There being a lot of inflation about these days, Angels borrowed piles of money. The loan isn't attached to anything - it's just a pile of money that won't be as much when it gets paid back. By the time the formalities in the Manager's office in the bank at the bottom of the hill had been completed it felt as if it had been earned. There were three copies each of two documents that seemed to be over a dozen pages long.
"Sign here," said the Manager, pointing a manicured finger and offering a biro. So I did, rose to my feet, smiled nicely and noticed everyone else was still sitting down. Mr HG was signing valiantly on.
"Every page?'
Right.
The first page had my usual signature, which looks like my name written out in my ordinary hand. The second page looked more or less the same but then the thought that perhaps best writing might be more appropriate occurred. Page three was bigger and neater. Then it became clear I was falling behind in the signing stakes and the Manager began to turn the pages for me. Page four developed elisions that were not on the other pages. Five started to look dashing, six was slipshod. Seven started to be turned before I was ready so I held it down. A small tear appeared - in the paper not from my eye but it was getting quite emotional in there. Mr HG was sitting back like those examination candidates who have finished and checked their work, worse, he was beginning to read the signed pages. Flustered, my signature now looking like something from a joined up writing exercise, the Manager engaged in discreetly forcing the pages, me and the Manager got to the last page.
The documents were swapped and I had the demoralising task of signing under Mr HG's beautiful signature, exactly the same on every page. My hand hurt. My writing had reverted to its infanthood, my name looked funny and I began to doubt the spelling. At the end the Manager looked at the bottom of every page and after that only answered Mr HG's queries on whatever strangenesses he had found while waiting for me to put my mark.
For any one who can interpret hand writing my entire life in all its layers and accretions is laid out there.
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'I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free'
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- Red Lines
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- No Vision
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- It Cannot Have Been Easy for the Prince of Wales
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- Taking Back the Bank
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Fallen Angels
- David Cameron (for risking the disorderly dissolution of the Euro)
- Giorgio Napolitano (for stance on Budapest 1956: Prague 1968: Italy 2013)
- Mervyn King (for bailing-out Northern Rock)
- Nicholas Kaldor (for inventing VAT)
10 comments:
I recall once having to put my name & perhaps candidate number etc at the top of a large number of sheets of paper (History 'O' level, I'm guessing), in a Big Hurry at the end of the exam
after a goodly number of such hurried imprints I found myself detachedly watching my hand go about its frantic business as though independently animated
I believe it's called muscle-memory or some such. Spooky, anyhow
I have terrible handwriting. If ever I have a card questioned in a shop (my signature is just a scrawl), I get out my other cards and show them the signatures. All different.
Hurting hand while handwriting always takes me back to the school line at the school I was at, to be written 20 times in 20 minutes before breakfast for detention
Few things are more distressing to a person with a well-regulated mind, than to see a boy, who ought to know better, disporting himself at improper moments.
Bless them. It's one of the few things that has stuck with me these forty something years since I left. Though I still recall our serried male ranks belting out fine Methodist hymns at top volume; always a rather fine, and the occasional sermon from Lord Soper, God Rest and Bless His Soul, he truly would be rolling in his grave to witness how these bastards have debauched our country. Wonderful sermons, even to a butthead 16 year old.
Dozens of signatures held together in the same file would be more revelatory than the identity data base.
Muscle memory sounds like something boys have, ND. Though musicians can pass dull moments playing in their heads and exercising their neurons.
I never understod the purpose of lines, Elby. Much harder to have to learn poetry or formulas.
Well, in those days I had no problems remembering poems. Whole odes by the Keats could roll off the tongue. Slabs of Shakespeare; but I hated lines. I don't think my large hands help either, or general lack of co-ordination. I was a serial lamp post-walker-intoer as a small child. Head in the clouds.
No, no lines!
I do like it though. It stretched the hand on purpose, I am sure, and whoever composed it must have felt pretty smug, I think.
Utterly off-topic, but exciting :-)
I am off in the morning to Winchester to collect the van, which has been insulated, panel-lined, walls and ceiling carpeted in a sober colours, and a heavy duty floor.
Motorhome wasn't built in a day, as no one ever said, I suspect.
Next step - find a caravan we van gut. Radstock ho.
Annual Glasto storm rumbling around; seems to have gone away. The animated weather map indicates heavy rain in the early morning. Can I say how much I love my Drizabone? Good wellies, one of those, and a good hat and off we go!
'Sober colours'. Well, probably a good thing, a fixed point in the world's kaleidoscope. Are there olives in your future - say late next November?
HG: You should not have succumbed to the pressure! Take your own sweet time; that's what you have it for. I hope you read the small print before signing your future away.
I always envied people with short names like say, Ann Day, who could rattle off twenty signatures in under 30 seconds. I have the better part of 20 letters in my full name and like everybody else my signature becomes less legible as the number of signatures mounts. After the first six or so it becomes merely a scrawl with a few high points and straight lines along the way. I also have a natural largish looping curve at the beginning when signing my name and find it very difficult to control the pen when signing the back of credit cards with their silly little narrow white strips (so my signature there hardly resembles its natural state) or that idiot minibox on a passport application form. Perhaps I should just change my name to Nomad and have done with it?
It's an X from now on, Nomad, and someone else can sign stating 'her mark'.
And, Nomad, it seems patently obvious that debt on the extraordinary scales incurred will be met by roaring inflation, particularly in the kinds of things I consume, so I'd better consume some fast and pay back in worth much less money later.
Bon appetit...
L is the one with regard to dates; at least for the moment. I am in essence a kept man and hence the envy of my sex :-) Though dibs down on the pension, tax free, to pay for the van and conversion, as my contribution to life here. Plus being house boy.
I've recently applied for the post of part-time Librarian in a Prep school not so far away. All those years working on library systems left me with the knowledge that I could work in a library happily.Love books. Love libraries.
Have tried both Somerset & Wiltshire, but I think they just employ school leavers. No replies from any of them when applying for simple part-time jobs at branches of both.
This would suit, tho' would of course make us less flexible than we currently are wrt getting away.
But we must sit down and think on this!
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