If you were thinking, 'ah good, a food-related passage with added interest for those of us in the legal profession!' sorry to disappoint, your Honour.
Apparently there's such a thing as 'Plenty-of-Fish'. It's not some sort of meal from a fast-food outlet with a marine specialisation; it's nothing to do with Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and his fish fight (whatever that is) and neither is it the cry of a happy Grimsby dweller. Actually the last one is speculation, I've never been to Grimsby but when our local footy team played them at the Millennium Stadium in the play-offs a few years ago our chant was "You're shit and you stink of fish" to the tune of Go West, by the Pet Shop Boys (I think). I very much doubt that our side thought it up so there must be a pre-existing fish-related theme to Grimsby.
If you've read previous installments you'll know that Lodge lives at mine because he is very recently divorced and having sold the family pile and split the proceeds he needs an interim place to put his head down and to store all his rubbish whilst he plans his future. Now it seems he's desperate for some female company and fair enough, sex is a basic human need (unless you're getting enough, YKWIM ;-) ). Other than one night in May this year he freely 'fesses up that there's been absolutely nothing doing on that front for literally years, so after researching a solution to the problem we've found P-o-F on the internet. Having explored it we are presently/pleasantly engaged in hauling in a couple of trout (well, I'm not per se, but I may as well be, I get to hear all the gory details whether I want to or not).
Once the shackles of marriage have been removed you're probably not going to go on the celibacy wagon unless you're a particular kind of person, in fact probably quite the opposite. I believe it's a fact that three in every two marriages fail before they reach the wool anniversary (wool eh? maybe that's why the call it the 7 year itch!). As a result of this it seems there are large numbers of people out there with one thing on their minds and P-o-F is where they hang out. (Other internet-based dating sites are available and my reference to this particular site should in no way be taken to imply my endorsement above any other site, blah, blah, blah). A word of warning though: some of the alternatives are distinctly fruity but unfortunately they do seem to involve a lot of spam in return, which I'm having trouble explaining to the mrs. Currently she's buying the 'research' line, but for how long?
Given the masses of people out there indulging in this online love-in, when you start your search you need to set a few markers out to narrow the field, otherwise you'll be 'swamped with munters'. Lodge tells me that this is how to do it. First, the NO category:
No fatties; no smokers; no poor people; nobody with a Liverpool, Black Country or Newcastle accent, no Chavs, nobody too prim, and no one over 50. Then the MUST BE/MUST HAVE category:
Good looking; high IQ; high sex-drive; self-sufficient (see also 'no poor people' from the preceding list); eloquent whilst knowing when to shut up (shouldn't be hard: getting a word in edge-ways is more likely to be her main challenge); handy in the kitchen and interested in motorbikes.
So having set out the ground rules we sat back and waited. Amazingly the fairer sex don't seem phased by the high bar - perhaps they think that someone who can afford to be so choosy must have quite a lot to offer. Perhaps he does, who knows....? He tells me that having compared himself with his peers he considers he has aged extremely well, so maybe he is a scoop for some lucky lady.
At the moment we're waiting for first contact 'in the flesh'. As I said earlier, a couple are on the hook and I'm hoping it all goes well. I'm also hoping that if he gets to whichever base it is, that they don't bash in the plasterboard behind the headboard in my spare room. 6 months of pent-up desires means it ought to be all over in a few seconds, but assuming second helpings are on offer then I fear for my wall. Maybe I should drop hints about the quality of the carpet and whether or not he thinks it might be the carpet-burning type - it might sow the subliminal seed.
Chips featured in the tag line and of course there's more than one type of chip. Whilst I clearly like the potato variety, you may have guessed that the chips in this instance are the metaphorical type that go on the shoulder. To be fair it should say 'one or two chips'. Although the breakdown in the relationship that is at the heart of the matter is, according to Lodge his idea, we know that it was just a throw-away comment that escalated and ended up causing the implosion. There may have been underlying reasons but sometimes these can be worked out. Not many of us are willing to air our discomforts/foibles/hates/fantasies with some nosey-parker posing as a relationship counsellor but perhaps we should, 'for the children'. On second thoughts, bollocks to that!
