Once Upon A Time in the West . . . Country

by Tony Hawks

  ‘Wow. No help?’

  ‘No help at all. Not unless you count my three-year-old brother.’

  This was rather encouraging. Perhaps it was something I could throw back at future dissenters when we explained about our plans for a home birth. So often, the explanation of our birth plan had elicited a sharp intake of breath and a slow deliberate shaking of the head, as if to indicate that this choice was equivalent to driving a car without brakes. The prevailing opinion seemed to require thousands of years of history to stand aside and make way for the careering juggernaut of medical intervention. Ken, however, had made it into the world without an obstetrician, a doctor, a midwife, or even a plumber.3 And he’d come out all right. He’d even gone on to rebuild a tractor engine.

  ‘That cottage had no electricity or mains water,’ said Ken, almost with pride.

  ‘How did you manage?’

  ‘We got our water from a well, and we used a Tilley paraffin gas lamp.’

  ‘How was it?’

  ‘It was absolutely fine. It was all we knew, so we just got on with it.’

  I considered all the devices we had in our kitchen. A few hours without the power that we took for granted and our world would begin to fall apart.

  It was quite possible that in the future we humans might need to live by a new slogan. Tragically, it currently didn’t sound like one that would win any general elections.

  Have a little bit less and enjoy it a whole lot more.

  ***

  ‘The trouble is that George doesn’t want to do the calling anymore,’ Rose explained. ‘He says he’s too old.’

  The occasion was our third village hall committee meeting. We’d already sorted out some pressing bureaucratic matters regarding the shift in power from the old committee to this one, and the new committee’s feet were very much under the trestle table. We were discussing item four on the agenda, the idea of reintroducing an event that had previously been a success – Meat Bingo. At first, I’d heard ‘Meet Bingo’ and I’d begun to wonder if this was a kind of dating night where people could be paired off according to what numbers coincided on their cards. But no, it turned out that it was simply bingo in which you could win a joint of meat instead of other prizes. My thought was, if we’re going to have bingo evenings where the prize is specific, then why stop at Meat Bingo? We could have Petrol Bingo. Salt Bingo. Insulating Tape Bingo. But all in good time. These would have to be suggestions that I’d propose when my stranglehold on power was more complete.

  ‘Oh. That’s a shame to lose George,’ said Mary. ‘He was a good caller. We’ll need to find someone else.’

  There followed a hideous silence where I felt the weight of expectation around the table. I held off for as long as I could. Finally, it all proved too much for me.

  ‘Well, I suppose I could do it,’ I said, begrudgingly.

  I am not a big fan of bingo. I’d played it once before in France, and even with a different language and the challenges which that brought, I’d still found it to be an incredibly tedious evening. Perhaps, I mused as the discussions turned to finalising the arrangements, that actually calling the bingo would make it a more enjoyable evening all round. A chance for the performer in me to shine.

  ‘OK. Item five,’ I announced in my best Mr Chairman voice. ‘Trying to get more people up to the village hall who never normally come to events.’

  ‘Could we distribute leaflets letting them all know what’s on?’ suggested Brenda.

  ‘Good idea.’

  It was decided that we would share the task and each committee member would leaflet different areas of the village. I figured that this would be a good way to get to know new people, because as well as passing on the information about the village hall, it could be a kind of cold calling for friendship. Facebook on foot.

  In reality, I didn’t do most of it on foot. I decided to do the more remote houses by car, after I’d delivered to my immediate neighbours. Two doors along, I met Alf. Actually I didn’t meet him, we’d met briefly once before, as he reminded me, when he’d delivered the local parish magazine to our door. His recollection of this, and my failure to do so, might have been easier to bear if Alf had not been ninety-three years old. Like a lot of very old people do, he dropped the revelation of his age quite early on in our conversation.

  ‘Wow, you look fantastic on it,’ I said.

