Zero Degrees Proof

In which The Author doesn't sponsor an acquaintance

About three weeks ago on a Tuesday afternoon, Clare and I were walking to Penderyn. We were bored, it was a sunny day, and she'd never walked up the old Mineral Railway Line from Hirwaun. I met her in the village and we went exploring. As we were strolling through the narrow tree-lined lane, with rolling farmland on either side, she told me about the time she and her older brothers were drinking '100% alcohol'.

I told her that they almost certainly hadn't been drinking 100% alcohol. I remembered our old Biology teacher, the late Terry Smith, correcting one of the lads in our class when he made a similar claim. According to Terry, drinking pure alcohol wouldn't do you any good (to put it mildly). If they had been able to get access to pure ethanol, Clare probably wouldn't have been there to tell the tale.

They'd probably been drinking something which was 100 proof – a rather different proposition. In the UK, measures of proof haven't been used for ages. Instead, we talk about the percentage of alcohol by volume (ABV). Historically the UK and the US used different standards to define alcohol proof anyway, which makes things even more complicated. And in the US they don't use the term 'degrees proof', as we did over here. Stating the ABV avoids this confusion and makes much more sense, doesn't it?

Something like Jack Daniel's (around 80 proof) contains 40% ABV. Absinthe, the infamous tipple formerly enjoyed by the avant-garde set of Paris, can reach an ABV of 74%, or around 148 proof. There is a brand of rectified corn spirit called Everclear available (here and there) in the US, which reaches a staggering 75.5% ABV. At the time of writing, it's banned in Alaska, California, Florida, Maine, Massachusetts, Hawaii, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, Ohio, Washington, North Carolina, New Hampshire, and Minnesota. I bet there'll be a few people in Aberdare making a beeline for the states not on this list once they read this.

But I digress …

As anyone with regular access to social media will know, the calendar is quickly being filled up with special 'Years', 'Months', 'Days', and even 'Hours'. The United Nations seems to have partly been responsible for this, when it declared 1959–60 as 'International Refugee Year'. Quite what this was supposed to achieve in practice is anyone's guess. At the end of 2015, there were an estimated 65.3 million people displaced by conflict throughout the world. So, yeah, they did a bang-up job of resolving that particular issue six decades ago.

There's a full list on the UN website, and they make for interesting reading. Taken collectively, they sound rather like a six-year-old girl's letter to Father Christmas, or the pipe dreams of a Miss World finalist. Since the beginning, we've had (to name a few):

• International Co-operation Year (1965) was another rip-snorting success at the height of the Cold War and in the midst of decolonisation.
• the International Year for Action to Combat Racism and Racial Prejudice (1971) proves my theory that half the people I meet in Aberdare still think they're living in the 1960s.
• World Communications Year (1983) was devoted to 'Development of Communication Infrastructures' – have you tried getting a mobile phone signal in Cwmaman or Penderyn recently?
• the International Year of Peace (1986) – yeah, right!
• most laughably of all, 2001 was the United Nations Year of Dialogue among Civilizations – when it wasn't busy being the Year of the Twin Towers Attacks and the Start of the Last Crusade.

As if these aren't far-fetched enough, 2008 was the International Year of the Potato, and 2013 was the International Year of Quinoa. (I'm not making this stuff up; follow the link and see for yourself.)

Anyway, logging into Facebook or Twitter will produce a welter of similar annual or one-off special days. According to the trending hashtags on the latter site, today is simultaneously the Day of the Girl, National Coming Out Day, and World Obesity Day. That's an obvious (if rather unkind) triple celebration for one of my recent romantic near-misses. It's also Ada Lovelace Day, marking the often overlooked role of women in the development of science and technology.

Yesterday was something else; so was Monday. I can't really remember what the special occasions were. It doesn't matter anyway, because they will have had as much impact on the world as did the International Year of Idealistic Pie-in-the-Sky Hippy Bollocks (1968, in case you're wondering).

It used to be only the Roman Catholic Church that made up a feast day for every occasion, simply to relieve the boredom of poverty, drudgery, near-starvation, plague and premature death. Whenever they wanted a small celebration, an obscure saint could usually be found somewhere to provide an excuse to use red ink on the calendar. (This gave rise to the phrase 'red-letter day'; according to Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, 'In almanacs, and more commonly in ecclesiastical calendars, important feast-days and saints' days were printed in red, with other days in black'.)

And, by Goddess, there were some really obscure saints. Try these for size, whom I've found by randomly flicking through The Book of Saints (7th edn, ed. Dom Basil Watkins. London: A & C Black.):

• St Cointha (feast day 8 February)
• Blessed Dominic-of-the-Holy-Rosary of Nagasaki (10 September)
• St Eusebius of Cremona (5 March)
• St Phaebedius (25 April)
• St Mageldisil (30 May)
• Blessed Otto of Heidelberg (28 December)
• St Raphael-of-St-Joseph Kalinowski (19 November)
• St Theophilus de Signori of Corte (19 May)
• St Wulstan (19 January)

See – every day's a potential holiday if you're a good Catholic. It reminds me of a great stand-up routine from early in Woody Allen's career:

I was thrown out of college, and when I was thrown out of college I got a job on Madison Avenue in New York. A real dyed-in-the-wool advertising agency on Madison Avenue wanted a man to come in, and they'd pay him ninety-five dollars a week to sit in their office, and to look Jewish. They wanted to prove to the outside world that they would hire minority groups, y'know. So I was the one they hired, y'know. I was the show Jew at the agency. I tried to look Jewish desperately, y'know. I used to read my memos from right to left all the time. They fired me finally, 'cause I took off too many Jewish holidays.