So there's a big chip nestling away, namely that The Ex accepted the situation far too easily. This has lead to thoughts of revenge: they say 'Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned' but whoever wrote that had obviously never met Lodge. The revenge has all been psychological: bitter text messages and emails, dodgy photo-messages (allegedly), barbed comments, etc. etc. Sadly these don't tend to reflect well on the creator (the creator of the messages and comments, not The Almighty) and can often lead to 'a brush with the law'.
This brings me round to the last part, 'the law'. We haven't quite finished our chips yet though and I don't know whether to admire his admire his style and nerve or condemn his actions but according to Lodge one of the middle ranking boys in blue clapped eyes on The Ex, whilst responding to her distress calls and immediately asked her out on a date! Talk about not letting the grass grow under your feet - incredible! If this is a sign of things to come under the economies imposed by the coalition government and we can henceforth expect them to bring such speed and dedication to bear on the resolution of crime, we can all sleep easy. Unless of course it's your ex wife they're concentrating on and you were hoping that despite having broken the matrimonial vase you might be able to glue it back together. So it's understandable that the police in general might have put another little potato through the chipper, joining the one held against acquaintances who may or may not have joined the
hunt a little too early.
With my would-be fisherman friend having launched a complaint against a member of the constabulary, one can only assume that should one of the P-o-F bites turned out to be from the same gang (and by her own admission the first one in the queue is), then we can probably tick her off without much further ado, unless she's that weird sort that I very much hope she is. If she aint, possibly she should make contact with her colleague, it sounds as though they might have something in common - both would like to 'do' Lodge.
I'm waiting with baited breath!
Claude
Thursday 10 November 2011
Friday 4 November 2011
Passport Application...
It's been a while since I last wrote and much ammo has been handed to me in the intervening period, but in the interests of keeping some of it private and to a length that doesn't immediately make you think 'No - way too long', I'll restrict myself to yesterday.
So, albeit that I gave my skittles team my resignation sometime
last year, I told them if they were short of players on the odd occasion and I could make it, then I would help out. Last night they were two players short and as I was free I said I would play and I would ask Lodge if he had time to spare to play for us too. Well," he said, "I have to find my passport" (I'll go in to that later), "but if I get up at 7.00am to find it then I can still fit everything that I need to do into the day tomorrow".
So, a-skittling we went and a reasonable evening was had by all. Our team won and I don't have many opportunities to blow my own trumpet, so I'm going to now. My score beat everyone on my team and was second only to one across the board. It was nowhere near the mythical 90, for which you get a certificate from somewhere in the upper echelons of the league management, but what the heck, I was pleased.
Quite importantly, it beat the other half's niece's boyfriend, who turned out to be playing for the opposition. He had been claiming bragging rights because although we'd never seen each other play and frankly we've hardly ever even seen each other, he's younger than me and must have fancied himself as a bit of a player of the hallowed game. He does real work for a living whereas I push a pen around and like to arrange things neatly on my desk, so I think he thought it would be a doddle, but it wasn't - I finished ten points ahead of him. To be fair, on another night it could easily have been reversed. Skittles is a cruel game where a small difference in the angle of incidence of the ball on the pin, where you stand, the aim being too good (or, obviously, too poor) or the optimum level of beer consumption can make a huge difference to the score you get. Many a night I've sucked air through my teeth at the unbelievably fine gap between a ball that should have taken 'em all out and the reality of it passing straight through without troubling a single pin. Lodge volunteered his future services to the team, having beaten the challenge set before him of getting more than 50.
But enough of that, this isn't a tale about skittles and the associated rivalry between the City's night-sport activists with related love interests (I know, that makes it sound incestuous but hopefully you follow me -and yes, skittles is a sport in my book).