  This was not a routine, sycophantic remark. I really meant it. Alf was the finest example of a 93-year-old man that I had ever laid eyes on. In conversation, too, he proved that his faculties were all there, and we’d already established that his memory was working better than mine. He attributed his good health to country air, nice views, and not getting too worked up about anything.

  ‘Regarding the bingo,’ he said, ‘Vera and I don’t get out as much as we used to, but I applaud what you’re doing at the village hall and we’ll try and get up there.’

  Impressive stuff. Now I had something to which I could aspire. Given that I was about to enter fatherhood at a more senior age than most, it would be my duty to try and emulate Alf. So, encouraged by the uplifting chat with my Peter Pan neighbour, I jumped in the car in order to reach the houses that were located at the end of a long, bumpy lane. Everything started well enough. Nobody was in at the first two houses, so I stuffed the leaflets in the front doors. At the next two stops, people were at home and I was able to introduce myself as a neighbour, explain my new role, and engage in a positive conversation about the village hall and its potential to bring people together. I felt rather buoyed by the positive responses. The bumpy road then became ridden with potholes, and the required driving was suddenly a far cry from the city action for which my car was designed.

  I pulled into the drive of a farm, parked up, and saw Sam – the guy who’d had a cup of tea with us after the ‘sheep in the garden’ incident. He immediately came over and invited me in for a reciprocal cup. I said yes, partly because I didn’t want to say no, and partly because I was due a break, having been on this arduous task now for a full ten minutes.

  When I got out of the car, I noticed that the front right tyre was flat. Oh dear, how foolish of me to think that the Smart car, the city runaround, could cope with these stony, unkept-up country lanes. Yes, I was in a Smart car. You know – those piddly little things that look as if the back has been cut off? Silly looking, but good for the environment. That had been our thinking anyway and we’d bought a second-hand one a month previously. However, bringing the Smart car up this particular lane had not been so smart.

  Sam jumped immediately into crisis-assistance mode and he and I began looking for the spare tyre. The Smart car is anything but conventional, and my embarrassing ignorance about it was soon exposed. Was the boot at the front? I didn’t know. How did you open the bonnet? I didn’t know. Did it even have a bonnet? I didn’t know. Was that where the spare tyre was? I didn’t know.

  ‘Do you have the manual?’ asked Sam.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I replied.

  Encyclopedic ignorance. If there was something that anyone needed not to know about this vehicle, then I was there with all the lack of knowledge at my fingertips.

  A search in the car (struggling first to find compartments, and then open them) revealed no manual.

  ‘Come in, have a cup of tea, and we can search the internet,’ suggested Sam.

  If you ever get bored, you can do exactly what I did next. Simply type the following into Google.

  Where is the spare tyre on a Smart car?

  It takes you to a forum. The first answer is: ‘There is no spare tyre, so remove the steering wheel and get out and push the thing like the shopping trolley that it is.’

  Yeah, yeah, very funny. Internet wise guy.

  The trouble was that all the other answers confirmed that the Smart car has no spare tyre. How could that be? Surely it was illegal? No, some further research revealed the awful truth is that they do it to save weight. It seemed that my environmentally friendly miles per g
allon were coming at the expense of leaving me stranded if I ever got a puncture.

  I followed the course of action that was fast becoming a default position when anything went wrong. I called Ken.

  Quite irresponsibly – and worse still, without informing me – Ken had gone out. His position as best neighbour in the world was suddenly questionable. I’m not sure that he could be allowed to have a life. How dare he not remain on 24-hour call?

  It was decided that I should leave the car and walk home. I would have to order the new tyre from the local garage, nip down with Ken to collect it, before whizzing back up the lane to fit it. All very inconvenient and time consuming. Never mind, I’d delivered a tremendous six of the eighty-five leaflets I’d been given, so I could go on a tour of Sam’s farm without any guilt.

