Ghosts

It is Christmas. Almost. Here are three things I want to share with you.


1) Marianna has two very dear friends called Mike and Margaret. She’s only known the two of them for just over two years but the three of them couldn’t be closer. Even if you’ve known Mike and Margaret or Marianna for decades when you’re in the company of the three of them you’ll feel like a spare part. The love they have for each other is clear. It seems that even though ‘M and M’, as Mariana calls them, had three children and successful careers and lives what had always been missing from their lives was a small Greek woman. I think they now consider themselves to have four daughters. Marianna hasn’t seen them since the four of us met up as a surprise for her on her birthday in September. Mike called yesterday to briefly tell Marianna that Margaret has been in hospital for the past three weeks. Although a diagnosis hasn’t been confirmed it seems highly likely that she has pancreatic cancer. The prognosis isn’t good.

2) We don’t have a kitchen and so, because it’s Christmas tomorrow, we thought we’d treat ourselves to some extra special uncooked pre-prepared food and so made our first visit to the Waitrose store in Kenilworth. Whilst wandering around the aisles I spotted a face I was sure I recognised. Before my brain seemed to have registered that this was a former patient from my NHS days in Lincolnshire I said “Will?”. He turned and looked towards me but then carried on. I tried it a bit louder; “Will Simpson?”. He turned and then took a step towards me.

I’m sure you know what I do for a living. I’m sure you know that I fell out of love with it a long while ago. I would summarise the job as involving myself in the worst that human life has to offer. I have, sadly and worryingly, become quite immune to it. The client says “And two days later I returned to the forest, dug her up and had sex with her again” and I just nod, make a note and ask the next question. I should stress that Will was a mental health rather than a forensic client. He hadn’t killed, raped or robbed anyone. Perhaps it was because I was only about three years into my career when I met him or that we’re the same age or just that he was a little, lost boy in a man’s body looking to me to help him that he touched me. This is despite his stating in our first session that “99% of people are arseholes and I’m not sure about the other 1%. You’re probably one of the arseholes”. He ranted about how awful his childhood had been in our first few sessions and the physical and psychological torture he had received from his mother, then we did some constructive therapeutic work for many months and intermittently I tried to convince him that life was worth continuing with. He was rarely convinced. When my career took me away from the NHS our time together came to an end.

When he came towards me I reached my hand out to shake his and was close to tears. I could say that this was because of the injury I sustained to my back an hour so earlier, that it was because it was Christmas or because of the extortionate price Waitrose charge for the average item but I was tearful because I was so genuinely pleased to see him and to see him alive and looking well. “It’s Patrick Bodger. Do you remember me?”. I didn’t want to say “I was your psychologist” because he was with someone. He said “Of course, I remember you. You turned out to be one of the most important people in my life”. It’s not much of a career and I increasingly see myself as a hack but I’ll remember his words for a long time.

3) This evening, just a little while ago, I called my friend Paul. We haven’t spoken since Christmas Eve 2008 when Marianna and I happened upon him in Tesco in Wisbech. We’d been estranged for a couple of years at that time. Typically, Paul began the conversation as if we’d last spoken a few days previously;

“Hello Paul, it’s Patrick”

“Hello, mate, you must be hoping Kenny Dalglish will come and sort out the mess Roy Hodgson is making of your season”

I met him just after I’d turned twenty one. Even though he was, and still is, twenty years older than me we became firm friends based on shared interests and activities; music, playing our guitars with each other and in front of a number of others, supporting different football teams and silently watching matches, going to gigs, silently watching movies. When I asked him to be my best man at my wedding he told me that he’d done it twice before and both of those couples were now divorced. That made me laugh. It doesn’t seem so funny now. It was, unfortunately, the women in our lives and the tendency for all four of us to do things together that eventually meant that Paul and I saw less and less of each other. Something about the four of us and the things we did together didn’t work and the friendship died away instead of us realising that we could have just reverted back to watching football together or spending hours trying to figure out the chords to a tune by The Eagles and let our significant others do other things.

It may not be clear why I want to share these three things with you but I want to add this;

“Life is very short. People come and go from our lives so quickly. You must never miss an opportunity to let them know how much they mean to you”. (Dr Frasier W. Crane, 1993)

Around The House in 189 days

189 days after building work began we have moved back into the house. We don’t have a kitchen, the furniture is still in storage, half of the rooms aren’t yet completely finished but it feels so good to be back in our own home.

The Cuttings

Have you ever been to Macklin Street in Derby? If you have you will surely be aware of ‘Christopher’s Men’s Hairdressing and Model Railway Book Shop’. That’s right, a shop where you can do two things. They are



1.     (If you’re a man) Get your hair ‘dressed’.

2.     Buy a book about Model Railways.

There is no doubt about what happens in this shop. It’s not like CURRY’S. Have you ever seen a Chicken Korma on their shelves? It is also noteworthy that this is not a barbershop. No one goes into ‘CMHAMRBS’ for a short back and sides or ‘the usual’. This is the dressing of hair. For men. Crimping, coiffuring, lacquering and perming are sure to be taking place on a daily basis. The Derby area must be full of men with hair like Pat Sharpe (circa 1988), Kevin Keegan (circa 1975) and Donald Trump (circa always).