I don't know what Lodge's plans for today were but I guess he's going to have to do it at a quicker pace. As I left the house at 8.00am, which is rather late by my standards, I heard the odd thumping noise from his room. I hate to think what goes on in there, newly decorated and carpeted as it very recently was, but he's paying for the right to do whatever it is he's doing and as long as there's nothing too ... nah, let's move on, or rather move back.
We came back from town last night courtesy of a lift from the venerable team captain, a man in his mid seventies who has no doubt heard it all before, but for whom Lodge must have been an new experience. The skipper's boy was in the car with us too and as another whose past has involved divorce and the Child Support Agency, Lodge obviously spotted that he had a captive audience who might care to hear him unload his thoughts about the whole hideous business, his landlord having declined to take much interest. The beer (all four pints of it) had loosened the screws at the back of his tongue, not that they were all that tight in the first place. The journey was was therefore the stage for a diatribe against greedy, grasping ex wives, the meddling interference of the CSA, the rights and wrongs of acquaintances who may or may not have had intimate relationships with the Ex, and whether a certain lap-dancing club that we passed en route was a complete waste of money when you considered
what was available in the way of full-on 'ladies of the night'. Now I genuinely don't know about that but I would have thought that our little city doesn't have much in the way of lookers walking the streets, or whatever they do. Anyway, the whole thing was interspersed for good measure with a liberal sprinkling of profanities and a running commentary on pros and cons of any 'birds' walking home down the streets that we drove (not 'walking the streets' as referred to above). In the past when I have cadged a lift off the skipper, who lives in the same general direction as me, he has always pooh-poohed suggestions that he drops me at the point where he would turn left, leaving me half a mile of walking and has kindly driven the extra leg. Not last night - I think his ears were probably worn out.
So, having got home, being better at getting up in the morning than Lodge, I cracked open a nightcap and settled down into my favourite chair to await the inevitable update on the day's events. Before this kicked off we discussed whether it was a good idea to stay up chewing the fat, but Lodge said he is usually awake by 7am therefore it's not as if he cannot get up. I agreed, after all I quite often wake up at 4am, so I'm practically up with the lark, even if I don't actually get out of bed until 7am.
Now Lodge is a temporary fixture and is actively looking for somewhere to live, so this formed the basis of the update. The house he's looking for has to meet a number of criteria: it needs to be big enough for him to be able to take the two boys from time to time; it needs to have a garage to house the motorcycle collection that's about to appear (being married to the black hole that was the Ex - by which I mean she was a financial drain, not that she had some nasty medical affliction - he never could afford the various motorbikes that it's every middle-aged man's right to own); it should be within certain districts of our fair city; it should have all the appliances, and preferably be furnished, as he currently owns very little on that front. (Is the preceding 6-line sentence really bad grammar? I don't know, but I imagine it probably is).
Apart from these reservations he is open to anything, as long as it's the right price of course. Being a sensible chap he set out all his outgoings on a spreadsheet to determine what he can afford each month and came up with circa £750 for the rent. As I said, he's a sensible chap, so when he told me he needed his passport in order to be able to make an offer to rent a 5 bedroomed detached place with the necessary garage (a double, no less!), appliances and even curtains, at only £895.00 pcm, I raised the quizzical eyebrow, a la Roger Moore. "No worries", he said, "I have even left myself nearly £60.00 a week for 'entertainment'". Now call me profligate if you will but I don't think I could get by on that, although I suppose it depends what you call 'entertainment'. I could drink that sum and possibly more, and he does seem keen on pub brunches and evening meals, which has to be accompanied by a pint. Then there's the take-aways too, although maybe these come out of the 'food' budget.
