Deriving from the Greek word Puxos

My fridge isn't working. It's genuinely not working - this isn't the set up to a joke from the 30tys. It's making a sort of old person in a nursing home who's given up on life hum and whine, to the point I think an old person is in the house waiting for bingo and pudding. Such middle class problems I have these days. I went through a phase of almost biblical strangeness where every time I had some sort of gripe like, say, my house was out of orange juice, the TV would put on a child who had no drinking water to put everything in perspective. I think it was the kind of niche advertising marketers dream of. I had to defrost the fridge of it's elderly tendencies, which means I have to sit in my room of accumulated knick knacks. I feel old at the moment, a sort of world weary fatigue has settled over me. I'd love to have accquired some great wisdom at this point of my life beyond what was the B side to Debbie Gibsons single "Electric Youth". My fridge splutters its final breath as it sleeps. There was only a can of coke Zero in there. When I was little, I used to have a distinctly weird lunch every day in Scotland, something like Sugar Free, Caffeine free Coke in a gold can, and a packet of M&Ms. Even the local drug dealer thought I was a kook. And he had a scar of undefinable roughness, that curved around his nose like the demented handwriting of a serial killer writing in green crayon. Maturity would mean having the knowledge to fix a fridge in a rational sensible manner, but I've simply never accquired the skills. If some1ne asked me what my skills were, I'd struggle to name them. Casual deflection of accumulated irony laced girlfriends might be 1ne of them, but it's hardly an employable skill. My auntie, a simple woman suspicious of social climbers, is still capable of carrying up to 15teen bags of shopping around her arms when pushed. And she could fix a fridge.

My woodwork class in Scotland was housed in a proper woodwork factory, an almost abandoned quarry at the back of the school accessed only by skilled map readers and those who could handle the trek - the scent of pine chips and slave labor hung heavily in the air. I was rubbish at woodwork. I made a jewellery box that was glued at 1ne end and nailed down at the other. It would have been the Alcatraz of jewellery box if anyone could put their valuables in there to begin with. Our teacher was a portly man who smoked a pipe, who, smartly realising the futility of plight, simply left to smoke increasing quantities of weed, and not so smartly leaving bored hormonal teenagers alone with weapons, wood, nailguns and a girl called Kerri-Anne who liked wandering around groping everyone for fun. It was a tense atmosphere most days. The ticking of the clock still sticks in my brain, just waiting to get out of there. There was also a car in the corner - well the remains of 1ne. It was like the aging overly painted diva in the corner of the average Tasmanian pub - strictly off limits, with a musky odor, but still it's incongrous presence had it's charms. I know there was a kid called Martin who used to climb in it's rusting hulk, clasp the steering wheel and pretend he was driving to more exotic locations. He had a penchant for driving in big races in Monaco, every twist of the wheel an imagined obstacle or driver conquered. I appreciated the symbolism, since I'd have given anything to get out of Kilwinning at that point. It got so anarchic that class that eventually I just climbed out of the window to sit in 1ne of the local chip shops sipping Irn Bru with a straw, watching rain drops racing down the wall, until it was home time. At the end of the year I was presented with a copious form of achievements listing everything I was supposed to learn from that class. Condensation race bets, avoiding the wandering hands, and coming up with the most imaginitve use of your mind to escape the drudgery of life for a moment - none of them were on the list. I wondered today how I found the time to make the jewellery box, then I remembered, I bought an almost made 1ne for 5ive pounds...sadly the glue and nails were my contribution...

The next door neighbours could not only put together a jewellery box, but 1ne with a water feature and 2nd storey on top of the original construct. He now has a middle level job in England - he's moved on from jewellery boxes to corporate boxes, and swings a golf club around freezing golf courses to make connections that are short lasting but profitable. In Scotland, a corporate box is the ultimate status symbol, a goal beyond all other. I've never been driven to be held in the plastic and glass prison sipping chardonnay with the great and good. My golf swing will be another sadly unticked box in my lifes potential skill set. When I did that particular woodwork class, 1ne day I found a notepad down behind the rusting car, just as I was going to the cafe, as I had 1ne leg out of the window. It was from the 70tys, a sort of sketch of an unfinished idea, a blueprint, some sort of big kitchen cabinet with 1 100ed added extras, rubbed out and re-drawn. I know it was unfinished because the last page sketch was missing several lines, as if it's creator had just stopped dead at some point in the 70tys. I presume it had laid there for 2wo decades, a spiral bound paeon to regret and unfinished dreams. Well that's how I took it anyway. I was fascinated by it, because even then I was obsessed with regret and the fast moving nature of time. No one else seemed to share my interest. The neighbours kid looked at the sketch and tried to figure out the best way to finish it while Debbie - in between thinking about robots and Galaxy Truffle bars - wondered what I was doing wandering around with, quote, "a manky auld book". I think I put it back after a while, and forgot all about it. The wilds of an Ayrshire winter weren't the place for ideas forged from emotions - it was a rational, logical world. No wonder I couldn't build a jewellery box and they could. They had the knack of working out that if A fitted into B you could make C, where as I thought A, B and C had to have some deeper reasoning, some depth. Maybe if I'd changed, I'd have a row of ornately made wooden objects on my mantle, and a more practical mind that could see a way out of my mental box of malaise. Maybe my fridge would work...maybe I'd have a ticket to the Grand Final...

My fridge is given the last rites. I could get a new 1ne because work has an incentive program and I could cash in my points for a fridge. I leave it behind to go and get takeaway. My chinese takeaway where I live is fantastic, a mix of spices and bewilderingly racked magazines from the 80tys mingling together in a bazaar of treats. The girl behind the counter is usually flicking through a magazine to cultivate a deliberate air of cool, and some harried and harassed family is usually huddled around the faux oak counter trying to keep some screaming brat from demanding extra prawn crackers, like, now. I'm usually so easy to serve, it takes all day to get to me, because I'm lost in the maelstrom of screaming kids and pushy elderly women. The man in front of me has 1ne of those hooded tops beloved of men in CCTV footage, a grey melange of stains and fade, his eyes darting from fingertip to floor as he balances a box of fried rice on his wrist while trying to discipline a small child - a child with a surfers air of casual indifference spelled out in his freckles. Inevitably, the dance of rice and gravity results in a slow, almost comic tumble of white grains to carpet, and there we all stand, boxed in, as it spreads across the carpet. The kid barely looks up from his indifference, I've got too much invested in a theory in my head about the decline of the Manchester music scene to be distracted by the seed of the monocot plant Oryza sativa landing on shagpile, and the girl won't look up from the compelling world of the Kardashians to clean it up, and so there the man stands, covered in egg stains, child on his arm hating him, scooping rice from a floor while rain beats down the window in a Kilwinning style race to the bottom. Just for a moment he adjusts his hood, grimaces, and stares at the kid as if he can turn him to ash just through the power of glaring alone. He hands the rice back, leaves in a hurry, the kid trailing at his back, utterly boxed in by responsibility, worn down by it, frustrated by it. In my own world of self absorption, I push unknowingly past an old lady in a race to the Thai skewers, before heading home to eat off a paper plate, and return home, to a restful sleep, ready to wake and try again tomorrow...

I never quite resolve my theories. They remain unfinished. It's a wonder I ever get to sleep at all...