Jem Clarke is in his mid-fifties, is five foot zero inches tall and has never left the family home in Cleethorpes, which he shares with his parents...
As a five-foot overweight man with artificial joints, rampaging male-pattern baldness and only two working pairs of trousers, I have found comparing myself with my peers is a mug’s game.
But Mother compares me with anyone and everyone, and finds me forever wanting. Having watched a documentary on a high-tech high-flyer, she explains:
‘There’s a man in Silly-con [sic] valley who’s worked out how to do only the things that will stop his body ageing, and to stop doing all the things that will age him.’ ‘And why are you telling me this?’ I said. ‘I bet he doesn’t live with his mother.’ ‘I bet it’s the first thing he stopped to decrease his bloody stress,’ I muttered. ‘It’s like you’re the polar opposite of him. You’re charging through your life doing all the things that age you. A podgy Peter Pan can’t fly for ever, you know.
‘You don’t have to be a scientist to know that no one’s lived past 70 on hot dogs and Beano comics.’
‘I don’t eat the comics. And I do lots of healthy things...’ I paused for reflection. ‘I avoid sunlight.’
‘You avoid daylight,’ she snorted.
‘You’re the one who doesn’t like me going swimming.’
‘I’m not having the lifeguard bringing you home with your trunks in a plastic bag again.’
‘That was decades ago – I was 26,’ I said. ‘And my IBS was undiagnosed.’
‘Mrs Maynard still calls you “Duncan Good-Poo”.’
‘Well, she should just let it go,’ I snapped.
I stormed off to the corner café. My head was full of sad thoughts. The last thing I want to do is bump into the ONE person I can be directly compared with – my five-foot junior-school classmate and accidentally longest-serving friend, Mikey Walburn.
‘I’ve been looking everywhere for you,’ he announces in a loud stagey voice, as if we’re in a care-in-the-community Les Misérables revival.
Mikey is painfully thin but taut with muscle – like a whippet on steroids.
His physique is honed from years of combining unsuccessful bricklaying with unsuccessful DJ-ing. Mikey has teeth in only single figures. But still I compare us, and I envy him. He lives the bachelor lifestyle with his own flat, albeit over a tanning shop, and accessible only once the frozen-food shop has moved its delivery boxes from his doorway.
‘My mam has died,’ he announces, putting an arm on my elbow to bring us closer, for fear that the news may be too much for me to take.
‘Oh, I know,’ I say a little too calmly. ‘I saw it in the paper.’
I realise he’s staring at me and judging me for not having been in touch.
‘Mother and Father sent a card,’ I explain. ‘It said “...and family”. That’s me – I’m “and family”.’
He doesn’t look too convinced, and I feel bad. My lack of sentiment is derived from Mother. It’s not that we don’t care. It’s that we process grief more quickly than most.
To prove I care, I share: ‘Mother mentioned that your mum did her hair for Mother’s wedding. Came round to her house, October 1961, and did her hair. Isn’t it fascinating? The links, the roots ... not the hair roots – the historical roots.’
Much as I was unmoved by his mum’s death, he was unmoved by my anecdote. He said, ‘Yeah, Jem. My mum was a hairdresser.’
He slightly stiffens, pulling away, getting ready to end the conversation, disappointed. I try to reach for something to acknowledge his needs.
‘It’s hard, isn’t it?’ I say. ‘We know we’re at an age where our older family members will one day pass. But we don’t know how it will feel till that one day.’
‘Jem. I’m in bits.’
I touch his arm – the slightest tap between two men who barely get touched.
He says, ‘The mind can get prepared for it, but it’s the heart. It always comes as a surprise to the heart.’
It’s a piece of raw philosophy and – now that something has been said out loud – it is enough. We part ways.
Back to Mother’s side via the shop. I present Mother with a peace offering, a bag of small, rabbit-shaped chocolates.
‘I bet these were discounted,’ she correctly deduces. She smiles, saying, ‘Good lad.’
The ‘Good lad’ and the smile mean everything. Compared with every other 55-year-old male on this planet, today I am rich.
