Barrel of a gun

We have settled the matter of where to live while the builders are at work. Marianna went to look at a room in a shared house a few days ago. Even though the landlord said he’d clean the room before we moved in the blood stained panty liner on the floor was a bit of a deal breaker. So she put a plea on her Facebook page for a room, tent, sofa and Vikki from the year above her on her course responded. We went to look at her house and the room she was offering on Thursday evening after my photography class at college. The deal was soon done although we can’t move in until a week after Max wants us out. I’ll work around the country and stay in hotels during the week and we’ll find a local hotel for that weekend. I’ll be honest. I’m dreading living there for the next few months. It’s not that I’ve anything against Vikki. I don’t know her, hadn’t met her before Thursday. I’m not sure how many times Marianna has. I’m not a good guest or visitor. I don’t relax easily. Perhaps I could have finished that sentence one word earlier. You can tell me to relax and make myself at home as many times as you like and I may try but it’s unlikely that I’ll cease to look any more at home than Anne Widdecombe at a Miss World competition. You might call me shy or persistently and pervasively avoidant but I don’t mix well. Or at least not for extended periods of time. I can do it in short bursts but I run out of steam. Or jokes. So, I feel I have three months of awkward loitering ahead of me but there weren’t any realistic alternatives.

I’ve been feeling a little stressed anyway. I’ve had a couple of memory lapses in the last weeks where I’ll sit for several minutes wracking my brain for an answer to a question. Here are the questions that have stumped me over the past ten days -
Have I ever been married?
What’s the name of the woman I live with?
What’s the name of the town my brother, Kevin, lives in?

I’ve also been extremely irritable lately. I don’t know if it comes across in the notes. Glaciers can normally form in the time it takes me to lose my temper. If any researchers are reading I now know why serial killers kill. Their killing can be traced backwards
1987 – killed 5 people
1986 – killed 3 people
1985 – killed 6 people
1984 - killed 3 people
1983 - bought a house in need of complete renovation

I could have done without receiving some new case papers yesterday including 87 autopsy photographs of a three year old boy. I don’t know why the solicitors needed to send me the photographs or why the autopsy was necessary. I don't know why they needed to open his chest or peel back his scalp. The imprints of a shoe on his chest and cheek said it all.

We went to Montague storage as we do most Saturdays and after looking at a few options hired a second unit which is a third of the size of the one we’ve been using and have now pretty much filled. Phil wasn’t open to negotiating on the price too much, reminding us of the bargain we got last time. Of course, Marianna felt that her powers were weak and she had failed.

She went to see the kitchen designer at Wickes alone, believing sitting through all of that again might tip me over the edge.

You may be intrigued or bemused to learn that after trying to sell his car for three weeks for £2995 with little interest Martin has increased the price to £3195.

So, the builders are due here first thing tomorrow. Who knows when ‘first thing’ is for them? For me it’s 6.00, for Marianna it’s 8.50. We don’t really drink or eat them but Marianna has been and bought tea, coffee and biscuits because working class people like that sort of thing. I’ve done a few things over the years; given evidence at murder trials, played guitar and sung in front of people, presented at conferences. There is an excitement at this point just before it all begins but, for me, the excitement isn’t about the event it’s always that in ten minutes, one hour or whatever this will all be over.

Can You Stand Upon One Leg?

These notes have never previously included a games section before so let’s remedy this. Please follow these instructions very carefully. Take an ordinary piece of A4 paper. Fold it in half. Fold it again. And again. And once more. Well done. Now, take this tiny square of paper in your hand and walk twenty paces away from your computer. Put your piece of paper down wherever those twenty paces lead you and return to your computer screen. Look back at your piece of paper. Small isn’t it? Well, the apartment we viewed yesterday afternoon was smaller. Included, in this 12 x 15 space was a double bed, a table and chairs, a washing machine, cooker and a number of kitchen units. There was also a bathroom. The woman who showed us around seemed to think it would be too small for us since we were used to living in a house. When I tried to manoeuvre my 6’1’’ and fifteen stone in and out of the bathroom I rather proved her point. The main sticking point was that she wouldn’t rent it for anything less than six months and even if Max exceeds his estimation we won’t need to be out of the house for that long. Marianna was concerned that, since I work from home, I would be eating, sleeping, bathing, working, everythinging in a very small space. On the plus side it’s on the same street as the cinema.

