The Dinosaur Ghost Question

By Mark Graham

Why are there no ghosts of dinosaurs?
Were my partner and I really "meant to be"?
Has anyone else ever got off on prehistoric-themed sexting?
Why did I buy this coat?

These are among the many questions which lead Michael Tortoishell on a winding, existentialist path from mediocre solicitor to infamous artist and occult icon.

It could be the most interesting thing you've read in ages.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mark Graham
• Release date: Nov 27, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465943477

Mark Graham

Mark Graham is a professor in the Art Department at Brigham Young University. Graham is an internationally known illustrator. His research interests include teacher education, place-based education, graphic novels, ecological/holistic education, secondary art education, design thinking, STEAM education, and Himalayan art and culture. Contact: 3116-B JKB, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT 84602, USA.

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THE DINOSAUR GHOST QUESTION

Michael Tortoishell

Copyright 2011 by Mark Graham

Smashwords Edition

CHAPTER 1

Why are there no ghosts of dinosaurs?

In an ideal world, that would have been where this book began - an intriguing opening statement that goes right the heart of what is to unfold in later chapters, perhaps also containing a secondary, very clever but as-yet-unknown meaning which will only become apparent on page 304.

A good hook, to quote from my editor’s limitless stock of literary clichés.

But as I have tried to explain to my editor, this isn’t an ideal world and because this isn’t entirely a work of fiction, the book simply can’t begin with ghosts of dinosaurs.

No, no. If I was to go stomping straight down that particular corridor, barging straight through the heavy oak-panelled door without knocking and shining my little fisherman’s torch in every cobwebbed corner, I would come across as being unsophisticated and boorish as a guide, not to say as a rather amateurish bungler in my methods.

There would be very little chance of us surprising a dinosaur ghost, either.

I’ll tell you what though, I said to Sarah (she’s my editor), "if you want that sort of an opening, you know, with plenty action and sensation and suchlike, why don’t I just barge through the door of the secret celebrity swinger’s club that I’m now a member of and shine my torch around the famous faces and world-renown buttocks in the steam room? That would be an attention-grabber, wouldn’t it? I know all the members’ pet names, secret tattoos, genital birthmarks, everything - I could blow the whole lot open on the first page! It would be the greatest scandal in British history - maybe the greatest first page of a book ever!"

Sarah sighed. "You’re not serious, are you? Mike, we’ve been through that before. The club is too well protected. You know as well as I do that the British media will never print a story about it and nor will this publishing house, or any other for that matter, ever publish a book which mentions it. At best it’s a complete non-starter and at worst you’ll get yourself into a lot of trouble."

But I could change the names, just hint . . .

She shook her grey cropped head. Forget it. Then, more brightly, Your book doesn’t need it anyway. It’s just the opening you need to sort out. Look, the fact of the matter is that most people who buy it will do so because they want to hear your account of Ed Gustard’s death, so I think you should start with him.

So, following several false starts (writing a book is a thousand times more difficult than becoming a well-known artist, believe me) I’ve decided I had better begin with Gustard after all.

That means that instead of the first line of my story being Why are there no ghosts of dinosaurs? it is now There’s much to be said in favour of alcoholism.

There’s much to be said in favour of alcoholism.

Rather a crass statement and certainly not one which many would concur with, but it was precisely that viewpoint that ignited a spark of mutual recognition between myself and the late Edward Gustard and so brought about the beginning of a remarkable partnership.

I use the word remarkable rather than, say, wonderful, because I must concede that the partnership concluded when Gustard died, an event which was anything but wonderful.

(Of course, that must be offset against the fact that, amongst other things we have determined conclusively whether or not ghosts exist, provided a plausible theory as to the precise nature of the universe and I have risen from the status of mediocre solicitor to infamous artist, occult icon and member of secret celebrity swingers clubs - but I’m already verging on the disrespectful so back to Gustard).

Gustard was a man who seemed perfectly suited to his name. Unusual names of people and places have always interested me, perhaps because my own name, Michael Tortoishell is somewhat out of the ordinary and often commented upon, generally at my expense.

At school I was on the receiving end of rather weak tortoise-oriented jibes about slowness of movement and the eating of fruit peelings, whilst I have also answered with a forced smile to Madame Butterfly, the invention of an early employer, luxuriating in the dullness of Mr Phillip Roberts. (Mr Roberts was, however, quite bald and had green teeth, so I was happy to allow him his little joke).

