A Bigger Grindstone

Define poverty.

Living on the streets?

Starving, having to steal food to survive?

Dying, having to sell your body to live?

Or just not earning enough money to be able to live decently?

Karen and I don’t particularly lead a profligate lifestyle. We’re not out partying every night (in fact although we went out for a meal Wednesday night to celebrate out wedding anniversary it was the first time we’d been out together in over 5 months). We don’t hit the shops every weekend in wild shopping splurges.

And yet, doing some sums and some short range financial forecasts we discovered that we’re pretty close to being in the crap. Karen needs to return to work in September as we simply can’t afford to have only one of us working indefinitely. This means paying for child care for Tom. Even if Karen only works school hours to try and relieve the burden of this we still need to find an extra £400 a month to cover the nursery costs.

We just do not have this money.

It’s ridiculous. We can’t afford to work. But can’t afford not to work. What are we supposed to do?

We only have three options.

1) Give up the rat race, claim benefits and hope we don’t lose our house as a consequence. Neither of us fancies this kind of lifestyle. This option is definitely out.

2) Bite the bullet and accept that over the next 4 years or so until Tom starts school we are going to slide inexorably into debt. Well. Not so much slide as bullet-train into debt.

3) Bite a bigger bullet and do all we can do slow that inexorable slide right down to a more manageable level. This means me getting an extra part-time job to bring in extra money to cover some of the child care costs. A morning or evening cleaning job most likely.

Karen isn’t happy about it (and I’m not exactly ecstatic) as she doesn’t want to see me flogging myself along the rocky road to a heart attack. But the alternative is a sizable debt that could totally destabilize us and take us decades to pay off. With the economy so shaky at the moment it seems to me some extra money coming into the house would not be a bad thing at all.

So. I am now officially looking for work. Even though I already have plenty. Full-time job. Part-time web design business. Novel on the go. One more year at University. Maintaining a wonderful home life.

Busy busy busy.

Sigh.

So does all this mean that I’m poor? Or just not poor enough?

Who knows? But at least I’m not sewing Nikes in a Kolkata sweat shop... or selling my body in an Essex lay-by.

Gardener’s World And Monkey Nuts

What a weekend!

Task 1: Karen and I purchased and collected a brand spanking second-hand car trailer from Meriden – our latest acquisition from eBay. You know you’re going up in the world when you buy a car trailer. You know you’re going down in your own estimation when you start getting trailer envy on the journey hone... “Hmm, they’re trailer is a lot bigger than ours...”

Task 2: We spent practically the entire day on Saturday using the newly acquired car trailer to ship the mountain of junk, trash, garden waste and assorted detritus that we’d cleared out of the shed the previous Monday down to the local tip. Three round journeys of approximately 120 minutes each. By the end of it Ranulph Fiennes had stomped off to mountains new and I was covered in bruises, lacerations and puncture holes... but enough of Karen’s “incentivizing techniques”...

Task 3: Far more enjoyable. We took the kids to Twycross Zoo on Sunday. Tom isn’t old enough to really appreciate either the entertainment value or the dodgy politics of imprisoning animals from different habitats in big cages in the UK but seemed to enjoy the experience of new sights and new smells greatly. Ben quite enjoyed it too but Karen and I both suspect that his personal Holy Grail was the acquisition of an ice cream at the end of the visit. This was confirmed by his opinion that looking at the animals was “all very enjoyable but you wouldn’t want to spend all day doing it”.

Ah kids. If it’s not got a joy-pad attached to it, it just ain’t cool.