The nature of disability

Who knows what errands we were running yesterday but during them it occurred to us that we could call in on The Door Store which had been closed on two previous attempted visits. I was humbled by Paul, the owner of the store. He was in an electric wheelchair, clearly unable to use his legs, and his right arm and his left arm from the elbow down. And yet, singlehandedly, he was running his own business. He had what I can only describe as a prodder attached to his arm. It ran along his forearm and emerged near his fingers and, since he had movement in the top part of his arm, he was able to stab at his computer keyboard or his telephone. There was a plastic loop on the top of the telephone handset so he was able to hook it with his prodder and lift it to his ear. The Door Store sells doors and kitchens and windows and Paul couldn’t have been more helpful and outlined how if we had any ideas or designs that we couldn’t find in his catalogues then his carpenter would make them for us. I think this man should be the standard against which those applying for DLA should be compared.

As we left we spotted Nigel Heron’s kitchen and bathroom design store which was previously unknown to me. It remained unknown to me for most of the time we were in there. I have, and always have had, a bit of an issue with my hearing but only had it tested and confirmed a couple of years ago. The man who tested me said that most eighty year olds would be disappointed to have hearing as poor as mine. I was touched. Well, to be honest I was a little distressed. I’d always known I missed large amounts of conversations in certain situations but, since these are the only ears I’ve ever used, I didn’t know truly how poor my hearing was. After testing my hearing the man gave me a hearing aid smaller than a five pence piece that actually sat behind my ear with a little wire going into my ear. The difference was miraculous. Then he told me it would cost me £2500 to buy one for each ear and then there was a maintenance charge plus new batteries. You can guess what I said. It’s not that I’m deaf it’s that I have a very limited range and so struggle to pick out certain sounds when there’s a lot going on. In a pub there’s so much background noise that I’ve no chance of hearing what anyone says however close to me they might be. It takes so much concentration to follow what is being said I’ve no chance of actually joining in. It also confuses people, I think, that I have to give them ear contact rather than eye contact. Certain, strange, things might be in my range though. Last year we went to see a comedian and I could often hear a couple whispering to each other fifty metres away above the performer and his amplified voice. It was driving me nuts but no one else could hear them. I also have tinnitus. I didn’t know I had it for years. This is the only head I’ve ever been inside and I’d never chosen to discuss the constant whistling with anyone else. If I had they would have said ‘What whistling?’. I love music but possibly part of my need to always want some playing is that the whistling disappears. Anyway, in Nigel Heron’s store we had the combination of a quietly spoken assistant, background music and, with the door open, traffic noise. I didn’t have a chance. It may be that he’s the only actual designer we’ve met thus far. He seemed to have ideas of his own and said that kitchen units could be made to suite our precise requirements. We didn’t stay long but left with a forest’s worth of catalogues.

Every Little Helps

Didn’t the public house used to be centre of the local community? What is it now? Is it Tesco Express? When we first moved here there was a pub about a fifth of a mile up the road which, I think, closed a week or so later. Their picnic style tables and chairs were left outside after it had closed and Marianna and I gave a lot of thought to carrying one of them home. Then there was rumour that Tesco wanted to knock the pub down and build a lovely mini Tesco. Some minor protests from local businesses followed. The local planning department, who I have some experience of, tried to outwit Tesco by insisting that whatever happened on that land had to be done within the existing building, which looked an awful lot like a pub. So, Tesco very cleverly adapted the existing building and now it looks just like a Tesco Express. The problem with this is that within a few hundred yards of this new store are several mini-marts, a butcher’s, baker’s, off-licence and numerous other independents who were desperate for Tesco to fail in their bid to move into the area. How will their businesses survive? The store opened a couple of months ago and initially I did my best to boycott it and continue to buy milk from the little general store I’ve been going into for the past year. I still do but have been into Tesco once or twice. I’m weak. What can I say? My point is just that I went into my usual store yesterday morning for milk and the store was a little empty. I’m not sure if there were less customers, less stock on the shelves or if it was the smile and hello from the shopkeeper that was a little emptier. That’s all. I’ve nothing against Tesco and the opportunity to find food, washing machines, weight lifting equipment, children’s toys and DVD’s all under one roof and I don’t mind the way they’ve subtly taken over the entire country. But with these stores in the suburbs there’s a more personal, bullying element to their presence. That’s all.

