(Waiting for) The Ghost Train

Have you ever seen the film The Ghost Train? It was made in 1941 and stars Arthur Askey. I recall watching it several times in my youth and found it quite terrifying. A group of people are stranded in the snow at a train station and the station master, Ted Holmes, appears and tells them about a ghost train that travels along the line. He turns out to be a ghost himself. This wasn’t a twist in the style of M. Knight Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense (You may be aware that the twist at the end of all of his other films was that they were shit and you’d just wasted two hours of your life) but Old Ted Holmes being a ghost was scary to me at that age. My brothers and I shared a bedroom until I was seven and, occasionally, when the lights were turned out at night one of them would whisper ‘Old Ted Holmes’. Aaaargghh!!

Wednesday began at 4am. An awful lot of my days have been like that lately as the pressure to keep pace with the final payments for tradesmen tightens. Obviously, as I get more tired I work more slowly and it become increasingly likely I’ll be awake and working in the middle of the night. I know it makes no sense. After a few hours of report writing I headed to Mansfield by train where I would be spending the next three days. We have, you’ll be aware, had a bit of wintry weather lately. After visiting the gym on Sunday I had a brief wander around Jephson Gardens in town with my camera. I’d been up at four that day also and was aware that it was minus ten outside. That temperature initially didn’t feel any different to the normal temperatures we experience in winter until I noticed that I’d lost the use of my hands and couldn’t operate the camera. Although it’s been cold we haven’t had an awful lot of snow in Warwickshire and even what we have had didn’t stop me from exercising out on Newbold Comyn on Tuesday. I’ve seen Rocky IV so knew a bit of snow was no reason to restrict my activities. Marianna thinks I’m insane.

Prior to my exercise session we had both visited the house. It was good that more of the floor had been laid but it should have been finished the previous week. The front door and its frame had been delivered on Thursday but because the floor wasn’t laid it wasn’t fitted and was clearly being rested in one place and then moved when they wanted to remove that section of flooring. Hopefully it wouldn’t be damaged during these little journeys. It was also nice that so many of the internal doors were now fitted and had handles but on two of them chunks of plaster had been damaged when they were fitted. Marianna returned there Wednesday evening and reported to me that John had begun fitting radiators on the ground floor, still bending the pipes and failing to use any common sense. During Wednesday and Thursday she sent me text messages saying that the front door had been fitted and looked wonderful and when she visited the house on Thursday she found four carpenters, three painters, a plasterer and a tiler (and a partridge in a pear tree).

It was only a mildly noteworthy journey. Ever so slightly the landscape became more wintry as the train travelled north. I should have changed trains at Derby but the train I was on was cancelled a couple of minutes after we pulled into Birmingham station. I was slightly relieved since about fifteen teenage girls had just entered the carriage and I knew that tiredness wasn’t going to make me think their noisy energy was charming. While I waited for a train to Nottingham trains to Liverpool, London, Edinburgh and Lincoln were cancelled. When I got to Nottingham it was evident that a couple of centimetres of snow had fallen. I watched the monitors as more trains from there were cancelled. My own, to Mansfield, was one of them. It appeared that the snow had performed a pincer movement around Leamington Spa but had covered most of the rest of the country. The next train arrived though and over the next half an hour as we travelled to Mansfield more and more snowfall became evident. I got a call from the solicitors hosting my first appointment for Thursday telling me they were closing and might try opening again on Friday. It was a surreal scene in Mansfield. The town was covered in a foot and a half of snow. I was in British Columbia the last time I saw snow like this. I arrived in Mansfield wearing my suit but no winter clothing. I own coats, gloves, hats and all sorts of things but they’re in the storage unit. I walked over to The Midland Hotel which is about twenty paces from the train station platform. A man and woman were just beginning to clear a path from the hotel door so they were able to watch me lifting my feet high to clear the snow to get to them. I stayed there a month or so ago. Most would describe it as ‘Cheap and Cheerful’. Well, one out of two isn’t bad. On that stay, in the morning, I happened upon the cleaner and asked if she could direct me to the solicitors I was due to visit. She only directed me as far as the woman on reception. She didn’t know the address so called for Eric. When the aged Eric appeared he sagaciously told me “What you want to do is go into the town centre”. “Yes?“ “And ask someone there. They’ll be bound to know”.  Marvelous.  The address turned out to be about a quarter of a mile along the same road as the hotel. I quickly checked in and headed off to find my sexually deviant client in his solicitor’s office. I didn’t request directions.


