Suits You, Sir

Every couple of years Mrs Crox comes out with it and says that I'm a scruffy herbert, and I'd look so much nicer ... so much sexier ... in decent clothes, especially a suit. Now, I used to have a couple of really nice designer-yet-off-the-peg suits, but they've long been recycled into industrial draught excluders. And it so happens that I am experiencing an ongoing crisis of entrouserment, in that almost all my trousers have got paint/putty/glue/sawdust/chickenshit/miscellaneous biological stains/other (delete as applicable) ingrained into them; have seams/buttons/flies much repaired and repatched; or have shrunk, especially in the midlands. The subject of suits came up in the course of havering over a job application (see post below) and although I decided in the end not to apply for the job, the thought of suits remained.

The task, then, was to measure myself. And so, equipped with a tape measure and those few clothes that still fitted, I discovered that I have a 52" chest, a 48" waist and a 32" inside leg. A frame, indeed, that one might call 'Olympian' (though Crox Minor refers to it in public as 'Gargantuan').

My first visit was to ASBO ASDA which is really good for clothes - plentiful, cheap, and well-made, and often in sizes for the more prominent male. This is why, I expect, that in America it's called 'Whale Mart'. Sadly, it was not to be. The suits, though dead cheap, didn't quite aspire to covering my stupendous deportment. The jackets went up to a pigeon-chested 48", and the entrouserments - well, let's not go there. I did come out of ASDA with a couple of XXXL T-shirts and a pair of underpants with pictures of Superman on them, which I guess is a kind of consolation prize, but the Quest for Suits remained unfulfilled. At the checkout I opined to the salesperson that I'd have to shop for suits at Mr Fat Bastard, but this jocund japery was met by a stony silence.

That's when Mrs Crox suggested Debenhams, a deportment department store which has furnished the Crox wardrobe in the past. A couple of clicks and I was on their website, which advertised suits for the larger gentleman. So it was that Mrs Crox and I found ourselves at the Norwich branch of the store. A 52" jacket in dark charcoal with a subtle yet stylish pinstripe was a perfect fit, but the 48" trousers were too baggy. "Perhaps you'd like to try a smaller size?" suggested the helpful assistant - the nicest thing anyone's said to me for ages. The 46" trousers fitted me like a ferret - the salesperson said he thought I looked great. "I bet you say that to all the boys" was my riposte. I bought the jacket and not one but two pairs of trousers. Given that the Debenhams Big+Tall range is called 'Centaur', I felt that two pairs of trousers had to be a working minimum.

A centaur. Not in a suit. Yesterday.

Mrs Crox pronounces the results satisfactory, though Crox Minor said that I looked like Cobra Bubbles, the secret agent in Lilo and Stitch.



I also bought a couple of shirts. Now, when I go into the office on Monday wearing my swanky new duds, people are sure to ask me whether I'm going to a job interview. "You might say that," I'll respond - "but I could not possibly comment".

Mental Gridlock

I am now so overwhelmed with things I have to do, things I've agreed to do, and things I'd rather like to do except that the prospect of actually doing them is terrifying, that I have become frozen into a kind of mental gridlock.

Let's see.

My friendly editor at BBC Focus has called me to say that it's time I wrote my regular column. I really enjoy doing this. Sometimes I come up with an idea, sometimes he does, but it's usually a collaborative effort such that my sesquipedalonious circuitomnambulations are trimmed to sentences as crisp as an iceberg lettuce straight from the fridge. He'd like my column by first thing Tuesday, which would be fine, except ...

... that I'm taking part in a panel discussion on Monday evening, which will necessitate staying over in London, which I always enjoy. The discussion is all about the relationship between science and science fiction, with a heavy emphasis on film. And while on the subject of SF and fantasy ...

... I am getting rather behindhand with the collection of material for Mallorn, the Journal of the Tolkien Society, which I edit. The magazine only comes out twice a year, and the next deadline is Christmas, but I have looked at my calendar and it's already the first week of November. Christmas also happens to be ...

