Collected Columns

by Michael Frayn

  You’re vaguely aware at these moments that other things have somehow been going on in your life as well as getting up, though it’s difficult to know when you managed to fit them in. Some of these things, you dimly recall, were more agreeable than this, others were even less. But they were notably agreeable or disagreeable enough – notably notable enough – for you to be conscious only of the things themselves, and not of yourself experiencing them.

  A lot of perfectly ordinary things have happened, for that matter. You had lunch the previous day, you walked down the street, you felt a cold coming on. But they were so ordinary that you were scarcely conscious of them at all. You weren’t looking in the mirror at the time, of course. This probably helped.

  But the last time you were actually thinking about what you were doing, you were getting up. So your life, as something that you are actually conscious of, rather than something that’s just rushing past without your quite being able to take it in, has closed up into one long, continuous, extremely dreary moment of getting up. It’s Wednesday, and it’s time to get up. It’s Monday, and it’s time to get up. It’s November 13th, 1959, and it’s time to get up. It’s January 19th, 1995, and it’s time to get up …

  One day somebody is doing to be writing your biography. Is it going to appeal to a wide readership, this biography of yours? I believe it’s not. I believe your biography is headed straight for the remainders table.

  This is obviously what eternity is going to be like. Today, and time to get up … Still today, and time to get up …

  I understand this kind of thing happens to space travellers in science-fiction stories – they get stuck in time-warps. They presumably manage to extract themselves and struggle back to earth with the help of various pieces of implausible science and fictitious mathematics. How are we ever going to get out of ours, with nothing but a toothbrush and a razor strangely encrusted with solidified shaving cream?

  Actually it’s not just space-travellers who get trapped in time-warps. It’s always happening, in the most respectable kind of books. But they’re stuck in the past in some kind of way, which might be more interesting. They’ve reverted to their childhood, or they’re still living in some rather memorable moment of triumph or disaster. It wouldn’t be much fun to spend your entire life watching the rats running over the cobwebbed ruins of your wedding-cake, I see that. But it would surely be more interesting than spending it cleaning your teeth, or shaving the lefthand side of your face.

  People are always recommending living in the present, it’s true. But couldn’t it at least be a different present? Couldn’t it be breakfast time? Yes, why doesn’t one get stuck in breakfast time, which comes round just as often as shaving? Why couldn’t it happen that every time one notices what one’s doing it turns out to be drinking delicious fresh orange juice, with the morning paper propped up against the coffeepot, full of appetising fresh catastrophes? Perhaps if one fixed up a mirror on the breakfast table …?

  After all, the lotos-eaters never seemed to have cleaned their teeth at all. Maybe their teeth fell out before they were thirty. Are they worrying about this? Apparently not.

  How do you get out of the warp? You never discover. One moment you’ve been cleaning your teeth since the beginning of time, and you’re going to go on cleaning them until the end of time, at which point, if Stephen Hawking is right, you’ll start cleaning them backwards, and go on cleaning them backwards until you get back to the Big Bang, when you’ll start cleaning them forwards again … Then somehow, miraculously, you’ve broken through to breakfast time, and orange juice and economic crises are going on around you.

  But scarcely have you got on to your second cup of coffee when out of nowhere it’s tomorrow, and it’s time to get up.

  (1994)

  Every day in every way

  If there’s one thing I enjoy it’s curling up with a good book entitled Release Your Hidden Personality – and Find God! or How to Sell Friends and Merchandise People. At the moment I am curled up with the latest of these treasure chests of wisdom, Word Power – Life Power, by one Vernon Howard.

  Sooner or later, I am sure, Reader’s Digest will regurgitate the quintessential cud of Mr Howard’s argument, but for readers who would prefer it in tablet form here and now it is roughly ‘Say beautiful things, and you will be a beautiful person.’