I’m not a fan of Zombie films, although I saw Nigel Havers in a play once, but there is a genre of film I haven’t watched many of but ‘I am Legend’ and ‘28 Days Later’ would be part of it. They seem to involve someone who is the last living person on the planet wandering around deserted cities, particularly past their most famous landmarks. Mansfield was much like this. Once I left the hotel I barely saw a soul. There were certainly no cars to be found since the roads were snow covered. It was impossible to know what was road, what was pavement and what wasn’t compacted frozen snow which would quickly land me on my backside. I minced my way to the solicitor’s offices. In the pedestrianised town centre the pavements had been cleared and very generously gritted. It was like walking in a cat litter tray. I hadn’t been to this solicitor’s office before. The staff who had made it to work were leaving as I arrived. One person was going to stay just so they could let me out later. The building was positioned right by the shopping mall and when the mall’s automatic doors opened a brief soundbite of Mud, Jona Lewie or some other festive tune wafted across to me. It mixed strangely with the recollections of the client with a propensity for indecent exposure.


I walked back to the hotel around 4.30. The only people I saw were council employees spreading more grit in the market place. Shops, cafes, pubs; everything was closed. It was truly bizarre. The couple had finished clearing a path from the train station to the hotel but I was coming from the town this time so again arrived after lifting my feet high to clear the snow. My room was okay but smelled as if a flatulent Alsatian had been trapped in there for a week and was released moments before I checked in. It had everything you could need though; a bible placed by The Gideons and a selection of teabags placed by PG Tips.


I thought I’d woken in the Overlook Hotel from ‘The Shining’ on Thursday morning, having slept for an impressive ten hours. My window gave me a lovely view of the train station and the complete lack of activity there. There had been substantial snowfall overnight. When I went downstairs for breakfast I discovered that I was now in a ‘people stranded in a snowbound hotel’ movie. My fellow strandees included an aged couple both of whom had hearing aids which were clearly ineffective as they shouted at each other across the room; “TEA?”, “CEREAL?”. I asked them if they were trapped by the snow and they told me their home was only a few miles away but the trains stopped going further north than Mansfield the previous evening. I noted that they didn’t shout at me, or the Polish waitress, only each other because both thought the other was deaf. My breakfast consisted of all the things too unhealthy for me to normally touch. We were joined by a limping man who also wanted to go further north and had managed to fall and hurt his ankle in attempting the twenty paces between the station and hotel. I’ve seen ‘The Day after Tomorrow’ and was worried that the future of the human race might depend on the four of us. It would be down to me or the limper to reproduce with the deaf octogenarian.  I thought the Polish waitress may have been a better bet. She was brunette, or at least her moustache was.  The woman enquired of the waitress if there was chemist nearby. She said there was a Boots just two hundred yards the other side of the train station but thought it might be closed. “It isn’t” said the limping man. “I’ve just been over there to get some hair gel”. You know you have vanity issues when you’ll limp through knee deep snow to make sure your hairy is spiky. I wished everyone good luck with trying to complete their journeys.