But back on topic (for a moment): T.S. Eliot was wrong; October is the cruellest month. The autumn in Wales gets going in earnest; it pisses down with rain most days, and when it's not pissing down you're just dodging the showers. You have to put the lights on at five o'clock (if not earlier), and the clocks go back an hour at the end just to make matters worse. You can't even go to the pub for a quiet pint without bumping into a load of bloody students pissing away their first loan instalments. Over the last couple of years, this horrible month has been made even less bearable by hordes of born-again clean-living individuals trumpeting their achievements via social media.

Because October isn't just thirty-one days of misery any more. Oh, no – these days you have to get healthy as well. If you do venture out for a pint, you're bound to be up against someone self-righteously sipping a soft drink and announcing to anyone who'll listen that they're doing 'Sober October'. If you smoke as well, your visits to the outdoor shelter will be greeted by cries of derision by people who are quitting the demon weed.

If you don't already know about these things, Stopober encourages people to quit smoking. Sober October does exactly what it says on the tin (of diet Pepsi, naturally) and encourages you to take a month on the wagon. Stoptober is supported by pharmacies and the primary health care sector, with advice and support available to anyone wanting to take up the challenge. Sober October goes a step further, and encourages you to get sponsored for not drinking for 31 days. The money raised goes towards Macmillan Cancer Support, which is a very worthwhile charity.

A couple of years ago, I asked Rhian if she fancied doing Sober October with me. She laughed in my face. When I asked her about doing Stoptober instead (I've never smoked, and have never been interested in starting) she thought it was an even more ridiculous suggestion.

I thought it was a ridiculous suggestion as well, to be honest. I once – many years ago – decided to spend a year off the booze, apart from my birthday (when it's daft not to go to the pub) and rugby internationals (when it's simply rude not to). I stuck to my word until about this time of year, which surprised everyone I knew, as well as me. But it was the academic season in work, and we were besieged by new students who (Goddess knows how) were even more condescending and less well-educated than the ones from the year before. The brave face was starting to wear a bit thin.

It was coming up to lunchtime one particularly stressful Wednesday when Laurie looked at me and said, 'I think you need a pint, mate.'

I said, 'I think you're right!'

And that was the end of that. Still, ten months and a bit was pretty good going, especially when you consider that bookselling was always a fairly boozy gig anyway. But they only had my word for the fact that I wasn't going home and sinking half a bottle of vodka every night.

You see, these special fund-raising months have one major flaw: they rely on a degree of honesty and trust that's often lacking in society.

Let's take one example of a really good sponsored event – the London Marathon.

You register way ahead of time; you train every evening and every weekend to get in shape for it; you set up a JustGiving page and ask all your family and friends to sponsor you. Everyone knows it's happening, because it's on the TV. You turn up on the day, run 26 miles and a bit, collapse into a foil blanket, get your medal for completing the course, and ker-ching! Anthony Nolan, or MIND, or Macmillan, or Shelter, or the RSPCA, or whatever your chosen worthy cause is, gets a nice cash injection from your efforts.

And that's exactly why it works so well. You might get to be on TV, if you're lucky. Even if you don't appear in close-up, you're somewhere in the mass of thousands of runners, walkers, wheelchair athletes and pantomime horses making their way through Docklands and back into the City, then onto Westminster and the finish line. You've got your medal to show that you've done it. When you get back home, you can go to everyone who sponsored you with a clear conscience.

In preparing the ground for a sponsored event I'm hoping to organise next year, I've taken the difficulty of charting one's progress into account. If all goes well, there'll be a large number of people undertaking a challenge which will take them the length and breadth of the Cynon Valley over the course of a few hours. I'm expecting that a fair number of people will bale out before the end. (I know I certainly would.) With this in mind, I've split the course into ten stages. Entrants will receive a 'token' on completing each stage. It makes the accounting easier all round.

Suppose, for example, that Tom, Dick and Harry sign up to take part. I sponsor Tom 10p a stage, Dick 10p a stage, and Harry 10p a stage. Tom finishes the entire course, so I pay him £1.00. Dick crashes out after Stage 7, so he raises 70p. Harry gets injured after two stages, so he gets 20p. If anyone decides halfway through that they'd rather spend the afternoon in the pub, they simply hand in their five tokens and collect half the sponsor money.

I'd rather do it that way than pay someone in advance to do a challenge that they might not complete (or take it on trust that they've done it). When my good friend Neil R. climbed Pen y Fan (the highest mountain in southern Britain) ten times in one day to raise money for charity, I was happy to pay up. He posted regular updates of his progress on Facebook, and you don't make that sort of thing up anyway. You've got to be pretty damn serious about the endeavour before you sign up for it. On the other hand, I sponsored another friend to do a tandem sky-dive back about this time last year. As far as any of us know, she's yet to leave the ground.