  What I enjoy are the anecdotes these books abound in, about nerve-racked, unsuccessful salesmen who go groaning to their doctor, a chuckling, genial old bird who gives them a simple mnemonic to remember, equipped with which they swiftly become president of the company, turning up under a thin disguise one or two anecdotes later to chuckle genially and show the reporter who is asking them for the secret of their success the letters ‘C.G.’ carved on their wall (standing for ‘Chuckle Genially’).

  Apart from chuckling, the basic technique for self-improvement is usually a programme of exercises and mnemonics with which the reader is urged to keep pounding away at himself all the time. Mr Howard, for example, suggests repeating phrases like ‘My words are daily dynamite,’ ‘I rest in the best!’ and ‘A smile is my style!’ He would also like you to ‘create vitalising verbal visions – don’t just day-dream,’ ‘build your dream castles with constructive word-nails,’ ‘try the “tomato technique”,’ ‘bake a say-cake!’ (which consists of a cupful of cheery remarks, a generous amount of enthusiasm, a full quart of prayer, and a pint of humour), and ‘make every adverb a gladverb.’

  A devotee of these pep books (particularly if he is trying to put more than one of them into practice at the same time) must maintain inside his head an interior monologue unsurpassed in richness since James Joyce ceased creating his vitalising verbal visions. Take the case of Walter, for instance. Walter, an elastic-hosiery salesman, is driving back to his head office in Walsall after being tossed out into the street by a chuckling cheesemonger in Rugeley. He has a hangover, an overdraft, and good reason to believe he is just about to be declared redundant.

  ‘I’m feeling fine,’ he is saying to himself as he drives along. ‘Things fine are mine. I rest in the best. I bask in the task. I wash in the slosh. Uh-huh, wrong one there. Try the tomato technique, instead. Just a moment – which is the tomato technique? Forgotten. Oh, well, all I need to do is use the cucumber technique for remembering things. How does that go? H’m, seem to have forgotten that one, too.

  ‘Never mind, keep smiling. A smile is my style. Check smile in driving mirror. Look out! Damn’ fool of a woman stepping off the kerb then! They ought to flog jay-walkers! Calm down. Make every adjective a gladjective. That’s wrong. What the hell is it? Every noun a gloun? God, I feel shaky. Nonsense. Never felt better. Things mine are fine. Every verb a glerb.

  ‘Headache. Pain in back. Quick, some constructive word-nails. Create a verbalised, visual vitamin … a virtualised verbal victual … skip it. Try baking a say-cake. A cupful of word-nails, a quart of gladverbs … gladverbs! That’s the word! Slow down for this roundabout, now. Watch for the posting to Gladverb.

  ‘I’m fine. Things fine are mine. I roast on toast. The toast floating down the Rhine, and the Rhine coasting down my spine. Now steady. Get a grip. Try laughing. Can’t. Say “ha.” Now say “ha” again. Ha-ha. That’s laughing. I laugh in the bath. I bath in the laugh.

  ‘Funny. Been going round this roundabout for a long time, but still no posting to Gladsall. Ah, policeman waving on the paving. Stop and ask him. Wind down window. Now, big, big smile, friendly slap on back for copper, never felt better. Officer, there’s no posting boasting Gladby. I mean Gladsall. No, no, Gladverb. What? Get out and walk along that white line? Why, certainly. Big smile, feeling fine. Both feet upon the line, like a bug upon a vine, feeling fine, fine, fine …’

  (1960)

  Facing the music

  In theory, television ought to be bringing the arts within reach (as they say) of millions who would not otherwise etc. etc. It seems reasonable enough. You’ve got sound, you’ve got vision. What more do you
want to communicate every known art form, except perhaps gastronomy?

  But in practice it doesn’t work out too well. The sight of a great painting reproduced a foot high, in monochrome and in low definition, isn’t a very compelling aesthetic experience. Nor is watching someone read poetry off the teleprompter – even a teleprompter with hand-tooled calf binding.

  You’d think that the performing arts at least would be naturals. And, indeed, stage plays and opera are; but ballet is hopeless, and music is very tricky.

