STICKY 'JAMAS AND INGMAR BERGMAN....

Oh shit! I'm sticky again! That's the third time this week and I've just about run out of clean pyjamas. I'll have to start sleeping in my underpants: ugh! That's pants! LOL! Why is it that the last twice I've not remembered the dream? It's not so bad if you wake up remembering the dream; at least there's some enjoyment. But to just wake up sticky and horrible and NOT have the dream there, in your head, then that's a con. Was it Julie Sommerfield again? She was in the last one I remember; dear Julie with her pushy little body, all serpent-like and bendy. Boy, can she bend! I saw her during a gymnastics display at the Sports' Centre and in a leotard she's something else. But I'd like to see Chrissie in a leotard; but would she be ace, would that destroy the illusion? Confusion ensues and, buggery-shit, I'm getting another problem!

"Are you up?" That's mum with her usual impeccable timing. She'll already have the breakfast ready and there'll be boyfriend Phil sitting at the table, reading his "Guardian". I'll sit down and start on the bowl of cornflakes and he'll cough to clear his throat and read me something from out of the paper. He thinks he's doing me a favour, giving me some snippet of news to use in what he calls a Civics lesson, something to impess the teacher. It's kind of him but we don't have that sort of lesson anymore.

Cough... "I see there's been an arrest in the Manchester killing... the one with the teenage boy shot by mistake.... terrible mess society's got intself into... never did that when we were kids... eh... mother?" What did I tell you? And calling my mum "Mother"... what's that about? I've finished my cornflakes and eaten my toast and drunk my orange juice. Phil says that drinking fruit juice every day keeps the Alzheimers away! Shitty-shitty-bang-bang! I'm only fourteen for God's sake!

I've just got time to get back upstairs and hide the sticky pyjama bottoms. Thank God it's only the bottoms... I can still sleep in the top and look the same to the outside world.

Wittering has a magazine for me. It's his way of saying thanks for some help I gave him with his history homework. I quite like history. Miss Gregg isn't in the same league as Miss Matthews, especially in the leg department, but she's got a sense of humour and makes the subject interesting. Chrissie likes Miss Gregg and they get on well; which is nice! And what is the magazine Wittering brings me? It's an old copy of "Playboy" nicked from his dad's collection. Shit-a-Rooney, and what a centre-fold it's got! I have a problem there and then, which is a shit of a nuisance as we're just about to have a maths lesson with "Donger" Bell.

Back home, I have to hide the magazine, but where? Mum's always tidying up so the obvious places are out. There's the box under the bed where I leave the sticky pyjamas to dry out... trouble is they become stiff and you have to rub them vigorously between your hands to soften the hardened patches. Why not wash them I hear you ask... can't do that! Sticky dries quicker than wet and you never know when your mum's going to want to wash them. Put the magazine under the mattress? Nice idea but it's a bit obvious, besides it reminds me of the definition of a mistress... someone who lies bewtween a mister and a mattress... boom-boom! How about in the wardrobe behind the shoes? Not after last time! I'm fast running out of hiding places. I know! It suddenly hits me... tape it to the bottom of the top draw of the cupboard, like in the movies. Shit-a-Sherringham, I've got no tape!

Well, not having any tape proved to be my downfall. Mum discovered the magazine but, rather than confiscate it and put it in the re-cycling bin, she gets boyfriend Phil to give me a talk. I can't wait!

I'm on my best behaviour and I've even sat in the front room and watched the six o'clock news all the way through. I must say that Natasha Kaplinski is a revelation. Oops, there I go again! But, come on now, she's hot! I think Phil secretly thinks she's hot the way he sits there, night after night, lost to the telly screen and soaking up every gobbet of news she gives him: the price of parsnips rises suddenly; there's a threatened world shortage of peanuts; black will be the new fashion black and petrol will become carbon free and a pig was seen flying over Yeadon Airport!

"It's time we had a talk, Tadge," says Phil and I know what I'm in for when he calls me Tadge. He's cleaning his glasses as if there's two-inches of muck on the lenses. "Your mother... ah... your mum... wants me to have a talk with you about things."
"That's nice," I say. "What kind of 'things' Phil?"
"Ah, well, the sort of things that fathers talk to their sons about... and, before you say anything, I know I'm not your father... but... you see... not having a father... it'll have to be me."
"Do you have a father, Phil?" I ask.
"Well, not any more."
"Poor you," I say in my best sympathetic voice and he looks down at his finger ends. Fifteen-love I think.
"Right, well, your mother says she's worried about you and I'm sure she has just cause to be worried about a young man of your age... facing the world with all its dangers and its temptations and challenges.
"We all go though the same rites of passage," he says. Shitty-poo-poo, he's beginning to sound like the vicar that comes to school once a month... what's the word that Chrissie uses to describe his sermons..."Sepulchral!"
"It was no different when I was a lad," says Phil but I was thinking about Chrissie and hadn't heard his last few words.
"What wasn't?" I ask.
"Life and sex and the birds and the bees," says Phil.
"You're not enjoying this are you?" I ask him and he shakes his head. I tell him I know all about the birds and the bees and that I even know the difference between a condom and a wristwatch with a luminous dial. That only confuses him but I tell him that there is a very old joke going around that if you strap such a watch to your penis during sex the nuclear what-ever in the luminous paint kills the sperm. "Oh yes," he says. "I remember that one being treated as gospel when I was a lad."
"What else do you remember from when you were a lad, Phil?" Got him!