I wonder if they’re widely advertised in Derbyshire; “POPPING INTO TOWN FOR A COUPLE OF THINGS? IF THOSE THINGS ARE A HAIRCUT AND A BOOK ON THE 1978 HORNBY INTER-CITY SLEEPER WHY NOT COME TO.......”.

Or even

“SOMETHING FOR THE WEEKEND, SIR? HOW ABOUT THIS BOOK ON THE FLYING SCOTSMAN?”

The owner, Christopher, is clearly a lucky man and has been able to make a living by combining something he is skilled at (hairdressing) with something he has a passion for (Books about Model Railways). It’s usually only the rich and famous who are able to do this. David Beckham is fortunately skilled at playing football and this enables him to pursue his real passion which is for covering himself in tattoos. Cheryl Cole is skilled at selling shampoo and has a passion for assaulting people in nightclub toilets. I’d love to describe the interior of ‘CMHAMRBS’ to you but I didn’t go in or even peer through the window. It had already taken me thirty minutes to find Macklin Street and discover that it was actually 500 yards from where I’d seen my client that afternoon. I walked away from ‘CMHAMRBS’ and booked myself into the Heritage Hotel. It was one of the most depressing places I’ve ever stayed in plus, it transpired, there was a nightclub within the building. The Heritage was able to provide something they were skilled at (Auschwitz style hospitality) with something they had a passion for (depriving me of sleep until 3am).

Above Us Only SKY

Monday the 6th was a big day in the history of the renovation project because it was the day on which the kitchen floor was to be laid. It is a polished concrete floor. It is made by laying concrete and polishing it. A lot. The team responsible for the floor were due between 7.30 and 8.00 but were already there when we arrived at 7.20. While they unloaded equipment from their vans we tried to remove the chipboard panel that currently covers the hole where our garage door should be. We didn’t want them carrying things through our lovely new front door and over our lovely new floorboards to get into the kitchen. The problem was that it was minus nine and the screws in the panel had been put in with an automated screwdriver. I was far from warm and far from amused. The panel was eventually removed and we left the men to it.





I returned to the house at four in the afternoon, assuming they would have finished, replaced the panel, pulled the front door closed and gone home. Of course they hadn’t finished. When I wandered in through the garage one of the men was holding on to the back of the trouser belt of another so he could lean forward and extend the long handled tool he was using to smooth the concrete all the way to the opposing wall. What would normally be an eight hour job might, they thought, take them until nine or ten in the evening because of the difficulties the sub-zero temperature was causing with the process. They said I should tell the neighbours that they were about to start using equipment that would “sound like a Harley Davison gang revving their engines”. I knocked at Brian and Julie’s door but got no answer even though Julie’s car was in the drive. It’s highly likely she saw me walk in the driveway and hid. Before heading back to Vicky’s I sent a text to Brian; “Hi. Just called at your place but got no reply. Our kitchen floor is being laid today. The workmen are about to use machinery that may just be audible to you. Sorry for any inconvenience. Patrick”. You may recall that over recent months Brian and Julie have chosen to completely blank us. I imagined Brian at work, sitting at his desk, with lots of pens and pencils in neat rows, in an office the size of a cupboard fighting back tears as he read my message and felt the love, admiration and respect contained within it. He was so overwhelmed by emotion that he couldn’t find words that would convey what he felt so he just texted “OK”.

Marianna and I returned to the house in the evening to clean and tidy in preparation for moving our things, and eventually ourselves, back in. The men were still there revving their Harley’s. We left them at 9.30. They thought they’d be finished at midnight. At 7 the next morning we had a call from Greg, leader of the painting team, wanting to get into the house. However, when we got there the painters were already in the house. The men working on the floor had only finished at 5.45am and their supervisor had been over to inspect the work and so was able to let the painters in. The floor looked really good. Which is what you’d expect for twenty two and half hours work.




I hadn’t met Greg before. He told me that electricians and plumbers were sloppy but his team, as finishers of projects, were different. Marianna told them several times not to walk on the kitchen floor because a couple of days were needed for the finish to dry. I told her it was unnecessary to keep telling them, not with the added reminder of the pieces of wood we’d crisscrossed across the doorway. Marianna headed off to work and I went to an assessment in Birmingham. Of course when Marianna called at the house later there were footprints across the kitchen floor. We hope they’ll fade.




On Wednesday we had an early meeting with Max who was noting all of the final little jobs that need doing. He was concerned about someone breaking in and stripping out all of the radiators, showers etc. Albanians do it a lot apparently. Pete had said he’d be there on Tuesday but called Marianna and now wasn’t sure he’d be over that week at all because he’d had so many emergency call outs. Max called him. I’m not sure what he said but both Pete and John appeared thirty minutes later.




The good news of the week was that I finally received payment for a court appearance I made seven months ago. There had been some dispute over how much they would pay me and, rather than get nothing, I settled for an amount that was about 60% of what I’d normally be paid. In error they sent me the full amount.




The bad news, and I’d struggle to explain why it has distressed me so much, is that the cabling hidden behind our paint and plaster means that, unless we want holes drilled and visible cables, we can only have broadband and telephone supplied by SKY. I have little firsthand knowledge of the company but I put them in the same category as the BNP, Adolf Hitler, Sharon Osbourne and McDonalds; that there’s just something intrinsically evil about them.

(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.