Collected Columns

by Michael Frayn

  NOVEMBER: I remember now – I haven’t got any friends in Queen’s Gate, Onslow Sqaure, or the Boltons. Well, to hell with South Kensington and November. My own rude native recreation ground will look incomparably beautiful when December comes, and the green grass and brown mud disappear beneath that first soft snowfall of winter.

  DECEMBER: Get out and about on the recreation ground, children at heel, yapping after ice-creams. Make a rain-man for them and organise a rainball fight. How one longs for January and February, the real winter months, when one starts to feel the first intimations of spring – spring, with all its sweet anticipation of a summer pregnant with winter-heralding autumn …

  (1966)

  Never put off to Gomorrah

  … the proposals in your Note can only meet with unqualified rejection, while the proposals I have set forth above, on the other hand, contain the basis of equitable negotiation in the cause of world virtue, leading eventually to the total liquidation of unrighteousness which is undoubtedly the dearest and most heartfelt wish of the peoples of our two great cities.

  N. S. LESS, Lord Mayor of Sodom

  My dear lord Mayor,

  I have now been able to study very carefully your reply of February 22 to my Note of February 12 to your reply of February 10, for which I thank you. I see with regret that its main proposal is the one which you put forward in your earlier Notes, of October 14, November 1, December 9, January 12, January 20, etc., calling for any conference on reducing the level of unrighteousness to be preceded by a meeting of the civic heads of our two cities.

  This, as I explained in my Notes of October 17, November 3, December 12, January 15, January 28, and February 12, is unacceptable. I do not believe, as I said in those Notes, that any useful purpose would be served by an unprepared meeting of civic heads at this stage. What we have to do before we meet, I am convinced, is to create confidence by achieving some actual progress in reducing the dangerously high level of unrighteousness in our two cities before – as so many experts have warned us is possible – it leads to a disastrous holocaust in which both our cities would be destroyed.

  Let me say once again that I believe – and my Corporation believes – that before there can be any agreement to reduce unrighteousness, provision must be made for adequate intercity inspection to ensure that the agreed level is not exceeded. Here I must reject as entirely false your allegation, set forth in your Notes of October 14, etc., and previously rebutted in my Notes of October 17, etc., that my intention in putting forward this plan is to establish, under a cloak of respectability, an espionage service for discovering details of your secret and advanced vices which would be commercially useful to us. Such a suggestion can only be intended to serve the purpose of propaganda. The real reason, as I have explained in earlier notes, is to obviate the danger – presented by your proposal for unverified reduction – that one of the parties, while storing up credit in Heaven by publicly liquidating the forces of vice, might in secret be building up other vices, so obtaining an unfair advantage in the tourist trade.

  I do not wish at this stage to go into this too deeply. My point is that here is a clearly defined area of disagreement between us of the sort which would have to be explored by specialists in moral hygiene with positive results before any general question of morals could be usefully discussed at the summit. It was with the aim of obtaining expert exploration of these areas that I proposed a disunrighteousness conference to take place first (my Notes of October 14, etc.). I suggest, as a measure of compromise, that this conference should be preceded by a meeting of town clerks to prepare an agenda for the conference, though with the limitation, naturally, that this agenda should exclude any consideration of an unverified reduction.

  It is in no spirit of mere propaganda, but in the hope that you will respond to the desperate yearnings of the common people in both our cities for righteousness that I urge you to consider this proposal.

  J. F. MORE, Lord Mayor of Gomorrah

  My dear Lord Mayor,

  I must say frankly that I am deeply grieved by the negative attitude adopted in your reply of February 25 to my note of February 22 to your reply of February 12 to my note of February 10 to your …

  (1962)

  New man coming

  One’s personality is a remarkably stable structure; and the most stable element in it is one’s steadfast conviction that it is just on the point of being entirely transformed.

