Martin rang my mobile at 8.15 this morning. I didn’t recognise the number and was busy so ignored the ringing. He left a message saying that after discussing it with Anne they didn’t want us to scaffold over or on their property. My heart sank and my temper rose quite considerably. At 9.15 Max and Jamie, the scaffolder, visited and looked at our house and Martin's. He explained how the scaffolding would sit in front of Martin’s garage and on his patio and not touch anything in between. As they arrived Marianna saw Anne come out of their back door and squat down on the other side of the fence supposedly weeding. My life has become a BBC sitcom. Not a proper, funny one but the sort that’ll be on at 7.30 on a Wednesday. I didn’t mention Martin’s phone message to Max and Jamie. My ‘Bay of Pigs’ strategy is that we’ll give him the letters and sketches and see if he’ll honour his handshake. What we do if he doesn’t I don’t know. Call on the party wall specialist? Go back to the absolute beginning of all of this and have a single storey extension? Live in it as it is? Now even Marianna, team leader and cheer leader of the project, has said that if we could get the same price we paid for the house she’d walk away.
It’s just a casual enquiry but I’m looking for people. The word ‘army’ or ‘revolutionary force’ or ‘hit squad’ may be going too far but if you know anyone or, you yourself, own a weapon, are able to break bones or have experience of kidnapping people and seeing this through to the delivery of a ransom or signature on a form then get in touch.
I didn’t imagine that Marianna was responsible. I couldn’t really picture her sitting by an open kitchen cupboard picking the label off a bottle of bleach but I thought it best to ask. So, when she had returned from spending Easter in Greece I opened the kitchen cupboard door and showed her the bottle of Bleach and asked if she was aware of it and could explain why it was now surrounded by it’s own shredded label. A visit from something verminous was the only conclusion and the purchase of a rat and mouse trap was the only solution.
On Saturday afternoon she spotted that Martin was performing some task at the front of his house so we went outside to see what he thought of Malcolm’s latest sketches. We had to go through some boring bullshit chit chat, mostly about our car and that he’d spotted the two hire cars during the week, before the subject of the gutter could be brought up. He said he’d been investigating different types of guttering at local suppliers and had made some detailed drawings of his own. He wanted us to get it right because Anne was having sleepless nights about the change in the guttering making their walls damp. I felt a little guilty that we’re causing them distress but equally I wanted to scream “Sign the fucking form” or suggest that it might be the stick up Anne’s arse that was keeping her awake. He wanted more time to research types of guttering but Marianna pointed out that it is only him and the lack of signature on the party wall agreement that is stopping us from starting work and he had two months to reply to our letter and that had now expired.
He called at 10.14 this morning. His drawings were very detailed and noticeably better than Malcolm’s sketches. His concern for the most extreme circumstances, such as several months worth of rain falling in several hours meant that he wanted an extra deep gutter. Why is he so concerned? It’s obvious to me that without a gutter water will come off his roof and straight onto our property. While he spoke and produced another Boy Scout drawing I looked around me at the house and the garden. It was like the Somme only with a greater negative impact on human life. It’s a wonder looking at the state of it all didn’t stop him in his tracks and shut him up. I was doing a sort of ‘thousand mile stare’ and calculating that if we’re meant to have 8 hours sleep each night in my last allocated 32 I’d been awake for twenty of them. I wanted to scream “Sign the fucking form”.
I don’t want to moan. I have no right to moan. I have a good life. But…..I’ve become very tired. These notes usually detail what has happened to us and our house and I throw in a smattering of jokes. Writing them is a nice distraction from work and the less pleasant end of the continuum of the human race I deal with and the reality of the house. But I’ve run out of jokes. I’m working ridiculous hours. Taking on huge amounts of work seems unavoidable and the only way to cover the expense that will soon be upon us. I’m constantly within minutes of or actually failing to meet deadlines and I hate that. I’ll soon be afraid to answer the phone. That’s not true, I’m already there. My strategy for making my deadlines over the past week or so has been working when I should be sleeping. It’s amazing how little sleep you can survive on and keep functioning but it’s not good for your mood or optimism. I notice that it also impacts on your bladder and bowel but you probably don’t want to know that. It feels like I’m bailing out a water filled boat with a colander. It isn’t as if I work on the checkout at Tescos though and being exhausted doesn’t matter. I’m not driving a bus full of school children but I am making decisions about someone going to prison or not, being released or not, how likely it is that this person will rape or kill someone.
I have of late, but wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises; and indeed, it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory.
