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.
No comments:
Post a Comment