THE HOT TUB

 

The big question on Dave’s mind was how the transition to the hot tub was going to happen. Would someone just strip off and jump in, or would some sort of announcement be made? Dave had no way of knowing because he had never been to such an event before. A so-called ‘Hot Tub Party’. And there it was, the hot tub, bubbling menacingly in the corner of the garden. 
  “There’s no fucking way I’m getting in there,” said Dick, when the subject was broached. “They’d have to fucking kill me first. It’s bad enough having to work with these fucking people.” Dick laughed and it was a dry, mirthless, burnt toast kind of laugh, and fell like ashes to the ground. 
  “What about you, Derek?” said Dave.
  “Well, I’d rather not,” said Derek. “It’s not a pretty sight, you know, when I get undressed these days. Even Jill can hardly bear to look at me.”
  “Yeah,” said Dave, “Jane’s the same. She says I’ve really let myself go recently.”
  Dick, however, kept silent. He was in fine shape and knew it. He cycled at least ten miles a day, practised yoga twice a week, and tried to avoid processed food as much as possible. If he was honest, the other two men disgusted him, as did most of the other people here – apart from a couple of the younger ones – which was the main reason he wouldn’t get in the hot tub. There were other reasons too, of course, but that was the main one. Other people disgusted him: their weakness, their flabbiness, their complete lack of self-discipline. 
  The three men were standing to one side in a discrete group while the other guests formed another, more amorphous, a loose constellation of twos and threes. They looked happy, normal, proper, uncomplicated. They would all take a dip when the time came, thought Dave, and probably wouldn’t even give a second thought as to how the transition would come about. 
  “I wonder who’ll make the first move,” said Dave. Derek made a kind of clicking sound with his tongue.
  “It would have to be Helen,” said Dick. “It’s her fucking house, after all, and her fucking hot tub. She’ll probably just strip off and jump in, knowing her. This whole fucking party is just an excuse for her to show off her fucking new extension and her 'conversation areas' and her fucking hot tub.” 
  Dick stopped abruptly. Helen was walking over. But a scowl of disgust remained etched on his face.
  “Yeah,” said Dave, “I like Helen. I think she’s great.”
  “Very funny, Dave,” said Helen who’d heard it all before and didn’t know why he even bothered. As a member of the department, she’d had to invite him but, frankly, had hoped he wouldn’t come. “Are you having fun?” she said, smiling as broadly as she could manage. Dick scowled defiantly, taking a slow, aggressive sip from his bottled beer. 
  “Oh yes,” said Derek. “It’s a lovely evening. The canapés are delicious.”
  “What about you, Dave?” Are you going to be joining us in the hot tub?”
  “No, I don’t think so. It’s not really my thing.”
  “Oh, come on, Dave. Live a little,” said Helen.
  “I’d rather not, actually. In fact, I’d better get going soon. Jane and I are having a takeaway.”
  Thank God, thought Helen. “But you’ve only just got here,” she said.
  “So, when are you going to make the move?” 
  “What move, Dave?”
  “To the hot tub. When are you getting in?”
  “I don’t know. It’s not up to me. Whenever anyone wants to, I suppose. There’s no set agenda.”
  “I mean, I just wonder how it works.” 
  “How it works?”
  “Yeah, like, does someone just strip off and jump in, or do you make some sort of announcement?”
  “I don’t really know, Dave. It just happens, usually. It’s quite natural, really.”
  “Are you even all going to fit? I mean, how many people does it hold?”
  “Oh dear, Dave. You really have given this a lot of thought, haven’t you? Don’t worry, I’m sure everyone will get a turn.”
  “Be a bit of a squeeze, I imagine.”
  Dick scoffed. Derek chuckled.
  “Are you going to get in, Derek?” 
  Derek cleared his throat. “Well,” he said, “I have brought my trunks ...”
  “Good for you. That’s the spirit.”
  Dick snorted, looking beyond his colleagues with an expression of ashen contempt. “Look,” he said, nudging his bottled beer in the direction of the hot tub. “Looks like it’s party time.”
  John and Sheila had stripped off and were in the hot tub, splashing each other and making little noises of pleasure. 
  Helen turned around. “Well, there’s your answer, Dave,” she said. “I guess you just don’t overthink it.”
  “Extraordinary,” said Dave.
  “Right,” said Helen, spraying her smile around like one of those sprinklers you see on suburban lawns, “I’m getting in.”