... the deadline I have set myself for completing the first draft for a proposal for a non-fiction book. Read that again, slowly - it's the first draft of a proposal. If I ever get to write the actual book...

... I'd have to prioritize more effectively requests I've had to write material for a Tolkien website, or to go and give seminars in various countries, or to get my head round next year's prospects for conferences I might attend, at home and abroad.

What about that thing I'd like to do that's so terrifying? Well, I have decided to apply for a job for which I am thoroughly unsuited and which is way out of my league. The funny thing is, people whose opinions I trust think it's a great idea and are encouraging me to apply. This worries me, for it suggests a number of possibilities, none of them very appealing.

The first is that I am in the habit of underselling myself and my own abilities to such an extent that I can't see them when clearly other people can. But is this true? After all, my work colleagues seem to have a fair measure of the limits of my capabilities.

Or do they?

When I mentioned that I might apply for this particular job the response wasn't laughter, but stunned silence, which could mean either max respec' - or, more likely, incredulity at the extent of my own self-delusion. Whateva. If I go ahead and apply, I am likely to be putting a great deal of hard work into an application that won't stand a chance of success, which would be embarrassing, and also a waste of time. If I don't apply - well, that would also be embarrassing, and an admission - to me, at any rate - that at 47 I have passed my peak and it's too late to try out new and ambitious projects.

Taking all this together, my only solution is to ignore all of it and write a reflective, self-indulgent blog post, rather like this one, in fact, as a way of getting it off my chest, before collapsing on the sofa with the dog, and thinking about nothing more alarming than going to bed.

Nighty night.

The Maison Des Girrafes Caption Competition #32

OOFTUGs (Orders of the Unicycling Girrafe) liberally awarded for captions to this seasonal picture (Note: 'Excuse me Madam, but does this bus go to the station'? has already been used).

Music News

As if having two blogs wasn't enough, I've started a third, specifically to document my occasional nocturnal emissions excursions into music, as I tote my keyboards round the county in the furtherance of the Majesty that is Rock, the Mystery that is Roll. You can find this blog here, courtesy of WohoMusic, a new social network site for music fans, just started by a couple of friends of mine. Do take a look. Join it. Add content. Make comments. You know the drill.

The Further Zoology at the Maison Des Girrafes

We've acquired a few more pets lately, at least one by accident, so it's probably time that I compiled a formal list. I'm prompted by the fact that we've now bought two axolotls, so that we now have representatives all of five Linnaean vertebrate classes. So, here goes.

CLASS PISCES

A few weeks back we were given a 130-litre aquarium, complete with fish. This one is Zebedee, a plecostoma about the size of a small nuclear submarine. He has a sidekick, Dougal, and there are several other fish of various sorts. All of them are teleosts, members of the largest and most highly evolved of any vertebrate group. They might not look like much, but with eight Hox clusters you get an average IQ of 165 and can do the Times crossword in under eleven minutes.

CLASS AMPHIBIA

Crox Minor (aged 11) is passionate about axolotls (you're asking me why?) so today we went out and bought a couple, which now live in a very snazzy tank in the kitchen. They're only about 3cm long (each) but we're assured that they grow... and grow ... and grow .... This one is Squirty Wilberforce Benson III. Not pictured is a mottled brown one, Attila Ambrosius QueenOfSheba VI.

CLASS REPTILIA

Here's Sid, our corn snake. He's our third snake, succeeding Cabbage (another corn snake, died young) and Tallulah (A King Snake, too fierce, whom we swapped for Sid). We've had him for a couple of years and I think he's on his fourth vivarium. He is now at least a metre long and around 5 cm thick, and consumes whole dead mice.

CLASS AVES

We now have ten chickens - six bantams and four ex-battery hens. They are Charlie and Lola (Pekin bantams); Hermione and Luna (Polish bantams); Bluebell and Bracken (Silver-lace Wyandotte bantams - pictured) and Titania, Portia, Ginny and Cho (ex-batts). They live free-range in the garden. The result is that the garden looks a bit tatty, but we have no garden pests and the soil heaves with worms like a remake of Tremors.