Next month is the even more bizarre Movember, where guys grow ridiculous facial hair (Moustache-November – geddit?) to raise awareness of prostate cancer (and presumably to raise money as well). That's going to be a non-starter in Aberdare, where half the males under forty are already sporting ridiculous facial hair. Maybe we could sponsor girls under the age of 25 to sort their fucking eyebrows out instead.

Which brings us back to Sober October. When one of my friends asked me to sponsor him a couple of years ago, I agreed because I knew he was serious about it. A mate of his had succumbed to a particularly aggressive cancer, and his sudden death had hit all the boys hard. A couple of the others have done sponsored walks or swimming events to raise money in his memory. That's fair enough. But now it seems that everyone is trying to grab everyone they can for sponsorship.

Last week, one of the barbints in Thereisnospoon asked me if I'd sponsor her for Sober October. I said I'd have to think about it – partly because about half a dozen other people had already asked me, and I can't afford to sign up for every appeal that comes my way. If she'd been a good friend, I might not have thought twice about it, but she isn't. We know each other to say hello to, but that's about it. I wonder how many other regular punters she's approached to sponsor her – and, more importantly, how many have said yes. I shouldn't think there are very many names on her form.

The other reason, of course, is that I'd have only Mandy's word that she'd managed to stay off the booze for the entire thirty-one days. Obviously she can't drink when she's in work, but what's to stop her from sneaking to the off-licence on her way home, or catching a sneaky glass of wine over Sunday lunch? It isn't like any of the challenges I've outlined above, where there's some sort of control mechanism in place to make sure people can't cheat. You might as well ring up the Guinness people and tell them you've just broken such-and-such a record. Without any outside agency to measure your progress, it's going to be your word against theirs.

And that, I fear, is where Sober October falls down (no pun intended). Stoptober could yield a definite result, in that someone successfully gives up the habit and makes a positive impact on their health and wealth. If, on the other hand, they head straight to the shop for twenty Lambert & Butler on 1 November, then the experiment was a failure.

The only fair way to determine whether someone has completed Sober October is for him or her to have a full battery of blood tests (including a liver function test) on 30 September. Then they go back on 1 November, have the same blood tests, and you can compare the results. In the meantime, they have to agree to the sort of random testing that people working on the railways have to go through.

And if you're a serious drinker, is just one month off the sauce going to make that difference anyway? The damage has already been done. I knew a man who'd spent four whole weeks 'drying out' at Whitchurch Hospital (see Rehab), only to return to Aberdare and head straight to the pub for a pint. Trebles all round! Another triumph for the NHS! No, not really. The poor bugger was dead a few months later. It seems that all Sober October really gives you is another opportunity for one-upmanship.

With my fund-raising idea, at least you get the tokens to show you've completed at some of the course. If it does come off, it's going to be properly organised and scrutinised to ensure nobody can cheat on the day.

To this cynical mind, however, Sober October is very much like an alcohol-free drink. There's absolutely no proof.

A Flashback to 2012

In which The Author finds history repeating itself again

Now that I've relocated my base of operations from Wordpress to here, I'm taking the opportunity to retrofit the disused blog to a consistent 'house style'. Every so I often I go through the original posts, tweaking the text and the HTML to a standard format. I usually call this 'extreme proofreading for geeks', incidentally.

Anyway, this afternoon I've been revising an entry from the summer of 2012, called Courting Controversy. If nothing else, it goes to prove that there's nothing new under the sun …

Rule Number One

In which The Author learns a new karaoke song

On Friday night I put a status on Facebook, saying that I wouldn't be online very often before New Year. It's partly true: I don't have Internet access at home; Aberdare Library will be closed for at least four days over Xmas and two over the New Year break; the Cloud is hit-and-miss in the pubs; my free gigabyte of mobile data is still going strong, but the signal in my house makes it pretty much redundant anyway.

I also said that I wouldn't be texting anyone for the rest of December, because I'd spent enough topping up my bloody phone this month. That was a blatant lie, aimed at Chazza in particular. In fact, I've still got a substantial proportion of my three thousand free texts to use before New Year's Day.

The truth is that I'm frankly fucking sick and tired of Chazza's blowing hot and cold in direct proportion to the amount of alcohol in her system. I won't import any more content from my secret blog, but I will quote one long extract and two shorter ones from an entry I wrote ten days ago.

Soon after that [on a Thursday evening], Chazza walked in with a huge smile on her face, waving a piece of orange paper for all to see. It turned out to be her employment contract with KFC in Cardiff, starting this week. I bought her a drink by way of congratulations, and the four of us chatted by the bar for a while. When it started to fill up, we went to sit by the jukebox. Phillip and Clare didn't join us, because one of their friends was already there with her chavvy boyfriend. I don't like either of them, so we decided to grab a small table and have a catch-up instead.

One of the chav's mates started hassling Chazza when she was by the bar, and she told him she already had a boyfriend. Needless to say, the fuckwit thought she meant me, and the situation started to deteriorate as the evening wore on. I wasn't in any fit state to sing anyway, as I've had a stinking cold for weeks. The atmosphere was quite unpleasant, so we baled out en masse at about 9.30 and headed for the relative sanity of the Prince.

Clare was ensconced with Gareth the DJ, so we didn't want to cramp their style. Instead, we parked ourselves at the bar and chatted to Ross [an old mate of mine from the Carpenters days who'd turned out to be Chazza's uncle] for a while. He was pleased to hear of Chazza's new job as well, and the drink was flowing quite freely by this stage.