I USED TO LIVE HERE

 

“Hello,” I say, “I used to live here when I was a boy.” The old lady, watering her plants in the evening sunshine, eyes me with a sharp look like a drawing pin. 
  “No,” she says, “I don’t think so.”
  I seem to remember being happy there, though most of the memories I can pinpoint you would not call happy. 
  I remember vomiting at the dinner table after eating mushrooms for the first time. The vomit landed on the plate and I can still picture peas floating in a sea of sick.
  I remember vomiting in the garden after playing football too soon after eating.
  I remember standing outside on the patio while my parents shouted at each other inside. I seem to recall that it was something to do with a secretary.
  I remember running into a door handle and blood pouring down my face.
  I remember falling off my bike when I rode over a fir cone and my whole face being covered in blood.
  I remember cycling down a hill and crashing into a man pushing his bike up the hill, buckling his front wheel. For some reason I was on the wrong side of the road. I cycled off and hid in a tree in my back garden, but the man followed me, rang on the doorbell and told my dad what had happened.
  The next-door neighbours had a dog that I remember being as tall as I was. I thought it was the scariest thing I had ever seen.
  But still I think I was happy there.
  It’s a lovely evening. I want to show the kids where I used to live. Where I lived when I was their age.
  We used to play out on the street a lot. I remember throwing dried dog poo at my friends.
  The old woman looks at me like a question mark. I reckon her husband is dead. Don’t know why. Just get that impression.
  “Well,” I say, “I don’t think I imagined it.”
  “I’ve lived here for over twenty years,” says the old woman. She probably thinks, I think, that I’m too young to have lived there before she moved in. She probably thinks I’m younger than the forty-seven years I’ve been alive for. I do look, I think, quite youthful for my age. “How long ago would it have been?” she asks.
  For a moment I am discombobulated. I feel like the kid in Flight of the Navigator – which was my favourite film when I lived here – who returns to his family home after being abducted by aliens thinking that only a few hours has passed only to discover that, like, twenty years have passed and his family have long since moved on. I feel like that for a moment. I wonder if this jagged-looking lady, like a broken shard of glass, has actually reordered reality, like, maybe this is a different timeline or something. 
  I have to compose myself and do a quick bit of mental arithmetic. “Thirty-five, forty years, maybe.” The lady looks annoyed. I seem to have that effect on people, even people that ought to like me. But she can’t argue with that, even though she looks like she still wants to. Her husband, I think, would have been nothing like me. He would have been a grafter, a hardworking practical man, useless around the house but great with a bit of wood and a dab hand with a screwdriver. I imagine he would have always combed his hair, and wore a tie on Sundays.
  “I should think,” she says, “it’s changed a bit since then. I had an extension built.”
  “Yeah,” I say, “it’s a different colour too.”
  “No,” says the lady, “I don’t think so.”

THE YACHT

 

“She’s been telling people that we’re staying on a yacht,” says wife to G___, the woman who owns the yurt, “so everyone thinks we’re on a boat.” G___ laughs. J___ makes a little shy face. “But this is better than a yacht.”

The view’s amazing. You can see Glastonbury Tor in the distance, and, like, an ocean of green. We’re all at sea in nature.

At sea

A lamb escapes from its field and wife turns shepherd guiding it back to its mother’s woolly embrace. It’s an exciting introduction to the countryside and we all feel quite proud of ourselves for the part we each play in wife’s success.

Wife’s success

The animals are making quite a noise as the sun sets. I’ve never heard a din like it, actually. Moos, baas, bellows, barks, all sorts. “I wonder what they’re talking about,” I say. “They must be trying to communicate something.” One of them makes a particularly odd noise in the distance. “That sounded like a sheep having a coughing fit,” I observe. “Do they do that?” says wife. “I guess so,” I say. “I don’t see why not. They must have some sort of phlegm. Sheep phlegm.”