CLASS MAMMALIA

Our first pet was a mammal, Marmite the Cat, who went to join Ceiling Cat last Remembrance Sunday, leaving - bereft - our second pet, Brave Sir Frederick, the Oriental Lilac Siamese, who went around the house howling for his friend before settling down into a sleepy retirement. He has been lately rejuvenated by a new cat, Naughtypants (not his real name) a black tom kitten aged around nine months who turned up in our garden one day, and whom no-one has claimed. Naughtypants has also made friends with Heidi the Dog (pictured) who - to be fair - wants to be friends with everyone.

Victoria, our fourth hamster (she succeeds Nippy, Zippy and Poppy) lives in an elaborate palace in the conservatory, now much bashed around by Naughtypants. Outside lives Beelzebun Demon Bunny of DOOM, who is free-range and sleeps under the toolshed - and eleven (11) guinea pigs.

We started with two females, Bubble and Squeak. We were given another two, Consuela y Juanita, and took in a further two, Blueberry-Muffin and Gingerbread, who had been abandoned in the grounds of the church across the road. We then bought two more, Florence and Emily, to aid lawn-mowing duties. However, Florence and Emily weren't the females that we'd thought, but blokes. Serves me right for naming them after the two transvestite characters in Little Britain.
The result was the sudden appearance of a litter of six, three of whom disappeared/died/were eaten, leaving two males, Punky and Snowy; and a female, Crystal.

I think that's it. I am sure I'll be reminded of any more.

You know you are getting old when ...

A colleague posted an update to Facebook to say that she'd been descended on suddenly by in excess of twenty relatives, none of whom had heard of Jimi Hendrix.

I shall pause, now, while you get your breath back.

How? How, I thought, and quite apart from one's ars being longer than rita's vita's brevis, could one not have heard of the apparently-not-quite-so-immortal James Marshall De Hendrix?

It brought to mind an occasion in, oooh, 1987, I think it was, when I found myself as a graduate student in the college bar, explaining to an audience of undergraduates that there had been, in living memory, a coin with the face value of three old pence, which was bronze and dodecagonal.


A three-pence piece. Yesterday

My young audience, to a man (and woman) refused to believe me. "You're making it up," they said. It was only when I had called in the college barman to arbitrate that they believed me (the college barman being the only person there present older than me, and seen, of course, as the ultimate arbiter and fount of all knowledge and ... er ... whatever it was).

It was then that I decided that I really should finish writing up my thesis and get a job.

Four Conferences And A Wedding

Now is the time of year when the leaves begin to fall and people start migrating to towns beginning with 'B' for conferences. Life at the Maison Des Girrafes has been especially hectic as both Mrs Crox and I have been off to conferences more or less solidly for it seems like weeks. This interval of fervid freneticism is rapidly coming up to reaching the top of the close, but before it does, I felt that I would, with your permission, or even notwithstanding inasmuch as which, without it, give you a communique.

It all started when Mrs Crox, who edits an online magazine for a charity, started her annual trawl round the political conferences. Usually she goes to just one, maybe two, but this year is the last before a general election, so she felt she needed to do all three major parties. The lot. The works. So, on Sunday 20 September, she hoofed it down to Bournemouth where the Liberal Democrats, a party with its feet firmly planted in mid-air, and yet staunchly - perhaps, desperately - convinced of its own relevance - held its shindig.

Mrs Crox returned on Wednesday 23 September, and a matter of mere hours later, I stepped into Caroline, my eVolvo 850CD (1996 model, 122,000 miles on the clock, two owners, one less careful than the other) who cruised the 260 miles to Bristol with her usual effortless ease, transporting me as if on a pink fluffy cloud to the 69th Annual Meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology. It's too late to blog about this now - I tweeted it instead - and was fair tickled, though, to be co-presenter of a poster.