  Most of the older arts have to be communicated on television, if at all, by suggestion and association. Details from paintings can be very poignant, glimpsed as the raw material for some quiz programme. Poetry can be highly effective, read as the background to film shots which are evocative in their own right. It’s a sort of titillation, like the suggestion of sexual feeling by glimpses of suspenders; it’s not really art itself which is being communicated, but a kind of nostalgia for art experiences with which one is already familiar.

  Music is the most tantalising of all. It’s odd; surely the performers (the perfect monochrome subject in their black tail-coats and white ties) are no smaller or less distinct on a television screen than they would be from the back of a concert hall?

  But there’s something about the sight of them which unsettles television producers, at any rate, and makes them feel the medium’s being misused. They tried to get round it first of all by creative cross-cutting. They’d cut to the oboes to show them playing five particularly significant notes. Dissolve to horns, for a telling tootle from them. Then they’d show you the piano keyboard superimposed over the clarinets, so you’d know that the piano and the clarinets were playing significant bits simultaneously. If only they’d put up sub-titles, too, saying ‘coda,’ or ‘modulation into E flat,’ or ‘attribution of this passage doubtful,’ we’d really have known where we stood.

  Evidently the producers still weren’t happy, though, because the tendency is increasingly to show music only in some secondary role, as the by-product of its performers’ personalities, or as the raw material of more telegenic processes.

  Instead of actual performances we are shown rehearsals. A little music occurs – then some celebrated and well-loved character in the musical world waves his arms despairingly and stops everyone. ‘No, no, no, no!’ he cries in compellingly broken English. ‘Not so – la, la-la, la – like from leetle mouses who are frighten of cat. Beeg, beeg! LA, LA-LA, LA … !’

  And again music breaks out; but of course by this time we are all turning to each other at home and saying, ‘My God, what a tyrant! But they all love him, you know – he’s such a character!’ Or they show the musicians in question on tour. We see them starting Opus 59 No. 1 at a concert in Denver, but after a few bars they leave the music playing of its own accord on the soundtrack, slip into sports shirts and drive by a scenic route through the Rockies to some millionaire’s ranch, where the cellist falls amusingly into the swimming-pool. By the time he’s out, and had a drink, and complications have set in on the Beethoven, they’ve abandoned it anyway, and started playing the second Bartok quartet in Salt Lake City.

  The latest and most fruitful technique is to show the music being recorded for stereo, a complex process which gives scope for every conceivable sort of human and technical diversion – and even offers a legitimate excuse for superimposing more entertaining sounds over the music while it’s actually being played, in the form of the ‘talkback’ between the recording engineers.

  ‘Stand by for the drum roll … Fade up Don Ottavio and stand by to kill Miss Nielsen as soon as she’s finished her A … We’re getting a bit of resonance off Siegfried’s glasses, aren’t we, George …?’

  Fascinating, certainly. In fact when you come to think about it, a lot of television itself isn’t all that televisual; it might be greatly improved by the application of the same sort of techniques. A man sitting reading the news out, for instance – wouldn’t it be much more exciting, much more real, to have the rehearsal of it, with all the talk-back between control room and studio floor audible?

  ‘… five, four, three, two, one – cue Bob.’ ‘The Prime Minister told the House of Commons today that …’ ‘Hold it there! Something’s wrong with Bob’s microphone … Well, get him to sit a bit closer, then … All right? All right – from the top, everyone … five, four, three, two, one – cue Bob.’ ‘The Prime Minister told the House of Commons today that …’ ‘Hold it, everyone! The lines on Bob’s forehead are strobing.’

  And if a programme about the enginers recording the music is better than just the music, surely it’s logical to suppose that a programme about the cameramen filming the engineers recording the music would be better still, and that even better than that would be a programme about the cameramen filming the cameramen filming etc. etc. Lord, think of the richness of the talkback!

  ‘Go right in tight, two!’ ‘Back a bit, one! No, my God, Ken’s two’s right behind you!’ ‘Get that blasted mike up out of the picture!’ ‘Come back down with Miss Sutherland’s mike, damn you!’ ‘Up a bit, three!’ ‘Down a shade, three!’ ‘Track round on to Ken’s one, two!’ ‘In on to Dick’s two, one …!’