I returned to my room to call the solicitors hosting the appointments for the afternoon and Friday. The one I was due to visit at 1pm was open and the two for Friday were open too. Ten minutes later the one for 1pm called to say they were closing. I hadn’t noticed intense snowfall or an avalanche in the past ten minutes so was bemused by this. The cancellations didn’t bother me. Normally I would rearrange things so as to meet a deadline but I happily told them that because of the snow and upcoming holidays they could add five weeks to the deadline. So, I had a day in a manky hotel in Mansfield ahead of me. I had the laptop and lots of work to do though. I decided against venturing out to make snow angels, an igloo or a snowman and avoided daytime television which seemed to largely involve people buying homes in foreign countries, buying antiques, moving to the country or being in a hospital. I did spot a show called ‘Homes under the Hammer’ which featured people buying semi-derelict houses and renovating them. Idiots. I did conclude, though, that my room could be instantly closed and reopened as stain museum. There were stains on the carpet, duvet, lamp shade, desk and pretty much everywhere else. When checking in I noted that they had a honeymoon suite. Does it bode well for your married life that it begins in a lowly hotel a stones throw from Mansfield train station? Perhaps that was the room they’d given me. At 10am I noticed that there were ten men outside the train station clearing paths through the snow. They had COMMUNITY PAYBACK on the back of the high visibility tabards they were wearing. I guess on a day when no trains were running clearing a path to the station was a matter of urgency. Their time could have been better spent acting as a form of transport. There were ten of them and four of us strandees. They could have just carried us to our destinations. At one o’clock they were back to work on the new snow fall. The victims of their crimes would have enjoyed the pointlessness of this.

So I spent Thursday in the room typing. I began Friday by checking if the appointments which had been confirmed the previous day would be going ahead. The phone for the solicitors who would be hosting my 9am was transferred to their Worksop office after a certain number of rings. I called every five minutes. “Hello, is that Worksop or Mansfield?”. “It’s Worksop Mr Bodger”. “Yes, you’re right it’s me again. I’m sorry. They clearly still aren’t open at Mansfield. I’ll stop calling”. I called the Solicitors where I was due to be at 1pm. They were open. They would call the client and see if she could attend early. She’d stood me up some weeks previously so I wasn’t optimistic about attendance at all, let alone early attendance. Although there are elements to The Midland Hotel that leave a lot to be desired the staff couldn’t be more friendly helpful. I checked out of my room and was allowed to set up office in the bar for more typing. The barman positioned an electric heater next to me. I was then informed that the telephone landlines weren’t working in Mansfield. I rang the solicitors again. “Worksop?”. “Yes, Patrick”. My friend, the Worksop receptionist, gave me the mobile number for a colleague in Mansfield. I called them and they confirmed that the office had been open the whole time. However, my client hadn’t attended. Criminality and inclement weather clearly do not make for good attendance. It was 9.40am but Eric was in the bar working on his third pint. He asked what I did and why I was there. I explained that I was a forensic psychologist and had five clients booked but slowly all appointments were being cancelled. He talked at me for about ten minutes. I’m not sure if my face exhibited indications of interest. Ninety minutes later a drinking partner joined him and he chose to introduce me; “This gentleman’s a barrister. Got stuck on his way to Sheffield”. I just looked over and nodded but wondered if I had actually been speaking English earlier. “Barristers earn a lot of money” said friendofEric. “Yes they do” I said, confirming my identity as a Sheffield based barrister. Thankfully, he lost interest in me before I was forced to invent an entire life in Sheffield with stories of court cases I’d worked on, my wife, children, golf club and ultimately a dinner invite for him and Eric. More friends joined them later. As I sat typing while they drank I felt like the only person at the fancy dress party attending out of costume. Of course at 1pm when I called the solicitors my client hadn’t turned up. One client out of five was not a great result for the week. I walked over to the train station and joined a huddle of people. I was hoping to catch the 13.41. A young woman told me they had also waited for the 13.11 and 12.41 but no trains appeared. Waiting for the Ghost Train.

But the 13.41 came.

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.

Of Mice and Men

I visited the for the first time in well over a week today. I really have underestimated how much work this is for Marianna. I mean no great disrespect to our building team but most of them are remarkably disorganised and persistently lacking in common sense. The plasterers are the exception and are a brilliant team of three and seem very efficient. They keep Marianna informed of what they’re doing and how they intend to go about it and make sure they understand her wishes before going ahead. Their work has certainly transformed the house and it looks increasingly finished. We had a lengthy discussion with Max who wants the radiators fitted so that the heating can be switched on which will help the plaster dry. Then he wants to work from the top floor down adding skirting, architraves and doors. He’s eager to get it all finished.


