Fine
By John Patrick Higgins
To hear Paul Reverb tell it, he’s fine.
Sure, he’s been caught in a compromising situation by his window cleaner and failed to prevent daylight robbery, and yes, he no longer tells people he was born the day Sergeant Pepper was released, as, to his horror, people no longer know what a Sergeant Pepper is.
Fine.
But Paul isn’t fine. He hates his job and he’s not fond of his friends. He sits in his dead parents’ flat surrounded by his carefully curated, reassuringly warm vinyl, not writing the novel he’s not been writing for a decade. Paul is lonely to his bones and will likely stay that way until his dead body is found by his cleaner.
Will Paul Reverb ever find happiness? Will he even recognise it if he does? And who cares if a middle-aged man finds happiness anyway?
Fine is coarse. Fine is sad and sweet and crude and beautiful. Fine is scurrilously funny while making your bottom lip tremble. Fine is a rallying cry for growing old riotously, for not going gently and for not judging people by the state of their recycling bins.
John Patrick Higgins is a writer and director. He lives in Belfast, where it rains.