We made a trip into The Fens on Sunday for a Bodger gathering. Here are the briefest of reflections on my hometown of Wisbech as I found it on 24th April 2011.
1.You know you’re entering Wisbech these days when you pass the Kiss Kiss Adult Superstore. They say first impressions are important.
2.We ate at Mendi’s. I haven’t been there since 1988. Neither has a decorator or chef to create a new menu.
3.We saw a rat in Tesco’s car park.
4.You know you’re leaving Wisbech when you see a young woman pushing a pram on the A47......not on the pavement but the actual carriage way.......in the dark.
Monday, 25 April 2011
Saturday, 16 April 2011
David Niven's Handkerchief
I made a commitment to shoot my mother several years ago. She was completely serious when she asked me to but I was far from serious when I reassured her that I would. I was only in my late teens at the time.
Here is our definition of LEGACY
1. Money or property bequeathed to another by will.
2. Something handed down from an ancestor or a predecessor or from the past:
My legacy from my mother’s side of my family may be a little unconventional. It is, I fear, Alzheimer’s Disease. My maternal Grandparents both died very, very slowly from it.
Someone recently told me how their father died aged seventy nine whilst on a long distance bike ride. He had a massive heart attack and collapsed in front of the home of a GP who, fortunately, wasn’t at work that day and was able to pronounce him dead. His daughter thought he would have been overjoyed to have died doing something he loved and to be so well organised to arrange for his own physician in attendance. Deaths like that are unlikely to occur in my family.
My mother is one of six children. Her eldest sister died with dementia in 2005 and, like his father and mother, her eldest brother died a slow death from Alzheimer’s in 2007 with all that had been of his personality disappearing, a new one emerging and then nothing that could be described as personality replacing it. ‘He’ had died long before his body chose to. When I was young I spent a huge amount of time with my Grandparents following Jim around his garden or watching Ada cook in the kitchen. I know I should have spent more time with them as they declined. Their behaviour became odd, then bizarre and then worrying and then diagnosable probably before I entered my teens. Their death was long and slow and their lives ended as I was about to leave my teens. They died in different nursing homes within six months of each other. They were apart in their final days after over sixty years of marriage but neither knew that the person they’d shared their life with was missing. And then at my Grandfather’s funeral my mother asked me if I’d be good enough to shoot her if she should end up like her parents. Afterwards the six children sat and discussed their parents and wondered what the first sign of decline was; when my Grandparents convinced themselves my brothers were going to live in America even though they were only thirteen? When my Grandfather tried to withdraw his life's savings in cash and walked home with much of it in carrier bags? Or when he chose to paint the outside of their bungalow red?
I want to write this as a marker in time just in case.
So........My mum and dad visited to help us finally move our furniture out of the storage and into the house on the thirteenth. Although we speak on the phone often I haven't seen my parents since last October. I’m not sure if I recognised an increasing absence of presence or an increasing presence of absence but there are some things I want to note down about my mum. They may be nothing but I know that they were significant enough that within two hours of meeting them Marianna told me to stop staring at my mother and looking so worried. I had been at Birmingham Crown Court all day, mostly reading a book and didn’t return to Leamington until 6.30. I went to meet them and Marianna at their Bed and Breakfast (Our house isn’t fit for guests). I met Marianna at the door and we waited for my parents in the guest’s lounge. After a few minutes my mum stepped into the room, looked at us and said to my dad, who was still in the corridor, “It’s not them in there Dave”. I called to her and she came back in and seemed to recognise my voice before she recognised my face. Perhaps it was the suit that rendered me unrecognisable. We took them out for a meal and she was rather quiet and just ‘not my mum’. Perhaps like a crucial scene from Invasion of The Body Snatchers something was giving her away as not being the genuine article. She has the same hearing issue as me only worse and worsening and does struggle when there’s background noise but if you went back 5, 10, 20 years you’d never describe my mum as quiet. That’s my dad’s role; to be a man of few words and yet he’s downright chatty these days. I think it’s that he’s compensating for and covering up for my mum in the hope that you won’t notice that she isn’t really taking