"We used to have Civics lessons and something called "The Use of English" and we'd have to read a quality newspaper and be able to talk about various news items with the teacher. Mr Taylor was very frightening so we all crammed as much as we could over the weekends; all that is apart from Fred Freeman who still had a paper round and picked up the info osmosis-fashion, through his fingers it was said. I loved photojournalism and so I got my mum to order the Sunday Times. It was the only one back then that had a Sunday Supplement and there were always great photo-essays on Vietnam or Paris or pigeon racing. I covered my bedroom wall with pages torn from the magazine: Olivier in one of Ibsen's plays... the "Master Builder" I think... next to one about the Paris fire brigade and a ballet dancer and some of Larry Burrows's war photographs. There was the world gathered in my small bedroom in dirty little Castleford. I lived in my head!" (Poor sod! I was beginning to feel sorry for him... shit and treble-shit!)
"Well, I began to watch French New-Wave films like 'Hiroshima Mon-Amour' and 'Last Year at Marienbad', you know? (No, I didn't know) And the Polish ones: 'Kanal' and 'Ashes and Diamonds' (shit, was there no Kiera Knightly or Bruce Willis?) and then I read a review in the Times about an Ingmar Bergman film called 'The Silence' and I wanted to go and see it. (Who is Ingmar Bergman when he's at home?)
"Well, I saw the film advertised at a cinema in Leeds so I went, on my own, to the cinema. Buying a ticket was fine and I made my way into the auditorium and found myself a seat (Wally, what else do you expect to do in a cinema?)and then sat there and waited. Along the front two rows were men, only men. That should have told me something but I was a bit naive back then (Naive back then? What's changed?). There were a couple of student-types sitting somewhere close to me and a young woman with her leg in a plaster. This leg was stuck out into the aisle and she was eating a sandwich. It had started to rain and I wondered if she was only there to shelter from the downpour.
"The lights dimmed and the curtains parted and the film started. It wasn't the main feature. Back then you had a supporting film to fill in the first hour or so before the main feature, the film you'd really come to see. That was unless it was one of those long epics like 'El Cid' or 'The Sound of Music'. (How-do-you-solve-a-problem-like-shit... did Phil really go to see 'The Sound of Music'?).
"This film was about a man who spent the whole time sitting stark naked on the edge of his bed while a string of equally stark naked women came in and he had to decide if he wanted to make love to them or not. It was in very grainy colour and I remember that the man had a moustache and fairly long, dark hair. The men on the front row all booed if the girls were less-than-well-endowed, if you know what I mean (Oh boy! do I know what you mean!). There would be cheers if the girls had, well... large... appendages (Hell's teeth, can't Phil bring himself to say tits?). It was most embarrassing. I didn't know where to look but I couldn't stop myself and... but... Oh God! I'm ashamed to say that I... what do you call it now? I responded... physically. I felt so dirty but I couldn't move and I couldn't keep my eyes off the screen. This went on for a while and then the main feature started. Ingmar Bergman in glorious black and white and, after about a quarter of an hour, most of the men on the front two rows got up and left."
"Why did they leave?"
"You've never seen a Bergman film have you? (I hadn't). Well, he's a bit on the heavy side for your average man-in-a-dirty-coat. 'The Silence' is mostly set in a hotel in a city that is in the middle of an armed uprising. If I remember the film correctly it deals with loneliness and desire and isolation but it has a harrowingly powerful pair of women holding the centre of the film. There was very little overt sex and nudity. The trouble was that when I came out of the cinema it was the porn film I remembered most."
"And now?"
"I remember more and more about the Bergman film though I haven't seen it since. I remember its claustrophobia and its texture and the lack of colour. There's less and less of the porn film intruding, thank goodness." (So, that's what comes with age, eh? And I've got all that to look forward to).
"Did you ever hide your sticky pyjamas under the bed?" I'm nothing if not direct. Phil looks at his fingernails and coughs to clear his throat. Shit-by-the-bucketful, he's actually blushing.
"Well, with me... it was more like... well, I hid my sticky pyjamas on top of the wardrobe!" Double and treble shit-and-shine-ola! That's somewhere I'd never thought of.