But Gustard, what a marvellous name! To me it speaks of a purveyor of gusts, a wind merchant, a giver-off of hot air, and yes, both verbally and digestively! A gung-ho, blustering bastard of a man, which is precisely what Edward Gustard was!

Ex-public school, early forties, thinning sandy hair, trimmed moustache, pudgy ruddy cheeks and piggy eyes. A tall man, comfortably over six feet and, though he had run a little to fat around the waistline, he retained quite an intimidating air of burly masculinity.

Exactly the kind of chap who would jovially kick sand in your face on the beach whilst winking at your girlfriend, who in turn would cast a sly glance or two the way of his trunks before telling you what a complete arsehole the man is and how she couldn’t understand why you liked him. Roaring around the countryside in his little two-seater Morgan he was almost a caricature of a 1930s bounder, although there was of course considerably more depth to him than his appearance and manner initially suggested.

Incidentally, when I happened to mention this to Pears (the third member of the aforementioned partnership) she disagreed entirely and said that to her the name Gustard had always seemed an unpleasant combination of gusset and custard, but then that’s Pears for you.

What Gustard meant by his comment that there is much to be said in favour of alcoholism, or at least what I understood him to mean, was that a good day’s drinking is one of few experiences in life which you can really savour at length and at the time you are doing it.

Naturally, it doesn’t sit so well the following day or night or whenever it is you return to consciousness and therein the experience differs from many of the so-called pleasures of life which are enjoyed in anticipation or retrospect rather than at the time.

Of course, open up any tabloid newspaper and (while the paper in question will be sitting on the hundreds of far more interesting celebrity stories that take place right beneath their noses each weekday in a certain club I’m not allowed to mention) they will have thrown the public a few scraps in the form of some ham soap actor, football player or someone else you’re supposed to be interested in projectile-vomiting their booze hell at you from the centre pages, telling you between retches how they secretly lapped vodka from the cat’s bowl, beat their grandmother to a bloody pulp and had god-knows-what sewn into their liver in consequence.

Granted, it has its down side, but waking up on a cool summer morning wanting to drink, enjoying your first deep draught, (bubbles winking at the brim and all that), and knowing that is how you are going to spend the rest of the day has a peculiar satisfaction about it. Gustard and I, individually and together enjoyed some golden days in the company of Bacchus before I turned both our attention to other matters.

To explain fully, I must return to my first meeting with Gustard, which took place at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in Leeds in the September of 1999.

Yes, I know what you are thinking, so much for golden days in the company of Bacchus. Well, I had been leaning rather too heavily on the old god’s shoulder as result of breaking off my engagement to Emily and my mother had insisted, just as Gustard’s father insisted after waking up one morning and drawing the curtains to find his naked son and heir topping up the fish pond in a most ungentlemanly manner.

The meeting took place in a typically nondescript community centre in Chapel Allerton, a sprawling, one-storey, flat-roofed, red brick affair with just the right amount of graffiti decorating its exterior. It was a damp day, the kind of weather which always forms the backdrop to my recollections of Leeds.

The old brown-and-yellow Yorkshire stone pavements slightly greasy and treacherous, a moistness in the air which, depending on what mood you were in, created an atmosphere of either fecund freshness or rankness and decay. The kind of day when armies of snails would emerge from their trenches under privet hedges in the housing estates and advance slowly en masse across the no-mans land of asphalt, passing feet and bicycle wheels leaving a trail of carnage amid the brown and grey ranks.

Pulling up outside the centre I was rather early having overestimated the traffic, but nonetheless I locked my little brown Mini and wandered up to the door of the centre. Looking past a cheerful home-made notice on the door, painstakingly made out in a multitude of felt-tip pens and advertising a forthcoming Family Kayley, I caught sight of my own reflection.

It was one of those times when you encounter your reflection unawares and for a split second believe you are looking at somebody else. For most people it is a negative experience, for when we expect to meet with our reflection we generally prepare ourselves, perhaps by sucking in our cheeks to emphasise our cheekbones, or jutting out our bottom jaw to disguise our double chins or whatever else it is we feel will make us look our best. Viewing ourselves fleetingly with the dispassionate and critical eye with which we would view a stranger is therefore interesting, but usually deflating.

