The Kill List — Ten Things I Have Witlessly Destroyed
(Not Including Relationships and Animals)
I used to think that breaking things and wrecking stuff was a sign of clumsiness, ineptitude and general idiocy.
When you break something, it is a rite of passage.
Like, say, killing a fridge. You only do it once — but once you have murdered a fridge, then a certain innocence is lost. There is also a coming of age.
To reach full maturity requires, I think, ten big kills.
Each kill is different, but the reaction will often be the same: First the incredulity; then, perhaps, the rage; and eventually there comes this bleary-eyed acceptance that the thing is dead and that it was you that killed it.
So: herewith my top ten kills.
Hacking at all the ice in the freezer box. I don’t know why there’s so much ice here, maybe the door was left open, but the thing is now practically a solid block of ice, with just enough room in the middle to store a pack of fish fingers. I hack away with the plastic chipper that came with the fridge, and even though the fridge has been turned off for five days, it is absolutely useless. I might as well scrape away with a tea-spoon.
I search round the kitchen for something more substantial and find… A knife! A good-sized carving knife. The tip is wickedly sharp and pretty soon, I am gouging out great chunks of ice. The ice scatters all over the floor.
A particularly stubborn piece of ice lingers on the side. I try to prise it off like a limpet. The knife-point slips seamlessly into the guts of the freezer, the pipe is punctured, and the coolant starts to hiss.
And after that… well there’s no coming back after that. These pipes can never be mended.
Driving a tractor is not difficult. The steering is usually hydraulic and you are never going too fast. So long as you take the bends wide, then you won’t be flattening the gate-posts.
But the inner workings of a tractor… now that is a mystery. Once the hood is up, you are confronted by all these caps — any one of which might be the right one for the diesel. Or it might not. Maybe it’s the filler cap for the water. Could be the oil.
You study and you study these caps. How difficult can it be?
Surely the answer is obvious. When they designed this thing, they weren’t looking to devise an IQ test.
The diesel cap is clearly going to be the one that’s used most often. Has to be. Not a shadow of doubt.
I fill up the tractor with diesel.
A few minutes later: this horrible grinding sound, wheezing, like an animal that has been poisoned and is in its death throes.
Of all the things I’ve smashed, this was the saddest.
For my 18th birthday, my godmother Ann gave me a very fine rummer; it was a double-sized drinking glass, old, cut-crystal. It gave a tinkling ping when you tapped it with your finger-nail.
I loved it. The rummer was my personal drinking glass. Every night, I drank from it.
One evening, I was putting my son Dexter to bed. I’d read him his story and had sipped my wine from my beautiful rummer; Dexter was put to bed.
I’m in the bathroom and I hear this very unusual sound from the bedroom. It’s a dull Clonk. I am thinking to myself: “What could that be?”
I go back to the bedroom. Wife and son in this dumb tableau as the rummer lies dying on the floor.
But then: if you have fine wine-glasses, you must expect them to get smashed. And when they do get smashed, you must go out and buy yourself another one that is even more beautiful.
A vast mirror — well over seven-feet tall, so big that it needs two people to lift it.
For some reason, I have never got round to screwing it into the bedroom wall. But it is so enormous, so solid, that it should be fine leaning against the wall.
I’m in the cupboard, the bottom of the cupboard, rootling in the corner for some shoes. The door needs to be opened a bit further. I open it a bit further.
It squeezes against the mirror.
I continue to hunt for my shoes. I just need more light. I push the door back another inch.
I suddenly remember that the shoes are downstairs.
I worm my way out of the cupboard. The door is shut. The mirror teeters on its axis, and as I quit the room, there is an explosion of noise, like a bomb — “Boooom”.
I cannot bear to look. I go down to the kitchen to get the brushes and the boxes that will be needed for all the glass.
Happiness is not about the acquisition of stuff. It is about having a few things which are tasteful and beautiful. Three or four exquisite gems, which, every time you look at them, fill you with this golden glow: a picture, or a handsome chair, or a walnut desk that belonged to your grandfather.
This was no ordinary light. It was beautiful and expensive, with a three-foot stem. It used to stand by the TV.
One Sunday morning, before I’ve even had breakfast, my younger son Geordie challenges me to a game of tennis on the Wii.
But even though I could thrash Geordie at a real game of tennis, on the Wii court, it is me who is getting the hiding.
My forehands are mighty roundhouse blows. I am St George slaying the dragon, the Wii controller my sword as I boom the ball back over the net. My concentration is fixed on the TV, and then a moment later my fist has crashed through the top of the light, and ceramic and bulb and shade and all are splintered into a thousand pieces.
In the newsroom, they did not like you to have drinks on the desk.
But how could you not have a drink on the desk?
How is it even possible to start the day without a cup of coffee? On your desk. By the computer.