Bear in mind that – apart from some very light flirtation – I'd never even been tempted to make a move on her. I'm not into stealing other people's girlfriends. So you can imagine my surprise when she leaned over and whispered, 'If I wasn't seeing Paul, I'd totally fuck you.'

It's a wonder I'm not on a diet of soup and energy drinks at the moment, because my jaw hit the floor with considerable momentum. I glanced over her shoulder to see if Ross had heard, but he was engrossed in his music.

I didn't say anything straight away, because I thought it was probably the drink talking. It still came totally out of left field, though.

After Chazza went home, I was still reeling from that bombshell. I didn't tell anyone else what had happened, though. It was almost beyond belief anyway.

On Friday night I was in the Cambrian when Clare messaged me to say she was in the Fforchneol (known locally as 'the Bonki'). It's a big old pub halfway to Stereophonicsland Cwmaman, which I've never been keen on. Gareth does the karaoke there on Fridays, which is why Clare no longer comes to the Cambrian. She and Phillip had had a bit of a falling-out, so he was on his way to town. She wanted to know he'd have a bit of company, so she was checking I was there.

Before he came in, Jenny the barbint asked me where the rest of the gang were. I told her Phillip was on his way and Clare was in the Bonki. Jenny seemed a bit surprised, because (like a lot of people) she'd assumed that Clare and I were an item. I disabused her of that notion, and then told her what Chazza had said the night before. She was almost as thunderstruck as I'd been.

Phillip came in soon after, and joined me in the corner. We hadn't been there long when Chazza came in with a chap she's known since school, and joined us at our table. When Jocelyn [the karaoke hostess] asked me if I wanted to sing, I initially said 'no'; this bloody cold still hadn't shifted, so I didn't feel up to it. However, they twisted my arm, so I decided to give it a go. Bearing in mind that Chazza was moving to Cardiff, I decided that 'We Got to Get Out of This Place' would be the perfect song for the occasion. Naturally, when I got to 'Girl, you're so young and pretty', I gave her a wink, and she blushed.

She and her friend went walkabout after one pint, and I didn't stay long after Phillip went home. It had been a long couple of weeks.

I was in the Glosters having a glass of Coke on Saturday afternoon, and texted Chazza that I'd miss her once she left town. She texted back, saying that it was a really nice thing to say, and asked me if I was in town. Then she rang me, sounding very hung-over, and said she was on her way up to Aberdare. She was catching the 3.50 train, but had an hour or so to kill. I suggested going for a late lunch, so we repaired to Servini's and sat at the back while she recovered slowly from a very heavy night. I said I knew how she felt, because I'd been none too clever on Friday morning.

'Oh yeah, we both had a few,' she laughed. 'And I still remember most of it.'

'Even a rather random comment at the bar?'

'With my uncle standing right behind me!' She blushed again, and then looked at me. 'I meant it, though.'

I’ve got to go to Cardiff before Xmas anyway, so we can catch up soon. But I’m still feeling a bit fazed by the whole thing. If she goes through with her plan to kick Paul into touch after her birthday, I might leave it ‘a decent interval’ (as they used to say) and then play my hand. At least this time, I know I stand a decent chance that my notional bank balance will stay the same.

PS I hadn’t even had chance to post his before Chazza texted me asking if I could meet her today (Thursday). She didn’t say too much, but she seems to think it’s over between her and Paul. I replied as soon as my phone came back to life, to say I was sorry and offering to treat her to Curry Club in Thereisnospoon this evening.

I must admit that I did a mini fist-pump as well, mind. Watch this space.

Well, she might have meant it with a hangover on a Saturday afternoon, but things definitely changed during the week. Entirely without my permission, I'm going to quote a full entry from my other blog, written last Friday, to fill in the background here.

Yesterday afternoon, Clare told me that Chazza had changed her status to 'single' on Facebook, and shared a recent song which apparently girls only sing when they've been dumped. (I was none the wiser, of course.) Then she posted a status asking if anyone could give her a lift from Penarth to Aberdare. The plot was thickening.

There were no fewer than four karaoke events in Aberdare last night: the regular two at the Lighthouse and the Bush, plus one-offs in the Cambrian and the Prince. Clare and I decided to check them out in turn, and I texted Chazza every time we moved from one to the other. I didn't get a reply, so while we were walking to the Cambrian I tried ringing her. It rang for ages, and then I got a recorded message saying that the person was unavailable to take my call.

Anyway, Phillip had joined us by this stage, so we decided to return to the Prince. Clare had the bright idea of walking past the Bush first.

'I bet she's in there with some random boy,' she said (a little ironically, in my opinion).

So she had a peek through the window. The place was full of the usual suspects, so there was no way I was going to cross the threshold anyway. But (unless she was in the ladies') there was no sign of Chazza. I didn't bother texting her again.

This afternoon Clare told me Chazza had put a status up earlier on. She had a new phone number, and was asking people to message her their numbers. I messaged her to ask if she was OK, told her I was getting concerned, and added my number at the end.

That was about two hours ago. Since then I haven't heard a word.

At least I know why Cash Generator is always full of smartphones, though. Young girls must go through them at the rate of at least one every two months, if they have to change numbers every time they get their hearts broken by some immature commitment-phobic playa.