I was, I confess, rather deflated by the reflection looking back at me from the glass in the Community Centre door. I had seen a man with prematurely greying black curls and dark eyebrows, a nose which was rather too large and little rectangular spectacles, which although fashionable did not quite suit his narrow features. The man looking back at me was certainly not overweight, but appeared a generally rather pasty specimen who while he did not look any older than his 34 years, by no means looked any younger.

When I recognised him, or rather when I recognised me, I was a little consoled to note that the impression did not take account of my most striking feature, eyes of an unusually brilliant green which were doubly disguised by the spectacles and the fact that I was looking at a reflection.

My moment of self-absorption was interrupted by the sound of a sports car approaching, fast, and crunching to a halt amid a spray of loose gravel. Turning back towards the road, I saw it was a little maroon two-seater Morgan, soft-top up. The man getting out of the driver’s side and heartily slamming the door was wearing olive green corduroy trousers and a cricket sweater, and appeared even from some little distance to be a touch florid of nose and cheek.

Got to be a fellow boozer, I smiled to myself. Of course I was right, and Gustard (for it was he) came striding purposefully down the path and pushed open the door, then held it open for me as I followed him with an unexpected, polite little smile.

Once inside the entrance hall, Gustard forged through the half-dozen or so people standing around awkwardly and pretending to be taking interest in notices advertising the Kayley and other forthcoming activities and stepped smartly to the reception desk with me in his wake.

Alcoholics Anonymous? he boomed cheerily, drawing glances from around the room.

Down this corridor and first door on the left smiled the short haired lady on the desk, indicating a long passageway to her right. If you go in and take a seat, Jenny will be with you shortly. There are a couple of gentlemen in there already.

Still basking in Gustard’s broad beam of thanks, the receptionist turned to me, eyebrows raised helpfully.

That’s where I’m going too I explained.

Gustard glanced behind him at this and waited for me in the corridor. Glad to meet a fellow sufferer! Ed Gustard! the volume was more discreet this time and he smiled again, proffering a large hand.

Er, Michael Tortoishell, good to meet you I returned, bracing myself for a bone-crunching handshake but being pleasantly surprised to receive a firm but pleasant, dry grip which somehow conveyed the utmost sincerity. Just the kind of handshake you are supposed to give at the beginning of a job interview, I believe.

Good to meet you. Tortoishell, you say eh? Interesting. Before I could think of a suitable response he continued, eyeing me keenly. This is the first time I’ve been to one of these meetings, not quite sure what to expect really.

Me too. If I’m honest, my fianceé has sent me. Not that I haven’t got a problem, of course, I quickly added, remembering the central tenet of self-help.

No, no, I know exactly what you mean, old man. I’m in exactly the same boat myself. Gustard whispered with evident delight. Dad caught me three sheets to the wind once too often, bit of a ballyhoo at home, made me promise to come along, you know.

The accent was clipped but with the residual undertones of the West Country. (Quite a few Tortoishells down in Devon and Cornwall. Well, comparatively, anyway).

"One doesn’t want to appear flippant, and God knows I do drink far more than is good for me, but I have to say I really rather enjoy it, Gustard warmed to his theme, you know, there is a lot to be said in favour of alcoholism".

CHAPTER 2

So that was it. Following the meeting, which I’m sorry to say was the only one of its kind Gustard and I ever attended, he invited me to join him for a drink and I accepted. Over one beer and several mineral waters in a nearby pub (we were of course, both driving), I asked him what he had meant and found that we concurred almost completely, not only upon the occasional merits of alcoholism but on a good many other topics too.

I don’t know how it is for other people, but for me it is a rare pleasure, even more so as I get older, to make a new acquaintance with whom I find I have a great deal in common. I’m not in Gustard’s league when it comes to gregariousness, but I like to think I’m fairly sociable and always ready to strike up a conversation on a train or wherever. I’m a bit of a conversational chameleon, like many of us are I suppose, and have various friends with whom I discuss literature, gardening or cricket depending on the particular shared interest I have with whoever it is I am talking to.