Do sheep cough?

I piss on the fire when it’s time to go to bed. “Well, that was more satisfying than your average piss,” I say, while plumes of smoke dissolve into the darkness.

More satisfying

In the morning wife observes that when I sleep I have what she calls a “sleeping corpse face”. I know exactly what she means because a few weeks ago she showed me a picture she took of me when I was sleeping and I looked like one of those monks you see lying on top of tombs in cathedrals, my hands joined together as if in prayer and everything.

The morning

All the shopkeepers in Glastonbury seem sort of fed up, like they’ve had enough of making money out of tourists but the continued presence of the tourists obliges them to continue doing so. A few are really rather brusque, even bad-tempered, and seem rather at odds with the crystals and dream catchers and tie-dye t-shirts and wind chimes and incense and magic wands and whatnot that constitute their wares. There is no shortage of crystal shops; in fact there is a superabundance, but, as wife observes, if you want anything practical or useful you’re fucked.

We visit the abbey which is full of people lying or sitting with their eyes closed, soaking up the monky vibes. I ask a man if it’s OK to ring the bell in the little chapel there, and he says yes, so we all have a go ringing the bell. That’s a first for me. I’ve never rung a church bell before.

Monky vibes

The man in the first pizzeria in Glastonbury, which also seems to be the only restaurant in Glastonbury, has no tables unless you’ve booked, but no one seems to have booked. There is only a constant stream of people – tourists, no doubt – who haven’t booked and the pizza man turns them all away with a weary sigh, as though it is his bothersome duty to do so. We order takeaway, which we eat in the car. I buy the kids little pints of milk which they drink with straws that the pizza man gave them.

My poncho has really come into its own on this holiday. I had begun to think its purchase had been a folly but out here it’s virtually indispensable.

We keep seeing Glastonbury Tor round every corner, like it’s teasing us. I thought we were going to go up there, but I think it’s higher than we thought it was and maybe that’s put us off, so I’m not sure any more.

Lights at night

I thought Wookey Hole was going to be, like, one cave with some funny lights that you kind of just walk around looking at the drippy rock stuff, but it’s way better than that. There are loads of chambers and tunnels and the man says there were choirs down there and we are ninety metres underground and he says there’s a lot of rock on top of us and that it’s best not to think about it.

Best not to think about it

There is a circus of young girls and they keep dropping the hoops and skittles they are juggling and when they all start riding unicycles I worry that someone is going to get seriously injured.

Worried

Most exciting of all is the dead bug that R____ finds. “Look J___,” he says. “A dead bug!”

Dead bug

On the way out a man and woman dressed as a wizard and witch start talking to the kids. “Don’t worry,” says wife, “they’re used to it. They’ve got idiots as parents.” “Are you calling us idiots?” says the wizard.

On the drive home, catching sight of it in the rear-view mirror every so often, I feel like Glastonbury Tor is mocking us, like it’s a middle finger, and it’s sticking itself up at us.

“This is the best day of my life,” I say, eating chocolate in the mid-afternoon, while sitting around doing absolutely nothing in particular.

Nothing in particular

“Truth or dare?” says R____. “Dare,” I say. “I dare you,” he says, “to die.”

It’s a bit too hot in the hot tub. “Look,” says R____, “it’s steaming. The steam is doing a dance.”

We decide to run around the field naked before bed, which seems like the right and proper thing to do. The sheep are all staring at us. “We’re alive!” shouts R____. “WE’RE ALIVE!”

What are you looing at?

Before we leave I sing a couple of my songs to the horses and sheep that live there. They start running around in circles, which I take to be a sign of their appreciation. R____ thinks they’re dancing. “Thank you horses,” he shouts, “for dancing to my daddy’s music!”

We go to Glastonbury Tor on the way home. It’s dead windy, and it’s quite a steep climb but it’s no big deal. We just do it and then we go home.