Clare asked me a few weeks ago why I don't watch soaps or Reality TV. I said, 'With you and people like Chazza in my life, I don't fucking need to! Your lives are fucked up enough for anyone's entertainment.'

I really wish I could share a meme I shared on Facebook about a week ago, but it's fucking impossible to find it again. (Note to Mark Zuckerberg: Sort your shit out!) The gist of it, though, was this. Boys text and say, 'Wanna chill?' Men text and say, 'Are you free any time this week? I'd like to buy you lunch.'

Go figure …

Anyway, last Sunday night the Spectrums were playing their last local gig of the year in the Cambrian. Andrew L., the keyboard player, was in school with my brother, so I've known him for over thirty years. Together with his son (who plays bass) and a crew of talented younger guys, Andrew is finally playing the music he's always wanted to play – the post-Punk, New Wave and Electropop music he grew up listening to. It's stuff I love, too, so I made a beeline for the front of the room. Phillip joined me; Jazz and Tommy Sticks came in a bit later; and then Anna E. came in with her 'gentleman friend', having driven down from Swansea for the gig. She didn't seem to be in a very good mood, especially when I told her I was keeping a seat for Chazza.

The girl herself was making her way up from Cardiff by train, so I wasn't expecting her until about 8.45. She'd drawn the short straw – working a Sunday, when the trains run every two hours, and missing the earlier one by a few minutes. Understandably, she wasn't very cheerful either; she was still in her work uniform (but with a change of clothes in her bag) and wasn't wearing any make-up. I bought her a pint, introduced her to the rest of the gang, and we settled down to watch the band.

Except that Chazza didn't settle down. She finished her drink and asked me if we could go somewhere else, because she wanted to talk to me. We headed to the Prince, grabbed our usual table by the fruit machine, and she told me that things weren't working out as she'd hoped they would. She'd decided that she didn't want to stay with her boyfriend. In addition, her new job had turned out to be a zero hours contract, and the couple of hours she'd worked that week had barely covered her train fare.

She was totally skint, and hadn't eaten over the weekend. I subbed her a couple of quid just so she could to get to work. In the meantime her phone kept ringing, and she kept rejecting the call. On the fourth attempt, she showed me the caller ID. Needless to say, it was Paul. We had a pint, and I bought her something to eat from the fast food place opposite.

While we were in there, though, something very strange happened. While we walked up Boot Lane, we must have gone through the Rift and ended up about two hundred miles to the east. Instead of talking in her normal voice, Chazza was suddenly possessed by the spirit of some Urban Yoof from Sarf London. She kept calling the guy behind the counter 'bro', and 'blood', and stuff like that. I was starting to think that she'd found her way into auditions for another sequel of KiDULTHOOD, and I found the whole performance a bit embarrassing.

In fact, I was quite relieved when Paul phoned her yet again, and she decided she'd better have it out with him. I made my excuses and left, grabbing another pint in the Prince before returning to the Cambrian in time to catch the end of the lads' set. I was making my way from the bar when Anna confronted me. It seemed that an evening of musical nostalgia and old friends had done nothing to lighten her mood. Our brief conversation went like this.

'Was that the girl you were waiting for?' she demanded.

'Yeah.'

'She's young!'

'I know.'

'She's fat!'

'She's a bit chunky.'

'She's ugly!'

'Fuck you!'

And then I got into an argument with Karen, to round the night off perfectly. She wanted to go to the Bush for a late one; I said I'd rather castrate myself with a rusty Stanley knife. So I made my excuses and left again.

I kept my phone on when I went to bed, as I had a funny feeling I was going to get a call. And, sure enough, at about 1.30 Chazza phoned me. She was still upset with the way her life had turned upside down, and wanted a shoulder to cry on. I told her what Anna had said, and how pissed off I'd been. I know Anna and I have been friends since we did our A levels, but that doesn't give her the right to slag off my friends – especially when she's only known Chazza for five minutes.

Anyway, on Monday morning Chazza texted me, wanting to know if I was around town. I was in the library, doing some work on the Plaid Cymru blog, so I offered to meet her for lunch. She also asked me to remind her what Anna had said the night before. I relayed the conversation again, and she thanked me for defending her. Then she totally contradicted herself by saying 'We're just mates!'

We had lunch anyway, and Chazza told me how conflicted she was with the whole Paul situation. She told me that she wants a baby, but he isn't keen on the idea. I told her she's got plenty of time to worry about that. For the time being, she'd be better off concentrating on her music and trying to break into the circuit. For fucks's sake, she can't even decide whether she wants a boyfriend or a girlfriend. In fact, I suspect that – like many young people I know in Aberdare – she's simply addicted to sex, and it doesn't matter a jot who she's doing it with. However, to judge from her rather strange text earlier that day, she won't be doing it with me any time soon.

She also asked me why Clare and I were spending so much time together. I told her that we get on well, we make each other laugh, and she's good company when we go away for a day.

'After all, it gets her away from her brother for a while, and gives her a bit of intelligent conversation as well,' I said. (Believe me, intelligent conversation can be very hard to find in the Valleys.)

'She's just using you,' Chazza said. 'I don't want to see you getting hurt.'