But to meet someone with whom you can have endless conversations about absolutely anything, and find that you are continually able to delight each other with your talk, either by affirming some half-formed, unspoken thought the other has long held but never articulated, or by precisely understanding some hazarded little observation that would have fallen flat in other company is a truly wonderful and refreshing experience.

Perhaps this most commonly happens when students leave their provincial school and move to a big city University or college, finding like-minded fellows amongst those studying the same subject or among the many clubs and societies on offer in Freshers’ week. Eighteen miserable years of being the only Goth, gay or glider pilot in the village, or indeed the county if you’re a Cumberland man like myself, ended at a stroke amid the trestle tables of the student union.

Those who are really lucky fall in love with someone with whom they share such a deep bond of mutual understanding, and those who are luckier still find that love is returned.

Of course, there are many more who kid themselves that they do share such a bond with the person they marry or choose to share a bed with when the reality is somewhat different. Though we are told we shouldn’t, plenty of us do settle for something which is no more than satisfactory at best, (not that one should underestimate the value of a little satisfaction once in a while, of course).

There has come a point in all of my relationships with women when the border of the common ground has been reached and I’m sure I’m not alone in that. Indeed, I know I’m not for it was one of the things I discussed with Gustard at that first meeting. I’m normally quite guarded when discussing personal matters, especially with a stranger, but the exhilaration of our conversation cast off my reserve and I was soon blathering away ten to the dozen about the gradual demise of my relationship with Emily.

His chin resting on his hand, Gustard was leaning over our little corner table towards me with the look, which is of po-faced sincerity fringed by mild alarm, with which it is customary to fix one’s features with when a recent acquaintance seems about to spill their guts in a pub. I duly blew out my cheeks and fixed my gaze firmly on the empty pint glass in my hand, before spilling my guts about where it had gone wrong with me and Em. Which was the first time I had done so, out loud at least.

You see I began, Erm, I just felt - it was as if I hadn’t bought the right coat.

Yes, you heard right. That’s exactly the kind of thing I tended to say on the rare occasions when I spilled my guts back in those days. I would open up with some obtuse gambit, and usually mumble it. I could sense the mild alarm rising in the eyes of the recipient (though I didn’t make eye contact), who having fixed me with that faux I’m listening sincerity now had nowhere to go when they a) hadn’t heard me, or more likely b) didn’t know what in hell I was talking about. There’d be embarrassment on both sides and only I can rescue the situation, and I’d seconds to do it and no script. That’s pressure.

But I don’t feel embarrassed in Gustard’s company, nor does he seem alarmed. My wheels grip and I rally out of the potential social mire. I look Gustard in the eye.

Let me put it this way. I did buy a coat, with Emily, not long after we got engaged. I’d been looking for a coat for ages and was getting a bit fed up of trailing round the shops in all honesty. Eventually we were in Burtons up in Carlisle and Em pointed out this grey waterproof jacket. I liked the look of it. It was well-made, fashionable, yet sober enough to be worn to work and reasonably priced at about forty-five pounds. The only drawback was the lining.

I see, said Gustard, trying his best to look as if he did.

I sighed. I’ve never liked the feel of that sheer, satiny nylon that gets used to line coats and things. I fact, I used to hate it as a kid. We had some sleeping bags made out of it and just the thought of a badly-manicured fingernail wheesking up and down before painfully snagging fast in the material sends a shiver down my spine even now.

As I said wheesking I slashed the air with my right index finger, conscious of the mire of awkwardness looming again.

The thing was, as I stood there in Burtons with Em beside me, I felt that I ought to have grown out of that childish fetish by now, and that I would grow into and get used to the coat in time. Might even do me good. I was turning the pint glass slowly back and forth between my palms, introspective again.

Besides, the coat was great in every other respect and, you know, perhaps I was being too fussy. Perhaps the coat I really wanted just wasn’t out there, perhaps someone else had bought it the previous weekend and was wearing it right now. I wanted a coat at the time and this coat was the best one that I’d seen, perhaps not ever, but in Carlisle that Saturday. You know what I mean?

I came up for air, eventually raising my eyes to Gustard again, wondering what, if anything, he was making of this.

I think I see what you’re driving at, Mike. Gustard nodded slowly.