If the cost of insuring, taxing, testing, servicing and consumables of/for the motorbikes comes out of this budget, as mine does, it could be a stretch. Then there's other people's birthday presents, trips away, holidays, hobbies, extraordinary motoring costs (assuming there is a separate budget for running the car, and for saving up to replace it?), clothes (separate budget?) and the many other intangibles that you forget, but which seem to add up to a fair old sum.
"Ah, but I'm thinking of knocking the purchase of a large 3D TV on the head" he countered, "I reckon I can get a perfectly good 50 inch LED TV for much less than I was thinking of for the 3D jobby. And the boys won't need separate TV's for their rooms because I've put down a deposit on a MW3 X-box which will keep the eldest happy and will be better than what he has available to him at his mum' house, so kudos to me!"
"I see" I said. "It all makes sense now".
"Plus," he added, "I've been able to put on facebook that for only £100 pcm more than the Ex, I'm renting a 5 bed detached house c/w double garage, etc, which blows her 3 bed semi-detached out of the water. I am the Daddy!"
"You certainly are" I said and retired to bed.
In a way I hope he struggles to find his passport because I'm getting to quite enjoy our little tete-a-tete sessions, although on the other hand it's nice to know that when you spot a flock of starlings in the WC pan it was your own doing, so upon reflection maybe I'll pop home at lunchtime and lend a hand in the search.
So, albeit that I gave my skittles team my resignation sometime
last year, I told them if they were short of players on the odd occasion and I could make it, then I would help out. Last night they were two players short and as I was free I said I would play and I would ask Lodge if he had time to spare to play for us too. Well," he said, "I have to find my passport" (I'll go in to that later), "but if I get up at 7.00am to find it then I can still fit everything that I need to do into the day tomorrow".
So, a-skittling we went and a reasonable evening was had by all. Our team won and I don't have many opportunities to blow my own trumpet, so I'm going to now. My score beat everyone on my team and was second only to one across the board. It was nowhere near the mythical 90, for which you get a certificate from somewhere in the upper echelons of the league management, but what the heck, I was pleased.
Quite importantly, it beat the other half's niece's boyfriend, who turned out to be playing for the opposition. He had been claiming bragging rights because although we'd never seen each other play and frankly we've hardly ever even seen each other, he's younger than me and must have fancied himself as a bit of a player of the hallowed game. He does real work for a living whereas I push a pen around and like to arrange things neatly on my desk, so I think he thought it would be a doddle, but it wasn't - I finished ten points ahead of him. To be fair, on another night it could easily have been reversed. Skittles is a cruel game where a small difference in the angle of incidence of the ball on the pin, where you stand, the aim being too good (or, obviously, too poor) or the optimum level of beer consumption can make a huge difference to the score you get. Many a night I've sucked air through my teeth at the unbelievably fine gap between a ball that should have taken 'em all out and the reality of it passing straight through without troubling a single pin. Lodge volunteered his future services to the team, having beaten the challenge set before him of getting more than 50.
But enough of that, this isn't a tale about skittles and the associated rivalry between the City's night-sport activists with related love interests (I know, that makes it sound incestuous but hopefully you follow me -and yes, skittles is a sport in my book).
I don't know what Lodge's plans for today were but I guess he's going to have to do it at a quicker pace. As I left the house at 8.00am, which is rather late by my standards, I heard the odd thumping noise from his room. I hate to think what goes on in there, newly decorated and carpeted as it very recently was, but he's paying for the right to do whatever it is he's doing and as long as there's nothing too ... nah, let's move on, or rather move back.