On Saturday 26 September I cruised back home again. Sunday was hardly restful, being filled with preparations by Mrs Crox for the infinite portent that is the Labour Party Conference in Brighton - the annual bash of what is, remarkably, still the party of government, though, it is to be hoped, not for much longer. Given that this party prides itself on being 'progressive', everyone addresses everyone else as 'comrade', and you have to be a trade union member just to be able to cover it - as if the past twenty years never happened. Mrs Crox found this not to her taste, although, she says, the fringe events were very interesting.

On Saturday 3 October Caroline transported me and the younger Croxii to a family wedding in Hampshire, wher we hooked up with Mrs Crox. We returned next day, whence Mrs Crox prepared herself for the Conservative Party Conference in Manchester, a city that does not begin with 'B', though the star turn definitely does. Mrs Crox is there as I write, and finds it more to her taste than Labour. The delegates do, at least, seem to be having more fun. Mrs Crox gets back to Cromer on Thursday.

Now then - where does that leave me? For most of this period I have been constrained to work entirely from home. Which is fine. I like working entirely from home. However, I do have the sense that if I did it for weeks on end without making footfall at the London orifice of Your Favourite Journal Of Record Beginning With N, I'd go completely barmy. Or barmier than I am already, at any rate. What makes it all much harder is that I am, in effect, a single parent - and that's a whole different ballgame. This experience makes me wonder how real single parents cope. Perhaps they don't.

Thereby hangs a tale. Doing a full-time job while simultaneously managing the relentless parade of school runs, lunchboxes, the unstoppable rain of directives from two different schools, feeding and cleaning out pets, keeping up with the laundry and household chores, requires an iron-hard determination and a formidable degree of focus. And so I am up at 6 and rarely get to bed before midnight, and when one is an Age of Middle-and-a-Bit, the fatigue hits you with all the effect of a rotten watermelon struck by a seven pound hammer. And at this time of year, it's dark, yea, even at both ends. Tiredness and darkness piques my inherent depression, and, Ladies and Gentlemen, brings out the aspartame asparagus aspergic in me.

And so, the other day, while chained to the kitchen sink, I was listening to a radio emission on undiagnosed autism spectroscopic disorder in adults. It's not a matter of some people having it and some not. Like sexuality, it's a spectrum - and also highly heritable. Crox Minor has a diagnosis of Asperger's, and as Mrs Crox frequently tells me with that indulgent clucking of spouses inured to the habitus of marriage, I have many aspergic traits. I get obsessed with certain things to the exclusion of all else. I rarely allow others to say their piece without butting in. I loathe loud parties and crowds of people, wondering - well, wondering what the point of such brouhaha really is. And it's possibly not unconected that I am arguably the most senior and longest serving member of the staff of aforesaid Journal of Record who has no managerial responsibility whatsoever. Aspergic tendencies go with tact and diplomacy as handily as the Tour De France can be won by a halibut.

But I digress.

The aformentioned radiometric emission noted that Simon Baron Cohen, the well-known neuropsychologist, had devised a questionnaire, available online, to assess one's own aspergic tendencies. I found the test and took it. Given that I have some experience of Asperger's, and so knew where some of the questions were leading, I did my best to be ruthlessly honest, while at the same time answering the questions as quickly as possible. My score was 36.

Only after I had completed the test did I discover the rubric, which says, in part

In the first major trial using the test, the average score in the control group was 16.4. Eighty percent of those diagnosed with autism or a related disorder scored 32 or higher.

So, there you are. I also know that people with Asperger's are prone to depression: so it could be that the depression against which I have struggled for much of my adult life is really a side-effect of this underlying mental tropism. The rubric goes on to say ...

The test is not a means for making a diagnosis, however, and many who score above 32 and even meet the diagnostic criteria for mild autism or Asperger's report no difficulty functioning in their everyday lives.

And given my current single-parent estate, this must count as an encouraging thought.

Mustn't it?