"I know it sounds terribly shallow and self-indulgent, but it’s how I’ve rationalised it to myself. You see, outwardly there was nothing wrong with the coat, no good reason for rejecting it. To everyone else it looked a perfect fit. I tried it on, looked at myself in the mirror took it off, tried it on again, paced up and down in it (I don’t know why, it wasn’t a pair of bloody shoes) and I knew deep down that the lining wasn’t what I wanted. But I was being jollied along by Em and this female shop assistant and I just went along with it and ended up buying the damn thing. I almost changed my mind and took it back when we were stood in line for the till but by then things had gone too far."

Gustard gave a little, sympathetic smile. And I take it relations between you and this, er, coat have been on the slide ever since?

I returned the smile. I tried to ignore it, the lining that is, when I put it on each morning I used to bunch up my hands into a fist and punch them through the sleeves to minimise the contact with the nylon stuff. But the mere fact I had to do that was a constant reminder that the coat was unsatisfactory. In the end I was making excuses not to wear it and, though I’m ashamed to admit it, even went out a couple of times in an old coat I had bought in my student days.

So what is it about Emily that has wheesked you, then , old man?! Gustard repeated my little gesture.

I put my hands behind my head and flexed my shoulders, riding a little ripple of contentment spreading through me.

I think . . . I think it’s best summarised by the fact that I don’t think she’d understand about the coat

CHAPTER 3

Now, having gone through all that alcoholism and coat business that I talked about with Gustard, I wouldn’t want you to think that I’m one of those dreadful Sunday supplement columnist types who regards relationships as some kind of lifestyle accessory that can be picked up and discarded like, say, a new coat.

You know the ones I mean, they’re usually women called something like Candida or Fionulla and they gleefully recount this week’s unsuccessful sexual experiment with the bloke, or, God help us Hubby, in the same paragraph as boasting about the new chrome juicer they’ve just bought and the fact that they’re thinking of adopting a disadvantaged pot-bellied pig they met in Mauritius. Even if the sexual experiment had included the juicer and the pig, which it never does, the sheer inconsequential smugness of it oozes off the page and besmirches the reader like newsprint. I have to wash my hands afterwards, I really do.

No, that’s not me, nor was it Gustard for that matter, it’s just that the above topics are the foot, or feet that we got off on and one doesn’t always get off on exactly the right foot with everyone one meets. There’s usually a bit of sashaying and do-se-do-ing before we get in step.

(I don’t know why I said do-se-do-ing, incidentally, that’s an expression I don’t like. In fact, one of my many ideas of hell would be suddenly waking to find myself at a barn dance with one of those lifestyle columnist women and her braying at me in her best Berkshire brogue, Come on Hubby, do-se-do!. Naturally, I’d be clothed from head to toe in that sheer nylon stuff as well. With jagged fingernails to boot.)

I want to be sure I get off on the right foot with you. So, perhaps I’d better fill you in a little more. I grew up in a comfortable middle class family in a little village in the county of Cumbria, north west England. Dad was a doctor, mother a librarian. Me and my sister Janet, a year younger, and a rabbit. No skeletons; my parents were happily married, the rabbit was well fed. We went on camping holidays, I watched football matches with my Dad and my Mum took my sister to dancing and violin lessons. We took the Mail and sat around on Sunday after lunch reading the supplements.

At no stage either at the time or thereafter did any of my family bugger, butcher or cannibalise one another, nor did anyone get to the age of 25 and find they’d been brought up as the wrong sex. (Just thought I’d better establish that at this stage as you never know how these books are going to turn out.)

After leaving school I went down to Oxford to read English. I suppose that should be went up to Oxford but to me that expression carries a rather smug implication that Oxford is geographically, or socially, north of your home or public school, which in my case it wasn’t, nor was my school public.

Anyway, like so many of my over-indulged generation I felt the world owed me a living after University despite not having given any detailed thought as to what exactly it was I wanted to do, or for that matter, was capable of doing. And so it was that after a year or so of travelling and other general arsing around I went to law college and became a solicitor.

Hence the rectangular glasses and hence the fact that other people matched me with grey waterproof coats and have no comprehension of how the satiny-nylon lining thereof chilled my soul.

