Mutilated and miserable
Jeremy Clarke
When I flicked on the telly at one o’clock on Saturday and there was Bono, our first living secular humanist saint, in pink goggles, I’d seen all I wanted to see of Live8. I jabbed the off button and went for a long walk with Sharon and her new dog.
Three days before, a dentist had drilled a hole in my upper jawbone and inserted a titanium peg on which he will be able, at a later date, to screw a false tooth. I should expect a little puffiness for a day or two, he’d said. Also, I should avoid alcohol, nicotine, tea, coffee, direct sunlight and ‘physical exertion’ — in short, all the absolute essentials of the unexamined life except perhaps spitting, which, he urged me to do as often as possible, complemented by a capful of antiseptic mouthwash. All this mutilation and misery was in the cause of a wider, more winning smile. And at a financial cost that would keep your average African village in anti-malaria tablets for the next 200 years.
We parked the car next to the lighthouse and headed west along the coastal footpath. Our intended destination was a village just visible on the farthest headland. A meal in the pub — if it did food — was the plan, then a taxi via the lanes back to the carpark.
One side of my face had swollen so that the eye was squashed shut. And I was feeling sluggish from the antibiotics, and nervy and paranoid due to withdrawal from alcohol, nicotine and caffeine. Nor was there any reviving sunshine: the sky was as black as a badger’s tit. But even so I should have been fitter than Sharon, who takes no exercise, save taking her clothes on and off, and seems to exist, as far as I can see, on a diet of gin, lager, Golden Virginia, genetically engineered marijuana, Doritos, Tic-Tacs, fireman’s hoses and the occasional crack pipe. (Because she is strongly in favour of animal rights, she calls this a vegetarian diet.) Yet I, currently as wellacquainted with the ergonomically designed handle of a Concept 2 rowing machine as a galley slave with his oar, was puffed out long before Sharon.
It took her about four of the five miles to the village, going at full prattle, both uphill and down, to bring me fully up to speed with the most recent developments in her Byzantine love life. If what the genito-urinary specialists say is true — that when you make love to somebody you are also making love to everybody that person has ever slept with, and to everybody that person has ever slept with — then Sharon must be working her way through her entire generation.
We stopped just once, to introduce Dexy to his first sheep. Sensing thrilling possibilities, and trembling with a mixture of fear and ecstasy, the dog approached the humble grazing ewe. Strained forward on his lead, he tentatively introduced his nose as far into the wool surrounding the sheep’s daggy old bottom as he dared and inhaled deeply. And the smell must have been a revelation, because here, unexpectedly, was the exact source of that mysterious, overpowering, intoxicating scent that clung to every fern and blade of grass, and suddenly the world was more comprehensible.
By the time we reached the village, I was at the stage where death would have been a welcome release. Sharon was merely complaining of thirst. In the pub was a big screen, on to which was being projected the Live8 concert. Annie Lennox was about to go on. The glassy-eyed punters were gathered round and the atmosphere was strangely pious, even in this remote spot.
I asked the landlord for two pints of lager, and, just checking, whether he took debit or credit cards, as neither of us had cash. He didn’t. He stopped pouring and watched while I had another look through my wallet. ‘Euros?’ I said. He shook his head. ‘We take beads, shells and most types of garden produce,’ he said, pokerfaced. ‘But not cards. And certainly not euros.’ Not only did he not take cards or euros but there wasn’t a taxi in the village, either. He let us have a half of lager each on the house. Sharon tossed down hers in one, then rolled and lit up a small joint to console herself, reasoning that if the landlord smelt it he could only ask her to leave, which we were going to have to do anyway.
Annie Lennox began to sing. The landlord started shaking a pair of maracas. Ladies were dancing. He’d set up a terrific sound system and Lennox sounded inspired and inspiring. I changed my mind. Actually, Live8 looked and sounded bloody fantastic. Especially if long-expected rain is starting to beat on the window and it’s a five-mile walk back to the car.
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