He didn't arrive home from last night's work this morning - he burst in the door and threw his work mobile phone across the front room, slung his bag in to the corner. I got off of the most comfortable window sill ever, decided to say hello and jumped up on the worktop to say wassup? "Do me a favour and don't hassle me now Dan, I really ain't in the mood for it!" And then he went off on one. Winnie nearly broke the catflap on the way out just from looking at his face. Storming up and down he was, using them words that people don't use in polite company - or not that loudly anyway. Banging cupboard doors, then ran upstairs to get changed and started spanking the punchbag so hard and swearing the neighbours must have thought he was being mugged. He came back down to the kitchen where I was reading the paper he'd slung on the top by the kettle. I looked up. "What you looking at!? I've had a bad night alright!!?" With all the love and concern I could muster I said.... I s'pose some CHOW is out of the question Stroppyboy?....
So it appears he had spent the night trying to organise something of no interest to me at work with a load of non-committal people, after trying to get a load more non-committal people to sort it out for the whole week before, and when him and his mate thought they'd sussed it, someone went and changed it all lastminute.com and pretty much wasted most of the weekends work to come. I think that's what he said, I had problems of my own when he was ranting.
Supermarket manky-skank! Where the hell did he find that? Felix son, I do Felix! I do not do supermarket manky-skank! I had no choice other than to 'accidentally' tread on that part of the bowl that - if you get it just right - launches the foul concoction right across the kitchen floor, and if you get it perfect sticks a big wad on the freezer door that Winnie licks off later. It's gross, but it's funny. Well I laugh.
"What the hell did you do that for, you bloody animal!?" That's me mate. "Well?" Manky-skank. Do I have to spell it out? "Don't you like that one then?" Well DUHHHH! "It's always the same when I give you that one, I swear you do that on purpose." You swear anyway, but you're catching on slowly. Right, now I've broken the hysterics, tell me wassup, and you can do it while you get the Felix out. No, don't bother wiping that up, Winnie will hoover that up when she gets in, just make with the Felix, and bore me with you problems. And he did. Dunno what it was actually all about as I wasn't listening, so it's a shame he threw his phone away, coz he could have phoned around to find someone who gave a shit.
He cooked himself some chow, and we sat and watched 'Skins' on the space telly save-o-vision..... after he'd reset the box. I like to flick channels and stuff when he's out and I control the remote. Anyway, as we sat there and he was fiddling with me ears he started calming down. Looking forward to Saturday he said. Going straight out to play with some great people straight from work in the morning, learning how to get us a better life in a house of our own. If it means less skank and more Scottish smoked Salmon, go get it I say.
I noticed though, that he kept looking at the two frames on the book cases either side of the telly. He'd mounted his dad and his grandad's medals a few months ago, and it looked like they were having an effect on him. His grandad had been a nine year man in the Army, and came out just in time to be invited back to go camping in some trenches in France and Belgium for a few years, which was nice, then some Huns crashed the party and a long and vicious scrap kicked off. It wasn't too long before the trenches were filled with mud and gore, and his dead mates, but they wouldn't let him come home until he'd tried to kill the Huns. It was four years before they gave it up as a bad job and all went home. Not the Generals though. They hadn't left home. Shame, coz if they'd gone into the trenches for a week or two, they might have been home for christmas after all. He was in some places called Mons, Somme and Ypres. Softboy visited the Somme a few years back. That shook him up for a while.
His dad was sent on a package holiday cruise by the Army the next time the Generals wanted to play war games with real people rather than lead toy soldiers, all started by a painter and decorator from Austria who had been a Hun in the last do, and had obviously not got over it. That took him to North Africa, where he made friends with a load of Italians who seemed miserable and asked if the British could look after them as they were lost having fallen out with their German mates, and just wanted to go home. The cruise then took him around the Med, and dropped him on Malta, which was nice until some modern Huns called Nazis started trying to bomb their towels off the pool recliners. They obviously had the hump about it as they kept the bombing up for nearly three years, and wouldn't let anyone in or out.
As me and Softboy sat there, he was obviously going into one of his deep thought phases that he goes into sometimes when he has major decisions to make..... like whether to have corn pasta or rice with his chow. Look, don't big him up, he ain't Einstein. Anyway, he was definitely thinking because he kept going over the same bit of the programme in wiz-o-vizion. He said to me, "Do you know what Dan, sometimes I piss myself right off. I should know better than get wound up about stuff that will just be an amusing anecdote I can use later when we're living La Dolce Vita." (His dad got that expression from his Italian mates up the desert. I think it's like cheesecake on a Rye base.) "I'm just going to let it go over my head, and treat it as my Shugyo." I chose to be conspicuous by my silence. Actually I was snoozing. Actually I was pretending to snooze, coz I bore easily.
"Shugyo" I know from when he's been beasting himself in the spare room on the punch bag or the cross-trainer, or the weights, or that really hilarious time he tried skipping - indoors - and had the light and curtains down, is 'hardship', or 'austerity' training in Japanese. It's all about keeping yourself outside the comfort zone, and even into the pain barrier in order to grow. The idea isn't to fight it, it's to embrace it. To understand that until muscle fibres break they can't grow. To accept that you can be emotionally comfortable and stay put, or get uncomfortable and progress. It's a choice made by people who want what normal people can't have, because only abnormal effort and behaviour promotes abnormal success. It was a good sign that he got into that thinking mode so soon after coming in spitting feathers, and that it was stimulated by the medals that usually make him smile and bring him comfort. It used to take the picture of his grandad in the trenches at Beaumont Hamel to stabilise his mood. The one where he is seen far right loading a bullet into his rifle aged 30, and looking 50. The one with his mates all trying to smile amid the blood and gore, and the stench of death all around, with no real confidence they'll make the next sunrise in one piece, with the hopeless look in their tired eyes. Shugyo? Softboy needs a reality check every now and then. I'm glad they're coming more regularly now. People at work can really piss him off with outlooks and attitudes, but his dad and grandad had people trying to really piss them off with high explosives. He's getting there. They're with him.
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