  It was impressive. Without the use of any pesticides, Sam, Lucy, Kate, Becky and Joe, who’d met each other on a co-operative farm where they’d been volunteering, were growing a vast range of vegetables, some that I’d never heard of. According to Sam, livestock were to follow, but only in a way that would help create a sustainable farm. (He explained briefly that keeping a few pigs meant you could get land turned over that would otherwise have required a tractor and fuel.) I admired the way five ‘thirty-somethings’ had upped and left city life to follow a dream – to live and work on a sustainable farm.

  They were doing something that most people in society would describe as ‘mad’. Not least because the chances of economic success were so slim. Margins were tight for this kind of farming, and myriad things could go wrong. Theirs was certainly not the kind of risk-taking whereby, if they were successful, they would become extremely rich. The most optimistic prognosis was that they would tick along nicely. But surely that’s the point? Wasn’t that why Fran and I had been drawn to this place? So we could tick along nicely? London had taught us that life was a competition, and the prizes were property and lifestyle. We were rejecting that, trusting that a simpler life could offer different, but ultimately more fulfilling rewards.

  ‘All of us have got part-time jobs, so we’ve got income outside the farm,’ said Sam.

  Very wise. Not a good idea to have all your eggs in one basket – at least until you have ensured that the basket doesn’t have holes in it.

  ‘I think it’s brilliant what you’re doing,’ I said. ‘I hope you guys are successful.’

  This wasn’t just polite conversation. I really meant it.

  ***

  ‘Do you think we should hire a doula?’ asked Fran.

  Fran was now nicely rotund, but she still maintained her petite grace. Hers had not been a troublesome pregnancy, and the general consensus amongst friends and neighbours was that she had blossomed during it.

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A doula.’

  ‘What’s a doula?’

  ‘She supports us through the whole birthing process. Physically and emotionally, before and after. She’s kind of like a coach.’

  ‘Like a tennis coach?’

  Fran looked at me blankly.

  ‘But with no need to explain topspin,’ I added.

  Fran ignored my frivolous remarks and went on to explain that a doula would try to guide her through labour without recourse to painkillers. She would be our ‘representative’ for the natural-birthing approach, in the event that the midwife was putting us under pressure to go down a route that involved medical intervention.

  ‘Do you have anyone in mind?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, Patricia, my pregnancy yoga teacher, is a doula.’

  ‘And do you like her?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘OK, let’s hire her.’

  What was happening to us? Were we becoming New Age, home-birth junkies? As well as having booked ourselves on a hypnobirthing course, we’d now also taken the decision to hire a doula. What next? Were we getting carried away? Perhaps we needed something to bring us back down to earth. Something like a good old-fashioned night of bingo.

  ***

  I arrived to find a packed house of all ages. It seemed that the prospect of winning some food items that were readily available on supermarket shelves was enough of a draw to lure people away from their television sets. (TV is OK up to a point, but let’s face it, an evening’s viewing will win you very little meat.) The prizes – neat little supermarket cartons of packaged meat cuts – were laid out on trestle tables, in an alarming number of rows. My initial thought was, my word, we’re going to play an awful lot of bingo here tonight. Claire, the evening’s organiser, and a genteel lady of an age consistent with those who seemed to volunteer to help with the village hall, took me through the rules. She explained that each game had three prizes – minced beef when one line was filled, chicken thighs for two lines, and a rib of beef for three lines. I was also reminded of a couple of the stylistic tricks of the trade for the caller – ‘88’ as two fat ladies, and the like.

  ‘You turn the wheel,’ explained Claire, ‘then you take out a numbered ball, read it out and place it in the numbered grid. When someone calls “House!”, I’ll bring their cards up for you to check off, and then we crack on.’

  ‘That’s all there is to it?’

  ‘That’s it, in a nutshell.’

  ‘And how many games are we playing?’

  ‘Eleven. Ten normal games and one Golden Game at the end for the big prize of the full meal – a complete chicken with all the accompanying veg.’

  My heart sank at the prospect of eleven games. It did seem an awful lot. Still, perhaps the time flew by once you got started.