part in or driving the conversation anymore; she’s a passenger. She was the same the next day when we were moving the furniture; she was a passenger. I don’t expect someone approaching seventy to be lifting and carrying furniture but she looked lost. Imagine you’re at someone else’s house and they’re clearing things away after a meal or party. You don’t feel able to help out much because you don’t know where anything goes and you feel like a spare part. She looked like that but it wasn’t complex because everything needed to come out of the storage unit, go into the van and then go into the house. When I caught her eye, and I often did, she beamed at me but it was an awkward smile, like she’d been caught out. She also didn’t say anything. She’s becoming a mime. You should know that before she retired she was a manager. When Marianna, dad and I discussed how we might arrange things in the van my mum didn’t take part in the discussion but, more worryingly, having heard us conclude that we’d put the sideboard in a certain space we carried it to the van to find that mum had put a chair there. Later, as the three of us carried a sofa out of the van and into the house, me at one end and Marianna and dad in reverse at the other end I noticed that mum had piled the cushions just inside the door. It was just illogical. She was very apologetic. I told her not to worry. I said it so many times in less than two days. She only became a manager after a career change after my brothers and I left school. During our school years she was a cook in three different schools around the town (She may have poured some custard for you) . Even if that wasn’t the case she cooked every day for the five of us. When we took a break from loading and unloading we had some fish and salad for lunch. The fish was prepared on our camping stove. When the water began to boil and possibly boil over she became panicked and didn’t know what to do. It seemed simple enough to lift the pan off the heat or turn the heat down or off but she was lost. Also, since we now have carpet upstairs and downstairs is still a building site we keep our shoes on downstairs and take them off for upstairs but mum couldn’t grasp this and might remove them as she entered the kitchen. She also told me three times about the poor state that the house I grew up in and they moved from twenty years ago is now in.
We took them out again on Thursday evening. For Marianna’s benefit they reminisced about how they met in June 1962. My mum held my dad’s hand but I thought she was holding on more than holding.
I never thought you’d leave until you went.
Here is our definition of LEGACY
1. Money or property bequeathed to another by will.
2. Something handed down from an ancestor or a predecessor or from the past:
My legacy from my mother’s side of my family may be a little unconventional. It is, I fear, Alzheimer’s Disease. My maternal Grandparents both died very, very slowly from it.
Someone recently told me how their father died aged seventy nine whilst on a long distance bike ride. He had a massive heart attack and collapsed in front of the home of a GP who, fortunately, wasn’t at work that day and was able to pronounce him dead. His daughter thought he would have been overjoyed to have died doing something he loved and to be so well organised to arrange for his own physician in attendance. Deaths like that are unlikely to occur in my family.
My mother is one of six children. Her eldest sister died with dementia in 2005 and, like his father and mother, her eldest brother died a slow death from Alzheimer’s in 2007 with all that had been of his personality disappearing, a new one emerging and then nothing that could be described as personality replacing it. ‘He’ had died long before his body chose to. When I was young I spent a huge amount of time with my Grandparents following Jim around his garden or watching Ada cook in the kitchen. I know I should have spent more time with them as they declined. Their behaviour became odd, then bizarre and then worrying and then diagnosable probably before I entered my teens. Their death was long and slow and their lives ended as I was about to leave my teens. They died in different nursing homes within six months of each other. They were apart in their final days after over sixty years of marriage but neither knew that the person they’d shared their life with was missing. And then at my Grandfather’s funeral my mother asked me if I’d be good enough to shoot her if she should end up like her parents. Afterwards the six children sat and discussed their parents and wondered what the first sign of decline was; when my Grandparents convinced themselves my brothers were going to live in America even though they were only thirteen? When my Grandfather tried to withdraw his life's savings in cash and walked home with much of it in carrier bags? Or when he chose to paint the outside of their bungalow red?
I want to write this as a marker in time just in case.
