by Ian Hutson
Ms Reception-Desk fumbled at the chain, put on her butterfly-wing spectacles and read word for word from her screen while she put some hapless and limp old fogey through the induction process. She carried about her the cheery air of the guest of honour at a well-attended funeral and I ventured that she had brightened many a room by leaving it via the closed fenestration. Her face may not have launched a thousand ships, but it certainly spoke eloquently of long spells of dockyard work.
The Inland Revenue’s computer’s auto-assessment of his financial affairs indicated, she said, that he was, in his legally-forced retirement, one step up from a cold, skinny, elderly church mouse and he had thus been deemed to have volunteered for (remaining) lifetime service in the armed forces. She didn’t look up from her screen for any confirmation from the gentleman. I gathered the impression that she probably didn’t look away from her screen because she was worried that if she let it out of her sight she’d be unlikely to find it again in a hurry – memory being what it is these days for all of us.
I made a mental note to adapt the commercially-available spectacles chain, re-package it and market it at a premium so that folk with suitably structurally sound necks could keep their computer screens handy about them at all times. Then I forgot about it, memory being what it is for we old fogies. A few minutes of frowning later some nagging sensation of loss made me wish that I could put my memory on a little chain around my neck, so that I wouldn’t put ideas down and then forget them. Now, where were we? Oh yes. The Induction Queue.
At about eleven of the o’clock our good friend Mr Sunshine put his hat on and came outdoors to play. His cheery nuclear light sparkled on the waiting room through the grimy plate-glass windows and even the scrawny birds eking out a desperate living in the dusty, depressed trees of the little shopping area began to tweet, hip hip hurrah, meep-meep. Please RT #birdcall #sparrows #urbanwildlife #kissmyfeatherylittlecloaca. Silly little buggers, shitting everywhere. LOL. – Send. Within seconds of the temperature rising the whole queue of inductees was asleep, napping for England, chins-akimbo and oblivious to the world. Such are the elderly. This is why old ladies break hips – one moment walking along and the next the sun comes out and wallop, sound asleep and in free-fall towards the linoleum. We were all awoken some indeterminate time later by the sound of Ms Reception-Desk coming back from lunch on her wooden Scholl cloggs. Gods alone know how long she’d taken in the pub while we all slept.
By the time I had worked my way around to the “Next!” chair my fellow queue-inmates and I had collectively sorted out the youth of today, agreed that nobody built anything properly anymore and were debating the pros and cons of Tupperware and of cooking several meal-portions at once and then freezing them for later hyperwaving in the combo-multiwave. That’s the thing about old farts – put 'em together and they talk. Put a similar number of spotty youth together and they just try to shrink into hiding behind their empty-three players and their eye-telephones and under their who-dee jogging tops advertising Umbro and Manutd or Mancity. They have done nothing to talk about, we want to get it all off our chests before we die.
Ms Reception-Desk called me forward and began her routine without waiting for me to reach the hot-seat. Her speech was punctuated by little triple-clicks on the computer mouse as she ticked various boxes in that way that technophobe OAPs do, not quite expecting the little on-screen pointer to obey them.
Did I understand my oath to honour my superiors, love my country and obey without question?
I asked if, after these vows, there would be a ring of some sort to seal the marriage.
The private security guard rolled his wheelchair forward from his place in the shadows and indicated that any more lip from me, my lad, would result in the award of a ringing in my ears. Since he’d obviously lived to the ripe age (and he was ripe) of ninety-something I didn’t doubt that he could deliver, should I press the matter.
