Alan had won second prize in a writers’ magazine poetry competition for his ‘Ballad of the Menopausal Male.’ The postman had just delivered the prize, a copy of The Chambers Thesaurus (5th edition).

As Alan hefted the thesaurus in his hand, he recalled that, in what used to be termed The Dark Ages, poets were feted and richly cosseted in the courts of Kings and Great Lords. When Gunnlaug the Worm-Tongue* (‘worm’ as in snake), the great Icelandic skald (= poet) was presented to the English king, Ethelred the Unready, Gunnlaug chanted four lines in praise of the king and was rewarded with a gold-thread-embroided, fur-lined cloak and was invited to spend the entire winter at the royal court.

Alan sighed at the comparison and went back to his breakfast of banana-strewn granola. As another poet had written: ‘It was all so unimaginably different/And all so long ago.’**

It was raining. Again. So he wouldn’t be going to the allotment. He needed to ring The Benefits Office, not on his own behalf – Alan’s earnings were currently sufficient to keep him in granola and bananas. He would be ringing on behalf of his deaf neighbour, Elspeth.

Alan was an old campaigner when it came to phoning The Benefits Office. He placed beside the phone a cup of tea, Elspeth’s little pile of Benefits Office paperwork, and a chair with a cushion. He dialled the number, heard the first recorded message (‘All our phones are busy at the moment’), followed by the weird electronic music (was it meant to be The Blue Danube?), periodically punctuated by the second recorded message (‘Your call is important to us’). He stuffed the phone receiver into the top of his open-necked shirt and picked up his book, William Morris’s ‘A Dream of John Ball.’***

It would be a long wait, but he was prepared.

He reflected that he soon would have lots more time to spare on Elspeth’s benefits problems: at the end of next month he would have served out his redundancy notice. He’d been a writer for a football magazine ever since he’d left university: it was all he’d ever wanted to do. Over the years, the magazine had transitioned from weekly, to monthly, to digital; shedding staff at each transition. He’d told Dorothy that, after the sacking, he’d go freelance and still be able to sell stories. He was also going to branch out into women’s football journalism: they had a jolly, boozy evening choosing his nom-de-plume (eventually, in bed, they settled on ‘Natalie Lofthouse’). Though the truth was that there was probably as much future in football journalism as in gas mantle manufacture. Meantime, he had to finish his piece about Roy Dwight (1933-2002), who had scored Notts Forest’s opening goal at the 1959 Cup Final, before being carried off the field with a broken leg. He was also Elton John’s cousin, Elton having been born Reg Dwight. Elton’s first gig had been to play at Roy’s wedding.

Alan sighed a sigh so long that it left him a bit breathless. He turned to ‘A Dream of John Ball.’ He’d read it before, but he was wise enough to know that, if you were feeling gloomy, it was better to re-read a favourite novel than pick up one that was unknown and unread. It started a bit slowly, with the author’s several pages in praise of medieval architecture, and the faint background tinkle of The Blue Danube didn’t help his concentration.

Then his cell phone started buzzing away on the breakfast table. More sighing. He replaced the landline phone receiver, closed ‘The Dream of John Ball’ and strode over to grab the cell phone. Surprise: it was his editor (known behind his back as ‘The Jackal,’ for the serial assassinations of his staff). The Jackal rarely phoned him, and even more rarely addressed him as ‘Alan’. A strange portent….

Turned out that The Jackal’s nephew wouldn’t be covering the 2026 World Cup in North America after all (‘family reasons’). So Alan’s redundancy notice was withdrawn and Alan was now to be The Mag’s Man at The World Cup. Could Alan draw up a draft travel itinerary for approval (meaning nit-picking disputation) as soon as possible?

Wow. Didn’t see that one coming.

****

The Ballad of the Menopausal Male

He yearns to wander the wide blue yonder,
To vanish – pouf – like Bilbo Baggins,
To shed his beery mini-paunch
And his many other mini saggings.

He’s a sixty-something, semi-senile seeker,
His new-grown beard’s already itching,
He’s up, up and away to Costa Rica…
Just as soon as he’s cleaned the kitchen.

And to keep everything all legal-like: The first publication of the ditty: in Writers Forum, Issue 167, Sept 2015.

****

*Gunnlaug the Worm-Tongue and Raven the Skald, translated by William Morris and Eirikr Magnusson, Ægypan Press.

**Louis MacNeice, Autumn Journal, in Louis MacNeice Collected Poems, Faber & Faber: London, 1966.

***William Morris, ‘A Dream of John Ball’, Longmans, Green & Co: London, 1924.

Michael Bloor

(Image is of the esteemed author engaged in an intellectual pursuit)