  Transformed, needless to say, not by any efforts of one’s own, but by magic objects and events outside oneself. One’s dissatisfactions and limitations will be suddenly and wonderfully sloughed off, one comes to believe, when one has acquired a striped suit, or a red car; when one has got married; when one has written a book, or found God, or learnt Italian; when one has reached the age of ten; when one has moved house; when summer comes.

  It is strange that so much of one’s action is motivated by such patent witchcraft. But in a society where unhappiness is regarded rather like fleas, as an unappealing state that people ought to be ashamed of getting into, I suppose it is congenial to see oneself as a naturally happy soul hindered from achieving perfect contentment only by external causes. All these extraordinary superstitions are ways of concealing from oneself the painful fact that most of one’s discontents are the inevitable by-products of one’s own nature.

  I rely a bit on almost all these superstitions, but most particularly on those that involve straightforward covetousness. If I had a certain material object, I have repeatedly felt, my whole life would be entirely changed. From its small corner the totem would radiate such a powerful field of rightness and delight that everything else would come to glow in sympathy.

  The first thing I can remember coveting as a child was a propelling pencil that wrote in five colours, after I had seen the teacher correcting exercise books with one. Other little boys might have conceived a passion for the teacher, but I fell in love with the propelling pencil. It was beautiful, and I desired it. The provocative glimpses of the coloured leads through the slots in the side inflamed my senses. I longed to touch the exquisite texture of the nickel-plating.

  My parents were driven to say they would buy me one – but, torment of hopes raised only to be the more savagely hurled down, there was none in the shops! I raged about the house like a tiny junkie deprived of his fix, while they ransacked London, and after days of great misery for all of us, ran one to earth in far-off Peckham Rye. But so supremely unimportant did it become as soon as I possessed it that I cannot even remember what happened to it.

  It sometimes seems to me that the whole story of my life could be adequately told in the catalogue of these love affairs. There was the affair with the ten-and-sixpenny plastic crystal set (purchased – never worked); the affair with the miniature starting-pistol (owned by a friend – fiercely desired through long centuries of time – swapped for about half my possessions – instantly devalued, and allowed to fall to pieces before it could fire the five blank cartridges which my friend’s father was keeping locked up to celebrate the end of the war with); the affair with the second-hand sports car (£180 – ‘Take you anywhere, that car,’ said the salesman. ‘Take you to Land’s End and back’), snatched away at the last moment by a providential failure to raise the money.

  One learns, of course. I don’t think I shall ever fall in love with another propelling pencil, or another plastic crystal set. But the inoculation is against the particular ju-jus I’ve tried, not against ju-jus in general. It doesn’t in any way deter me from my present mania, for example, which is coveting a swivel chair. If I had a swivel chair, upholstered in worn leather, I know I should be a new man.

  I can see myself very clearly with the swivel chair. I am a calm man, a responsible man, a happy man, a man who can work for eight hours at a stretch without being interrupted by fatigue, boredom, bad temper or incompetence, a man who can take well-earned relaxation with his smiling wife and laughing child in some agreeable but uplifting leisure pursuit. I am a
man who keeps an exquisitely selected early June day permanently outside his window. I am a man who does not get telephone calls from people who think they are phoning the South Eastern Gas Board.

  I am a man who is swinging gently from side to side in his worn leather swivel chair as he decides whether to spend the sunlit working day ahead on finishing his play about the ultimate essence of man, or starting the essay in which the ultimate nature of the universe is set forth in 500 exact and simple words.

  Manufacturers of swivel chairs, join me in happy contemplation of the picture! Sooner or later I shall have the swivel chair, and you will have the money for it. How would you sell me a swivel chair I do not need if I did not believe I was buying a complete new personality? How would any five-colour propelling pencils ever be sold if other people did not share my disorder? How would the evangelists and travel agents survive?

  And just as surely as I know that the man in the swivel chair will be a new and perfect man, so I know he will be the same inadequate one, not only depressed by the weather, interrupted by the telephone, unable to find a pen that works, and confused about exactly what he is supposed to be doing, but also driven to final exasperation because the swivel on the blasted chair is broken.

  I know it only too well. Perhaps it’s just as well for all concerned that I don’t actually believe it.