'Not going to happen', I reminded her. 'You can't break someone's heart when it's still in pieces. I haven't even found all the pieces yet, never mind started sticking them all together again.'

We finished up and I walked her over to the station, then headed back to the library to finish what I'd been doing. Needless to say, Clare came in shortly afterwards and dragged me to Performance and Cock-ups. While we were waiting for Gareth to set his gear up, I told her about the events of the previous night, and the rather odd turn the conversation had taken over lunch.

'She's just using you,' Clare said.

Fax from Miss Pot for the attention of Miss Kettle? You decide …

And that's brought you pretty much up to date. Pretty much.

Except that on Friday afternoon Chazza texted me to ask if I'd be out for the Cambrian karaoke. I told her that I was Xmas shopping in Bristol (which Clare and I'd been planning to do anyway), so I wouldn't be back in Aberdare until just before midnight.

Now, the beauty of a mobile phone – especially if you haven't enabled Facebook Check-in or Twitter Locations – is that you can be absolutely anywhere within reason. In reality I was in the Glosters, having a quiet pint before Black Friday really got under way. But my virtual stroll through Cabot Circus and the old quarter was a totally believable diversion.

In the early evening, I joined Phillip for karaoke (Clare, naturally, has made the Bonki her new weekend home), so we were chatting before Jocelyn set her gear up. I told him I'd lied to Chazza, and said I probably wouldn't be sticking around. At about 6.00 the jukebox kicked into Default Mode, blasting out the sort of Thrash Metal I used to listen to when I called to Bogiez for my Saturday evening after-work pint. It was fun twenty years ago, but the genre seems to have stalled there. We made our excuses and left – Phillip to the Lighthouse, and me to the Prince.

Of course, by now everyone who'd finished for the holidays had piled into town, and everywhere in the town centre was packed to capacity. They were serving beer in polycarbonate mugs in the Prince, and the barbint couldn't work out how half a pint could fit into a half-pint plastic. I decided not to waste my time, and headed to the Glosters for one. I could barely push the door open, as there were so many people in there. I walked back to the Cambrian, and found Phillip finishing off some fried chicken in the car park. He'd taken one look in the Lighthouse and decided against it.

We found a small table near the front, and chatted to Jocelyn while she set up her gear. Inevitably, of course, Phillip had only just sung his first song when Chazza strolled in, with Leanne and her uncle Dai and his new partner. I smiled at her and said 'Hello', but they walked straight to the other end and sat down.

'Busted!' I said. Phillip and I laughed and carried on chatting. Chazza got up to sing 'Price Tag' by Jessie J, and didn't acknowledge me at all when she walked past to rejoin the gang. When I went for a piss about five minutes later, they'd all gone.

Later on in the night, I sent this Tweet:

Rule #1: The Doctor lies. As for me, I'm just joining in the fun, because every other fucker has been doing it for as long as I can recall.

I haven't replied to any texts since, except to arrange to meet Shanara for lunch tomorrow. In Cardiff. And that one isn't a phone spoof – it's a real change of scene. After all, I haven't got any credit, have I?

And last night, at Lindsay's karaoke night in the Glandover, I tried out a new song: 'Hot and Cold' by Katy Perry. It needs work, but I'm keeping it up my sleeve for the next time Chazza and I are in the same pub at the same time.

And that was the end of the story.

Except that Chazza has literally just texted me to see if I fancy a pint. Good thing I'm currently at the Colstars Xmas concert, eh?

You Don't Know What You've Got Till it's Gone

In which The Author wonders what to do next

In an unexpected sequel to the previous post, I can bring you an exclusive update to the Clare Situation.

In spite of Charlie the barbint's encouragement to me on Sunday night, in spite of Karen's well-intended advice to Clare on Monday night, in spite of all the time Clare and I have spent together over the past couple of months, in spite of all our ideas to have at least one fucking day away from Aberdare, in spite of my spending pretty much the whole day with her yesterday, and in spite of my chatting to her online every day since we first became Facebook friends, I have concluded – on the basis of overwhelming evidence – that we've got about as much chance of getting involved romantically and/or sexually as I have of being the first human to set foot on Mars.

There are three main obstacles in our way, so I'll deal with them in turn.

I haven't mentioned until now that Clare's brother Phillip has a learning disability. It's never bothered me. Twenty years ago, when Sam and I were engaged, she was working in that field. As a result, I met her clients a number of times. She was always impressed by the casual way I interacted with them (see Learning Disabilities in my main blog). Friends of mine who have children with 'special needs' have often remarked on the fact that I don't patronise them, or ignore them, or sideline them. It's possible that the job I do now demands a certain level of 'autistic spectrum disorder', after all, so perhaps I recognise a kindred spirit when I meet one.

On the other hand, a lot of the fuckwits in town don't know how to deal with people in that position. They either take the piss out of Phillip, bully him, or become downright aggressive. While he's perfectly happy to come to Aberdare and have a few pints, Clare's (understandably) very protective of him. This makes her pretty much his unpaid carer whenever they're out together.

However, after a little while, you can tell she'd love to break free and do her own thing. It generally isn't worth the hassle though, because it'll either lead to a temper tantrum, an argument, or the Incredible Sulk which lasts for hours on end.

Furthermore, Phillip becomes very jealous if Clare does something which he's not involved in – like (for example) going for lunch with a friend.