Then we had a major row with John the plumbing partner of Pete the Plumber. There’s more than a slight hint of a George and Lennie element to their partnership and it’s much easier to deal with Pete. They’re not so much ‘& Son’ as ‘& Dad’. John had noticed that the shower we bought for the top floor will deposit the water slightly outside of the tray and yet had begun fitting it. We questioned why on earth he would begin to do so rather than call us. It wasn’t his job he told us. We bought it and he was there to fit it. We discussed swapping the second floor shower fittings with the first floor shower but unfortunately the pipes for these were different and were hidden by plaster and tiles. Taking the shower back to the suppliers may seem an obvious solution but Dave had opened the box and spread it out flat like a beach towel to kneel on. Somehow he had also managed to scratch part of the shower. Marianna also noticed marks on a sink and a toilet he had fitted. John doesn’t do discussion or negotiation or acceptance of responsibility but seems to do stropping and then walking out. The damage on the basin and toilet wasn’t his responsibility. They were ours. They weren’t marked when they were delivered we said. But that still wasn’t his responsibility; “I’m not like you, I don’t go over things with a fine toothed comb when I buy them”. Mmm, and that’s why it isn’t ‘& Son’ mate. So I rang Pete who is a sweet and lovely man. He said that if toilets and basins were damaged they’d be replaced. If the shower was damaged he’d try to use it with another customer for us. And if we wanted to remove the tiles and plaster and swap the two showers we could. But obviously we won’t, we’ll buy a shower that fits the tray.

There has also been some drama with the bi-fold doors which were fitted two weeks ago. The fitters were due to arrive at eight. They didn’t arrive and didn’t make contact until 10.40 when they said they wouldn’t be able to make it that day but would come the next. Marianna met with them in the morning, gave them her number and asked that they would call when they thought they were half an hour from finishing so she could go to the house from work for an inspection and instruction on how they opened, closed and locked. When she returned at 4.20 they had gone. We now have a bent set of keys, damaged by one of the builders because, it turns out, once you’ve unlocked the door you have to remove the keys before trying to open the doors. We’ve also noticed thirty two different marks, scratches and blemishes on them. Perhaps that’s why they didn’t hang around at the end of their day. We’ve only paid 50% of the cost at present. That may be all we end up paying.

On a similar subject of daftness after the Velux windows were fitted the roofers passed tiles and equipment through them when they were still working on the roof. So the white frames of the windows have some nice marks and scratches.

These are the frustrations that Marianna is experiencing on a daily basis and she’s really tiring of how dismissive a lot of Max’s team can be. She tells them how she would like something done, they laugh and say it’s not possible and she has to produce the magazine or brochure where she saw that design or idea. It’s true that she thinks almost every word used in this country is derived from the Greek language and that the ancient Greeks invented everything worthwhile except for Wii and those cushioned trays that help you eat and watch tv but she’d hadn’t previously believed herself to be a huge intellect. And yet our builders are forcing this belief upon her. She walks around the house with the electrician/plumber/carpenter telling them what she wants and where she wants it and returns the next day to find that the wrong type has been fitted or it’s in the wrong place. They always acknowledge the error but make her seem unreasonably fussy when she wants it altered. It’s also unreasonable that she refuses to pay for the alteration. Recently, despite there being pipes coming from the wall, the shape of a radiator drawn on the wall and the word ‘Radiator’ written in the shape the electrician still tried to fit a wall socket there. It just defies belief. It’s like those people who press the button at the pedestrian crossing even though there are already a dozen people standing and waiting for the flashing green man to tell them to cross; “Thank God you came along mate. We’ve all been standing here for hours. It didn’t occur to us to press the button”. What can I say? Some people get to sit on the intellectual carnival float and others, flag in hand, watch it go by.

Goin' Back

Treasure every moment you hear music. I bought three CD’s today; ‘Let There Be Rock’ and ‘Highway to Hell’ by AC/DC and ‘The Best of The Carpenters’. All from the bargain bin in the supermarket. I felt that I deserved a treat after a largely wasted morning. A large percentage of the time that a court appearance is pencilled into my diary it is cancelled before that date arrives or is cancelled when I’m half way there. Often I’ll go to the court, sit and read a novel in the waiting area and then be sent home because I’m surplus to requirements. Occasionally, I get to shine and actually give evidence. Today was a sitting with a novel in the waiting area day. After a two and half hour drive to Lincoln I sat in the waiting area with the lumpen and my John Irving novel and was then called for a five minute consultation with the barristers and solicitors. And then I was sent on my way. I stopped on the outskirts of Lincoln for diesel and it was whilst paying that the CD’s called to me, wanting to be rescued. The cashier eyed my choices and me carefully. She was clearly thinking that an error had occurred and someone who loved the guitar riffs of Angus Young couldn’t possibly love the voice of Karen Carpenter. In the same way that Attitude and FHM magazines don’t appear in the same shopping basket or custard and roast lamb don’t go together. I played my new CD’s on the drive home and sang along joyously to all of them.