For a few weeks, for a few months, all is well.
By now it’s perfectly normal to have a cup of coffee on your desk. When your friends go off to the canteen, they bring you back more coffee.
Not that you’ll be drinking it because by 3pm in the newsroom, the pace quickens, the mad-masters become ever more manic, and for the reporters there comes that squeaky-bottom moment when finally — finally — they have to write their story.
Your world is this white-hot focus point of getting the words onto the screen. Phones are ignored as you work your way through this blizzard of papers and notebooks on your desk… and where is that wretched report that you had in your hands ten minutes ago, it must be somewhere… and it is somewhere.
It is underneath the coffee cup.
The report is snatched up, and the cup flicks over and the tepid coffee slops onto the keyboard. The keys fizzle and the screen flickers, and as you stare at what you have done, you pray to your Sainted Aunt that your words have also not been lost into the ether.
If you have a watch that is beautiful, or expensive, or has vast sentimental value, then know this: you’re going to break it.
You can do all you can to avoid breaking it. You can leave it at home for those woodland walks, and for the camping holidays; and you can take it off when you go skating or skiing or when you’re in the workshop; and when you go running, you can tuck it into the pocket of your trousers, safe and sound, so that it won’t get hurt.
But it makes no difference, you know: your watch will still get broken. That is the way of fine watches; that is their immutable destiny.
Sometimes, if you’re lucky, it’s just the watch-face that gets scratched, or perhaps it’s a button that gets snapped off.
You get ready for your run, and as you put on your shorts, you take off your Tag Heuer. Just for old time’s sake. The excessive running motion may not be good for the watch.
For some unfathomable reason you slip the watch into your trouser pocket.
Well over an hour later, as you stretch off by the bathroom, you hear this odd sound from the washing machine. It’s sounding like metal on metal; perhaps it’s a few coins, but now that you analyse the sound more closely, you realise that it’s not coins at all, it’s actually quite a solid piece of metal. Without having to know any more, you go downstairs and pour yourself a large glass of wine.
Most people have never been in a proper sand-storm.
Of course you think you know what a sand-storm is going to be like. It’s going to be windy and there’s going to be a lot of sand; if you’re outside, then you’ll need to find cover.
But what you don’t quite realise is the dust. The ochre dust gets everywhere. It coats everything. It gets up your nose, and your teeth are covered with this thin layer of grime. It works its way into books and clothing and even down to the clothes at the bottom of your rucksack.
I was in a sand-storm in the Sahara.
It went on for hours and hours. As we huddled down in our sleeping-bags, we looked at each other with white eyes and brown faces.
I’d thought my digital camera was safe. It was zippered into a pocket on the top of the rucksack. But the next day, when the sand-storm had died, and when I tried to take a picture of the dunes, it had seized up, like an old engine red-rusted with age.
The task is very simple; perhaps, even, too simple. It is so simple that, seemingly, you would have to try very hard to botch it.
All I have to do, as the new boy waiter at The Old Fire Engine House restaurant in Ely, Cambridgeshire, is to whisk up two gallons of cream.
Just pour the cream into the mixer, press the green button, and watch as it thickens and clots, and when that is done, it will be ready for all the scones at tea and the puddings at supper.
But actually… watching cream being whisked is rather boring. After a few minutes, the cream will start to get a bit thicker, but there is not a lot going on.
Really though… what difference does it make? Whipped cream is whipped cream.
I mooch over to one of the fridges. This is where they keep the smoked eel. You may not have had it before. It is the most delicious sea-food on earth.
I cut off an inch of eel and pop it into my mouth. A taste explosion.
The mixer continues to spin. The cream is beginning to thicken.
I have another piece of smoked eel. I would not have believed it possible, but the second mouthful is perhaps even better than the first.
I will have to have some more.
In time, and at length, I return to the mixer.
Now this doesn’t look quite right.
In fact… it looks very, very wrong. Far from looking like a bowl of whipped cream, it has suddenly become watery.
Who ever would have thought it? Whip cream for long enough and it will eventually separate and turn into butter.
A night-club in Cambridge; I leave my friends and my girlfriend to go to the lavatory.
At the urinals, I hear the faint sound of trickling water coming from one of the cubicles. The cistern is not working properly.
A madness descends. I decide to try and fix the cistern.
I stand on top of the toilet and lift off the cast-iron lid. I place the lid carefully onto the ground.
I nose round the cistern. It is all perfectly clear. The orange buoy is not properly attached to the crank arm. All it needs is for me to give that little piece of wire a twist and that should be everything sorted.
And… Snap. Is it the arm that’s broken, or is it the main valve? I am not quite sure, but what I do know is that water is now fountaining up out of the cistern, and is pouring down the walls and onto the floor.
As I flee the toilet, the water is already lapping at the outside carpet.
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