In Moben we were able to get an appointment with the kitchen designer for this afternoon. Danny joined us a couple of hours ago loaded down with samples. When did kitchen designer become a proper job? Isn’t it like calling yourself a hair comber? Surely people can manage these tasks for themselves. When did people become unable to arrange a couple of cupboards, some drawers, a sink and an oven in a reasonable way? It’s not the Rubic’s cube. There can’t be millions of combinations. Is this a complex task? Well, apparently it is because he didn’t do any actual designing but took notes on our tastes and requirements. Marianna went through her collection of magazine cuttings which, apparently, is a mood board. My mood board would just be a blackboard with “IRRITABLE” chalked on it or a picture of the face of a cat getting out of a bath. Danny gave himself away quite early on by saying that he was an independent designer subcontracting for Moben and we didn’t have to use them to supply the kitchen. They clearly don’t know this is his strategy. He also said that cash payments would keep some costs down. I realised that his early enquiry about what we did for a living wasn’t about what we did but what we didn’t do, like work for the Inland Revenue.
I had a good look at him since I wouldn’t be required to comment until someone was asking me to choose between option A and B or wanting a cheque. He didn’t look like any sort of designer. I expect them to better turned out. I noticed how dirty his fingernails were, that he gave off an odour that was a curious mixture of tobacco and plasticine, that he was overweight but only from the hipbone up and that his shirt was unironed. It looked like he’d chosen it, not from the wardrobe, but from the bottom of the laundry basket. Perhaps it had been washed without detergent or he’d merely photographed the shirt and washed the photograph. It wasn’t really that it was dirty, just crumpled. Much like his face. The lines and bags beneath his eyes were a like roadmap leading you to a town called Debauchery. He was slightly camp but not in the same way that David Cameron is slightly oily (not so much a man, more a shiver looking for a spine to run up) but, and forgive the generalisation, his appearance would have been neater if he’d been gay so I wondered, given the sizeable wedding ring, if the campness was an affectation. Perhaps, like a doorman being macho or an English footballer being illiterate Kitchen designers have to be camp. Perhaps he was intentionally channelling Laurence Llewellyn Bowen when at work.
The discussion moved through colours, styles, cookers and hobs and reached extractor fans. Marianna’s attendance at exhibitions and consumption of magazines have helped her conclude that she wants a very expensive extractor fan that looks more like a chandelier than what it actually is. She told Danny, with regard to this, “I want a statement piece”. “Is the statement ‘I have more money than I know what to do with’?” I asked, clearly amusing only myself since the two of them united in giving me an old fashioned look. I’d declared how uncultured I was. Possibly until that point he thought I was the host or co-host of this party. But no, there I was with a glass of wine in one hand and a vaul-au-vent in the other, a definite guest. I don’t want to sound like something out of the ark but I recall when the main two things you needed in life cost the same amount. A 7” single = 65p. A cinema ticket = 65p. That’s my bench mark. The phrase most likely to fill my head in shops, regardless of what I’m buying, is “HOW MUCH!?!” and wanting to say “No no, my good man I wanted to purchase this single item not your shop and all of its stock”.
Danny left us promising to email some designs by Friday.
Max and his team should be starting within the month, possibly as early as the 24th, so we need to find somewhere else to live. We will need to embrace a new Kerouac existence. We have a few options; rent a house, rent a room in a shared house (I'm much too unsociable), rent student accommodation(you get a cleaner!), rent a static caravan on a holiday park or stay with friends for a few days at a time in the hope they don’t notice we’re homeless. I’m certainly not keen on student accommodation since this would be in Coventry and I have an allergy to Coventry. I’m also not keen on holiday parks since they’re out in the countryside. As much as I love to be in the middle of nowhere it would make getting to the train station and the gym (my only non-work activity) difficult. Marianna’s best idea is that we could buy a caravan or camper van. The logic being that rental money is lost whereas if we buy something we can live in it for a few months and then sell it when the house is finished at a minimal loss. I’ve never been in a caravan and never been on a caravanning holiday. I didn’t know it was something people did by choice. I thought it might be part of community service. And where would we park it? We’ve been living like squatters so a caravan must be the next step. What’s next? A park bench? Selling The Big Issue?
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