Twycross for me, at least, was something of a trip down memory lane. (Cue brass band music akin to that used in the Hovis adverts of old...) When I was a young nipper my Nan and Grandpa took me to Twycross Zoo with my sister and I had a great time looking at all the monkeys but my overriding memory is that of buying a rubber spider on a piece of elastic. It was quite a big spider as I recall and covered in small rubber spines that made it seem both furry and springy at the same time. The elastic meant I could also bounce it quite menacingly into the face of any adult female that came within range (I guarantee I didn’t get my face wiped with a spat-in hankie that particular day, no sirree). Anyway, boys being boys – and me being a boy – the spider was taken on many joyous trips to school where me and my best friend at the time, John McCrae, would throw it to each other as high as we could across the school yard. Such fun and larks lasted until the flying spider found itself at last flung over the school wall and into the garden of one of the houses that abutted the school grounds...

Never to be seen again.

I mourned that spider for a good week. They don’t make them like that anymore I can tell you (I know; I’ve looked).

But now I am a man. And I have a car trailer instead.

Growing up sucks.

Teabags

I’m going to lift the lid a little on the neat(ish) four-walled container that is my domestic life in this post... nothing too saucy though: I honestly don’t think you’d be able to cope with the enormous, pulsating levels of un-depravity that occur beneath the roof of my house on a regular basis...

Instead I’m going to talk to you about the Blake Tea Ceremony which generally occurs once every 2 or 3 weeks and though it lasts barely ten minutes seems to impinge on my consciousness for an amount totally disproportionate to its importance in the bigger scheme of things.

Karen and I like a drop of Earl Grey. I’ll spare you the aromatic descriptions – we just like the stuff so drink it a lot. Now whether it’s a specific property of Earl Grey or a property of tea in general, I don’t know, but within 10 days the tea mugs are not just stained but are coated on the inside. A thick layer of tannin that no ordinary dishcloth will ever shift. The build up is phenomenal. If left for 2 weeks the volume of tea that the mugs can contain actually diminishes.

If left unchecked the mugs eventually come to resemble cross sections of one of John Prescott’s arteries or two very short, incredibly thick straws.

It’s at this point that I have to act. I just can’t bear it. The only thing that can cleanse the mugs back to their sparkling pristine state is a wire scourer. The result of all the subsequent scrubbing is that the dishwater ends up looking like a flood in a clay pit. Revolting. But suddenly the amount of tea that the mugs can accommodate nearly doubles. It’s amazing.

My only concern is what the hell the tea is doing to my insides? We’ve all heard about the acidic effects if coke... do I need to up my cola intake to ensure my oesophagus and my stomach don’t become congested with tea residue? Swallow the occasional wire brush to chip away at the internal build-up (not good for piles surely)?

It’s a small thing, I know. But it bothers me.

However, my psychiatrist says it’s healthy to air these things...

How Desperate Are You?

Regular readers of this blog will have noticed that I have an unquenchable predilection for fly-on-the-wall type documentary TV shows – an appetite that I indulge solely so that I can exercise my rabid spleen by giving the participants of these shows a bloody good drubbing.

Hey. A nasty spleen is a happy spleen after all.

But watching “How Clean Is Your House?” last night I had to wonder to myself what kind of person actually chooses to willingly debase themselves on national television by appearing on such a show?

Now I realize that there are people out there – damaged, inept and socially inexpert – who through no fault of their own are unable to live conventional lives and carve out a small pocket of existence for themselves which resembles that of a New York bag-lady. There are even people who just choose not to clean their homes regularly and feel perfectly happy mired up to their hips in their own filth and detritus and develop immune systems that can snuff out the after effects of a neutron bomb.

But generally – either through immense shyness bordering on psychological shutdown or a perfectly normal sized sense of shame – these people would rather run a mile through Irish bog than let a strange person into their homes... let alone a film crew fronted by Scottish frost-pot Aggie MacKenzie and blonde beehived behemoth Kim Woodburn.

Which leads me to conclude that the people who apply to participate on this show are, perhaps, a little bit conniving... a little bit scheming... a little bit manipulative and self publicizing.

