve never wanted anything badly, nothing that wasn’t human and female at any rate. So I sacked it. In fact, if truth be known, they sacked me. I’d captioned a picture of the local MP at a garden fête as follows: ‘ANGELA HOWEY, MP, HOLDS ALOFT A LARGE PARSNIP BEFORE INSERTING IT INTO HER ANUS’.

Everyone at the paper missed it, and they got scores of furious letters, not least from Ms Howey herself, but I was long gone. It was, I can see, a puerile gesture, but momentarily enjoyable, and mentally I was way out of there anyway. I wasn’t happy in my work, you see. At least I got out alive, if somewhat disillusioned with journalism for the time being. And now I wait tables.

So I would ask myself the question: Frank, are you happy in your work in a bad restaurant in Battersea? The answer? No, not really. Score? 3.

FIVE: HOUSE One of the easiest of the lot, particularly if you’re an owner-occupier. The property market has a strange and mysterious beauty to it, in as much as you always get exactly what you pay for. It’s practically impossible for people to artificially inflate or deflate their scores here. Let the market decide, it has great wisdom in these matters. Again, a ready reckoner may help to elucidate:

* of London, obviously.

** Likely to be a barn (unconverted).

In all cases subtract I point if you’re renting.

For owners of second homes, combine scores up to a maximum of 10.

For Islington, read Fulham, for Neasden read Tooting and so on. Zone 1 tends to beat Zone 2 which tends to beat Zone 3.

You may think that I have marked Notting Hill a tad unfairly, especially if you’ve just bought a plasterboard cubbyhole there for two hundred grand. I just say that if you live in Notting Hill you deserve all the unfairness you get.

If anybody else feels hard done by, and thinks this table undervalues their own property, I am afraid to say I don’t yet operate an ombudsman system to mediate disputes.

I rented a room in Henry’s cosy three-bed flat in Clapham, which was above a CTN and overlooked the public khazi. A roof-terraced, stripped-floored, ficus-benjamina-by-the-tellyed 4.

SIX: WHEELS Cars, basically. With motorcycles, HGVs, tractors etc each case is treated strictly on merit, but basically I’m talking cars. Cars are complex in a way that houses aren’t. Whilst in the case of new cars the market principle is broadly operable – a £13,000 Vectra always scoring more points than a £9,000 Punto – the second-hand market wreaks havoc. For instance, Marie, my ex-girlfriend, scores a solid 4 with her nearly-new Nissan Micra, whereas Henry, with his ancient Triumph Stag, scores a 5, despite the fact he paid about two grand less for it. More high marks might be scored by: a gubernatorial stretch Zil; a gold Roller droptop on white-walls; a cigarillo of crimson fibreglass with head-high tyre tread and 400 horses slavering at the nape of your neck; any Aston; anything American.

The acid test is whether or not your car evokes the comment ‘Nice motor’ (or ‘’smoter’) from a black eighteen-year-old male. If so then you’re 5 or above, if not, you’re 4 or below. I drive a 1977 Vauxhall Cavalier. Oh! My Chevalier! ‘’Smoter’? No. Laughing stock? Yes. Score? 2. Better than a Daewoo, purely for the kitsch value.

SEVEN: PHYSICAL You could never accuse me of being superficial here, as I always take care to look beneath the skin, as well as upon it. There are two dimensions on which to score; 5 for aesthetic beauty and 5 for physical health. Kind of, ‘Yeah, not bad, but how long’s it going to last?’ Some examples: a Premier League footballer with a horse’s face (getting rarer – most of them look like Zulu chiefs or boy band members nowadays): a 6. A supermodel with an aerobics video out is brushing 10. A supermodel with a syringe of smack lolling out of her eyelid as she goes hypoglycaemic in a nightclub toilet (i.e. most of them), more like a 6 again.

Despite the peascod gilet of Trex that I sport, I get two beauty points for tapering, sensitive fingers and a winning, lop-sided grin, and one fitness point for being able to go to the shops without the aid of a motorised wheelchair. I smoke Luckies, because hardly anyone else does, and binge drink whenever I get the chance, which I’m sure doesn’t do me any favours, but I never go to the doctor’s (on the same basis that I never open mail from the bank) so maybe I’m just fine. Thus, being in paranoid ignorance of my real state of health, I gave myself a rather unprepossessing score of 3.