So I was a solicitor. When I used to tell people this, I found that they react in one of two ways. I moved in fairly polite circles so the majority generally raised their eyebrows whilst giving a half smile and little nod of the head, indicating that they were politely impressed by my profession and saw me as a potential fellow smuggee. This kind of person would most likely follow up with some enquiry about what kind of house I live in, what car I drive or my presumed membership of local golf, bridge, sailing or tennis clubs, Masonic lodges and Round Tables.

Seconds later, my new acquaintance had realised what I had already established, that we had absolutely nothing in common whatsoever. This would not stop us, however, from continuing to converse in ever decreasing circles until the well of unctuous small talk was well and truly exhausted, all the while maintaining an expression on our faces which I have since defined as the Business Beam.

The Business Beam is the number one cause of crow’s feet in the Western hemisphere. Fact. That’s the kind of thing they should be putting in those Sunday supplements.

The second group of people made varying degrees of effort to disguise their presumption that as a solicitor I must be some kind of tosser, which I have to say is fair enough.

Gustard, being an estate agent by trade, delivered an excellent impression of fitting squarely into the first category and boasted a well-developed set of crow’s feet together with membership of a rather exclusive golf club in north Leeds.

His Business Beam was a veritable lighthouse of warm insincerity, a beacon to any lonely voyager tossed upon the black and soulless straits of networking, a beacon now sadly extinguished.

--------------------------------------------------------

If you don’t mind me saying so, Tortoishell old man, you seem a little dissatisfied with your lot in life, Gustard observed from behind the Yorkshire Post.

It was the third or fourth time we’d met, having decided against further attendance at Alcoholics Anonymous and also having decided not to inform our respective loved ones of our lapse. On this particular occasion we were instead sitting towards the back of the East Stand at Elland Road, the home of Leeds United Football Club.

We had arrived about an hour early for a first round league cup match for which Gustard had obtained a pair of free hospitality tickets from his firm. An inclement evening, with belts of icy, autumnal rain sweeping down over the glimmering orange streetlights of Beeston Hill and a rather uninspiring fixture against Gillingham or somebody meant we had had a swathe of blue plastic bucket seats to choose from. I was almost glad of my grey, waterproof coat.

A stadium announcement about further price reductions in the Leeds United club shop delayed my reply. A football ground isn’t the best venue for in-depth conversation.

Yes, I suppose I am, really. I know I haven’t got a lot to complain about, but, all the same . . .. I was interrupted as we stood to allow a young couple access to their seats further along the row.

Gustard glanced after the girl’s bedenimed backside as he retook his seat.

Plenty of people worse off than you, old man. Good job, got your own home. Things have gone down the pan with Emily but she’s an attractive girl and I’m sure you’d find another. Got your health, too. Don’t underestimate that.

Now I had to raise my voice above a smattering of applause as some Leeds players ran out to commence their warm-up.

You don’t need to tell me how shit other people’s lives are, Ed. God knows, I’m a family lawyer. Bloody hell, some days it seems like there isn’t a marriage in Yorkshire free from domestic violence, drink, drugs and accusations of child abuse. Each time I close the door after another client I tell myself how lucky I was that my parents weren’t at each other’s throats all time, smackheads or just plain useless.

I rubbed my palms together, a habit of mine, whether it’s cold out or not.

It still shocks me how miserable so many poor buggers’ lives are in this country, even after eight years in practice. Some of these kids you know, the little shits you read about terrorising neighbourhoods and what have you, you can almost sympathise because you meet their parents and you realise the kids have had no chance at all. Really, not a fucking hope in hell.

Gustard nodded distractedly.

I was speaking quickly, not confident my voice was carrying sufficiently over the tinny pop music which had now kicked in on the public address system.

I do count my blessings, honestly, but there are only so many times you can do that. Because at the end of the day I’m living my life, not theirs. Trying to take comfort in the fact that there are people who are worse off than you is no more satisfying or worthwhile than envying the rich and famous. You can’t live a life which is just a comparison.

Gustard still gave the impression of half-listening and half checking the players on the pitch against the team list on the back of his programme. The floodlit turf was a brilliant green oasis of illumination under the darkening skies.

I know exactly what you mean, old man, he replied eventually.

After watching Leeds win a rather tedious affair 1-0, we got the bus back into town and ensconced ourselves in a quiet corner of the Horse and Trumpet public house which stands on the Headrow, the wide thoroughfare that runs West to East through the heart of Leeds.

