18th May – It’s very nice to just wander the camel route to Iraq, but it’s so much nicer, yes it’s oh so nice, to wander back.

I had a go at being normal the other day. The first part, a thirty-mile bike ride, passed tolerably well. But as soon as I descended from Boffin and rejoined the tribe, we, me and my independent mind, were soon wishing that we’d stuck with the original plan – to stay indoors until the local medical school came to pick up our spent corpse for sewing practice. No sooner had I chained the Boff to the railings of Great St Mary’s, than Mohammed El-Erian comes walking along in my direction.

Yes! The, Mohammed El-Erian. I know! It’s a pedestrian area there, but, as he would, he stuck to the old narrow pavement, and, in my awe, I fumbled with Boffin’s lock and hadn’t got out of his way, when there he was. Him going that way, and me blocking the path.

Was he drawn to me? Something tells me that we’d locked eyes from about twenty yards apart. I don’t know, maybe that’s what love feels like? Mmmh. Now, as you know, I hold those who celebrate the lives of the famous in contempt, but you know what I did next? I said, “Oh my God, it’s Mohammed.” You know, I told him his own name. Then I said, “I’m sorry, I don’t usually act like this when I meet celebrities,” but I didn’t even convince myself. I did stop short of telling him that he was my favourite macro-economics commentator, but only just. Mohammed though, he dealt with it all as if I was, in fact, perfectly normal. He thanked me earnestly for my kind words, then went on his way.

This is why we should never meet our heroes. Not because we suddenly see that they are mere mortals like us, who happen to have been thrown into the spotlight; no, it’s because we see the difference. See that photo down there? He looks like a serious, middle-aged, hefty sort of man, doesn’t he? Nothing of the sort; he is slight, athletic, and, get this, young and fresh-faced looking. See what a camera does to you? What would I look like? A seventy-year-old giant, with elephantiasis? And how would I have ended the encounter? Not with the composed grace of Mohammed, but instead, a panic-searched self-condemning mini-anecdote to redress the balance of the relationship, to ensure that the fan-boy left the encounter with the same status as me.

It’s about breeding, isn’t it? And nurture. Mo, born of intelligent, kind, parents, had no instincts towards people-pleasing; me, the produce of toxic parenting, who bypassed cherished-child stage to go straight to junior-adult who didn’t pay his way, knew only that third parties’ lives, trump ours. I talk about this a lot, I know, and I must append, as I never do, that I attach no fault to my father for being this way. He was a sulky inadequate just as his probably was before him, and his, in turn, before him, and so on, all the way back to the Big Bang of our ancestral line …as I no doubt I would have been, had I any issue to spoil..

My sense is that ours is a long line of peasants until you reach the pantry maid ravished by the squire’s eldest son. Our nuance being, that this son was the first born, out of wedlock, to the woman who the squire would eventually marry, and with whom would produce legitimate heirs. A marriage that came too late for our progenitor, who was condemned forever be the overlooked rightful heir, and instead be regarded as not quite qualifying as the lowest ranking of all his junior (full-) brothers. This explains the sense of injustice and entitlement, without any facts to support it, that has been passed down in our DNA through the generations.

Would I be bound to fail as a parent too? My instincts are that I am too aware of the previous failings not to make a better job of it. But I suppose that it is only once the child sits before you that your instinct for disdainful disinterest in their juvenile antics kicks-in.

And who would I mate with? Frances looks like she’d produce a nice child, but she’s almost forty, and surely, she’s given up the ghost now? Even Big Tooth’s getting on a bit, even if relations could be rekindled; besides which, I suspect that she came into the first relationship without a womb. How would you broker it? Given how late it is in the day, would you simply approach Frances, and say, “I am sorry for the failure to execute a proper relationship yet; would you like to have a family with me?” That has never been my way – my approach to negotiation has always been of a particular style, which I can’t vary now. My method is to drop vague and obtuse cryptic clues into drunken evenings, then leave it for the negotiatee to suggest what I’m proposing, back to me. The whole process usually takes between three and five years, depending on economic conditions. That’s what I should have asked Mohammed! I should have invited him for a coffee. I cannot do, as I fancy Thierry Crapaud does, and just to go straight up to her, and say, “Do want to have a baby with me.” What is charismatic in sing song Latin languages, can sound rude and aggressive in Germanic Old-English.

I write all this at a terrace table outside Gail’s Coffee House. It’s big, with a sort of designed utilitarianism, that feels central European. Those tacky American chains I noticed on the way in, were packed, and had queues out of the door. This should be overflowing, but it’s strangely quiet, as if we’ve arrived before they’ve formally opened. There are trays upon trays of bite-sized savoury buns and sweet confections, that have all been made by hand on the premises. It really feels like Europe, or the 1950s, one of the two.

The woman who told me how the ordering process worked, is the only other person on the terrace, and she’s writing too. I still can’t make all this work [ https://dickiewhitesdiary.com/2025/04/29/30-april-youve-been-crying-your-face-is-a-mess/] and I can’t get the shame of the Mohammed El-Arian encounter out of my mind. I look up to see how my terrace-mate is getting on with hers, when another woman comes out to join us with her sweet little avocado, chickpea and coriander cress, penny bun. She almost brushes past me as I look up, just and so avoiding an intimate incident. She’s so tightly packed into her yoga pants, that a brush against them would have counted as a touch to the person. She went to sit beyond my new friend, then turned face on to me as she drew back a chair, and I counted my blessings for what might have been, as she set her plate down. Those buns. You could pop one entirely into your mouth in one go.

I can’t help but think, as much as I enjoy a gratuitous glance at the contours and form of an inconnu’s vagina, would not a doting father take a different view?

It only goes to confirm, I suppose, that old adage that the foundations on which grandparents and grandchildren build their relationships, is that they have an enemy in common.  And I suppose the corollary of that, is that is why only but a small percentage of us are fit to fill the positions in society that the likes of Mohammed do – only but a privileged few have been nurtured by parents capable of the task. The rest of us are doomed to fail; and whether that failure is big or small, deal-able with, or to be suffered for a lifetime by the innocent victim, is directly proportional to the extent to which your imbecilic parents projected the fulfilment of their absurd dreams on to them to achieve.

I decide to return to my parent’s shed, and give up on the experiment to re-enter real life for a little while longer yet.