I understood. I indicated that in the circumstances I tended towards the affirmative in re her rather rhetorical and redundant enquiry. Then my mind descended into a discussion with itself regarding whether rhetoric could ever, in these circumstances, be truly other than redundant and if so, whether that made the redundancy redundant or even perhaps both redundant and rhetorical since the redundancy would then be self-evident, unavoidable and implicit. The ex-Speaking Clock obviously couldn’t give a shit. I wondered if she’d been about to work her way up to being The Speaking Calendar when she’d been forced to retire into Army Recruitment (Chennai – Paris - New York) PLC Inc Ltd. “At the third stroke it will be two thousand and twenty-six. Pip – wait for it – wait for it - pip-pip.” She certainly had enough personality to pull it off. Even I might have been tempted to call her on the eve of numerical palindromes of non-Mayan significance, although it has to be noted that the next of those will be the year 2112 so you couldn’t accuse me of being over-eager to run up my telephonium bill.
Was I Reginald Alfred “Grimsby Town F.C.” Dalrymple-Smythe of Pelham Square, Cleethorpes?
I replied that as far as I knew, I both had been and indeed still was, even though there seemed little call for it now, other than from the Army. I suggested that I preferred Reggie.
Mouse-click-click-click followed by some typing that sounded as though it might have been along the lines of “residual spirit needs breaking”, “save”, “save”, “have you saved?”, “save”, “close screen” and then immediately “re-open it to check that the previous entry had saved”. All standard OAP-techy stuff really.
The country, the nice paramilitary lady-biddy explained while adjusting her side-arm, was in parlous peril and experiencing egregious economic exposure and was fearlessly fighting frightening foes. Surely an oxymoron, since how could any foe be frightening in the eyes of a fearless defence force? If only we all remained fearless, no matter how terrifyingly lethal and murderous the foe, then they would no longer be frightening, in which case why was I being required to fight them at all? What though, my mind asked, if they hunted in small even-numbered groups of fewer than six, even though they weren’t the real enemy? Would my first, frightening, fearless foray be against four non-frightening faux-foes, phuphux ache? What of my fellow fighters? Five faithful fellows would be my minimum favoured force for facing four non-frightening faux-foes in a fight or a fracas. Flamin’ eck. What if I faced the foe and farted or fainted or failed to be otherwise fearless in the face of the enemy, so to speak? What would be my fate? I decided that under the circumstances, I would turn F off as soon as practicable.
The speaking calendar brought me back to my senses with a smoker’s cough and three pips (she’d been eating grapes). My brain snapped back into current life and it asked my eyes to look around to see what we had missed while in our reverie stroke pre-stroke nap and general absence of being “in the moment”. Well, when I say “snapped back into life” what I mean is that my mind sort of looked up, like a cow preoccupied with eating grass in a meadow, and mooed. I don’t usually claim any sort of focus until at least five minutes or one cup of tea after drifting back from drifting off. Not even with an F involved.
She was up to the sibilants... The country had need, she said, stiffly, of selfless superannuated stupid single sods such as me. She snatched a bite of her Stilton sandwich and a second slurp of her Star-Sucks super-skinny soy spiced, iced, sweet cinnamon sparkling tea. She made clicking sounds as she sucked at Victoria sponge crumbs that had lodged in her back teeth. They must have been desperate crumbs indeed to settle for lodgings such as those while the Salvation Army hostels were still in business the world over. Oops – I was drifting again.
It was just possible of course that I had misread the situation in re her clicking, and she was in fact conversing intelligently with an invisible alien colleague in their common mother tongue. Click, click-click, suck suck squelch click click tsk tsk click humans eh click click suck? Despite the seriousness of my situation, my mind wandered and wondered. Could it really be that she was a giant alie
n stick insect covered in foam and Essex salon-tan coloured latex – like Mrs Wilkinson at number eighteen had proven to be when de-frocked during a brawl over biscuits at the Council-run Social Centre?
The modern army had no need to advertise for recruits and saw no point in populating its reception desks with beautiful people – when they played the Status Quo Army Anthem and said you were in the army now, you were then in the army now. I mean, in the army then, now. End of story, no need to sign here, we’ve done that part for you and please to drop your trousers, oik up the heavy, hairy folds of gut-flop and cough at the little screen for the brief, web-cam based medical by some ATOS arse calling in from Botswana between two other jobs, one as a leather and restraint expert on a telephone sex-line and the other almost identical job as a claims dismisser for AVIVA. Both of them basically tell you to go yourself.