I have visions of them scrunching up yet another rejection letter from The Weakest Link or Deal Or No Deal and deciding that, "right, that’s it, I’m off to my local landfill site to collect as much dross, crap and bio-muck as I can; I’ll chuck it around my living room and dining room kitchenette and then give those obsessive compulsive cleaners from How Clean Is Your House? a call... it’s a sure-fire way to get on the telly!"

And bingo – it works. Cos every week there’s yet another sad-sack on my TV screen looking theatrically abashed at the sheer volume of killer ecoli spores that are lurking on their welsh dresser and the amount of faecal contaminates that have been liberally scattered around their DFS sofa suite and within the air tight confines of their tupperware lunch boxes by the malfunctions of a scabby toilet bowl that resembles the north face of the Eiger.

Effing hell. Do these people want to get on the telly that badly?

To the point where they’ll risk their own health and well-being as well as that of their family and friends? Do they even have friends? I mean it’s not something you’d boast about in the pub is it?

"Oh yeah, my mate Kev has been on How Clean Is Your House? - yeah, they had to slash and burn his entire living room apparently, it’s been diagnosed a global biohazard... there’s a five-mile exclusion zone around the whole site... but hey at least he gave Kim Woodburn one.... now she really was mucky..."

Urgh. Shudder.

For God’s sale just buy a mop and some Mister Sheen! I mean how difficult can it be? Isn’t there enough crap on the TV these days without encouraging more...?

Captain Grim

This is probably an unfair posting but I just can’t help it.

Part of my duties at work involve managing the small team of cleaners that maintain the cleanliness and hygiene of the building. Now before I get accused of snobbery I’d just like to point out that I did such work myself during my twenties. It’s demeaning, thankless, boring and ultimately unrewarding. However, it did allow me the freedom to write to my heart’s content for years and years without my creativity being debilitated by a stressful working life. And cleaning does have some amazing pros: you’re pretty much your own boss, there’s precious little responsibility, it’s not difficult and when your work is done you can go home, forget all about it and concentrate on the stuff that’s really important to you.

I have a tremendous amount of respect and even a little envy for anybody who cleans for a living. I really do.

So why is it that I absolutely can’t stand the cleaner where I work? I shan’t mention his name because that really wouldn’t be fair.

There is something so... spiritually desiccating about the man, it’s unbelievable. He only has to approach me and I feel my life force being sucked out of me and a dark rain cloud of gloom being inserted into the cavity it leaves. He’s a depressed and depressing vampire. Everything this man says is a lament or a tale of mundane woe. Everything. But worst of all it’s also so grovellingly accusing.

• Steve, we’re run out of loo rolls... and it’s your fault.


• Steve, the toilets are blocked... and it’s your fault.


• Steve, vandals have broken the sinks and are running amok with AK-47s... and it’s your fault.

Aaargh!

But what I hate most of all is the simple fact that this man doesn’t EVER listen to whoever he’s having a conversation with. He’ll ask the same question or make the same point eight times in a single conversation without once registering that it was responded to after the first instance. It’s maddeningly infuriating!

Steve, the toilets are blocked.

I know. The plumber is on his way.

Steve, the toilets are blocked.

Yes. The plumber has been called. He’s on his way.

Steve, the toilets are blocked.

Are you listening? The plumber is coming RIGHT NOW to deal with it.

Steve, the toilets are blocked.

Look I’m gonna shove this plunger up where the sun doesn’t shine in a minute!

Steve, the toilets are blocked...

And so on and so forth. Ad bloody infinitum.

Lastly – and this weirds me out big time – he sings to himself.

Nothing strange about that, you may think. But... he sounds like a ruddy Clanger. With a Geordie accent! I kid you not. “Bu-bu-bu-booo-boooo! Boooo-booo-bu-bu-bu-boooooo!” The corridors resound everyday to the ghostly yet faintly melodic wailing of hand-knitted children’s television show puppets from the 1970s. The toilet pans echo to their plaintive cries.

Ha-wey! These bogs are blumin blocked agen, Steve man! Is the plumber comin’..?!

It’s doing my effing head in.