  (1963)

  Night thoughts

  Impossible to postpone moment of recognition much longer. No no, leave it few moments more. Mustn’t jump to conclusions. Never know, might just manage it in last few minutes. Too much effort for tired, man to decide. Put it off for minute – half- a-minute, then – just a few more seconds …

  All right, I surrender. I admit, I AM NOT ASLEEP. I have not been asleep, am not asleep now, nor ever will be asleep. Inside of head feels like armaments factory on night shift, every particle of it alive and occupied with teeming, meaningless activity. Three o’clock! Half night gone and no sleep to show for it. I shall get up tired, go through day in haze, and go to bed too tired to sleep tomorrow night. Was there ever anyone in such pitiful case? Was there ever anyone so ill-used by his own cerebral cortex? I shall get tic, grow old before time, go mad. Be permanently exhausted. Never manage to sleep again, Oh, unfortunate me, how I pity my condition!

  Now, calm. Think. Get up, take bracing breath of cold night air at window, fetch water, wake up properly, start all over again. Aaaaugh! Bare toe stubbed on misplaced furniture. Wife stirs, asks the matter. Explain just fetching water. Tone hopelessly matter-of-fact. Couldn’t I have produced something more tragic, more martyred, more wife-awakening? Wife asleep again already. Some failure of communication here? Some indifference to husband’s mortal predicament? Marriage breaking up? Divorce courts looming?

  Lie down again, full of air and water. Arrange limbs with utmost care, relaxing each, muscle in turn. Method prescribed in book I once read – infallible cure for insomnia. Unfortunately have to unrelax right arm to deal with itch in scalp. Rearrange arm again, relaxing each muscle individually as prescribed – though scarcely enough muscle in bicep section to know whether relaxed or not.

  Peace. Hopes rising every moment. Alas, itch breaks out in foot. Have to disarrange right arm and left leg to scratch. Rearrange limbs with difficulty, since right leg and left arm have also become disarranged and unrelaxed in process. Wait anxiously. If sleep doesn’t come in next fifteen seconds, doubt whether will be able to remain relaxed in this hopelessly uncomfortable posture. Suddenly get itch between shoulder-blades. Contortion of every muscle in body necessary to scratch it.

  So much for that method. Will now try just lying on left side like normal human being, as always have done. Funny – something deeply unsatisfactory about left-hand edge of body. Couldn’t remain lying on that side if I was paid to. Twist with insane speed on to right-hand side. Too fast, too fast! Can feel nerves still twanging like strings of piano thrown downstairs. Right-hand edge of body, curiously enough, in precisely same state as left-hand. Never mind, will make a stand here – retreat has to be halted somewhere. Not another inch will I cede. I am on my right-hand side, and on my right-hand side I remain, till I have taken sleep at bayonet-point.

  One minute. Two minutes. It’s more than flesh and blood can stand. Retire in disorder – hurl self on to back. At last discover reason for sleeplessness – too hot. Fling back covers. By tremendous effort of will blot out all thought processes, concentrate on featureless field of cerulean blue – another infallible trick for inducing sleep I read in another book. Feel pain in temples at sheer effort of keeping whole mental horizon sky-blue. Watch aghast and helpless as jet airliner flies in from lower edge, on way to Rome. Reminds me of worrying problem – where going for holidays? Must think. Must not! Sit up hastily. Discover another reason for sleeplessness – freezing cold, because no covers on.

  Still awake! Hell and damnation! Outrageous injustice of distribution of sleep in world! What sort of welfare state is this? What am I supposed to do – lie there till breakfast time without anyone caring? Go through life sleepless – while all around me sleep-millionaires are positively wallowing in the stuff? Must use the leisure to plot Insomniacs’ Revolution, to take sleep from sleepers and redistribute to sleepless …

  Hm. Greyness. Daybreak. Daybreak!? Quick, quick – relax muscles, think of sky, no, no, drink water, relax muscles, but first turn over, fling back covers, now relax muscles, drink water …

  (1962)

  No one could be kinder

  You hear a lot about the growing harshness of life. You don’t hear so much about the good side of things, though – the huge increase there has been in politeness and kindness.