The lady recruitment agent handed me a photocopied sheet that explained the whole situation. I was male. Well, that much I already knew from having had a particular dripping washer changed several times by an NHS plumber who specialised in trousers – click, delete, click correct radio-button box. I had reached the compulsory retirement age whereupon had I had employment I had been removed from it to make way for youth. All hail youth. Indeed so. Click – delete – tsk tsk click save. I had no visible independent means of support (click click twang as her army gussets absorbed the full brunt of the cheese sandwich working its way through her thorax towards her insect abdomen). Scratch, scratch, click (possibly with her back legs, I couldn’t see past her screen, planted right in the middle of her desk to save her from bad posture that would aggravate existing aches – never mind that she couldn’t see her customers and vice visa).
National efficiency was the name of the game (the sheet actually used the word “game”, can you believe it) and so changes had been made. The armed services were no longer able to draw recruits from school leavers because cheap though they were, there were even cheaper options to be had. I was the cheaper option and I’d been well and truly had.
By removing the National State Pension and introducing compulsory National Retirement Service the country could do away with paying school leavers to join the army, do away with paying open-ended pensions to ungrateful old gits, and often even got to save money that the NHS would otherwise have to spend on silly things such as hip replacements and hypothermia care because life expectancy in the army was, well – quite frankly, less than stellar. It was a win-win situation for the country and the country loved win-win situations.
I rather hoped that it was also win-win in terms of the many wars we were involved in, with England still barking like some “British” bulldog that hadn’t cottoned on to quite how elderly and toothless it now was, and how the backyard of every Tunbridge Wells nimby now belonged to any cat, squirrel or rat that cared to cross it or set up shop in it. Though the country barely had the wherewithal left to give a weak little wave of the Cross of St.George to the world stage from the Mortgaged Cliffs of Dover, no-one had thought to mention this to the politicians who roamed the galaxy annexing willy-nilly and picking fights as though most of it was still coloured pink on the Ordnance Survey-produced galactic maps.
The sheet of paper also indicated that this was my last chance to claim a statutory exemption from service. Exemptions would only be granted on production of countersigned evidence of a minimum of forty years of employment in the following reserved popular occupations: doctor; dentist (private, not NHS, obviously); very, very, very senior white-collar management of a PLC; media (front of house only); solicitor; barrister; High Court judge; policeman (any rank); member of Parliament (any length of service); clergy (any denomination, no more than six serious sexual convictions and no more than three changes of religious conviction); poet laureate (not defrocked) or prior death accompanied by organ donation (any length of service).
Without so much as a do please excuse me love, Ms Reception-Biddykins used her grey “Grabbit” stick to reach out, grasp onto my collar and drag me closer. Had I been fifty years younger I might have assumed that she was in need of a kiss. She then forced my head down onto the desk with her hand. To be frank, even though I am Reggie, it felt as though a very weak crab with liver-spots and inappropriately tart-red fingernails was trying to subdue a wrinkly-pated sea-urchin sporting a patchy snowy-white number two crop. No body-heat was exchanged in the touch – we could neither of us spare the energy. She pressed the button on her little hand-held machine to Laser-tattoo a barcode on the back of my neck and then asked if I wished to claim an exemption. Click. Tap-tap, click. Suck suck squelch – explore freshly-discovered soggy crumb with tongue, swallow and sniff. I gathered from this that such claims for exemption, unlike her ankles, rarely held water.
This unfortunately reminded me that we had been going for some three or four minutes now and that I was aware once again of holding my own water, so to speak, and barely successfully at that.
Thank you, no, none of the exclusion criteria apply - but would it be possible to be assigned to some Earth-based duty please? I have problems with queasiness if weightless for any length of time such as might be the case with the more rough and tumble Space Units, and I wasn’t the most adventurous or gung-ho chap around and didn’t do well in confrontational situations such as fights, especially with strangers or with insectoid species. Given my suspicions about the lady’s non-mammalian origins I suspected immediately that the reference to insects was a serious faux-pas on my part.