Gustard settled into his chair with an exhalation and supped on a pint of Tetley’s bitter. He wiped a thin line of smooth froth from his top lip before he spoke.

"I do drink too much, you know."

I sensed Gustard was about to spill his guts, so I arranged my expression appropriately. But you enjoy it - for the most part?

Not always, old man. I’m not sure why I do it, that’s what bothers me. I tell myself that it’s just a social habit that goes a little too far now and then.

You surprise me - that your drinking bothers you, I mean!

Why so?

Well, I began, with a little laugh, that’s not the impression you gave at the AA meeting- or that, well . . . let’s just say you don’t come across as much of a soul searcher!

Gustard gave a snort of amusement. Whatever do you mean by that?.

Just look at you. Big, brash, estate agent, positively exuding bonhomie, the big house, the Morgan . . . you come across like you smash your way straight down the fairway of life with a three wood without a care for the little sand traps the rest of us pitch-and-putters find ourselves in from time to time.

He chuckled at this. So you see me as some sort of bluff, hale and hearty Rupert who dismisses all of life’s ills with a second helping of spotted dick and custard!

In a nutshell, yes!

Gustard, still smiling, shook his head slowly. That’s rather a stereotype, but perhaps I do come over that way. He looked up, in earnest now. " But like you Mike, I am what I am. Some of the things you’ve mentioned there, they’re just part of who I am. Yes, perhaps I am more socially confident than some and because of that I’ve always found my job quite easy and the rewards have followed. But because I am me I don’t know what it would be like not to have that confidence, that upbringing, that background, so it doesn’t really mean a lot. We’re not so different, you and me. We both have what you would no doubt call arsey jobs, we’re probably in a similar earnings bracket. Your old Mini is no less eccentric in its own way than my old Morgan."

Gustard was an animated speaker, flinging his hands this way and that to emphasise each point.

"Just because it looks to you like I breeze through the world without a care doesn’t mean that I do. I’m sure that I find business meetings and golf club chat as facile as you do at times, it’s just that I have a public schoolboy’s genetic capacity for affable blustering. I just don’t take all that stuff seriously, though granted there are plenty who do. I know you’re only joking but I have my black nights of the soul too, you know."

I felt that ripple of mutuality again. So what is it that can take the wind out of your almighty sails then Ed?

Bloody hell old man, where do you want to start? He was smiling once more. What it boils down to is the same as you, really. Thinking that there’s got to be something more - something better than this. I suppose it’s what might be labelled a mid-life crisis.

That’s it though, that’s just it. I rocked back and forth in my chair in my eagerness, grasping for the right words. Labels . . . this labelling of everything in life is the whole fucking problem. ‘Mid-life crisis.’ It’s one of those glib, lazy, over-used phrases that these arsehole lifestyle columnists pad out the Sunday supplements with. (I was back on my pet subject again).

Life lost all meaning? Don’t worry reader, you are simply having a mid-life crisis, just as my own darling Hubby was when I caught him rogering our Swedish au pair over the Aga on Tuesday. It will soon pass and you will then be able to find solace in Monty fucking Don’s tips for growing better pumpkins on page 56.

I was into my stride now, making my own little inhibited gesticulations as I expanded.

It’s all so dismissive. I don’t know if each new generation is the same but it’s like people today think we fucking know it all. There doesn’t seem to be one area of human emotion or experience, birth, death and everything in between which hasn’t been reduced to a two-word label by some media twat, who is most likely the last person on earth you would want to vicariously live your life through. And the thing is, most of us just take them at their word. We wake up on Sunday morning, hung over from our attempts at escapism the night before, and perhaps for the only time of the working week we have a bit of time for contemplation of the bigger picture.

Hmm.

We look at our partner snoring beside us in our Ikea bed under our Habitat duvet, go to the window, pull back our Laura Ashley curtains and watch the morning sunlight filtering down into the little square of English garden that we are privileged enough to own and glinting off the bonnet of the newish car that got a good review on Top Gear a couple of years ago. We note all this and maybe we feel a warm glow of satisfaction - great. But maybe we don’t. Maybe we do wonder if this really is as good as it gets. We go downstairs to make ourselves a cup of coffee, still in thoughtful mood, when we are ambushed by the Sunday papers lying on the doormat. There, in all her shrink-wrapped glory, is Candida or Christa patronisingly dismissing our musings as a bloke thing or a mid-life crisis, or slapping some stupid fucking acronym on us which tries to explain away our whole existence as a product of some just-made-up bollocks character type. We read that our little flutter of philosophising is no more than one of the classic hallmarks of us being a, I don’t know, a GUTWAD or a FARTPIPE.

