Frank Skinner on the Road by Frank Skinner

Author:Frank Skinner
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781409036661
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2013-10-16T16:00:00+00:00

THURSDAY 6 SEPTEMBER 2007

SLIGHTLY RESTLESS NIGHT but I woke up feeling a bit better. I bought this flat in Birmingham about ten years ago for fifty-two grand. It’s on the tenth floor; I like to be high up and away from everyone. It’s sunny today. I’m drinking tea and eating custard creams on the balcony as, at the Edgbaston Croquet Club below, old people dressed all in white are swinging mallets and chatting in huddles. A football match is about to begin on the pitch to the right of the Croquet Club. Men in their thirties, in blue or red, stand around, lazily aiming shots at goal or doing sketchy versions of warm-up exercises they’ve seen footballers do on the telly. In short, it’s all gone a bit Beryl Cook.

I don’t normally eat biscuits but this is one of the plusses of illness. If you’ve hardly eaten for a week and then you actually fancy something, it’s allowed, no matter what it is. On the way back from the gig last night, I got Adam to stop at a garage and I loaded up with biscuits, crisps and meat pies so I can junk-food myself back to health again. Stuff that makes me feel sick when I’m well seems to make me feel well when I’m sick. The plusses of illness are something you think more and more about as you get older. When you’re twenty you lie in bed and think, ‘I feel terrible; I’m going to die; I’ll never see any of my friends again.’ When you’re fifty you lie in bed and think, ‘I feel terrible; I’m going to lose at least half a stone; I’ll be able to get into those jeans again.’ And, no, it isn’t only women who think that – it’s only women who ADMIT they think that.

The other plus is an excuse to stop in. That’s another age-thing. When you’re twenty and a night out is cancelled, you’re devastated: ‘It’s too late to rearrange anything now. What am I going to do all night?’ At fifty, a night out is cancelled and it’s like you’ve suddenly been handed a wondrous gift: ‘Ah, I can stay in, eat food I’ve chosen and use my own toilet.’ Nowadays, I basically want to stay in every night, nice and cosy, tracksuit-bottoms and television. However, hanging over my head is the fear that this staying-in constitutes a terrible waste of life and, when I’m old and unable to leave the house, I’ll look back and think, ‘Oh, why didn’t I go out when I had the chance?’ So I DO go out, most nights, motivated by a regret that I MIGHT have IF I live long enough to be old and house-bound. The imaginary old me is bullying the real, here-and-now me into going places I don’t want to go and speaking to people I don’t want to speak to, and for what? The old me probably won’t be able to remember whether I went out or not anyway.

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