Come Undone

On Thursday morning we had the meeting with Pete the plumber. My emotional response to aspects of the house I’m unhappy with is always the same; on the day it is discovered I am always extremely angry and frustrated but by the time I get to actually meet that tradesman I’ve calmed down and resigned myself to the fact that that aspect of the house will be far from the way I want it. He explained why some of the things were the way they were, some of which we accepted and some we asked to be altered. It’s quite clear he now just sees as overly fussy or having more money than sense. I wanted to point out how apparent this was but I’m really tired of it all now and just want it finished. There came a point several weeks ago where I realised that the reward of the finished house would not be worth the sacrifices made to achieve it. It couldn’t be worth the months of working seventy hours a week, moving out, the endless discussions, negotiations and tolerance of incompetence.

A little later in the day I headed north to Hull where I was working the next day. I can’t explain why but I have great affection for Hull. We lived there for two and half years and really enjoyed our time there despite it being in the top five of all of those ‘car crime’, ‘teenage pregnancy’ and ‘obesity’ type league tables. Since someone else was paying this time I was staying at the Express by Holiday Inn which is part of the St. Stephens shopping complex in the city centre. I checked in with one of the twelve to fourteen year olds at reception, collected my things from the car and went to room 304.

I’ve known people to lose their temper, their mind or lose their shirt playing poker but somewhere around eight O’clock I discovered that I had lost my suit trousers. I had carried them from the car on a hanger but somewhere between there and the room they had made a bid for freedom. My heart sank and it’s possible I began to unravel slightly. It seems that tiredness, overwork and stress either makes you make bad decisions, lose concentration or become highly incompetent. This can be blamed on the renovations too since somewhere in the storage I have a proper suit bag and hanger. I rushed out to explore the car park but there weren’t any trousers out there. You often see a pair of children’s mittens on a fence post, found and placed there by a friendly stranger so I was hoping to find my suit trousers kindly placed somewhere. They weren’t to be found. I asked the security men patrolling the car park if they’d noticed any trousers on the ground. When I mentioned trousers one of them lowered his eyes to my legs, as if each of us only has one pair. “Not these, another pair” I told him. I also asked one of the twelve to fourteen year olds on reception. No trousers. And then David Cameron appeared on the television proclaiming my life to be a natural disaster. Perhaps Gary Barlow would organise a charity concert for me. I hope Midge Ure doesn’t spend the next twenty five years claiming it was his idea. This was a dilemma. I couldn’t really work the next day wearing only my shirt, tie and suit jacket or even this plus my jeans. This was fine, though. One of the biggest Tesco stores in the country was less than a five minute walk away and I’d go there to buy some new trousers. Going to the Oxfam clothing bank was an option but I didn’t have anyone to hold onto my ankles. Aldi wasn’t option. They’re great for groceries and the randomness of some of the other items they offer; electric drill, exercise equipment, self assembly wind turbine etc but not suit trousers.

So I went to Tesco. They had a selection of suits, some for as little as £29 but these were made for people with the strangest measurements. Also, for every fifteen jackets there was only one pair of trousers so there was a limited choice. I’m not a natural shopper and would rather slam my genitals in a car door than enter a fitting room but I couldn’t risk buying a pair in my size and finding that they didn’t fit in the morning. I chose some black ones, shiny black ones which were priced at £10 which must speak volumes about their quality. I’m not sure what the material was but I’d be sure to keep them away from naked flames. In the end I tried on four pairs. I do know my waist and leg sizes so the first pair should have been a perfect fit but wouldn’t go much higher than my thighs. The waist sizes increased in relation to leg measurements but as more and more material gathered around my middle the gap between the end of the trouser and my shoes didn’t seem to close. The pair I finally bought was four inches bigger than I know my waist to be and three inches longer than my legs are. They were huge around the waist but that was the only pair I could find that were close to being long enough and yet still flashed a hint of sock. With a slight change in my eating and exercising habits I’ve lost a stone and a half in the last three months but clearly my volume has remained the same and as I’ve lost weight I’ve gained height. What are these numbers on the labels supposed to relate to since they don’t represent measurements? I think this is really poor. Five year olds in Peru are being paid £3 a month to make these things and so should make the effort to work to a higher standard. I paid and returned to the hotel.