  It may be slightly spoiled by interference from various hooligans singing and otherwise creating a disturbance in the background. But it should prove once and for all that it’s possible to get television across on television.

  (1967)

  The faith of a snout baron

  It must have been a moving moment when Lord Sinclair of Cleeve, the tobacco baron, stood up in the House of Lords during the debate on smoking and said he wanted to ‘refute conclusively some of the baser allegations made against the reputation of an industry which I have been proud to serve.’

  I wonder how many people had realised before that the tobacco industry was an institution which men were proud to serve, and which had a reputation they were prepared to stand up and defend against dishonour? I’m not sure that the industry shouldn’t make the facts more widely known – perhaps commission a film about life in the tobacco industry which brought out something of its essential nobility. But why should I be modest? Gentlemen, I have the scenario you want right here:

  Handsome, dashing young Simon Ricepaper, scion of one of the oldest and proudest tobacco families in the land, who has passed out of the Royal Tobacco Academy top in smoke-ring blowing and winner of the Cigarette-holder of Honour, joins a crack Kingsizer company.

  As the youngest member of the boardroom here he has to undergo all the time-honoured initiation pranks and rituals of the Company, and in these his chief tormentor is the boardroom madcap, Freddie Twenty. Simon despairs of ever being accepted by his fellow directors. But one day, when Freddie and Simon are leading a detachment sent out to bring a tribe of blackamoors in a remote colony under the cigarette, Freddie gets cut off and surrounded by dangerous anti-smoking killjoys. Simon goes to help him, fearlessly bombarding the killjoys with any arguments that come to hand. ‘Fwightfully decent of you to wescue me like that‚’ drawls Freddie as together they manage to evade the issue. From then on Simon and Freddie are fast friends.

  But at the next boardroom dining-in night, Simon is in trouble again. Colonel Flake, the Chairman, is holding forth about the Great Sales Drive of ’53, when the Company massacred over a thousand smokers in one campaign. Simon, exhausted after advertising practice, falls asleep. One of his fellow-directors, dark, saturnine Rupert de Luxe, draws Colonel Flake’s attention to it, and Simon is given an extra two weeks as duty director.

  Instead of enjoying himself at the annual Company ball the following week, therefore, Simon has to be at his post, ready to deal promptly with any outbreak of non-smoking in the Company’s distribution area. It is here that lovely Virginia Flake, the Chairman’s daughter and the toast of the boardroom, finds him when, filled with a strange melancholy, she slips away from the brilliant throng within. All his chivalry aroused, Simon offers her a cigarette, and she tells him she is engaged to Rupe
rt de Luxe. But when their eyes meet, they both know that the curling blue ribbons of smoke from their cigarettes are hopelessly entwined.

  But Simon’s trials are still not over. The very next day, as Simon offers Colonel Flake his cigarette-case in the ante-room, the monocle slips from the Chairman’s eye. ‘Cork-tipped!’ he exclaims, going white with anger. ‘This is an insult which I should never have expected to see bandied about between Kingsizers, Ricepaper. Kindly have your papers in my hands by the morning.’

  Simon accepts the sentence stoically, although he knows it was not he who filled his case with the cowardly cork tips. As soon as they are safely outside, Freddie cries: ‘It’s that cad Wupert de Luxe! I saw him at your cigawette-case while you were out last night!’

  Simon accuses de Luxe, who challenges him to a duel. Simon chooses to fight with cigarettes, and they slog it out behind the fives court, swapping puff for puff for twelve hours before de Luxe, wheezing and gasping, cries: ‘I give in! I don’t want to die! I confess everything. I planted the cork tips on you because I didn’t want a rival for Virginia – and her father’s money! And you may as well know that I’m a deserter from the Woodbine Corps.’

  ‘I just did what I had to do,’ says Simon modestly, one arm round Virginia, the other being fervently shaken by Colonel Flake, ‘for the honour of the Company and the good name of tobacco.’