As a result, he's something of a third wheel whenever Clare and I discuss plans. The only reason we were able to go to Cardiff without him tagging along was because we arranged it late at night, and she sneaked out when he was on his way to do his voluntary work.

The trouble is, he knows about the Bristol trip, so he's already invited himself along. I'm happy for him to come, because the three of us get on well and we always have a laugh. But we'll need to be back in Aberdare before the karaoke evening gets under way. If we aren't, and they start without his getting the chance to do 'American Trilogy' for the nine hundredth time, Clare and I will never hear the last of it. That's fucked any possibility of our having a couple of extra pints in Cardiff before the last train.

When I whispered to Clare earlier that any little 'weekend break' in London – something we've talked about a couple of times – would be strictly for the two of us, Phillip's superhero hearing picked it up. I think that was why he dragged her up to the karaoke evening at least two hours before it all got started. How very dare I suggest taking his little sister out of the country for more than a couple of hours?

The second obstacle in our way is the very thing which allows you to read this: the fucking Internet.

Like most young people I know these days, Clare spends almost her entire time in a WiFi-enabled pub chatting to random people she's met online. The other night she asked me if she could log into Facebook on the Netbook, so that she could untag herself in a couple of photos she'd rather forget about. When she went to the ladies', I had a glance at her Timeline. I wasn't spying on her – she wanted to me to look at a picture she'd shared and which she said I'd enjoy.

As I'd suspected, it was full of posts by ropey-looking chavs from all over South Wales, ranging from their mid-teens to their mid-thirties. To a 'man' (and I use the word advisedly) they were boasting about their prison records, drug deals, fucks and/or fights, and trying to get Clare to meet them. Most of them were swearing their undying love for her, because they'd seen her profile picture and thought she was the best thing since sliced bread.

I'm not being nasty to Clare (she's a very pretty girl, remember), but she wasn't even the most attractive female in the bloody pub at the time – never mind in the whole of South Wales. Either these fuckwits have spent so much time in chokey that they've forgotten what women look like, or they need to learn to access decent online porn.

[A digresion: Actually, given Clare's especially unflattering profile picture at present, if that young lad from Pengam thought she actually was the best thing since sliced bread, he's given me a business idea. I'm going to open a little supermarket in the village, selling Vesta curries, Angel Delight, Goblin tinned hamburgers in gravy, Norscä shampoo, Slimcea diet bread, Texan chocolate bars, Tweed perfume, Brut aftershave, and all the other 1970s must-haves that were advertised on the TV when I was a kid. The natives have obviously missed out on so much of modern life that it'll be a roaring success from the moment Bernie Winters cuts the ribbon and the Dagenham Girl Pipers march down the central aisle.]

At any given time when her phone is connected, Clare'll be simultaneously sexting at least half a dozen kids called Kyle, or Josh, or Chet, or something else that sounds like it was made up out of left-over Scrabble letters. Nine times out of ten, if I try to engage her attention, I have to join the back of the queue. (And I'm the guy sitting opposite her and buying her drinks, remember.)

The biggest joke is that she's signed up for all manner of dating apps, in spite of protesting at length that she wants to concentrate on herself and isn't interested in men. This very afternoon, in fact, she wore a ring to town because it's karaoke in the Lighthouse tonight.

'If anyone asks, I'll say I'm engaged,' she laughed. 'Engaged to myself!'

That was at five o'clock, when the three of us (inevitably) were in Thereisnospoon. I'm willing to lay odds that by 10.00 p.m. the ring will be in her back pocket, and she'll be stuck to the face of her next ex-boyfriend.

On Monday night, in fact, literally within minutes of Karen telling Clare that she could do a lot worse than going out with me, she'd left with Gareth, the DJ from the Lighthouse. Even though nothing happened between them (she says), she thought that maybe she'd met someone who liked her. (Remember, she'd only just baled out on me.) Then she spent half an hour yesterday telling me how much she loved the single life. Go figure …

The third obstacle is Clare's personal history. From what she's told me, her parents' marriage was fairly violent. Her father currently has a partner whom Clare gets on with quite well; her mother has remarried, and Clare hates her stepfather. She's had a long string of boyfriends, widely spread in age, but mostly wasters, as far as I can tell – although at least one of them was man enough to give her a child. Finally, she got a result. A baby could give her unconditional love; exactly what she'd been looking for – until Social Services got involved, anyway.

Like many young girls I know from similar backgrounds, she seems to be on a relentless quest for 'love' with people who are equally dysfunctional. Needless to say, it's doomed to fail, because they're locked into the same cycle of self-destructive behaviour, abuse, violence, and ultimately kids in care, that their parents were.

Yes, sure, it's nice when you meet someone with whom you've got something in common. If it's a shared taste in films, or a band you both like, or a particular restaurant you can revisit many times, that's a good thing. If it's simply the fact that you could both be minor characters in an Irvine Welsh novel, that's not a good thing.

So, how do we reconcile all that with Clare's endless protestations that she's 'happy on her own', 'doesn't need a man', 'wants to focus on herself', 'stronger by being alone', and all the other life-affirming crap she posts on Facebook every day?

Well, that's obvious, of course. She's fallen back on the classic attention-seeking technique of 'Don't take any notice of me, I'm fine!' – to which everyone responds, 'Oh, what's up, babe? Mail me now', and so forth.

