Had a nauseating phone call from my sister Stella, an endless tale of woe and how my great, big, useless, vastly overpaid cunt of a brother-in-law had made himself ill worrying about the recession.
“He worries all day and he worries all night”, she said “And I’m at my wit’s end looking after him”.
She then went on to say that my nephew Arthur was not enjoying his year in California at all, and he couldn’t wait to come home. I know for a fact that the reasons Arthur isn’t enjoying California at all are because (i) the Americans actually make the lazy little scrote do some work, (ii) for the first time in his life he’s met people who probably DON’T think the sun automatically shines out of his port-hole (other than myself and Misty that is) , and (iii) he’s not allowed to drink. No point saying any of this to Stella though, who’s convinced that it’s all down to a culture clash, and Arthur missing his Mum and British chips (British licensing laws more like).
The point of this depressing phone call was then made clear. Stella couldn’t cope with doing everything herself. She really needed someone to come and do all the shopping, all the cleaning, all the cooking, all the gardening, all the ironing (you get the drift). She didn’t actually include walking the dog, washing the £20,000 glorious car, changing my brother-in-law’s trousers, and reading him a soothing bed-time story, but I wouldn’t have been surprised let’s say. I decided to ignore this disgusting hint, and pointed out that her local area directory should have a list of people all offering their different services to do these jobs.
“You must be having a terrible time with all this”, she said.
(Why ME in particular???). “We’ll be alright”, I said, trying to remind her that there are actually two of me, a fact she usually conveniently forgets “We’ve got all the Summer ahead of us, and if things get too bad I can put Misty out on the streets and be his pimp!”
There was an aghast silence at the other end of the phone, and then she said (n a very New Labour-ish way) that I wasn’t to make jokes like that. It wasn’t right.
I rang off and went to eat a bag of Maltesers, all the while thinking that a good injection of a healthy sense of humour really wouldn’t do anybody any harm.
Misty was in the bath, whilst I was doing some work on my latest masterpiece - the dunes at Fobbington Sands - when I was interrupted by an insolent little git coming to the door, offering to spray-wash my garden path. I said I didn’t want it doing.
“It needs doing”, he said (you don’t even have to leave the house to be insulted these days, the world can come to you!).
“Go away and stop bothering me”, I said, rapidly losing my cool.
“Alright”, he shrugged “I’m not the one with a scruffy front path!”
I slammed the door and put the chain on too, just for good measure. Misty came out of the bathroom to see what all the fuss was about.
“How does he expect to sell anything with an attitude like that?!” I exclaimed.
“We could call the police I suppose”, said Misty “But I expect they’ve got more important things to do”.
“I wouldn’t bank on it!” I said.
I decided that only the direst of emergencies was worth the hassle of dealing with the cocky 12-year-olds who seem to run Fobbington cop-shop, so I let it go.
I was so rattled by this and my sister Stella’s phone call (does she have this ridiculous assumption that all gay men adore doing cooking and cleaning? If so, in my case, she couldn’t be more mistaken) that I had trouble getting to sleep that night. Misty, needless to say, slept like a log.
At around 2 o’clock in the morning (in my opinion, a horrid time to be awake when everyone else is asleep) I heard a rustling noise in the living-room. At first I thought, with some dismay, that we had mice again. We had had one a few years ago, which I had heard scuttling around on a packet of sweets Misty had left lying on the floor, and that is what this sounded like.
In any case I thought I had better get up and investigate. I crept to the bedroom door, which fortunately I had left ajar. The living-room was very dark, but the noise was quite loud, and I figured out that it must be coming from the desk with our computer on it, which sits in the corner nearest the bedroom door. The thoroughly unsettling thought then came to me that this wasn’t a mouse at all, but another - larger -intruder.
The noise was also more methodical than the random scuttling of a mouse. Someone was sifting through my paperwork. My overwhelming feeling was of anger. How dare this arrogant bastard come into my house and look through my private things? Fortunately, angry though I was, I wasn’t so bone-headed as to go out confronting whoever-it-was full-on. Not unarmed anyway. I decided to try and get a reasonable look at this person first, and I positioned myself to peer through the crack in the door. All I could make out was the dark outline of someone standing with their back to me. The figure was quite tall, but other than that I couldn’t make out anything other than a dark shape.
The only thing that could reasonably be classed as a weapon which I kept in the bedroom was a large monkey-wrench, which a plumber had left behind once, and which I had commandeered for just this eventuality. It was in the top drawer of Granny’s old dressing-table. I was trying to speculate how long it would take me to creep across the room, open the drawer and get the thing out (by which I could probably have done it!), when I realised the rustling had stopped. The figure had gone.