Gosh, yes love, of course, she said. That’s what this man’s army’s all about – choice. Did I have any thoughts as to what rank I might like, because there would likely be an opening soon at the level of General or Field Marshal, and that was mostly just desk work. If that didn’t appeal then it was also just possible that she could find me a spot at Bletchley Park fiddling with the new vacuum-valve technology, or perhaps something like polishing the Prime Minister’s Wolseley all day, if I’d prefer...
The security guard sniggered and re-arranged the tartan rug over his knees, tucking it down into the sides of his wheelchair seat. His movement knocked at the microphone of his hearing-aid and caused a momentary feedback whistle that disturbed the pigeons on the pedestrian pavement outside. Being profoundly used to it the gentleman didn’t seem to notice the panes of plate-glass around him cracking in harmonic sympathy and the number of dogs that collected outside, all looking in at him with quizzical “you rang?” expressions.
After mug-shot (click – save – click-click - save), thumb-print (click click click), DNA swabs (tsk tsk suck squelch click dab dab snort-ugh) and retinal scans (click, click – two eyes, one generous click each this time) I was told to follow the blue line through the door rather unnecessarily marked “New Recruit Chaps”, and to do so as quickly as possible. Time was money and we were none of us getting any younger. Ms Personality added that I was please to open the door before attempting to walk through it. There were scratches and stains on the woodwork suggesting that this instruction might be a serious pragmatic one that she had added to the induction process herself on the basis of everyday experience with new recruits. The blue line indicated also showed signs of having lived through quite a bit of O.A.P. bottom-panic. My brown and beige tartan slippers slid over the flaky paintwork easily enough though and I made it to the door-frame in good time, hoping beyond hope that the door led to a lavatory, for none of my internal arguments with my circumstances were holding water with myself well. Oh good grief – well. Wells hold water. More water. Think dry thoughts.
So. Here I am starting National Service at my age. Mind you, it would be difficult to start it at somebody else’s age. Odd to think that even though we all begin our service at an age identical to our comrades in arms, my age is mine and theirs is theirs, age being somehow universal but indivisible. I was drifting again, obviously.
I think that maybe I should keep a diary of some sort. It may assist me in holding on to my sanity. Such as remains, anyway. Wibble. Oh thank the Roman
gods, there’s a lavatory – the blue “following” line made a sudden swerve towards it before leading onward to the induction zone. We might just make it in time, provided that there’s no-one in there and my flies don’t argue back or get stuck.
Phew! Oh Zeus, that’s good. Yee-hah! Render back unto Poseidon what was once de-salinated from Poseidon. There then followed eight minutes of trying to end that particular Roman prayer without too many encores and without leaving the floor looking as though some watersports pervert had just showered in there.
So. Diary eh?
Dear Diary. The last truly conversational word anyone spoke directly to me today was “Next!”
Still – at least it’s only until I die eh? I took one brief look back at the door to the civilian world and then went onwards towards my fate, like some soldier, marching as to war in my slippers. As in I was shuffling towards war in my slippers, there wasn’t a war going on in my slippers. Not unless you count the lifetime stalemate between Cheese-Away Spray and toe-jam.
The army never makes mistakes, and I was sure that National Service would all be very proper and dignified. Wars were fought electronically these days weren’t they? I’d probably spend my days logged onto the web taking down enemy alien websites with denial of service attacks and putting acerbic, pithy comments on pan-dimensional non-humanoid insurgent’s blogs. Have at thee, thou vile alien forces, I Tweet thee to death in the name of His Majesty The King. Clicks “dislike” button on alien commander’s FaceBook status update and slopes arms after a raid well done.
My BIG Page-to-a-day Diary, 16th June 2027, about 22:00HRS.