In fact, I'm becoming convinced that the lady doth protest too much. I suspect that all this 'single forever' crap is entirely for my benefit, because she knows I like her.

She doesn't want to take the risk of accepting my offer, because if she sees that it's possible to go out with someone who genuinely cares about her, it'll send her fucked-up little world spinning entirely off its axis.

As I said in a text to Karen earlier, I can't possibly compete with all these external factors. I dare say that I'll be a shoulder for Clare to cry on when her next little relationship goes tits-up, just as I was last time.

I hope I remain enough of a gentleman to say, 'Well, that's too bad, babe – fancy a pint?' instead of, 'We all told you so, didn't we, you silly bint? You need to learn how to recognise a good thing when it's under your nose. Now fuck off and leave me alone!'

Perhaps then she'll finally wake up and smell the coffee. After all, in the words of the song, you don't know what you've got till it's gone.

I'll Have a Large Retcon, Please

In which The Author has a sensible conversation on election day

At about 1.30 this afternoon, having been driven from Aberdare Library by the xenophobic drivel churned out by the Debating Society, I decided I needed a pint.

I can't entirely blame the fuckwits who come in every day 'to read the papers' for swallowing the neo-Nazi bullshit peddled by the Desmond and Northcliffe press. Most of them don't listen to the BBC Radio 4 news, or read a quality paper, or have the 21st-Century skill set necessary to access something like the BBC's 'Reality Check' website. Following the latest round of financial cutbacks within Rhondda Cynon Taf, the only national 'news'paper available to the public is the Daily Express.

As the unofficial house journal of the British National Party, this rag (along with its cut-down comic digest for knuckle-draggers the Daily Star, and its rivals the Sun and the Daily Mail) has been responsible for many of the myths, half-truths and downright fucking lies spewed out during the nastiest, most hateful and most deceitful election campaign I have the misfortune to remember. For some unknown reason, this 'socialist' council has decided that the only print media available in our central library will be this poisonous chalice. I'm sorely tempted to fork out £2.50 a week of my own money and sneak a copy of i into the rack every day. (Needless to say, I'll then be withholding a tenner a month from my council tax. I'm willing to pay for one or the other, but not both.)

Anyway, I repaired to Thereisnospoon, which seems to have had a bit of a reinvention furniture-wise. The tables have been completely rearranged: the small tables are now dotted around the place, rather than being lined up at one end; the high tables are all near the bar; the average height tables have been turned through 90°, and the high circular tables have been moved to the middle of the room. (I'm sitting at one of them at the moment, feeling very conspicuous.) Meanwhile, a small round table, big enough for two, with two comfy wing chairs, has been positioned beside the patio doors.

I decided to grab that small table, and was enjoying my first pint of the day when a shadow fell across me and a voice said, 'Hello, how are you?' I looked up into the vaguely familiar face of a chap in his twenties, with wavy mid-brown hair, casually dressed in 'student' style. I knew I knew him from somewhere, but I couldn't think where.

I invited him to join me, and we started chatting about the election in general. Both of us had voted on the way into town, so we were able to avoid the pros and cons and discuss it at a sensible level. I mentioned my Plaid Cymru membership, and he talked about his instinctive anarchist tendencies (which I could sympathise with to a great extent). Then we started talking about politics generally – Jeremy Corbyn's track record, our shared admiration for Dennis Skinner MP, the prospects for the Tories in the event of a 'Remain' result tomorrow – and the historic internecine feuding on the left of British politics which kept Labour out of power for eighteen whole years.

Before long the conversation turned into one of those free-jazz conversations over beer which I always enjoy: veering from topic to topic with no obvious connection; exploring a theme in depth before changing direction abruptly; pulling in information from elsewhere and incorporating it into the development; harking back to something which was mentioned earlier; looping and spiralling into an overall work the structure of which neither of could have predicted, and which would have been impenetrable to anyone arriving late on the scene.

I do know that we chatted about film-making, the Spanish Civil War, the Vote Nobody campaign in South Wales a decade ago, the Battle of Verdun, family history in Cwmaman, Geoff E.'s book The Men Who Marched Away, my last copy-editing job, my forthcoming proofreading job(s), Throbbing Gristle, Industrial music in general, gigs I went to in London in the mid-1980s, the German sense of humour, a Czech film (which I've never seen), BBC radio comedies, psychology, ancient history, abortive ideas for Situationist happenings, anarchism in general, police spies, obscure neo-folk bands, interesting books and documentaries, Doctor Who and Blake's 7 …

I also remember that my pal was heading off to Bristol by train, and couldn't stick around any longer. In fact, considering that in the course of an hour and a half we'd covered a range of subjects worthy of a full day of blogging, I remember a fair amount of what we talked about.

But do you think I can remember his fucking name?

I know that we've met before, because he mentioned this very blog. However, I've got no idea of his name, or where it was that we first started chatting, or how long ago it was. It was a very refreshing change to have an afternoon drink with such an intelligent, interesting, well-informed and stimulating young chap, all the same. I just wish I could remember his fucking name!

The only reason I'm writing this now is because after a few more pints I won't even remember the broad outline of this afternoon, never mind the fine details. I blame the Retcon, personally.