  In the old days, if you rang up Associated Swill Industries, what did they say? They said ‘Associated Swill Industries.’ Just like that. ‘Associated Swill Industries.’ Take it or leave it. Or more probably just ‘Ndustries’. Because people on switchboards frequently didn’t bother to turn on their microphones until they’d almost finished explaining who they were, so you were always talking to firms call ‘Umpany’, or ‘Orporated’, or ‘Imited’.

  It’s completely different nowadays. ‘Thank you for calling Associated Swill Industries!’ they cry, with absolute delight. You’re taken aback. You hadn’t realised you were doing them a favour. You suddenly feel a warm glow, a slight lump in your throat. So, someone in this world does appreciate the efforts you make after all! Your ears are red. ‘That’s all right,’ you feel like mumbling. ‘Don’t mention it. My pleasure. Least I could do. Any time.’

  But before you can say anything – on they go again. ‘In what way may I help you?’ they say – and you know, from the sheer eager eloquence of the words, that they really mean it. This is astonishing – you scarcely know these people! You find yourself saying: ‘Well, I wouldn’t mention it if I could think of any other way of doing it – but if you could possibly – I know this is a lot to ask – but I should be eternally grateful if you could somehow, well … put this call through for me.’

  You were going to say ‘To Customer Accounts’ – you have a query about your bill. But now the words die on your lips. If someone takes the trouble to talk to you as lengthily as Associated Swill Industries now have, if they have told you how grateful they are to you, and begged you to tell them of any way in which they could possibly make your life better, then you can’t just ask for Customer Accounts and start niggling about your bill. They offer you the moon – and you ask for Customer Accounts! It’s an inadequate response. It’s worse than that – it’s a deliberate rebuff, a cold refusal of intimacy.

  You feel you should explain about your personal problems. Ask them for advice about where to go on holiday, and how to get on with your parents-in-law – perhaps even request a small unsecured personal loan. Or would this be going too far? You’ve only known them for such a short while, after all. Though it seems much longer. In fact you suddenly feel as if you had been sitting there talking to Associated Swill Industries for half your life.
So you ask if they could possibly put you through not to anywhere as mundane as Customer Accounts, but to the Chairman himself.

  Then you can threaten him with legal action for the amount of your time and your capacity for emotional response that his firm has wasted.

  I’m also rather overcome when people I’ve never met before tell me, usually over a public address system, often on aircraft, that I’m kindly requested to do this, or not do that. In the bad old days they used to say, ‘Will you kindly do this? Will you kindly not do that?’ In other words they expected all the kindness to be provided by us in doing as they asked. Why should we have to start laying out stocks of kindness, when we’re not getting paid for it? Particularly when we’d no idea in what spirit the request was being made. Were they requesting us kindly? Or were they doing it unkindly? Quite unfeelingly, perhaps – cruelly, even? And then they expect us to be kind to them!

  Now we know that a warm heart and a generous nature are concealed behind that loudspeaker. I just wonder, though, if it’s fair that they should have to tell us this themselves. Suppose there was no one to introduce a distinguished visiting lecturer, and he had to start off by telling us himself how witty and erudite he was, and how he was going to enlighten and entertain us!

  Couldn’t some of the switchboard operators who have spent so much time helping callers that their employers have gone into receivership – couldn’t they travel aboard planes and introduce the speakers? They wouldn’t be hampered by any lingering modesty. ‘Mr Clake, your Director of Passenger Services, is known wherever aircraft fly not only for the kindness with which he makes his requests, but also for the refined accent that he does it in. Critics have praised the sheer courage and determination of his requesting, its exuberance, its technical virtuosity – and at the same time its engaging modesty. So, here, to ask you to leave the aircraft by the forward exit – the great requester himself! Ladies and gentlemen, will you please welcome – Mr Clake!’