I had noticed it before I went out on my shopping trip but maybe I was in a better, calmer mood then but the people in the room next to me were making a lot of noise. He clearly knew other people staying in the hotel and was either trying to communicate with them by shouting up to the floor above or out of the window. He was coming and going from the room a lot and letting the door bang shut rather than pulling it to and turning the handle. He was doing this a lot. I guessed that he had come to a hotel to celebrate learning to walk upright that day. This may sound unreasonable of me but I was tired, had been up late the previous night, up early that day and wanted to be reasonably fresh for work the next day. On Wednesday evening we had gone to see Neil Hannon of the Divine Comedy in concert. Sometimes people meet your expectations, sometimes they fall well below them (Alistair McGowan) and sometimes the quality of their singing and musicianship leaves you spellbound. The music of The Divine Comedy is almost orchestral in the complexity of the arrangements but this was just Neil and a guitar or the piano but his playing was of such a quality that you wouldn’t notice that the other thirty musicians were missing. I also liked that if you only owned a ‘Best of’ CD you wouldn’t have recognised most of the songs he played since the setlist was a pick n’ mix from all of his work over the past seventeen years. My only complaint was that after the support act Neil didn’t come on stage until 9.10. I think he’s failing to understand his demographic. Most of the audience were in their thirties and forties and don’t want a show that starts at 9.10 and ends at eleven. A timing that had you back at home in bed with a cocoa by ten would be much more suitable. When you’re five and go to a party it will have finished by 2pm, fifteen years later you’ll still be out at 2am but add another decade or two and at nine in the evening when you’re still yet to see the headline act you may turn to your spouse and say “Two songs and home?”.

Anyway, I was keen to sleep and the noise from next door was stressing me. I experienced something similar in a motel in Alabama once. When we had returned to the motel we noticed half a dozen charming looking men sitting outside of the room next to ours chatting and drinking beers. Add some neckerchiefs, a porch and several rocking chairs to the image if it helps. Their noise was tolerated for several hours before I decided to do something about it. Based purely on a stereotype and a fear of being nailed to a burning cross I didn’t wish to go and ask them to be quiet myself so I called reception. I heard their phone ring, some mumbling and then there was silence. And the silence remained throughout the night. I didn’t want to go and speak to the people in room 302 because venting spleen might become beating someone over the head with my empty coathanger given the stress levels I was experiencing at that point. So, just after nine I called reception. I was a little reticent in case I was asked “Are you the man who lost his trousers?”. One of the twelve year olds on reception said they’d call room 302. Then, when there’d been no change in the amount of shouting and banging, I called again at 9.40 and asked if they had called. They had. I told them there had been no change. They said they’d call again. When I called just after ten they said they would try again. I gave them five minutes and demanded a new room. My unravelling had come to an end. They told me Mr 302 had ceased to answer his phone. I was headed out to collect my room key when I found him just going back into the room. He was surprisingly young, perhaps only nineteen or twenty, very, very fat and very spotty. Maybe it was because he had a cream cake in each hand that he couldn’t close the door properly. “Don’t you know how to close your door properly?” I asked. Unfortunately what he thought I’d said was “I’m not very bright. Could you please teach me how to open and close this door?”. He was about to enlighten me. This misunderstanding tipped me over the edge and indeed there was much venting of spleen. You name your favourite expletive and I promise I used it. It was a torrent of abuse. He ceased to make eye contact and hung his head. I wasn’t discouraged. We have all been in arguments and afterwards thought of things we should have said but this was not what I experienced this time. My thinking was sharp and clear and linked directly to my mouth. There was no deviation, hesitation or repetition. I usually have all the authority of a seven year old girl but he was paying full attention. I’m sure you’d like to hear that I was then struck by a moment of self-awareness; a forty year old man verbally abusing a morbidly obese spotty youth and that I foresaw a point in the future when a therapist might be saying to him “Using the dolls show me what the man did to you” but I wasn’t. The problem with genuinely stupid people is not how many of them there are but that they don’t know how deeply stupid they are. It’s not that I think I’m perfect, it’s just that I’m the closest thing the planet has come up with thus far. This young man is now blessed with a full appraisal of his imbecility. He should have thanked me. I left him and went to collect the keycard to room 310 from the teenagers on reception.