So........My mum and dad visited to help us finally move our furniture out of the storage and into the house on the thirteenth. Although we speak on the phone often I haven't seen my parents since last October. I’m not sure if I recognised an increasing absence of presence or an increasing presence of absence but there are some things I want to note down about my mum. They may be nothing but I know that they were significant enough that within two hours of meeting them Marianna told me to stop staring at my mother and looking so worried. I had been at Birmingham Crown Court all day, mostly reading a book and didn’t return to Leamington until 6.30. I went to meet them and Marianna at their Bed and Breakfast (Our house isn’t fit for guests). I met Marianna at the door and we waited for my parents in the guest’s lounge. After a few minutes my mum stepped into the room, looked at us and said to my dad, who was still in the corridor, “It’s not them in there Dave”. I called to her and she came back in and seemed to recognise my voice before she recognised my face. Perhaps it was the suit that rendered me unrecognisable. We took them out for a meal and she was rather quiet and just ‘not my mum’. Perhaps like a crucial scene from Invasion of The Body Snatchers something was giving her away as not being the genuine article. She has the same hearing issue as me only worse and worsening and does struggle when there’s background noise but if you went back 5, 10, 20 years you’d never describe my mum as quiet. That’s my dad’s role; to be a man of few words and yet he’s downright chatty these days. I think it’s that he’s compensating for and covering up for my mum in the hope that you won’t notice that she isn’t really taking part in or driving the conversation anymore; she’s a passenger. She was the same the next day when we were moving the furniture; she was a passenger. I don’t expect someone approaching seventy to be lifting and carrying furniture but she looked lost. Imagine you’re at someone else’s house and they’re clearing things away after a meal or party. You don’t feel able to help out much because you don’t know where anything goes and you feel like a spare part. She looked like that but it wasn’t complex because everything needed to come out of the storage unit, go into the van and then go into the house. When I caught her eye, and I often did, she beamed at me but it was an awkward smile, like she’d been caught out. She also didn’t say anything. She’s becoming a mime. You should know that before she retired she was a manager. When Marianna, dad and I discussed how we might arrange things in the van my mum didn’t take part in the discussion but, more worryingly, having heard us conclude that we’d put the sideboard in a certain space we carried it to the van to find that mum had put a chair there. Later, as the three of us carried a sofa out of the van and into the house, me at one end and Marianna and dad in reverse at the other end I noticed that mum had piled the cushions just inside the door. It was just illogical. She was very apologetic. I told her not to worry. I said it so many times in less than two days. She only became a manager after a career change after my brothers and I left school. During our school years she was a cook in three different schools around the town (She may have poured some custard for you) . Even if that wasn’t the case she cooked every day for the five of us. When we took a break from loading and unloading we had some fish and salad for lunch. The fish was prepared on our camping stove. When the water began to boil and possibly boil over she became panicked and didn’t know what to do. It seemed simple enough to lift the pan off the heat or turn the heat down or off but she was lost. Also, since we now have carpet upstairs and downstairs is still a building site we keep our shoes on downstairs and take them off for upstairs but mum couldn’t grasp this and might remove them as she entered the kitchen. She also told me three times about the poor state that the house I grew up in and they moved from twenty years ago is now in.
We took them out again on Thursday evening. For Marianna’s benefit they reminisced about how they met in June 1962. My mum held my dad’s hand but I thought she was holding on more than holding.
I never thought you’d leave until you went.
Tuesday, 12 April 2011
Bodger For Sale
I met someone recently who, when told what I did for a living, said “Well, you’re not Cracker are you so it’s probably not that fascinating”. Indeed! This is the response I have always wanted because it means that we can move the conversation on to something much more interesting and I don’t have to pretend that my work actually is fascinating. In reality, my work largely involves being in grotty northern towns interviewing far from fascinating people. However, over the weekend beginning 8th April my ‘career’ took me to north and south Devon to work on a case which was brought to me by the job description ‘school teacher’ and the phrases ‘she looked a lot older with make-up’ and ‘I didn’t know she was a pupil in my school when I met her in the nightclub’. I had another case in another part of the county and it was a nice coincidence to have two cases fairly close to each other and at a similar time. The plan was to see one client on the Friday, work in the Bed and Breakfast over the weekend and travel across the county and see another client on the Monday. In the end I was convinced by my hosts to actual take a walk and enjoy the good weather. The drive to the second venue and later on my way home revealed scenery unrivalled on other continents I’ve visited.
So, on Saturday morning I was in a very lovely coastal town having a very generous breakfast. My hosts were busy dealing with the concerns of a group of German professors who had mislaid a fellow professor and found that his bed hadn’t been slept in so I engaged my fellow diner in conversation. She was a very lovely lady in her early fifties who was in town to collect her son from college and take him home for the Easter holidays. When I asked what she did for a living she told me that she was due to retire in three weeks time. She and her husband had, all of their working lives, owned and run a village shop. They lived in a house next to the shop and this was the house her husband was born in since the shop had previously belonged to his parents. They were in an area so wonderfully remote they hadn’t been affected by a nearby supermarket wiping out their business. She mentioned that they were open early until late seven days a week and how, over the years, it had been very difficult to take holidays. In January a man came into the shop and declared himself to be an employee of the Co-Operative. He then made an offer to buy the business for a sum of money which she described as “more generous than our wildest dreams might have conjured”. And so they’ll both be retiring in three weeks. It had all been a bit of whirlwind she said but was excited about their new future. She was unsure of what they were going to do but thought that holidaying regularly would feature heavily. A door will open in three weeks and on the other side will be the rest of their lives.