EIGHT: POPULAR Do people spend their time at parties scanning the space over your left shoulder looking for someone they’d rather be talking to? How many invitations do you have on the mantelpiece? How many times this week did you spend your break time circling the programmes you’re going to watch on telly tonight? How often do you sit there in the early evenings desperately flipping through your mental address book, wondering why no-one ever calls? My answers to these questions go like this: yes, 0,5, very often. It’s a painful area, and you may well be reluctant to be truthful to yourself. I could even forgive you for overstating your score a little bit. I did. My score? 3. Work friends score half.

NINE: INTERESTING Another difficult category, and one with several booby traps lying in wait for the inexperienced. Let’s take an example. I have an acquaintance called Christophe who would give himself an 8 or 9 here. He would adduce as evidence the following: he plays the guitar to a high standard, goes to the theatre a lot, has one Californian parent, one Swiss, both of whom have had complicated and drawn-out nervous breakdowns. He rides a Harley and lives for half the year in a villa in Fiesole giving English lessons to the children of rich Tuscans. Crucial to his impression of himself as a ravishingly interesting fellow is the fact that he has travelled widely ‘amongst the peoples’ of the Himalayas, China and the Arctic Circle, often, as he never ceases to remind one, in difficult and dangerous circumstances. He has eaten yak’s bollocks. He is something of an authority on Taoism. There is no ‘r’ on the end of his name. A 9, Christophe? You must be joking. A 2? That’s it.

On the other hand, my flatmate Henry is a computer scientist from Leeds. His dad is that slipper magnate I was telling you about. His mum’s a housewife. For some reason he’s a Crystal Palace fan, and rarely misses a home game. His interests include supermarket shopping and TV. He holidays in the Peak District. He likes Pink Floyd and Michael Bolton. Score? 8. A man should be judged by the content of his character, not by the colour of the stamps in his passport.

I scored myself a 7 here. Oh, all right then, a 6.

TEN: CACHET Not the same as popularity at all. A hundred years ago this section would have been called ‘class’ and everyone would have slotted into their given echelon with a kind of Buddhist acceptance: Lord Salisbury: a haughty 10; fresh-off-the-boat-at-Liverpool-docks-Irish-immigrant: a potatoey 1.

The prevailing convoluted, ironic system of social classification makes everything a lot more complicated. Whilst it remains very easy to score in the lower reaches (rapists and child abusers regularly put in low scores, as does Henry), there is always a lot of debate about the high marks. Low life is just as likely as high life to push scores northwards. Even winos (or ‘dossers’ or whatever we’re supposed to call them nowadays) can score well, as long as they get a bit of media attention. Some other central figures in the new social order are surprising. Footballers can put in some immense scores. In the fifties they had the status of miners; it was good to know they were there, keeping things ticking along, BUT I’M NOT HAVING THEM FUCKING MY DAUGHTER. Now, they are like the young viscounts of the eighteenth century, taking their pleasure as it pleases them with the flower of European girlhood. The Grand Tour is somewhat dumbed down, however; Marbella and Mauritius replacing Florence and Venice, but they’re generally the boys to beat for .

Provenance is a key factor, e.g. Blenheim Palace is excellent, but so is a Glasgow tenement. A semi in Purley has retained its ability to put in a fair-to-middling if slightly shame-faced 3. Semis in South Manchester, Wigan, Poulton-le-Fylde, Stoke, St Helens and Salford are much the same as a semi in Purley, with the necessary London weighting discounted. Consequently, I also get a 3.

So let’s tot me up.

Grand Total 29.

Various ways of interpreting this, but the one I was going for at the time was as follows: ‘I am 29% as successful in life as I could be, which is much less successful than my friends.’ Putting a more positive gloss on it, I was a huge 71% as unsuccessful as I could have been. Much better than my friends. Fuck it.

Coincidentally, when this all started, I was 29 years old. So there it was. 29. The beginning and the end of Frank Stretch.