Room 310 was the disabled access room. It had a door linking it to another room, possibly for carers. Either my hearing had become quite superhumanly good or there are serious soundproofing issues in that hotel. In the adjoining room were Vicky and Anna. I could hear pretty much every word of their conversation. Vicky’s boyfriend is called Richard. Her mother lives in Minehead. There is a very annoying woman called Monique who works in her office. Perhaps you know her. I didn’t want to complain about this too. Nobody wants to answer a knock at their hotel room door to find a naked, irate man in the corridor. I tried to relax and enjoy listening to them. Their conversation was like a bed time story and I drifted off to sleep to their accompaniment.

In the morning, reflected in each shop window I passed a flash of my socks waved to me from the gap between the bottom of my new trousers and my shoes.

Sail Away, Raymond

It seemed that I was involved in two comedy sketches today. The first is a classic, only not for those involved. I was about to wash my hands after using the toilet at Derby Railway Station when I was attacked by a particularly aggressive tap. I casually pressed the top of it and it sprayed water more viciously than a cannon or cherry tomato across my chest, towards my knees and, of course, over the crotch area. Fortunately my train was parked just outside the lavatory and I quickly entered it, found a seat and adopted a sitting position which would optimise the drying of clothing. I was en route to a court appearance. All dried off by the time I arrived I made myself known to the usher and sat down with my book. The waiting area was filled with life’s rich tapestry as usual. Seated several rows away from me was a young man in a wheelchair. One of two young women seated near him asked “What happened to your leg?”. And thus began the second comedy sketch. He didn’t say what had happened to it but said “I can’t lift it” and proceeded to do just that and straighten it out in front of him. He added “There’s a lot of pressure if I lift it, so I don’t” as the second leg joined it floating in the air. This was clearly a horrific disability. Then he lowered his legs and lifted his trouser leg up, clearly to reveal a scar. The scar was hidden to me but the girl’s faces weren’t and they showed a look of horror as if they’d caught their grandparents at it on the kitchen worktop or had just heard the words “You’ve won a holiday in Bridlington”. Then he stood, lowered himself onto a chair and rested his legs up on his wheelchair. I carried on waiting but kept an eye out for banana skins.


I largely dislike court appearances. I shouldn’t since I’m largely being paid for sitting in the waiting area and reading but I don’t, it’s just too boring. I do love a bit of verbal sparring though when I get to give evidence. One of the barristers today was good, very good. It caught me off guard initially like a boxer who, a few seconds into round one, has realised his opponent is much younger and quicker than him. However, she had a couple of tells and would play with her spectacles and blush slightly when she felt she was on dodgy ground so I always knew how I was scoring on points. The other barrister couldn’t draw the short straw in a clutching at straws competition so was no competition at all. There was no “You can’t handle the truth!!” moment. The defendant, who I’d assessed some months previously, stared at me with a particularly unimpressed expression the whole time. I took this as a sign of a job well done. Earlier in the year a defendant mouthed variations on “You fucking wanker” to me throughout my evidence. I’ve removed him from the Christmas card list. Unless they’re mouthing my home address I’m indifferent.

