God Save The Queen - Sunday

‘So no real reason then.’ I state to my wife as she fusses over which blouse to wear and I vacillate over unlikely shorts this time of year, or trousers.

‘It’s just nice to do.’ She replies, tilting her head in the mirror then turning towards me. God I haven’t a clue which one, I think as she sees the look and decides not to ask. She goes back to the wardrobe as I tug the shorts off. They seem a bit snugger round the waist since the last time the sun came out.

It’s another ill-fated, much rain-delayed autumn barbecue, which will still probably end up with soggy attendees huddling under a leaky gazebo, a couple of kids heading for casualty after bouncing off the trampoline at unexpected angles and a beer-fuelled argument about property prices. I don’t really want to go as I could happily live without seeing the majority of people coming, for at least another year – probably longer. But my wife and her cronies still arrange the twelve-monthly gathering of friends, neighbours and even ex-neighbours, who have the sort of lifelong membership usually reserved for Wimbledon winners and those who make double centuries at venerable cricket grounds. I’m not bowled over by the prospect.

‘Most people wait for a jubilee or a dead monarch to have these cheesy garden parties.’ I grumble, as I notice the jeans are a bit tight too and that’s before a carnivorous chow-down on burnt burgers and incinerated ribs with less meat on them than Kate Moss. My wife glances at me with what eighties warblers ABC definitely wouldn’t call The Look Of Love, although no doubt someone will be playing them, along with Simply Red and the f***ing Lighthouse Family before I’m sufficiently pissed to care. My Clash, Sex Pistols and The Damned compilation was swiftly ousted by a woman who loved Michaels Jackson a couple of years ago. Her husband looked like an albino chimp appropriately enough, and it was after I inadvertently called him Bubbles that the first argument started.

‘Just be pleasant’ Coaches my wife as I decide against any shirt with even a hint of Hawaii about it and plump for something loose and plain – the best way to get an easy screw according to the serial shagger I ended up drinking with last year.

‘Hi great to see you.’ Gushes a pasty-faced man as we enter the chosen garden clouds gathering, and I try to hide the cheap lager I brought with me in the pile on a wobbly trestle table.

‘You too mate.’ I fib, wincing at the unconvincing term. He must know, as I do whenever the disingenuous word is used, that I can’t remember his name or what he does. The man has worn horribly and looks as grey and washed out as a pair of old underpants. This sort of barefaced deception would get me prosecuted under the Consumer Protection Rules if I applied the lie to a worn out three-bed semi detached house presented, immaculately.

My wife seems to be circulating effortlessly while I get stuck with bores bigger than North Sea oil rigs can muster and a new couple who are wetter than the weather is about to get.

‘So you’re the estate agent?’ States the scrawny wife as her underfed husband with the limp handshake looks on attentively. He looks in need of a good meal but as she’s already told me she’s decided they should both be vegetarians, he’ll get no sympathy - or sausages - from me.

‘We think we paid a good price for our house.’ Continues the woman in what sounds like a challenge. They didn’t buy it from me so there’s no duty of care. I mention a similar one we’ll be marketing in a week or two at less money and leave.

‘Christ these people have aged.’ I whisper to my wife when I go for a top-up - of someone else’s beer.

‘We all have.’ She replies tartly.

‘Which family have those bloody cats?’ I ask, glancing at a portly man carrying more timber than a lumberjack’s trailer, wearing a suspiciously hair-covered fleece

‘You won’t be crapping on their lawn.’ She tells me decisively.

God save.

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Fascist Regime - Sunday

I don’t know half these people.’ I tell my wife, as we turn up at the Jubilee street party to celebrate 60 years of the Queen’s reign. In 1977 I bought The Sex Pistols, God Save The Queen, convinced anarchy would be a good thing for the UK. Now a load of royalists in 1950’s frocks they bought from one of countless charity shops in the blighted High Street, are singing rather engaging patriotic songs. Time and bags of equity in your home can soften the angriest of left-wingers.

I’m expecting some wag to buttonhole me and complain about property prices after a few glasses of punch. The old feisty attitude I wore, along with numerous lapel badges when punk rock was at its height, has been submerged for much of my working life. Hidden behind a sales’ smile and the slow leeching of establishment values into a philosophy that looks more and more flawed the farther into mortgages, pensions and savings you get sucked. I haven’t gobbed at anyone for thirty years.

Several drinks in and after three plays of a Vera Lynn compilation on the PA system, I start to loosen up. ‘This isn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be.’ I slur to my wife when she detaches herself from a gaggle of middle-aged women with dyed hair and vein-lined legs.

‘See,’ she admonishes gently. ‘These are really nice people. They’re the same as you.’

And the uncomfortable realisation I normally get in the shaving mirror, washes over me and replaces the light-headed rush of alcohol. With unwelcome clarity, I see I’m not the idealist with a full head of hair and a 32-inch waist any longer. I’m the same as them – just with better legs.

‘You’re the estate agent right?’ Questions the bloke from several doors up who washes his Audi TT as if it’s his penis. I don’t know his name and have decided he’s a knob, at least until he wants a valuation. I give a cautious affirmative and paste on the smile that used to be a snarl when I played Neat Neat Neat by The Damned, at full volume. I’m expecting some one-sided diatribe about prices and parasites, but he surprises me just as the Glen Miller album replaces Vera.

‘So what do you reckon on these solar roof panels then?’ The man asks eagerly, gleaming eyes of a zealot as bright as his motor’s metallic blue paintwork.

Now I have a tricky decision to make. One not helped by several glasses of disarmingly fruity punch and the bouncy beat of a big band I used to hate with a passion. I have to quickly remember if his roof has succumbed to the ugly panels, I’m convinced will turn out to be as big a miss-selling scandal as Endowments and Payment Protection Insurance, in time. It hasn’t. So I tell him what I think, in an uncharacteristic – in public – rush of honesty. There’s an uncomfortable silence then he laughs and says.

‘Yep, me too, I reckon they’re a bloody eyesore. Bunch of Polar Bear loving Greens with more money than sense buy them just to sop their conscience. It’ll take decades to get the money back and I’m betting the panels won’t still be working.’

‘Some nice people here.’ I slur to my wife as I start to feel semi-detached. Then the royalist versus republican argument breaks out from nowhere, as someone plays the National Anthem. While the temperature rises and storm clouds gather, a lairy bloke - who must be renting - starts to bad-mouth the Queen and I find myself reluctantly defending her. Obviously I can’t do the same for Charles, his tree hugging and his hangers on. It’s only thirty-five years since the bondage trousers and The Buzzcocks, after all.

‘That wasn’t helpful.’ Hisses my wife as the party disperses and the rain starts to fall. She has a point. I thought I’d defuse the situation by posing the Diana v Camilla question and asking who would shag Camilla?

But it got ugly.

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