I love music. You may know this about me. I own a lot of CD’s but, because of my age, I own an awful lot of records. Those who have been unfortunate enough to live me know I have an anecdote for each one, perhaps about the band or where I bought the particular LP or the weather on the day I bought it. For your own safety, don’t get trapped in a room with me when I’m playing records. If I know you particularly well I may tell you how I went into Andy’s records in Kings Lynn in 1985 and asked for the twelve inch version of ‘Bring it Down’ by The Foreskins when it was actually a recording by The Redskins I was hoping to purchase that day. I was thirty nine when I got over the humiliation. My record and CD collection is varied. There’s a lot of Beatles and ex-Beatles, pop, metal, Bach, Rockabilly, Nat King Cole, Country, AC/DC, Musicals and even 50Cent. It is possible to appreciate the beauty in all of these. I like to discover new artists and re-discover old ones; perhaps those whose music I didn’t buy at the time but heard coming through the wall from my brothers’ bedroom in my childhood. I didn’t buy a CD player until 1993 and throughout the 90’s still bought vinyl records as much as I bought CD’s. I was often buying those my brothers had bought a decade or so previously but were no longer available to me since we were no longer in the same house. I liked to go into what I called ‘the sad record shop’ in Kings Lynn and flick through the records. And occasionally buy one or two.

I don’t believe in ‘Guilty Pleasures’, the idea that we should be embarrassed by some of our likes and preferences, that there might be some items in our CD/record collection which we would wish to hide and others we may wish to boast about. It’s a nonsense to rave about the Black Eyed Peas CD you bought last week to a visiting friend, hoping they don’t notice you have the entire Steps back catalogue. It might impress you to know that the first single I bought was ‘Oliver’s Army’ by Elvis Costello. You may be less impressed to know that my second purchase was ‘Honey I’m Lost’ by The Dooley’s (the Steps of their day). There is nothing within the nature of either that makes one better than the other. It’s all a matter of personal taste. I worry about the future of such variety given the cynicism of The X-Factor. Some do believe in that elitism. A few years ago I sold a few LP’s and singles that I rarely played. The man who bought them from me was happy to mock me for ever buying ‘Reg Strikes Back’ by Elton John but was overjoyed at the opportunity to buy my copy of ‘Have Twangy Guitar Will Travel’ by Duane Eddy. However, I’d only played the Duane Eddy once whereas, although I was happy to part with it then, Elton John had been played many times when first purchased.
Music can take you somewhere. It may be in the emotions the voice evokes, it might be the words, the arrangements, the chord choices and progressions or it might be what you know of the story behind the lyrics, who the songwriter had in mind when writing. It might remind you of something and open a door to the past. In my early twenties, when I had my own little house, I was in the habit of drifting off to sleep listening to Radio 1 (I got off that bus a long while ago). As I was drifting somewhere between consciousness and sleep one night a song was played on the radio that suddenly took me to the front room of the home my family lived in until I was 5 and ¾‘s. I would have struggled to describe that room if you’d asked me to but the chords and lyrics of this song took me there. As the song played I could see the room and I could feel the simplicity of life when I was that young. I knew the song must have been by one of the artists whose records my mum loved to play; Crystal Gayle, Johnny Mathis, The Carpenters etc. The next day I called my brother and sang/mumbled the song to him and he identified it as ‘Wichita Lineman’ by Glen Campbell. Of course, I bought a Glen Campbell LP as soon as I could. It felt like a connection to the past. It’s for that same reason that I bought The Carpenters today. Great music and a door into the past.

When I was young the radio played just for me. It saved me.