We came back from town last night courtesy of a lift from the venerable team captain, a man in his mid seventies who has no doubt heard it all before, but for whom Lodge must have been an new experience. The skipper's boy was in the car with us too and as another whose past has involved divorce and the Child Support Agency, Lodge obviously spotted that he had a captive audience who might care to hear him unload his thoughts about the whole hideous business, his landlord having declined to take much interest. The beer (all four pints of it) had loosened the screws at the back of his tongue, not that they were all that tight in the first place. The journey was was therefore the stage for a diatribe against greedy, grasping ex wives, the meddling interference of the CSA, the rights and wrongs of acquaintances who may or may not have had intimate relationships with the Ex, and whether a certain lap-dancing club that we passed en route was a complete waste of money when you considered
what was available in the way of full-on 'ladies of the night'. Now I genuinely don't know about that but I would have thought that our little city doesn't have much in the way of lookers walking the streets, or whatever they do. Anyway, the whole thing was interspersed for good measure with a liberal sprinkling of profanities and a running commentary on pros and cons of any 'birds' walking home down the streets that we drove (not 'walking the streets' as referred to above). In the past when I have cadged a lift off the skipper, who lives in the same general direction as me, he has always pooh-poohed suggestions that he drops me at the point where he would turn left, leaving me half a mile of walking and has kindly driven the extra leg. Not last night - I think his ears were probably worn out.
So, having got home, being better at getting up in the morning than Lodge, I cracked open a nightcap and settled down into my favourite chair to await the inevitable update on the day's events. Before this kicked off we discussed whether it was a good idea to stay up chewing the fat, but Lodge said he is usually awake by 7am therefore it's not as if he cannot get up. I agreed, after all I quite often wake up at 4am, so I'm practically up with the lark, even if I don't actually get out of bed until 7am.
Now Lodge is a temporary fixture and is actively looking for somewhere to live, so this formed the basis of the update. The house he's looking for has to meet a number of criteria: it needs to be big enough for him to be able to take the two boys from time to time; it needs to have a garage to house the motorcycle collection that's about to appear (being married to the black hole that was the Ex - by which I mean she was a financial drain, not that she had some nasty medical affliction - he never could afford the various motorbikes that it's every middle-aged man's right to own); it should be within certain districts of our fair city; it should have all the appliances, and preferably be furnished, as he currently owns very little on that front. (Is the preceding 6-line sentence really bad grammar? I don't know, but I imagine it probably is).
Apart from these reservations he is open to anything, as long as it's the right price of course. Being a sensible chap he set out all his outgoings on a spreadsheet to determine what he can afford each month and came up with circa £750 for the rent. As I said, he's a sensible chap, so when he told me he needed his passport in order to be able to make an offer to rent a 5 bedroomed detached place with the necessary garage (a double, no less!), appliances and even curtains, at only £895.00 pcm, I raised the quizzical eyebrow, a la Roger Moore. "No worries", he said, "I have even left myself nearly £60.00 a week for 'entertainment'". Now call me profligate if you will but I don't think I could get by on that, although I suppose it depends what you call 'entertainment'. I could drink that sum and possibly more, and he does seem keen on pub brunches and evening meals, which has to be accompanied by a pint. Then there's the take-aways too, although maybe these come out of the 'food' budget.
If the cost of insuring, taxing, testing, servicing and consumables of/for the motorbikes comes out of this budget, as mine does, it could be a stretch. Then there's other people's birthday presents, trips away, holidays, hobbies, extraordinary motoring costs (assuming there is a separate budget for running the car, and for saving up to replace it?), clothes (separate budget?) and the many other intangibles that you forget, but which seem to add up to a fair old sum.
"Ah, but I'm thinking of knocking the purchase of a large 3D TV on the head" he countered, "I reckon I can get a perfectly good 50 inch LED TV for much less than I was thinking of for the 3D jobby. And the boys won't need separate TV's for their rooms because I've put down a deposit on a MW3 X-box which will keep the eldest happy and will be better than what he has available to him at his mum' house, so kudos to me!"
"I see" I said. "It all makes sense now".
"Plus," he added, "I've been able to put on facebook that for only £100 pcm more than the Ex, I'm renting a 5 bed detached house c/w double garage, etc, which blows her 3 bed semi-detached out of the water. I am the Daddy!"
"You certainly are" I said and retired to bed.
