Stretch, 29. Damian Lanigan

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marks might be scored by: a gubernatorial stretch Zil; a gold Roller droptop on white-walls; a cigarillo of crimson fibreglass with head-high tyre tread and 400 horses slavering at the nape of your neck; any Aston; anything American.

      The acid test is whether or not your car evokes the comment ‘Nice motor’ (or ‘’smoter’) from a black eighteen-year-old male. If so then you’re 5 or above, if not, you’re 4 or below. I drive a 1977 Vauxhall Cavalier. Oh! My Chevalier! ‘’Smoter’? No. Laughing stock? Yes. Score? 2. Better than a Daewoo, purely for the kitsch value.

      SEVEN: PHYSICAL

You could never accuse me of being superficial here, as I always take care to look beneath the skin, as well as upon it. There are two dimensions on which to score; 5 for aesthetic beauty and 5 for physical health. Kind of, ‘Yeah, not bad, but how long’s it going to last?’ Some examples: a Premier League footballer with a horse’s face (getting rarer – most of them look like Zulu chiefs or boy band members nowadays): a 6. A supermodel with an aerobics video out is brushing 10. A supermodel with a syringe of smack lolling out of her eyelid as she goes hypoglycaemic in a nightclub toilet (i.e. most of them), more like a 6 again.

      Despite the peascod gilet of Trex that I sport, I get two beauty points for tapering, sensitive fingers and a winning, lop-sided grin, and one fitness point for being able to go to the shops without the aid of a motorised wheelchair. I smoke Luckies, because hardly anyone else does, and binge drink whenever I get the chance, which I’m sure doesn’t do me any favours, but I never go to the doctor’s (on the same basis that I never open mail from the bank) so maybe I’m just fine. Thus, being in paranoid ignorance of my real state of health, I gave myself a rather unprepossessing

score of 3.

      EIGHT: POPULAR

Do people spend their time at parties scanning the space over your left shoulder looking for someone they’d rather be talking to? How many invitations do you have on the mantelpiece? How many times this week did you spend your break time circling the programmes you’re going to watch on telly tonight? How often do you sit there in the early evenings desperately flipping through your mental address book, wondering why no-one ever calls? My answers to these questions go like this: yes, 0,5, very often. It’s a painful area, and you may well be reluctant to be truthful to yourself. I could even forgive you for overstating your score a little bit. I did. My score? 3. Work friends score half.

      NINE: INTERESTING

Another difficult category, and one with several booby traps lying in wait for the inexperienced. Let’s take an example. I have an acquaintance called Christophe who would give himself an 8 or 9 here. He would adduce as evidence the following: he plays the guitar to a high standard, goes to the theatre a lot, has one Californian parent, one Swiss, both of whom have had complicated and drawn-out nervous breakdowns. He rides a Harley and lives for half the year in a villa in Fiesole giving English lessons to the children of rich Tuscans. Crucial to his impression of himself as a ravishingly interesting fellow is the fact that he has travelled widely ‘amongst the peoples’ of the Himalayas, China and the Arctic Circle, often, as he never ceases to remind one, in difficult and dangerous circumstances. He has eaten yak’s bollocks. He is something of an authority on Taoism. There is no ‘r’ on the end of his name. A 9, Christophe? You must be joking. A 2? That’s it.

      On the other hand, my flatmate Henry is a computer scientist from Leeds. His dad is that slipper magnate I was telling you about. His mum’s a housewife. For some reason he’s a Crystal Palace fan, and rarely misses a home game. His interests include supermarket shopping and TV. He holidays in the Peak District. He likes Pink Floyd and Michael Bolton. Score? 8. A man should be judged by the content of his character, not by the colour of the stamps in his passport.

      I scored myself a 7 here. Oh, all right then, a 6.

      TEN: CACHET

Not the same as popularity at all. A hundred years ago this section would have been called ‘class’ and everyone would have slotted into their given echelon with a kind of Buddhist acceptance: Lord Salisbury: a haughty 10; fresh-off-the-boat-at-Liverpool-docks-Irish-immigrant: a potatoey 1.

      The prevailing convoluted, ironic system of social classification makes everything a lot more complicated. Whilst it remains very easy to score in the lower reaches (rapists and child abusers regularly put in low scores, as does Henry), there is always a lot of debate about the high marks. Low life is just as likely as high life to push scores northwards. Even winos (or ‘dossers’ or whatever we’re supposed to call them nowadays) can score well, as long as they get a bit of media attention. Some other central figures in the new social order are surprising. Footballers can put in some immense scores. In the fifties they had the status of miners; it was good to know they were there, keeping things ticking along, BUT I’M NOT HAVING THEM FUCKING MY DAUGHTER. Now, they are like the young viscounts of the eighteenth century, taking their pleasure as it pleases them with the flower of European girlhood. The Grand Tour is somewhat dumbed down, however; Marbella and Mauritius replacing Florence and Venice, but they’re generally the boys to beat for

.

      Provenance is a key factor, e.g. Blenheim Palace is excellent, but so is a Glasgow tenement. A semi in Purley has retained its ability to put in a fair-to-middling if slightly shame-faced 3. Semis in South Manchester, Wigan, Poulton-le-Fylde, Stoke, St Helens and Salford are much the same as a semi in Purley, with the necessary London weighting discounted. Consequently, I also get a 3.

      So let’s tot me up.

      Grand Total 29.

      Various ways of interpreting this, but the one I was going for at the time was as follows: ‘I am 29% as successful in life as I could be, which is much less successful than my friends.’ Putting a more positive gloss on it, I was a huge 71% as unsuccessful as I could have been. Much better than my friends. Fuck it.

      Coincidentally, when this all started, I was 29 years old. So there it was. 29. The beginning and the end of Frank Stretch.

Three hundred grand

      Half an hour after fleeing Bill Turnage I was still crammed into the corner of the cab (non-smoker, inevitably) somewhere between High St Ken and Holland Park. The meter was clicking up remorselessly, like a digital stopwatch. I was speculating on Bill’s maths. FURNITURE DESIGN & BUILD had a convincing ring to it, but there was something almost desperate-looking about Bill that made me baulk at anything above the high 40s. I tried to put him out of my mind. There was no chance of me ever getting in contact with him, no way he’d bother to write to me. We’re at the end of the twentieth century, for God’s sake, nobody has to do anything they don’t want to do. And anyway, I had more pressing concerns, namely the guests at Tom Mannion’s party and how they would bring home to me with force my irredeemable 29-ness. All of them would be my age, have, on paper at least, my background and education and all of them would have more money, nicer flats, more sex, better bodies, better jobs, faster cars, fuller diaries and fewer neuroses than me. What was worse was that they’d all know it and they’d know that I knew it. What was worse than that was that Tom and Lucy had invited some girl along they thought I might be interested in. I wasn’t at my best.

      Tom,

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