Bang goes the Nobel Peace Prize

Did you call? Were you looking for me? It’s possible that I was in a kitchen or bathroom showroom. Last weekend we spent several hours in The Bathroom Store while bathrooms were designed from our plans and then we went to the bathroom section of Miles of Tiles and then BPS. I liked the selection of each store more than the previous one. Then Marianna pointed out that each store was more expensive than the previous one. Yesterday, we visited Magnet, Wickes and B&Q. Having spent an hour with her last Saturday yesterday we spent a further three hours with Liz. Yes, you read correctly, that’s three hours. My patience was wearing thinner than Sarah Ferguson’s excuses. The eventual price of the kitchen Liz designed was double the price I had in mind. I already knew we were heading there when Marianna told a little anecdote an hour earlier about an ex-display kitchen she’d seen at an exhibition and its extortionate price tag. Liz’s failure to express shock told me she thought it was a reasonable price and I was in trouble. I should point out that Liz didn’t really design the kitchen since all of the ideas were ours. She just knows how to use the computer designing programme but it was her that suggested the dozens of cupboards and drawers that ended up in it. Why do we need all of these when everything required to keep me satiated currently is in a four drawer filing cabinet? We came away with very little since until we pay a deposit we aren’t allowed to have a copy of the design. Giving a fine performance of imbecility Marianna asked Liz many questions and furiously made a note of all of the units and their dimensions and made a sketch. Liz’s face was a mass of indecision, watching the rules being bent but clearly unable to protest.

I was thoroughly fed up by the time we left. I know it sounds awful but I was really tiring of all of the chit chat and niceties. I don’t go to these places to make friends. I just want some nice, functional stuff to put in our house. I recently assessed a bank robber who has gained some little fame. Prior to robbery he had been involved in fraud. He found that he tired of all of the effort it took to con someone out of their money and it was much easier to just go into a bank with a big gun and a smattering of friends. I empathise.

Then we went into Moben to ask what had become of Danny since we’d heard nothing from him. A woman who seemed to have some sort of early onset dementia began looking through the diary to see when he met with us. I kept saying it was the 16th but she kept looking at different dates. She finally found our details on the 16th of May. She said someone would call us. Fifteen minutes later I got a phone call from the area/national/global chief of Moben kitchen designers. Danny had told them that he made a design for us and gave us a quote but we weren’t interested. Of course he did, he wanted to steal us to keep for himself but then didn’t bother for some reason. The global chief was very apologetic and said this was not the way they expect their designers to behave. As well as being global chief she was also a designer and if we sent her our plans she would do our design herself.

Then we drove to Coventry to Wickes. We wandered around their displays but the staff seemed indifferent to us and were busy chatting amongst themselves. The female staff, additionally, seemed to be holding an informal ‘Who can expose the most cleavage?’ competition. I didn’t know if I should announce a winner or just leave them all to it but Marianna gained the attention of Rachel and her tongue-piercing-induced-speech-impediment. She took our details and handed us over to Mark who I found instantly annoying. He conducted himself like a consultant neurologist about to save my life instead of someone about to arrange a cooker and some cabinets. His quick estimate was a quarter of the Magnet price. We made an appointment for 12th June so he could make a design and I could become irritable.

