It was a Saturday afternoon, July 20th when I really thought about becoming Joe Biden. It started out as me just wondering about the man himself, 81 and wanting to embark upon another four years as president. 81? Bloody hell, relax man, leave it to some younger guy I thought.
Me, I’m only 42 but even I think about taking things easier, especially after that fall from my bike the other day. I do a lot of cycling. I do a short run every evening after work and at the weekends I take a good run over the cycle track through the local woods but this one occasion I decided to go out on a Wednesday, all because Paula my wife had gone out to some curry night and left me alone. Well, I cycled round the woodland track and a tree branch caught in the spokes of my wheel and tipped me right over onto the deck. I took a bit of a whack to the head and I’ve bruised my left thigh but other than that I’m ok. Good job I was wearing a helmet.
Anyway, back to Joe Biden. In case you didn’t know, he’s president of the USA. Theoretically the most powerful man in the world and as I lay back on the settee I wondered if, not only what would it be like to be Joe Biden but also if I could actually be Joe Biden. You know, become him, actually beam myself, my spirit, my being into his body and actually become Joe Biden.
I hope I haven’t lost you there. I know it’s a mad crazy concept but for some reason I thought that somehow, I could actually do it. Maybe it was that whack to the head but lying back on the couch on that sunny Saturday afternoon I set about doing it, actually projecting my persona into the body of President Biden. What would it be like I wondered?
So after a while I opened my eyes and to my great surprise, there I was in the oval office. It was actually more circular than oval. The carpet was a pale blue and the presidential seal was there. I was sitting behind my desk and I was tired despite waking up from a very comfortable nap. An assistant came in and she asked if there was anything that I wanted. I said yes, a cup of tea and a slice of buttered toast.
The assistant, a young woman in a dark business suit looked at me oddly. ‘What was that Mr President’ she asked.
“Tea and a slice of buttered toast if you don’t mind.”
“Not at all Mr President,” she said.
She went out and a man came in. He had a list of stuff he was reading, a sort of itinerary but I wasn’t really listening. Instead, I was thinking about what I could do on my first day as the president. After a little thought I decided that I would really like a helicopter ride. After all, the president does have a helicopter.
“I’d like a trip in the helicopter” I said.
“Mr President?”
“Yes, could you arrange that? We do have a helicopter, don’t we?”
“Well you are scheduled to be going off to Camp David this afternoon, in Marine One.”
“Marine One?”
“The presidential helicopter.”
“Of course. What time are we going?”
“Three pm Mr President.”
“Three pm. Fine. Good work.”
President Joe Biden poses for his official portrait Wednesday, March 3, 2021, in the Library of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Adam Schultz)
About this same time back in a small village in Lancashire in northern England, Joe Biden, the real Joe Biden had woken up from a nap in the oval office to find himself in my body, the body of Simon Harkness, a civil servant aged 42 who worked for the ministry of transport.
Joe was naturally a little confused at first, I mean there he was, the president sitting in the Oval Office, he takes a nap and finds himself in Lancashire, England. I mean, he was bound to be confused, wasn’t he?
Joe was on the couch and jumped to his feet. His surroundings were strange but not only that, he felt fitter and stronger than he had felt for a very long time. He didn’t realise it at the time but he was an 81 year old man suddenly thrust into the body of a 42 year old. The difference was just amazing and apart from a little pain in his left thigh and what he later learned was some severe bruising, he actually felt fitter than he had felt for years.
Just then his, I mean my, wife entered the scene. She was due to go off to visit her sister and she came in chattering about the cheese sandwich she had made me and the left over casserole that only needed reheating in the microwave later.
“Who are you?” asked Joe/me.
“What?” said Paula.
Back in Washington I was getting ready to board Marine One, the presidential helicopter and I was rather enjoying it. A great many military men were saluting me and I was of course saluting back, I was the commander in chief after all.
We were all seated and ready to go.
