What Has it Got in It’s Pocketss’s
In my shirt pocket, where it is handy, is a syringe, containing five millilitres of a rather pretty golden liquid. It is interesting to consider that whether or not this is a little or a lot depends entirely on what it is and what it is for. Now, if this golden liquid were whisky, then this would not be nearly enough. If however, it were say, Botulinum toxin in its purest form, then it would be enough to sterilise the British Isles of animal life which is almost certainly too much. We shall return to the syringe later.
I am a pathetic, absent minded shambles of a man. I really am. If, by chance, you are one of those fascistically ordered freaks who tic-toc their lives from some geometrically ordered mental desk whilst light glints silver cold from your spectacles, then you would weep on close examination of much of my life. I misplace and lose things with a frequency that would startle you. In all probability, you own something which was once mine. You can keep it. I’ll have bought another by now. Several, I expect. These are the reasons I do not carry a bag or wallet. Pockets are best; I have never yet, however drunk, returned home sans trouser.
Perversely, because I am aware of my limitations, I have over a number of years beaten and trained myself to an almost psychotic level of compulsion always to have my regular paraphernalia in allotted places about my clothing. I am quite obsessive about this, so much so that if you were to shout out the name of any of the objects mentioned herein, I would reflexively slap the appropriate pocket. If you caught me unawares and shouted them out one after another quickly enough, then I would appear to perform body percussion. I am thus able to remember where things are in my clothing when I need them in the same way as I am able to remember where my ears and nose are when they itch. This behaviour, eccentric though it is, is ingrained so as to try to present an image of tolerable personal order to the world rather than have me staggering around, Columbo-like, with flies open and one shoe on.
This obsessive attitude to pockets does have its disadvantages. In my left jacket pocket there is a bus ticket. This is always where bus tickets live. It is their place. It is written. (Train tickets are a different can of pop. When I have them they live in my shirt pocket.) If, however, as I step confidently onto a bus, reaching suavely into the left pocket, I find no bus ticket, then I experience a level of disorientation and panic only a lost four year old in a shopping centre far from home could understand. Luckily, also in my left pocket is my telephone, so I can always call for help if the bus driver shouts at me, or puts me in prison, or whatever it is I expect him to do in that moment of pathetic terror.
It is odd that my telephone should be there anyway, as its place is actually in mister right jacket pocket. The universe is fickle today; perhaps I’m not as bad as I thought. I am, luckily, ambidextrous and so can listen with either ear. Ah yes, the reason for the change of pocket is that the right one is full of painkilling tablets and a ‘Ripper’ DVD. These two are unrelated and incidental. I realise that to someone who didn’t know me, these items taken in context with the syringe might appear sinister, but all is explicable and innocent; I do not sedate and mutilate prostitutes whilst in the throes of a slavering migraine blackout. That is provable fact. The ‘Ripper’ belongs to a friend, for whom I was holding it and the tablets are for any hangovers I might stumble upon. To the syringe, I shall, as I say, shortly come. There is also some change in this pocket because that is where I put it after purchasing the prostitutes. Did I write prostitutes? I meant, of course, tablets.
In the inside pocket of my coat is an ID card with my picture on it. This is not a Blairbadge, it is merely for work. Now I come to look at it, the picture does rather make me look as though I’m being arrested for mutilating prostitutes but can’t see what all the hoo hah is about.
This philosophy of the pocket, or philosophie de la poche as it should probably be termed, in order to pretend someone like Voltaire thought of it and lend it credence, I find flawed. Does the manner in which we distribute the ephemera of our modern life around our persons really lay bare the degree and colour of the significance we attach to them? Are my credit cards really in my left inside pocket because money is close to my heart, or could it perhaps be that all cashpoints are right handed and I don’t want my cards artful-dodgered into the pocket of some tiddly-fingered thieving little shit? Because my house keys are in my right trouser pocket near my genitals, do I necessarily want to have sex with my flat? My back pockets are empty, what does that mean? Are the comfort regions of my being empty and without purpose? Am I a latent homosexual? I think perhaps we look a little too deeply into some things; if you look hard enough in a jam buttie mine, you’ll probably find a jam buttie.
Funny, I had no idea how to start this, but now I can’t stop thinking about pockets. Even the contemporary Neolithic tribes of Papua New Guinea have pouches to carry the poison for their arrows – ah, now that reminds me, the syringe……..
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