I walked into the train station at 13.13 and caught the 13.18 train heading homeward. These days I celebrate timing like that like a lottery win. When I got to Derby again I called Pete the plumber. The last time I met Pete his trouser zip was undone. Don’t think poorly of me but I didn’t mention it to him. I wasn’t sure how to; “I happened to be looking at your genitals and couldn’t help but notice…….” or “Calvin Klein?? Me too”. I hadn’t been able to call him previously because I was in ‘The Quiet Zone’ and I like to respect the idea of it being free from mobile phones, games, laptops, conversation, laughter…..Not everyone does but personally I couldn’t stand the festival of silent hatred that would surround me if I made or took a telephone call. I needed to call Pete because Marianna and I visited the house at the weekend and discovered that our boiler had been fitted and the heating was now working, drying the plaster and warping the skirting and architrave. Of course, if you’ve read these missives from an inconsequential life before then the words…..the boiler wasn’t fixed to the wall we’d asked it to be fixed to….won’t surprise you. It was disappointing to say the least. It could have been tucked behind a door but now renders a section of wall useless. The other issue was the amount of pipes which surrounded it. It looked like an Escher drawing; pipes from the left and right, above and below, twisting and turning. There was also what looked like two gas tanks. The whole collection looked like something James Bond might need to defuse at the end of the movie. I asked Pete why it was there. He said no one had ever told him that it should go anywhere else. We did, it was one of the meetings I was actually present at. It was also an opportunity to ask why they had hidden the pipes for the radiators in all but two rooms. That was because we hadn’t ever told him exactly where we wanted them. We did, it was one of the meetings I was actually present at. I also asked why the pipes had been fixed at one distance and were then bent at an angle to meet the radiators. The measuring should have been easy since the radiators were delivered before the pipes were put into the walls. He said they were only bent by a matter of millimetres. I disagreed. It was becoming a rather awkward conversation. He said he was happy to go and complete the work but some things hadn’t been supplied and some decisions hadn’t been made…..”by your wife”. I took it as a very bad sign that he had intentionally chosen not to use Marianna’s name. He was becoming increasingly oppositional and suggested we meet.
After the visit to the house on Saturday we had a few house related errands to run. Amongst these was ordering the internal doors. Marianna was in charge of the negotiations. I forget the exact prices but the conversation went pretty much like this

Salesman: “Those doors are £100 each including VAT”

Marianna: “I’ve seen them online for £85” (This was a lie. The best price she found was over £100)

Salesman: “Where was this?”

Marianna: “Building and Plumbing Supplies Ltd” (Remember, this is not true)

Salesman: “I can do those for £81”. (Thank you and goodnight. Bow, accept applause and exit stage left.)

They’ll be delivered on Wednesday. I think we all know that if I did the negotiations it would have gone like this:

Salesman: “Those doors are £100 each including VAT”

Patrick: “Lovely. Do you take Visa Debit card?”

Last Thursday we had a meeting with Max. The aim of this was to challenge him over part of his latest invoice since he’s trying to charge us an additional £800 for the box gutter that was constructed between our house and Martin’s. The problem is that when we showed all of the builders around the house at the start of the year when we wanted quotes we detailed everything we wanted doing. Max failed to quote for some of the things we detailed. That’s his fault. We failed to spot that he had done this. That’ll be our fault. We pointed this out to him and he acknowledged this but his negotiation technique is incredible and seems to largely involve pretending we haven’t said what we have or just re-stating his position endlessly. He must have been trained by the SAS since he doesn’t give an inch. I’d like to remind you that Marianna and I are capable people. I’ve talked people into confessions and into disclosing things to me they were adamant they wouldn’t but Max is immune to these techniques. He is Kryptonite to me. That’ll be a cheque for £800 then. At least the house is nearing completion. We should move back in on the 4th of December. The kitchen will be fitted six weeks later but that’ll be fine.

Marianna and I, like the Royal family, travelled separately to this meeting. She went by car and I cycled after exercising in the rain on Newbold Comyn. As I arrived Martin was just leaving our house. He blanked me. He had wanted the telephone number of the roofer from Max. To torture him Marianna was particularly cheery in greeting him. He had delivered a letter to us a couple of weeks ago detailing all of the things he’s still unhappy with and photographs of the things he’s unhappy with. One of Anne's sizeable arse wasn’t included. Marianna has written an acidic response to him but I’d really rather not engage with them anymore. One more conversation, discussion or negotiation session and I’ll lose all interest in going back to live there.