“OK what are we waiting for?” I asked.
One of the officers looked a little pale and answered, “The First Lady, sir.”
The first lady? Of course, Biden’s wife. Now what was her name? Jill, I think.
After a while a woman came aboard and sat down and I realised it was her, Joe’s wife. She looked a little younger than Joe and soon we were buckled up and ready for take off.
In Lancashire Joe had quietly informed my wife that in fact he was Joe Biden, president of the USA and he was wondering what had happened.
“Is this something to do with that silly blog that you write Simon?”
Joe looked a little confused and before he could answer Paula told him about the sandwich and if he was eating it in the lounge to make sure he didn’t drop crumbs everywhere.
“By the way, I’ve left you a cup of tea on the kitchen table. I’m off now. Don’t forget you’re playing darts at the pub at 6.”
“I don’t suppose there’s any coffee,” said Joe.
“Don’t be silly. You know we don’t drink coffee in this house.”
She gave him a quick peck on the cheek and was gone. Joe walked through into the kitchen and took a bite of the sandwich. It was good but a corned beef on rye would have been better.
Over at Camp David I was trying to think about something I could do to help out in the world. Maybe I could call Mr Netanyahu and sort something out about Gaza. Then there was the war in the Ukraine. Was it worth calling Putin and trying to make him see sense? The thing was they had one of those really huge HD TV screens over at Camp David and I settled down to watch some US TV.
Some aide wanted to talk about the re-election campaign and I mentioned that it was a shame that in such a huge and diverse nation the best candidates were two old men who were both past it. What America needed was a younger candidate, someone like, well that woman who’s the vice president. What was her name, Camel something?
That was when Joe’s team finally seemed to be behind me. After all I told them, I’m 81, it’s time for someone new to take over, some one like, what was that woman’s name? The very next day, Sunday, we made the announcement.
Back in the UK I’m not sure how Joe managed to make it along to the pub but he turned up anyway.
The guys all welcomed him and they were asking about his fall off the bike and when he came out and told them straight, he was actually Joe Biden, well they were all a little taken aback.
“Pint of Two Hoots Simon,” called Pete, the landlord.
“Two Hoots?”
“Yes, real ale, you were knocking quite a few pints of it back last Sunday.”
“I was?”
“Go on,” said someone,“Get it down yer neck.”
“The boys say that it’s your round so that’ll be twelve pound fifty Simon,” said the barman.
“Er, I don’t think I have my wallet,” said Joe.
“Bloody hell,” said one of the lads. “Come out without his wallet!”
“Could I open up a tab. I’ll see that the White House pays the bill.”
“The bloody White House” someone else called and soon they were all laughing together.
It was round about then when I thought it might be time to get back home. It had been nice meeting Jill and a lot of other people whose names I can’t really remember so I went into a quiet corner and closed my eyes and soon there I was, back in the pub. The guys were still laughing about me leaving my wallet at home but Pete was happy for me to come in the next day and pay my tab.
I didn’t do very well at the darts. I had a slight headache so after a while I wandered off back home.
Later, I told Paula about the whole thing, about how I became Joe Biden and went to the White House but she brushed it all off saying it was something to do with that knock on the head and that I had probably dreamt it all. Even so, on the news the next day I heard that Joe Biden had decided not to run in the election and he had endorsed Kamala Harris, his vice president.
I wasn’t surprised.
For an alternative version of this post, click here.
JJ the cat was a lady who liked to be boss of the catwalk. Any other local cat who dared to walk along the wall at the back of our property was soon either chased off or JJ would just plonk herself down in the other cat’s way and just dare him or her to come this way. Sometimes that led to a tense staring off competition which usually led to the other cat going home a different way.
Day 3
Yardley sponsored the BRM team and John Player Tobacco sponsored the Lotus cars, even to the extent of naming the cars the John Player Specials. I also started to learn more about the history of the sport. Who was Juan Manuel Fangio, the guy who had won an incredible 5 world championships? Well he was an Argentinian driver who once drove for Mercedes in the 1950’s. His team mate back then was an Englishman named Stirling Moss. What had happened to him I wondered?