It’s unlikely that the Co-Op would want to buy me out but I want to make it clear that I’m open to offers. If anyone would like to offer me a sum of money which forces me to holiday almost permanently for the rest of my days the chances of refusal are slimmer than a cheap hotel towel.
So, on Saturday morning I was in a very lovely coastal town having a very generous breakfast. My hosts were busy dealing with the concerns of a group of German professors who had mislaid a fellow professor and found that his bed hadn’t been slept in so I engaged my fellow diner in conversation. She was a very lovely lady in her early fifties who was in town to collect her son from college and take him home for the Easter holidays. When I asked what she did for a living she told me that she was due to retire in three weeks time. She and her husband had, all of their working lives, owned and run a village shop. They lived in a house next to the shop and this was the house her husband was born in since the shop had previously belonged to his parents. They were in an area so wonderfully remote they hadn’t been affected by a nearby supermarket wiping out their business. She mentioned that they were open early until late seven days a week and how, over the years, it had been very difficult to take holidays. In January a man came into the shop and declared himself to be an employee of the Co-Operative. He then made an offer to buy the business for a sum of money which she described as “more generous than our wildest dreams might have conjured”. And so they’ll both be retiring in three weeks. It had all been a bit of whirlwind she said but was excited about their new future. She was unsure of what they were going to do but thought that holidaying regularly would feature heavily. A door will open in three weeks and on the other side will be the rest of their lives.
It’s unlikely that the Co-Op would want to buy me out but I want to make it clear that I’m open to offers. If anyone would like to offer me a sum of money which forces me to holiday almost permanently for the rest of my days the chances of refusal are slimmer than a cheap hotel towel.
Friday, 1 April 2011
All Things Must Pass
There is, I feel, little to say about yesterday’s funeral. Or perhaps it’s that I don’t know what to say or how to say it. Perhaps I don’t know the right words. Perhaps those words don’t exist. If I felt able to speak about it at length I would need to find a way to explain why Margaret’s passing has impacted on me so deeply and I don’t know how to explain that. I have never previously known grief to be so tangible, to be such a physical experience.
When we arrived at the church Mike, his daughters, their husbands and Margaret’s sister were outside greeting mourners. Mike shook hands with or hugged each one. “It’s okay, it’s okay” was what I noticed him say to the two people he hugged before Marianna and he said it to her too. I thought it was a message for himself and not the people he said it to; “It’s okay, it’s okay”.
But of course it wasn’t.
I have never seen a church so full. It’s a sign of a life well lived.
Mike read a Robert Graves poem. He read. He cried whilst reading. He read whilst crying.
The priest and others, later, spoke of her premature passing and how young she was. But she wasn’t. She was sixty four. I don’t mean that if you’re in your fifth decade you should start putting your affairs in order but twenty five is a premature death. That people actually believed it was premature was because of her character, her personality, her radiance, an inner light. They used the word premature when unfair was more apt. The priest guided us through Margaret’s biography/obituary which they had compiled jointly when they met in the hospice. Her sixty four years and career involved nursing, social work and counselling as well as motherhood and many other activities and there were people from all different stages of her life. Childhood friends of her children attended because of how she may have impacted on their lives thirty years previously. She had touched many lives in major and minor ways and people came to acknowledge this. The priest spoke of her marriage to Mike in 1970 and anecdotes from their life together. He spoke of how she chatted to strangers on buses and made friends everywhere. He said he had visited her in the hospice and she complained of how complimentary people had been in the cards they had sent, how they portrayed her as a saintly figure and how misunderstood this made her feel. He told of how she passed away with Mike and her daughters at her side. We sang hymns, including Lord of The Dance; I’ll live in you if you’ll live in me.
Then there was a gathering in the church to drink tea and eat sandwiches and cake and “share your memories of Margaret”. But that wasn’t really what happened, she was largely unmentioned. People, as they always do, talked about their work, families, ailments, holidays. I didn’t engage anyone in conversation. Marianna didn’t. It was only Mike we had words for. But there were no words.
Counting The Beats
by
Robert Graves
You, love, and I,
(He whispers) you and I,
And if no more than only you and I
What care you or I?
Counting the beats,
Counting the slow heart beats,
The bleeding to death of time in slow heart beats,
Wakeful they lie.
Cloudless day,
Night, and a cloudless day;
Yet the huge storm will burst upon their heads one day
From a bitter sky.
Where shall we be,
(She whispers) where shall we be,
When death strikes home, O where then shall we be
Who were you and I?