I walked back to Vikki’s from the Railway Station along the canal towpath. Thankfully, it was warmer than the minus three it was when I left in the morning but with the increasingly autumnal weather the towpath doesn’t make for an easy walking surface and it’s much like a game of hopscotch around the puddles. I saw a sign on one of the barges; “FOR SALE. OFFERS AROUND £9500. NEEDS A LOT OF WORK. NO, REALLY I MEAN A LOT OF WORK. CALL ME AND COME AND HAVE A LOOK AROUND”. I’m tempted to call. Our house must be worth about £9500 at the minute. The barge owner and I could just swap.

Sail away, Raymond, sail away.

A Pirate Looks at Forty

We are on holiday in Cornwall. More precisely, we are on a free holiday in Cornwall. It’s actually our builders who have sent us here. And this is how they did it; Marianna visits the house almost daily and whilst waiting for a rep one day she thumbed through a copy of The Sun that was next to a flask and lunchbox in our dining room. In it there was an offer for a holiday or mini-break that could be yours so long as you collected a certain number of tokens which would be printed in the paper over the following weeks. So, each day when she went to our house she reached into the skip in the driveway and removed the previous day’s copy of The Sun and collected a coupon. When she had enough they were sent off and we had to select our date and venue and, depending on how many days we wanted to go away for, a very small amount of money had to be parted with. We selected Cornwall and then I ensured that the expense of travelling would also be covered by others by booking assessments in Bristol and Weston-Super-Mare for Thursday and Friday as we made our way west.

To keep the focus on work until we actually entered Cornwall we also made a five mile detour into Exeter so that I could visit one of the solicitors who owed me money. I noticed a month or so ago that their website and phone line were out of action and assumed that they had shut down. Indeed, when we got to the address there wasn’t an OPEN sign, just a huge FOR SALE sign. I called the estate agents who would only tell me that the company had been wound up. I had, foolishly, hoped that there had been some mistake with the website and phones and the offices would be open and whoever I spoke to would be overwhelmed by my assertive manliness and would handover a cheque or carrier bag of crisp twenties.



We are in a static caravan just outside of Newquay. Newquay is not a new experience for me. I was here in 1981 and 1983 with my family. However, being in a static caravan is a new experience for me. Ours was built in 1873 and was last decorated in 1938 and has a very distinct charm. Sorry, that should be distinct smell. I think Marianna is trying to prepare me for another holiday which involves staying in hostels. I wanted to bathe in bleach after the last one. Our caravan was clearly meant to be inhabited during June, July and August and is far from airtight. The whole structure seems as stable as a Sugababes line-up. This, you’ll be aware, is November and it is distinctly chilly in here. Fortunately, we bought our own electric heater with us. However, I’ve really been feeling the cold in general over the past week. Is this how it happens? One minute you’re 39 and wandering around in your shirtsleeves whatever the weather and then you’re 40 and hide yourself under a weight of M&S pullovers. Next, neighbours will be keeping an eye on me in case I have a fall.

Also, and I know this may not sound great, and I’m not opposed to The Sun and the exposure of perfectly formed breasts or an insightful bit of football coverage, but every other resident here actually is a Sun reader. Every fifteen feet around the site there are signs telling people not to park near their caravan but to use the car park. There are two hundred caravans here and only six cars in the car park. That’s my definition of anarchy. I was surprised by how many facilities there are at the holiday park; a shop, laundrette, surfing supplies shop, amusement arcade, burger bar, indoor pool, outdoor pool, adventure playground and cafeteria. The spirit of Butlins is alive and well. There is also entertainment. On Friday night there was ‘comedy and song with the fantastic James and Murphy’, on Saturday there was ‘quick fire comedy and non-stop laughter with the one and only James Laister’ and on Sunday there was Bingo and a quiz. The problem was that none of these started until 10pm and we’ve been very busy lately and had retired, wrapped around the electric heater, long before the entertainment began.