Then we went to B&Q. The quality of their kitchens seemed somewhat suspect when we went in and made the appointment last week. We spent two and half hours with Monica going through the same things we had with Liz. Even though we gave her the design it was the ‘what sort of …’ that took time. Their price was very close to the figure I’ve had in mind. So, we could go with B&Q but our best bet seems to bewww.usedkitchens.com and similar sites selling ex-display kitchens at a fraction of their real cost. The scratches and finger prints are free. We’d then have to find a clever carpenter/kitchen fitter to fit our bargain square peg ex-display kitchen units into our round hole kitchen.

Also, Martin has bought a new car. It’s a whole year newer than his old one. He now has three cars in his driveway, one of which has a For Sale sign on it. In our weaker moments we suspect he’s done this to fill the driveway so there isn’t room for scaffolding.

Kitchens & Caravans

I feel I should make it clear that we don’t have anything you would recognise as a kitchen in this house and never have had. Most of our utensils have never been unpacked, we don’t have an oven and all of our food and crockery is in a filing cabinet I used to use for work related papers. Over the past year we’ve eaten a lot of salads. So, with regards to the kitchen in the new version of this house we will be starting from scratch. It’s time that we had a plan for the kitchen so that Max’s team know where pipes and wires should emerge. It’s highly likely that that’s all they will do for some time because we’ll probably have run out of money by the time they leave and we’ll move back into a new version of the house that still doesn’t have a kitchen. We’ve wandered around the showrooms over recent months but it’s time to be more focused. There was no point in going to Mark Wilkinson’s showroom since their ex-display kitchens are around £29000 so we called into Moben and Magnet in Leamington. In Magnet yesterday we briefly spoke to Liz, who was wearing so much makeup it must have been years since her skin saw daylight, and made an appointment with her for next weekend.

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?

Signature

In my own mind, and there alone, apart from the world weariness and that my new spectacles are a little more Eric Morecambe than they appeared in the shop I was looking very catwalkesque in the finest tailoring M&S offer yesterday morning. Lately, I mostly exist in one of two states; late or tired. At that time I was both. My mind was busily wondering how it was that I was getting in the car fifteen minutes later than I’d planned to when Martin appeared. Unlike me he was sporting the fashion of a geography teacher in a rural comprehensive. When late and tired my social skills may not be all they could be. I think he’d begun talking before I’d registered that he was there. He was offering me an envelope which I assumed contained the party wall agreement. He was mid-sentence when I said “Is it signed?”. “I’ve put a little note in to clarify a few points. It may seem that we’re being a bit over particular about things but..”. “but you’ve signed it?”. “Yes”. “Thanks Martin” and I got in the car and headed off to Nottingham (In my mind the sun was temporarily eclipsed by the series of hats I threw in the air). When traffic lights or queuing traffic would allow I reviewed his two page list of conditions dependent upon which he had signed the PWA. He/They wanted more detailed drawings of the guttering, he only wants the scaffolding to be up for four weeks (unlikely), he wants to be able to access his garage at all times (not unreasonable), they want to be able to park on their drive at all times (unlikely), he will “reserve the right to ask for the scaffold to be removed at any time without undue delay” (ask as much as you like, it wont happen), he wants a copy of Max’s insurance and he will be taking photographs throughout the process (fill your boots. I’ll be happy to pose; evening wear, swimwear, topless). We’re living in a house that is one good sneeze away from total collapse and these are his worries. He clearly thinks we’ll turn the place into Guantanamo Bay and they’ll be prisoners in their home, surrounding by scaffolding and builders backsides peering through their windows and I don’t want to be the cause of their anxieties but I’ve run out of reasonableness. It is no longer my default state. Marianna wasn’t happy with the list of demands and thought we should go next door for more negotiations. I think not and while it’s tempting to shove his gutter so far up his arse he wears it as a nose ring I think we’ll do nothing at all. The thing is that it’s signed and that gives us carte blanche (this is not a Sara Lee dessert).