In a way I hope he struggles to find his passport because I'm getting to quite enjoy our little tete-a-tete sessions, although on the other hand it's nice to know that when you spot a flock of starlings in the WC pan it was your own doing, so upon reflection maybe I'll pop home at lunchtime and lend a hand in the search.
Tuesday 18 October 2011
So now I have a Lodger....
Lodgers, it's a lot like sharing a house with a cross between Basil Brush, Barney Gumble (of The Simpsons) and Johnny Fartpants.
Watching telly is like having Basil Brush in the room: whenever anything vaguely funny comes on (puerile humour works best) he bellows "HA, HA, HA" and pointing at the telly, shouting "look at that!" at me.
Meals are like feeding time at the zoo - I cooked Sunday dinner for the other half and I, to which I of course invited him - he belched his way through it, extremely loudly.
And then there's the farting......
At least I never get to see him in the morning: he's only ever been up once before I leave the house in the morning, even if I'm late-ish. Odd for someone who apparently never had a lie-in since the birth of his first-born. You'd have thought he would be used to getting up before 8.30ish (or maybe later, who knows). Despite the late rising he's often tired and yawns very vocally - whilst yawning he likes to go "oh-oh-oh" loudly, so that everyone else knows he's yawning. Probably all that hard work he does at the Gym, although I hear (by his own admsission) that he limits it to about 10 minutes on the cycling machine, a wee bit of rowing work and a spell on the machine near the door, you know, the one that dispenses chocolate bars and cans of coke.
I also get moments of respite when the police are after him, trying to persuade him that harassing his ex wife is a bad idea. That usually buys me 30 minutes of peace whilst he mulls over the implications and/or how to annoy her again. I think the last barrage he launched on her was when he discovered that Junior had not passed the 11 plus with anywhere like enough points to go to Pates, the Ex's preferred choice, or even Tommy Riches, his choice. Crypt looks possible but he cannot work out how the blighter would get there, (although one of our mutual friend's boy who lives very nearby seemed to manage). I suggested they got him a bicycle but he pooh-poohed that, preferring the nuclear option of demanding a recount. It got quite tense on Sunday when he learned that another mutual friend's kid had cruised in with a much better score. The phrase 'clutching at straws' springs to mind when you hear him say "Junior did say that he hadn't pressed very hard with his pencil when marking the
multiple choice boxes in the exams. Perhaps the computer that marks the cards was unable to read his the wimpy marks" (actually 'wimpy' was my choice of adjective, but you know what I mean).
Last Thursday evening we went out in Cheltenham: it was weird. Lodge likes to point at almost everything, including any woman he finds attractive. With his arm fully outstretched and making loud pronouncements like "She's got a fit arse" I was surprised that we didn't any more headway into the female population of the town than we did.
On Saturday we watched the rugby on the telly. I don't need to expand I'm sure, but there was a hell of a lot of arm waving and expression of opinion about Irish Francophile referees. Then (sucker for punishment that I am) we watched the rugby at Kingsholm. Fortunately I was in our Companies' box and he wasn't, although he met up with us after the game for beer in the Shogun bar then in the pub across the road. I let him talk to my boss (the host in our box) and very nearly got sacked on Monday morning. We left there at maybe 7.30pm for the pub near home and after a few more bevies we got a Chinese take- away and a bus back to Chez Moi at about 10.30pm. Lodge was p1ssed as a newt and boucing off walls on the walk down my street! I managed to get the monosodium glutomate and the occasional Spare Rib off the carpet around his chair on Sunday morning before the Aus/AB's match. By half-time I was beginning to wonder what had become of him when suddenly he charged downstairs and out of the front door with barely a by-your-leave, muttering something about picking up the bin lids - grist to the mill no-doubt for the presumable forthcoming battle over access to the little beggars with the Ex-wife.
Last night we watched Doc Martin together and he pointed out that I remind him of Doc Martin. It's a comparison I cannot deny carries some weight, but I at least have the manners not to point out to him that he reminds of something off Countryfile, Farming Today or Gorillas in the Mist.