Not there but here,
(He whispers) only here,
As we are, here, together, now and here,
Always you and I.
Counting the beats,
Counting the slow heart beats,
The bleeding to death of time in slow heart beats,
Wakeful they lie.
When we arrived at the church Mike, his daughters, their husbands and Margaret’s sister were outside greeting mourners. Mike shook hands with or hugged each one. “It’s okay, it’s okay” was what I noticed him say to the two people he hugged before Marianna and he said it to her too. I thought it was a message for himself and not the people he said it to; “It’s okay, it’s okay”.
But of course it wasn’t.
I have never seen a church so full. It’s a sign of a life well lived.
Mike read a Robert Graves poem. He read. He cried whilst reading. He read whilst crying.
The priest and others, later, spoke of her premature passing and how young she was. But she wasn’t. She was sixty four. I don’t mean that if you’re in your fifth decade you should start putting your affairs in order but twenty five is a premature death. That people actually believed it was premature was because of her character, her personality, her radiance, an inner light. They used the word premature when unfair was more apt. The priest guided us through Margaret’s biography/obituary which they had compiled jointly when they met in the hospice. Her sixty four years and career involved nursing, social work and counselling as well as motherhood and many other activities and there were people from all different stages of her life. Childhood friends of her children attended because of how she may have impacted on their lives thirty years previously. She had touched many lives in major and minor ways and people came to acknowledge this. The priest spoke of her marriage to Mike in 1970 and anecdotes from their life together. He spoke of how she chatted to strangers on buses and made friends everywhere. He said he had visited her in the hospice and she complained of how complimentary people had been in the cards they had sent, how they portrayed her as a saintly figure and how misunderstood this made her feel. He told of how she passed away with Mike and her daughters at her side. We sang hymns, including Lord of The Dance; I’ll live in you if you’ll live in me.
Then there was a gathering in the church to drink tea and eat sandwiches and cake and “share your memories of Margaret”. But that wasn’t really what happened, she was largely unmentioned. People, as they always do, talked about their work, families, ailments, holidays. I didn’t engage anyone in conversation. Marianna didn’t. It was only Mike we had words for. But there were no words.
Counting The Beats
by
Robert Graves
You, love, and I,
(He whispers) you and I,
And if no more than only you and I
What care you or I?
Counting the beats,
Counting the slow heart beats,
The bleeding to death of time in slow heart beats,
Wakeful they lie.
Cloudless day,
Night, and a cloudless day;
Yet the huge storm will burst upon their heads one day
From a bitter sky.
Where shall we be,
(She whispers) where shall we be,
When death strikes home, O where then shall we be
Who were you and I?
Not there but here,
(He whispers) only here,
As we are, here, together, now and here,
Always you and I.
Counting the beats,
Counting the slow heart beats,
The bleeding to death of time in slow heart beats,
Wakeful they lie.
Saturday, 26 March 2011
Making Music in Rooms with the Windows Open
The last thing I remember it was 2005 and I was lying on a beach in Florida and hatching a plan. It involved resigning from a job I hated and becoming self-employed. It was that sort of holiday. I had been spending a lot of time in the US and Canada and watching Dr Phil but I had also just completed courses in hypnotherapy and Neuro-Linguistic Programming and wanted to see what use I could make of these new skills and move outside of the constraints of traditional psychological practice. I had also become increasingly interested in coaching or life coaching and I had for some time delivered groupwork to clients and training to other professionals. I thought that, when self-employed, I would do all four of these things to keep life interesting and challenging. I did resign but not after laying the foundations of self-employment it was suddenly in a meeting when my manager said something I thought was completely ridiculous. It had been that sort of holiday. Anyway, for various reasons, it wasn’t possible to split my time in these four ways. I did quite a few hypnotherapy sessions in late 2005 and delivered lots of training during 2006 and in 2007 I delivered groupwork sessions for people with drug addiction problems. There wasn’t ever any coaching or motivational speaking tour or book called “Even though you’re socially and physically inadequate you can achieve whatever you want” and its sequel ‘A journey of a thousand miles begins with an accurately programmed SATNAV’ or website (www.itsthebodge.com). Increasingly I wrote reports for the courts and this was mostly because they paid about ten times the amount the other stuff did and because during 2006 when I was first self-employed I’d be lucky to get four days work a month. Anyway, in 2007 I was devising and delivering group work sessions for people with drug addiction issues. One of my former group members tracked me down today through Facebook. I share this with you to blow my own trumpet and say “Hey, I did inspire someone (a bit) after all”.
