I have been obsessed by a character called Tuffin for a good while now. He appeared publicly at the end of the Easter Broadcast but he has had quite a number of private airings in various stories and poems. As I have a tendency to wake up early with the drugs ringing in my brain and need something to do other than Pinterest and TikTok and the Guardian and Ebay I have started writing very short chapters of what may turn out to be ‘The Life of Tuffin’ (working title). I am disinclined to set myself the goal of writing a novel/saga/epistle/memoire (its such a cliche and i wont do it anyway – much too much work) instead I will drip feed each tiny chapter as a blog post as frequently as my inclination and productivity permits – they will never be more than 500 words and usually less. They will all be first drafts usually completed in less than 30 minutes (so if your feedback refers to such inconsequential details as spelling and grammar please refrain from providing it cos i don’t care). My plan is to polish and reassemble them once I have lots.
I don’t expect anyone to actually read them but the possibility that somebody might is sufficient motivation to drive me away from videos of poor doggies being rescued from the ice at the last second or delivery drivers throwing parcels over garden walls that haunt me in the early hours if I am left to my own rudderless devices. See what i did there – two different meanings of the word devices captures both my mental state and the physical act of Ipadding that gives rise to said mental state.
They will be set against the ‘eau du nil’ tint below so you can navigate around them if you are not interested or really annoyed by them. Mind you if that’s the case you must always find this blog uninteresting and annoying unless you have a voyeuristic fascination in me and my illnesses, enjoy reading stuff where i show off off about my family, love a bit of pretentious arty crap, enjoy an ill educated rant about politics and religion from an opinionated arsehole, or just relish being able to spot the incorrect use of the semicolon and over use of the —- dash.
Anyway tough! let us proceed with Tuffin Chapter 1 – see what i did there Tough -> Toughin -> Tuffin
I am on a roll today!
Tuffin 1
The two Corgi dogs are named April and May. Dad doesn’t enquire why, nor does he note the coincidence, but he dutifully takes them to the woods and attempts to persuade them to do their number twos. Despite the encouragement, the dogs indicate by acts of canine prostration, that they would prefer to stay in the warmth of the back seat of the Austin A40 parked outside Number 9 The Rise. The Austin and the Corgis belong to the midwife concurrently encouraging June (my Mother) to push me out of her womb into the front bedroom of number nine The Rise, the 6th detached house looking up the road from the station, on the left-hand side of the road.
I note the coincidence, the processional nature of the dogs names leading to my mother’s name as the first of many pleasing patterns, puzzles and serendipitous occurrences that give rise to my arrival in England on January 16th 1957 at 4:37 pm covered in my own and my mothers number twos and provide my first dataset (see below) for a lifetime obsession with recording such happy accidents.
As I arrive, and to the midwifes and my mother’s surprise, the excessive faecal lubrication causes me to slip through a space time worm hole (that has formed in the front bedroom of Number 9 The Rise, while dad is out dog walking and thus unable to prevent it – thus i find myself circumventing mother’s breast, Terry nappies, Farley’s rusks, the horror of polio vaccinations, rides into the village on the back of my mothers bicycle in a rusty baby seat that rasps my thigh red and all the ensuing and inconsequent crying, fully prepped as a four year old in short plaid trousers with matching shirt [a two piece), knee length tan socks, lace up brown shoes, a hand knit cardigan courtesy of Auntie Barbara and sporting a silk tie that will in various manifestations will remain around my neck until a trip to Italy one August many years years later persuades me, as a result of the inordinate heat, to take it off. It is July 1961 and I emerge from the worm hole with my own Corgi dog called March and I am called Tuffin.
| Dogs | Mother – mine |
|---|---|
| March – mine | June |
| April – midwifes | |
| May – midwifes | |
| January 16th 1957 -> July 16th 1961 | Days lost in worm hole 1643 |
| Hours lost in worm hole 39,432 | |
| Minutes lost in worm hole 2,365,920 |