That aside, it's lovely to have company and I know I'm a miserable git for having one or two reservations.
The much-put-upon Claude
Watching telly is like having Basil Brush in the room: whenever anything vaguely funny comes on (puerile humour works best) he bellows "HA, HA, HA" and pointing at the telly, shouting "look at that!" at me.
Meals are like feeding time at the zoo - I cooked Sunday dinner for the other half and I, to which I of course invited him - he belched his way through it, extremely loudly.
And then there's the farting......
At least I never get to see him in the morning: he's only ever been up once before I leave the house in the morning, even if I'm late-ish. Odd for someone who apparently never had a lie-in since the birth of his first-born. You'd have thought he would be used to getting up before 8.30ish (or maybe later, who knows). Despite the late rising he's often tired and yawns very vocally - whilst yawning he likes to go "oh-oh-oh" loudly, so that everyone else knows he's yawning. Probably all that hard work he does at the Gym, although I hear (by his own admsission) that he limits it to about 10 minutes on the cycling machine, a wee bit of rowing work and a spell on the machine near the door, you know, the one that dispenses chocolate bars and cans of coke.
I also get moments of respite when the police are after him, trying to persuade him that harassing his ex wife is a bad idea. That usually buys me 30 minutes of peace whilst he mulls over the implications and/or how to annoy her again. I think the last barrage he launched on her was when he discovered that Junior had not passed the 11 plus with anywhere like enough points to go to Pates, the Ex's preferred choice, or even Tommy Riches, his choice. Crypt looks possible but he cannot work out how the blighter would get there, (although one of our mutual friend's boy who lives very nearby seemed to manage). I suggested they got him a bicycle but he pooh-poohed that, preferring the nuclear option of demanding a recount. It got quite tense on Sunday when he learned that another mutual friend's kid had cruised in with a much better score. The phrase 'clutching at straws' springs to mind when you hear him say "Junior did say that he hadn't pressed very hard with his pencil when marking the
multiple choice boxes in the exams. Perhaps the computer that marks the cards was unable to read his the wimpy marks" (actually 'wimpy' was my choice of adjective, but you know what I mean).
Last Thursday evening we went out in Cheltenham: it was weird. Lodge likes to point at almost everything, including any woman he finds attractive. With his arm fully outstretched and making loud pronouncements like "She's got a fit arse" I was surprised that we didn't any more headway into the female population of the town than we did.
On Saturday we watched the rugby on the telly. I don't need to expand I'm sure, but there was a hell of a lot of arm waving and expression of opinion about Irish Francophile referees. Then (sucker for punishment that I am) we watched the rugby at Kingsholm. Fortunately I was in our Companies' box and he wasn't, although he met up with us after the game for beer in the Shogun bar then in the pub across the road. I let him talk to my boss (the host in our box) and very nearly got sacked on Monday morning. We left there at maybe 7.30pm for the pub near home and after a few more bevies we got a Chinese take- away and a bus back to Chez Moi at about 10.30pm. Lodge was p1ssed as a newt and boucing off walls on the walk down my street! I managed to get the monosodium glutomate and the occasional Spare Rib off the carpet around his chair on Sunday morning before the Aus/AB's match. By half-time I was beginning to wonder what had become of him when suddenly he charged downstairs and out of the front door with barely a by-your-leave, muttering something about picking up the bin lids - grist to the mill no-doubt for the presumable forthcoming battle over access to the little beggars with the Ex-wife.
Last night we watched Doc Martin together and he pointed out that I remind him of Doc Martin. It's a comparison I cannot deny carries some weight, but I at least have the manners not to point out to him that he reminds of something off Countryfile, Farming Today or Gorillas in the Mist.
That aside, it's lovely to have company and I know I'm a miserable git for having one or two reservations.
The much-put-upon Claude
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