26 March at 18:12
Hi Patrick,
I attended group therapy with you for a few months at @@@@. I had stopped already stopped taking drugs at this point but attended anyway for extra support. In the end you told me I didn't need to come anymore but asked if me and another boy who came to the group, Danny, if we would go to some other groups to talk to other people about their problems. I didn't come back as I had taken your advice and re-entered education. I told you that I went to enquire about starting the access course but they told me as I had a son I had too much on and I had been put off. You told me not to let anyone else decide what I was able to do and decide for myself. The following September I enrolled and finished with the highest possible credits in law, psychology and sociology. I am now nearing the end of my second year at university studying criminology with law and looking at a 2:1.
I have tried to contact you for a while, the @@@@ informed me that you had moved, and last time I rang they gave me your last name which helped me find you. Firstly, I wanted to thank you as I feel you helped me get the confidence to be where I am today. Secondly, I wondered if you might be able to point me in the right direction for some volunteering work as I am trying to build up my CV. I have contacted the @@@@ but they can’t offer me anything as unfortunately the government won't fund them anymore and they may be closing shortly. I have also contacted victim support and youth offending and am awaiting their reply. As I have a conviction for possession I feel that when I tell them they may think I am unsafe to work with vulnerable people. This is not true and I believe I could help people. I wondered if you might be able to write me a character reference from what you can remember if you can remember me. I understand if you cannot. I hope you are well and thank you again.
Megan
My recollection is slightly different from hers. When we met she had ceased to use amphetamine forty eight hours previously and left the group for a few weeks having attended for several months because she lapsed into using again. She returned for one more visit with a friend who was in the middle of some sort of psychotic episode.
26 March at 18:12
Hi Patrick,
I attended group therapy with you for a few months at @@@@. I had stopped already stopped taking drugs at this point but attended anyway for extra support. In the end you told me I didn't need to come anymore but asked if me and another boy who came to the group, Danny, if we would go to some other groups to talk to other people about their problems. I didn't come back as I had taken your advice and re-entered education. I told you that I went to enquire about starting the access course but they told me as I had a son I had too much on and I had been put off. You told me not to let anyone else decide what I was able to do and decide for myself. The following September I enrolled and finished with the highest possible credits in law, psychology and sociology. I am now nearing the end of my second year at university studying criminology with law and looking at a 2:1.
I have tried to contact you for a while, the @@@@ informed me that you had moved, and last time I rang they gave me your last name which helped me find you. Firstly, I wanted to thank you as I feel you helped me get the confidence to be where I am today. Secondly, I wondered if you might be able to point me in the right direction for some volunteering work as I am trying to build up my CV. I have contacted the @@@@ but they can’t offer me anything as unfortunately the government won't fund them anymore and they may be closing shortly. I have also contacted victim support and youth offending and am awaiting their reply. As I have a conviction for possession I feel that when I tell them they may think I am unsafe to work with vulnerable people. This is not true and I believe I could help people. I wondered if you might be able to write me a character reference from what you can remember if you can remember me. I understand if you cannot. I hope you are well and thank you again.
Megan
My recollection is slightly different from hers. When we met she had ceased to use amphetamine forty eight hours previously and left the group for a few weeks having attended for several months because she lapsed into using again. She returned for one more visit with a friend who was in the middle of some sort of psychotic episode.
Friday, 18 March 2011
Stuck Inside a Cloud
We don’t have a washing machine yet and haven’t had one since we moved back into the house on 19th December. You may be aware that there are several options available to you in this situation;
A Go to the laundrette
B Visit friends and ask if you can use their washing machine.
C Pop your laundry into a large jiffy bag and post it to your mother.
D Febreeze
E Extend the amount of time you wear your clothes for (a lot).
F Keep buying more clothes.
I won’t tell you which option has been the favourite in this house but we’ve been using an increasingly fluid definition of ‘fresh and clean’. There has even been some sniffing before deciding if one can risk to wear this item of clothing for yet another day and even asking each other to sniff, asking “Is this clean?”. I always have to put a statement at the end of my reports outlining my professional responsibilities to the court. I feel I should now add “This report was written whilst wearing a shirt originally placed in the laundry basket on 16th January, removed on February 2nd and worn again, returned to the laundry and worn again today. I apologise”. Since I largely work from home the dress code has always been fairly relaxed but has now become a health hazard to others.