Moss had moments of lucidity but didn’t fully wake up for 38 days. In the excellent biography by Robert Edwards, the author describes Moss’s presence at the hospital in Colchester as ‘something of a sensation’. The switchboard was jammed with callers enquiring after Moss. Even Frank Sinatra called for information. The accident occurred on the 23rd April, 1962. Moss would not leave hospital until July that year.
He was by then divorced from his second wife and he was still a celebrity so he settled down at his 
I’ve been suffering lately with a lot of back pain and I thought I might as well have a bit of a moan here and just get things off my chest. I’ve had a little mild back pain for a long while. I don’t mind that, I really don’t. I’m retired so I’m officially old so it’s only right to expect a little pain. I can’t run anymore; in fact, I can’t even remember the last time I ran. Maybe it was for a bus or something, I don’t really know but it’s certainly not something I can do now.
It’s always good to pick up my iPad and see that my scheduled post has been successfully posted but the next task is to start thinking about a new one for next week. What can I write about? Has anything interesting happened to me? Have I read a great book or watched something good on TV? No? Well, that’s me up the creek without a paddle then.
Once, many years ago, I had a cigarette vending round. I visited pubs in Merseyside, serviced their ciggy machines, filled them with cigarettes and took away the cash. A lot of the time I was in a hurry to get going to the next site. Even so, I would never turn down a cuppa and so many times I would have to drink a steaming hot cup of tea quickly so I could move on. The faster I worked, the earlier I finished and I very soon developed the knack of drinking hot tea,
If the weather stays warm we might stay outside for a barbecue and these days rather than getting the coals ready, lighting them three or four times before they finally get going and getting my favourite shorts covered in coal dust and grease, we nowadays use our little portable gas barbecue. Perhaps I could write a barbecue post? Well, I could probably write a barbecue section of perhaps another foodie post but an entire barbecue post? Probably not.
I don’t usually write topical posts simply because I’m a rather slow and measured writer. Some might even call me lazy. I write a blog post then I re-write it. I add things and take away things. I leave post drafts to simmer and mature and then I fine tune them and the process usually takes quite a few weeks so writing something topical is generally out of the question. This post which I actually thought was pretty topical is therefore only reasonably topical, at least it was when I wrote it, so round about now, when you the reader finally gets to see it, it’s probably not that topical after all. Now we’ve got that clear, here we go.
Olivia de Havilland was one of the great film stars of Hollywood’s golden age. Amazingly she died only fairly recently in 2004 having lived to be 104 years old. She appeared in eight classic films with fellow star Errol Flynn, including The Adventures of Robin Hood in which she played Maid Marian to Flynn’s Robin Hood. Flynn claimed in later years to have been in love with Olivia but nothing ever happened between the couple, or so they both said.
That may sound like an odd title for a blog post but I actually pinched it from the BBC website before adding a small but subtle change. I was scanning through the news and right at the bottom of the page I saw something about My Life in 5 Dishes. It was actually a BBC podcast series in which several celebs are interviewed and asked to name 5 meals that somehow relate to their lives. One episode which I partially listened to was Nigella Lawson talking about elements of her life including her mother who had various eating disorders and died when Nigella was young. A dish she used to make was a sort of chicken stew and Nigella used to make the same dish for her family which in turn brought back memories of her mother.
These days I’m retired but back in my working days I sometimes dreamt about having a really interesting job. You know, something special, something really interesting, something out of the ordinary, something like a Hurricane Namer. Let’s face it, someone out there has to do it; someone has to name those pesky hurricanes. Whenever I was having a bad day at work I used to think that one day I’d search just that little bit harder, go that extra mile and maybe, just maybe I’d land a job like that.
Letters from an Unknown Author! 