(Gustard snorted approvingly at FARTPIPE.)

"It’s like, ‘Don’t even bother having these thoughts reader, me and Toby went through that phase aeons ago and it’s so last summer. Besides, we’re both more intelligent and successful than you so just take my word for it, there’s a dear.’

Hah!

Abashed, we fold away our thoughts and take our coffee upstairs, where we find that the missus has woken up and before long we’re up to our apricots in another kind of placebo and that briefest of windows between the two weeks has slammed shut.

Not got much time for those columnists, have you, old man? Gustard laughed when I’d finished. I’m not sure that they all take themselves as seriously as you seem to think, but I’m with you, I really am.

He paused a moment, glass in hand.

Ha! You know, I’ve never actually told anyone this before, but when I have the sort of thoughts we’re talking about here, about the mundanity of daily life and all that, the thing I always come back to is the frozen pizza..

"Contrary to what you appear think, old man, I don’t exist on a diet of Brown Windsor Soup, Beef Wellington and jam roly-poly! I’m actually very partial to a frozen pepperoni pizza, too partial in fact. Not that there’s anything wrong with a frozen pizza, far from it. It’s just that since I’ve been living by myself, I eat too many of them, sometimes three or four a week. I know I should vary my diet more and it’s not as if I can’t cook, but I get in from work, I’m a bit bushed and the prospect of one of those quick pizzas is just more appealing. More often than not I’ll take the thing out of the oven too soon and eat it even though the middle is still ice cold, or I’ll overcook it till it’s virtually dried up then start eating the thing when it’s too damn hot and burn my mouth in the process."

I do that too!

"Don’t we all, old man? When I’m licking the last traces of spicy tomato sauce from my fingers, or tentatively probing the burnt roof of my mouth with my tongue, a feeling of mild regret comes over me that I haven’t made a bit more effort for myself. But what matters more is that my hunger has been satisfied for another evening.

Gustard leaned closer across the table.

You see old man, I think we are basically animals, creatures of appetite and a lot of what we do is simply geared towards satisfying appetites and urges in the short term. We need to eat each day, we need to shit and piss each day and we need to give the wife a damn good seeing to on a Sunday morning. All of those things are the principle animal pleasures in life and I am an animal.

I waited for a noisy group of be-suited business types to pass our table on their way to the bar.

I take your point I countered, both elbows on the table, "but that’s not exactly what I’m saying. Yes, we are creatures of appetite and, yes, we are enslaved to our bodily urges. It’s even probably fair to say that we’ve never before been able to so precisely pleasure our individual appetites, say for travel, for food, or for sexual gratification - whether with a partner or through pornography - than we are today and maybe those appetites have grown more demanding in consequence. "

Yes.

But the irony of it is that the wider the menu of experience placed before us, the less adventurous we have become. It’s a cliché, but we can all sit at home in our living rooms and without leaving our sofas we can eat what we think is the best food China has to offer with the best live football match on offer in the whole world on one tv screen and our ultimate sexual fantasy being acted out by an Amazon, six dwarfs and a horse on another. Not to mention having our whole existence reduced to a comfortable soundbite for us by some columnist or talk show presenter. And we can have that perfect experience every night if we want to, just like you and your frozen pizzas.

Even I’d get a bit dyspeptic if I had one EVERY night.

Well, yes. But as well as this enormous potential for instant gratification of every kind, which I’m not saying I don’t enjoy, comes a feeling that everything, every thought even, has been done or thought before by somebody else and probably better than we could do it, so we don’t bother. And I’m not talking about horse and dwarf gangbangs, though I bet even you would struggle to organise one of those, I’m talking about more fundamental areas of experience, about questioning the limits which we have just accepted which form the boundaries of our society, the world, even the Universe around us.

Gustard focused on his glass as he drained it. You mean the meaning of life and all that.

My