An issue that had been holding up progress on the house was that we couldn’t find anyone to polish the kitchen’s concrete floor. Three different companies came over and polished a small patch and give a quote. The patches all looked slightly different and one company wanted to charge ten times what another did. The problem was the one of the patches was George Michael and the other was distinctly Andrew Ridgeley (topical reference) so it was an easy decision to make and then Marianna just had to negotiate until they’d relinquished all of their profit. They began on February 28th, thinking it would take four days. However, by the third day it was clear that for some reason they couldn’t achieve the finish on the whole floor that they had some weeks earlier on the patch. A supervisor, manager and then company owner visited and agreed the finish wasn’t good enough and on the fourth day they stripped off the work they’d done and began again. It took them eight days to complete. It looks great but came at the additional cost of damage to the kitchen radiators, damage to the kitchen door when they took it off its hinges and damage to the wall they rested it against.
On the 3rd and 4th of March the carpets were fitted on the first and second floors and stairs. To select the colour Marianna and I went through a process longer than the X Factor auditions which involved many, many samples spread over the floors. It appeared that our carpet fitters were unable to stand upright without leaning on the walls. This is fine but they seemed to have washed their hands with soot before arriving so our white walls were covered with handprints. Also, as the carpets were carried up the stairs they had marked the walls. All of the walls it seemed. Greg, the painter, had advised that some of his lads should come and do touch ups before the carpets were fitted and they did but just forty eight hours later the walls and skirting boards were even more marked than they had been. As overjoyed as I was with how good the carpet looked I found the damage to the walls deflating. The mantra in my head is ‘What a waste of time, money and effort’ and it’s hard to silence. Still, once the carpets were fitted we could live in the whole house. Well, not really because all of our belongings were piled in the dining room and the furniture they might normally be stored in was still in storage.
With the carpets down we could move two bed bases we bought on Ebay some weeks before up to the bedrooms. These were a real bargain. I’d been working away and set an alarm for half past midnight to get up and bid on one of them. No one else was bidding at that time of day so I won it for 99p. When the seller sent me a message about payment he said he’d been selling another but no one had bid on it so I could have that too at no extra charge. I found a courier who collected and delivered them for £30 so for on only £30.99 I had two bed bases worth well over £200. Once the carpets were down we attempted to move them up stairs. But, of course, they wouldn’t fit. After an hour when my mood had gone form a normal one to anger and then to misery we had discovered that, by a few millimetres, they were just too big. We may ask Max if he’ll remove a bedroom window when the scaffolding goes up for the front of the house to be rendered in a month or so. Or sell them on Ebay. Or give them to a local charity.
A Go to the laundrette
B Visit friends and ask if you can use their washing machine.
C Pop your laundry into a large jiffy bag and post it to your mother.
D Febreeze
E Extend the amount of time you wear your clothes for (a lot).
F Keep buying more clothes.
I won’t tell you which option has been the favourite in this house but we’ve been using an increasingly fluid definition of ‘fresh and clean’. There has even been some sniffing before deciding if one can risk to wear this item of clothing for yet another day and even asking each other to sniff, asking “Is this clean?”. I always have to put a statement at the end of my reports outlining my professional responsibilities to the court. I feel I should now add “This report was written whilst wearing a shirt originally placed in the laundry basket on 16th January, removed on February 2nd and worn again, returned to the laundry and worn again today. I apologise”. Since I largely work from home the dress code has always been fairly relaxed but has now become a health hazard to others.
An issue that had been holding up progress on the house was that we couldn’t find anyone to polish the kitchen’s concrete floor. Three different companies came over and polished a small patch and give a quote. The patches all looked slightly different and one company wanted to charge ten times what another did. The problem was the one of the patches was George Michael and the other was distinctly Andrew Ridgeley (topical reference) so it was an easy decision to make and then Marianna just had to negotiate until they’d relinquished all of their profit. They began on February 28th, thinking it would take four days. However, by the third day it was clear that for some reason they couldn’t achieve the finish on the whole floor that they had some weeks earlier on the patch. A supervisor, manager and then company owner visited and agreed the finish wasn’t good enough and on the fourth day they stripped off the work they’d done and began again. It took them eight days to complete. It looks great but came at the additional cost of damage to the kitchen radiators, damage to the kitchen door when they took it off its hinges and damage to the wall they rested it against.