Ooh, new shoes Jeremy?

I don’t know why getting a haircut isn’t a more simple process. Take, for instance, ordering a sandwich at Subway. If you order a veggie patty on Honey Oat and then indicate that you want some lettuce, tomato, cucumber and a squirt of Mayo. You will almost definitely get a veggie patty on Honey Oat with lettuce, tomato, cucumber and Mayo. Also, if you are at the train station and buy a ticket to Barnsley you will almost definitely have a small piece of card that gives you the opportunity to travel as far as Barnsley provided you’re bright enough to get on the right train. However, for many years I have sat in the hairdresser’s/barber’s chair described exactly the same haircut/style and left each time with a completely different style (none of which have ever pleased me). So, when I sat in the chair on Saturday morning and the architect of disappointment asked “What are we doing with you today?” I wanted to say “Humiliating and disappointing me?” since that’s the way it normally works out. Alternatively, I could have said, “Just like this, only with five weeks less hair, since that’s when you last did it”. One thing was for sure, I didn’t want it like his. Red and spiky this time, blonde and floppy last time. Last time he didn’t cut it as I wanted but there I was again. My thinking of late is that I’ll make appointments and go to the same place regularly to avoid the occasional hair disaster that comes from going in anyoldplace in anyoldtown when I’m working and find myself with some time to kill. The main problem I have is that whatever is done to my hair I’ll say “That’s great, thanks”, probably leave a tip and certainly make another appointment. All this may make me sound like I’m overly fussy. I’m not. I’m largely indifferent to how my hair looks. Perhaps it’s just frustrations associated with the “I’d like this” – “I’ll be giving you something completely different” interaction and that I feel something better should come out of staring at myself in the mirror for twenty minutes whilst making chitchat with the young man disappointing me. This was our third meeting and I know all I could want to about him. I’ve assessed and formulated him and even offered some therapy.

This excitement came at the end of a week working away from home which had been intense and draining. It’s a way of maximising profits and my time. Rather than drive one hundred miles up the motorway and doing it again, largely in a similar direction, a few days later I’ll stay over in cheap hotels and squeeze in as many clients and assessments as I can. In the evenings I can begin to type up the person I’ve seen that day. By the end of the week they’ve all merged into one seriously messed up, dangerous person. Since this is work I end up in the type of hotel that only gives you the terrestrial tv channels rather than dozens of satellite ones and gives you a complimentary bar of soap the thickness of a postage stamp rather than some complimentary bottles of shower gel. I can’t pretend it was all work though since I got stood up twice. This can be very frustrating but is worse for the client since judges tend to frown on failure to attend for psychological assessment.

Since this left me with several hours to kill until the next appointment or the time when I could check into the hotel I went to the cinema. I’m sure I could have shopped, gone to a museum or sat in my car and read a book but once the solicitor and I had realised their client had committed a major error I was out searching for the town’s cinema. I had little choice but to watch the next film starting. On Thursday this policy yielded ‘The Town’ which I loved, although it was about criminals and psychopaths doing dreadful things to nice people so was just like work. Since I was wearing my suit and carrying a briefcase I felt obliged to explain to the girl who sold me my ticket that I’d been stood up by a client and was killing time in case she thought I was one of those wears-a-suit-to-the-cinema-in-the-daytime-perverts. The next day when I was stood up the next film showing after my arrival was ‘The Other Guys’. It was a dog of a film and howled from beginning to end. Again, I explained to the girl who sold the ticket what I was doing. She probably thought I was one of those weirdly-tells-me-his-life-story-like-I-give-a-shit-perverts. I returned to Vikki’s late Friday evening.

On Saturday morning Marianna and I went to in-toto to finalise the kitchen design and requirements. Somehow Marianna had negotiated the supermodel kitchen at an Airfix model price she’s wanted for the last few months. Then there was a visit to the house so I could review the week’s work. Of course there was post there. We haven’t had a door or letter box for months and there’s been a redirection to a PO Box in place and yet at least once a week the postman will hand post to a builder or rest it next to a newly built wall. We ring and complain but they’re completely indifferent to this.

Then I went to the hairdresser’s; “What are we doing with you today?”