Heading towards a goodbye

Lines and lengths, chapter one

What is actually longer? A great long novel, or a godawful short story? Having been occasionally trapped with nothing other than one of those “Aliens Gatecrashed My Wedding” magazines designed for the hard of reading (loads of photos of ‘celebs’ (who, exactly, is Kerry Katona, who, exactly, cares what Mrs Wayne Rooney thinks, or whether she lives or dies, and what, exactly is the point of Robbie Williams (ex-boy-band dancer) and Gary Barlow (soppy, sappy, boy-band wimp))) my opinion is that bad writing, short-form, due to the predictability, the lack of ideas and originality, and the willingness to ignore all the rules of the language, seems to take an age to plough through.

I have two ways of describing this, one personal, one from a long but easy to read novel.

As a boy, the school holidays consisted of football. Up at the crack of dawn, playing football until someone’s disgruntled mother (for some this was a temporary condition, for mine, the default setting – I still dread having anything to do with those perma-disgruntled elderly ladies, and the time-sapping nature of dealing with their joyless, anal, views of life) dragged us in for something to eat (more accurately to bolt down something to keep them happy before running, without gratitude, without agreeing a return time, without saying two words, to be honest – what does a small boy, football mad, have in common with a disgruntled old lady worth talking about?, out of the door to get back to the game) interrupting the day-long game that stopped only when we lost the light. When we went indoors to play Subbeteo or talk about football.

That wasn’t ever, not for a micro-second, boring.

Then, every so often, I had to help carry the shopping. This interfered with the football, so was already incredibly, indescribably, inconvenient. Then, she would meet someone she knew, and start to talk. How are mothers, so (in their own minds) in tune with their kids, so ignorant of how every billionth of a second they spend discussing the price of beans, or whatever it is they talk about, seems like eternity squared to a small boy.

I rebelled. Dumped the shopping, ran for it (she was never going to catch me – we live in a physical world – she thrashed me when she had me locked up without an escape route, I’ve hated bullies ever since, but she’d never catch me in a foot-race, and as soon as I had the mental wherewithal to present a threat (only a threat, and having reached threat-point, not backing down when she turned on the tears) she learned to abandon the thrashing line, quick-sharp) and got back to the mates and football.

In Catch 22, Dunbar decides that living in total boredom = living forever:

"A friend of Yossarian and the only other person who seems to understand that there is a war going on. Dunbar has decided to live as long as possible by making time pass as slowly as possible, so he treasures boredom and discomfort."