With the carpets down we could move two bed bases we bought on Ebay some weeks before up to the bedrooms. These were a real bargain. I’d been working away and set an alarm for half past midnight to get up and bid on one of them. No one else was bidding at that time of day so I won it for 99p. When the seller sent me a message about payment he said he’d been selling another but no one had bid on it so I could have that too at no extra charge. I found a courier who collected and delivered them for £30 so for on only £30.99 I had two bed bases worth well over £200. Once the carpets were down we attempted to move them up stairs. But, of course, they wouldn’t fit. After an hour when my mood had gone form a normal one to anger and then to misery we had discovered that, by a few millimetres, they were just too big. We may ask Max if he’ll remove a bedroom window when the scaffolding goes up for the front of the house to be rendered in a month or so. Or sell them on Ebay. Or give them to a local charity.
Wednesday, 16 March 2011
Sophie, Tim and Jennie too
Around five o’clock yesterday I drove into Warwick to give blood. On the way home I had just stopped at traffic lights about a mile from home when a dark blue Vauxhall forced itself into the back of my car whilst travelling at around fifteen or twenty miles an hour. I saw it approach in the rear view mirror and partly thought “Shit!” and partly “Yep, that’s about right. It’s been nearly an hour since something went wrong”. The Vauxhall forced me into the back of the car in front of me and that car into the one in front of it. As I got out the driver of the Vauxhall was repeatedly apologising and saying that she had pressed the brakes but nothing had happened. I wanted to say “Something did happen. You ruined my car” but went for something along the lines of “Well, we’re both ok and that’s the main thing”. There was a fair amount of damage to the rear of my car but the front had been completely transformed, moving the metal inwards and upwards and the glass down onto the tarmac. I spoke to the man I hit (Tim) and the girl he hit (Sophie) and they were both okay but could instantly feel the soreness of the impact in the neck and shoulders as I could. Jennie, who had hit me, first called her husband and then the police. We moved her car and then mine to the side of the road slightly and then began exchanging details. I can’t pretend I didn’t enjoy taking charge of the situation. I called Marianna to tell her I’d be a little late. I think I could hear her googling 'injurylawyers4u' while we spoke. “What sort of shape is the car in?”. “Well, it’s not the shape of a car anymore”. Jennie’s husband arrived before the police. He was brought by someone else. He walked towards his wife but didn’t speak to her. Instead he inspected the damage to her car and then without addressing me inspected my car and then Tim’s and Sophie’s. He then spent several minutes talking to his mate who’d brought him before going to speak to his wife as the police arrived. He was thoroughly charmless. If Jennie woke up with any injuries this morning they would probably have been inflicted by him after they got home. I hadn’t realised so little happened in Leamington and Warwick but our little incident warranted two police cars and four officers and an entire fire engine crew. An officer advised Tim and Sophie that, since there was minimal damage to their cars, they could leave. When told where I lived he said that if mine would start and the wheels would turn I could drive it home. And so I did. After a few hundred yards the exhaust began bouncing off the tarmac.
It was a very lengthy process speaking to the insurers that evening. They wanted a description of Sophie, Tim and Jennie in case I had been a victim of some sort of scam. For some reason I could give a fully comprehensive description of young, slim, blonde attractive Sophie even down to some piercings and tattoos she had. Tim was ginger and wearing the uniform of his work place so that was easy but Jennie had made no impact on my memory at all.
“Err, a woman”.
“We do require a full description of all of the people involved, sir”
“A woman, probably in her early fifties, at least ten stone over weight, particularly sallow skin probably as a result of several decades of smoking and consuming a high fat diet, wearing the outfit of a Doncaster barmaid circa 1978 presenting herself at some speed into the back of my car”.
“Thank you”.
I feel that the four of us are now bound together forever. Tim will probably call me up any minute and suggest the four of us go out for a pint. Or he may want us all to go on a caravanning holiday. I might suggest we don’t tell Jennie.
It was a very lengthy process speaking to the insurers that evening. They wanted a description of Sophie, Tim and Jennie in case I had been a victim of some sort of scam. For some reason I could give a fully comprehensive description of young, slim, blonde attractive Sophie even down to some piercings and tattoos she had. Tim was ginger and wearing the uniform of his work place so that was easy but Jennie had made no impact on my memory at all.
“Err, a woman”.
“We do require a full description of all of the people involved, sir”
“A woman, probably in her early fifties, at least ten stone over weight, particularly sallow skin probably as a result of several decades of smoking and consuming a high fat diet, wearing the outfit of a Doncaster barmaid circa 1978 presenting herself at some speed into the back of my car”.
“Thank you”.
I feel that the four of us are now bound together forever. Tim will probably call me up any minute and suggest the four of us go out for a pint. Or he may want us all to go on a caravanning holiday. I might suggest we don’t tell Jennie.
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