  I sat at my table and watched as the clock ticked round to 7.30 p.m., and I was given the nod to start proceedings. The gentle murmur of conversation died away as I explained the format of the evening, and a feeling of great expectancy filled the room.

  ‘OK. Eyes down!’ I announced, with as much passion as I could muster. ‘If the numerical gods shine on you tonight, then some of you could walk away with chicken thighs.’

  Several titters, and one comment about someone nearby having pig’s thighs already. Good, I thought, we’re off to a very good start.

  Unfortunately, the lyricists of ‘Things Can Only Get Better’ and ‘The Only Way Is Up’ were once again going to be exposed as fantasists.

  I cannot think of a better way of enabling you, dear reader, to empathise with the experience of what followed, other than to ask a small favour of you. Could you please read the next paragraph out loud? Thanks.

  Two and four, twenty-four. Seven and nine, seventy-nine. On its own, five. Four and three, forty-three. One and six, sixteen. All the fives, fifty-five. Eight and five, eighty-five. Two and nine, twenty-nine. All the fours, forty-four. Nine and zero, ninety. Three and eight, thirty-eight. Two fat ladies, eighty-eight. On its own, nine. Five and nine, fifty-nine. Seven and six, seventy-six. Three and one, thirty-one. (Are you still doing this?)

  OK. Now imagine doing that for two hours.

  By my calculations, I must have read out around seven hundred numbers in all the eleven games. No excitement. No variation. The only momentary respite from the tedium came in the form of the numbers eleven and twenty-two. For the first of these numbers, convention has it that the caller announces ‘Legs eleven’, after which the bingo players, should they so choose, offer up a wolf whistle. For twenty-two, the caller adds the wildly creative description of ‘Two little ducks’ into his patter, which is enough to cause a voluntary response from some players of ‘Quack, quack’, such are the levels of euphoria now being reached. I cannot tell you how welcome these sounds are when you have just read out 640 numbers back to back. They are the audio equivalent of visits from loved ones for prisoners with long sentences. They sustain you. They give you hope. Without them, you wither, you suffer, you decay.

  ‘Two little ducks, twenty-two.’

  ‘Quack! Quack!’

  A feeling of hope. I can get through this.

  I am now of the opinion that bingo is evil. The thought that up and down the
country theatres and cinemas have been converted into bingo halls simply appals me. Once there was entertainment that challenged, titillated, amused, inspired, moved or scandalised. Now there’s some poor sap reading out hundreds of numbers, one after the other, so that a room full of administrators (that’s right – they’re not players, they’re administrators) can stand a reasonable chance of winning some soulless prize. There may be something wrong with me, but I just cannot see the point of it.

  Why not shorten the whole procedure and reduce the suffering? If the ‘players’ are up for winning prizes based on the random drawing of numbered balls, then why not pare down the misery by having one ball in a sack for each player present, and draw out one ball to provide a winner? OK, I know that makes it just a raffle, but it’s fundamentally the same as bingo in spirit, only so much quicker. And better. And more humane. It spares condemning a human being to a life of misery as a bingo caller.

  The evening drew to a close at around 9.30 p.m. I was truly exhausted. Chicken thighs and ribs of beef had been redistributed amongst ‘lucky’ members of our community, and the ritual (what would anthropologists make of this?) had ground its way to a routine and inevitable halt, leaving people to make their way home with deadened senses and the sound of my monotone voice ready to haunt them in their sleep.

  A word of advice. If anyone asks you to call bingo – say anything to get out of it. If you have never called bingo in your life, then you are very lucky. You have something over me, and you should do everything in your power to preserve that advantage. I will bear the scars forever. Any situation where I have to read out numbers, for any reason, will bring me out in a cold sweat. Never again will I be able to pass chicken thighs in a supermarket without breaking into a run. And if I happen upon two fat ladies, then I might need to be restrained from attacking them with a rib of beef.

  No wonder George had said he was too old. He was probably only twenty-two.4