Anyway, we arrived late on Friday afternoon and after checking in had a lovely wander around the town centre. Given that over a quarter of a century has passed since I was here and my memory is as reliable as a Lib-Dem manifesto promise almost nothing in the town was familiar to me. Had I been able to buy a Slush Puppy in Woolworths some memories might have been triggered but alas not. It was clear though, even with the shops shut, that this is a town dominated by dudes. While we were thinking how cold it was we kept spotting people wearing flip flops and shorts. The weekend visitors were easy to spot because they were wearing woolly hats and gloves. The make-up of the town is 35% ‘Fat Face’ and ‘White Stuff’ style clothes shops for the surfers, 45% surfing supply shops, 10% Cornish pasty shops, 9% niteclubs and 1% useful stuff for any non-dudes that may live here.

Saturday began with a shower. The shower cubicle fitted me like a glove which meant that whenever I bent forward to adjust the controls, which were strangely at knee height, my backside opened the door. We ventured out for another wander around the town so Marianna could visit the charity shops and we had an extended wander on Fistral and Newquay beaches so I could try and take one photograph I was happy with. Marianna chatted to a surfer, making his usual weekend visit from Luton, who recommended we visit Padstow, home of the famous Rick Stein’s famous fish restaurant. That is that the restaurant is famous, not that they only cook famous fish. It turned out that Mr Stein also has a shop, B&B, patisserie and bakery, delicatessen, fish and chip shop and ‘seafood school’. He owns the town! Like ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ one day they’ll rename it Steinville or Padstein. It’s the kind of town where everyone seems to shop at Joules and Boden for their clothes. After a very pleasant wander and more photography we went to Mr Stein’s fish and chip shop. I must say they were very good. Then, fully satiated we returned to our caravan to sit with our coats and shoes still on while the heaters defrosted us and our surroundings.

It began to rain during Saturday night and we slept to the sound of raindrops beating a tattoo on the roof. The rain cleared and it was a chilly but beautifully clear skied Autumnal day. We went to Truro for a wander and to view the Remembrance Day service at the cathedral. Following the recommendations of the Luton surfer from the previous day we then went to St. Agnes (although he pronounced it ‘Stagness’). We had a wander on the beach for more attempts at photographing surfers and wet dogs and then a walk on the cliffs. We bought some weighty newspapers and then retired to a pub to review them before returning to the fridge-like caravan. The electric heaters can warm the main room but opening a door to another is like stepping into Narnia.



On Monday we returned to Stagness to walk the cliffs and countryside around the village again. It was wonderfully refreshing. I love the less populated outer extremes of the Britain and always have. I love that the place names are unfamiliar. I like to feel that there’s distance from the urbanised and familiar, to get outdoors and get some fresh air. I’d love a life in which the only footwear I own is walking boots and flip flops. My impression of the tiny handful of places we’ve visited is that it’s a little bit less likely you’ll be in Samesville as in the centre of England. At the extremities you may find a genuine family business or local trader. However, in almost every town and village we’ve visited in Cornwall we’ve found a Boots and a Barclays Bank. Somehow, at some point in the past, Boots managed to sweep aside all competition. The local pharmacist must have sold much the same produce but Boots came into town armed with a points card and a chiller containing finger sized slices of carrot and lemon drizzle cake and the battle was won. Barclays are able to dominate the area because their clear thinking brought us ‘Hole in the wall’ which cleared up that ATM/ Cash Machine confusion which swept the country a few years ago. We noticed that the opening hours at the bank in St. Agnes were 10am till 2pm. There’s a nice, relaxed working day. We stopped by a tea room and enjoyed the conversation of our septuagenarian neighbours. The tea room was open from 12 till 2pm. I’d love to work those hours. When we return from our three day break to our rented spare room and await the completion of our house I’ll work on my dude-like qualities. PARTY ON.