Waiting For The Man

I wouldn’t mind if the purpose of waking before birds’ chirping time was to get stuff done or go to work. It isn’t; the buzzer goes off, there’s shuffling and mumbling before the object moves downstairs to watch recorded programmes about back gardens. I’m not being euphemistic.

Fighting pillows becomes a losing battle and, in the end, I reach out to stick on the radio and tug on some GVC. I used to hate Grants. That was before I grew to like it…which came shortly before I made the decision that if the opportunity presented itself I’d skip the atty and simply mainline the stuff. I’m not addicted to vaping; I could (as Zammo might have said in Grange Hill) give it up anytime. But not Grants Vanilla Custard. I have a nasty feeling that if I ran low I might indulge in robbery to sustain my fix. Or prostitution. I’m prepared to keep my options open.

But downstairs there’s something important happening in a front garden. Or maybe there’s a new type of accident that no one in Casualty has ever seen before, certainly not at half five in the morning. I’m expecting today, the vendor’s website says so on the tablet. It’s time to wave a white flag and get up, coffee beckons.

Stairs are a wonderful invention. Stairs allow you to go up, and then you can use them to go down.  You can even use them as a makeshift storage unit for all of the things you can be bothered to put in your room because your life as a child is simply too damn busy. At this point stairs help you go down far faster than you could have previously envisaged going at 5:45am.

Nursing a throbbing toe, a coffee and an intense hatred of Alan Titchmarsh – I sulk. I sulk because more bad things have happened in the space of sixty minutes than I’d have hoped would enter the entire day sprawling in front of me. Mainly, I sulk because 6am has only recently featured in my sphere of reference and Alan bloody Titchmarsh is talking about something I couldn’t develop an interest in if my kids’ lives depended on it. But their lives don’t depend on it; they depend on whether or not they leave something on the stairs again.

I draw deep on the GVC-fuelled Squape. I draw deep and blot out humanity through the medium of more coffee until almost 7am. It’s at this point in the morning that two little people, who aren’t so little anymore, join us. Two not-so-little people moaning, two dogs barking and a partner panicking they’re now late because time has been frittered.

Satre said: “Hell is other people.” What he didn’t know is that they live in my house while Breakfast TV drones. Dante needs to add my pre-7:45am lounge to one of his levels, somewhere between fornicators and liars.

And then the door clicks and it’s done and it’s over. Heaven. Just me and you, Squapey. Me, you and a bottle of GVC to us through the next threeish hours until Posty rings twice. And Posty is going to ring because the vendor’s website said so on my tablet. Posty will ring and I’ll answer like it’s my birthday because he’ll be carrying a parcel containing a new atomiser. You take your pleasures in life where you can find them and we know the unbridled excitement of receiving an expected envelope with kit in it. Boy do we know that joy.

Time ebbs then Dog#2 barks. Dog#2 barks at everything that might be coming near the house but the thing he loves most is Posty. Loves as in ‘hates with a passion based on no logical motive whatsoever.’ The fury in his woof is my cue: it’s the signal to ride the flotsam and jetsam on the stairs as I try to break land speed records covering the distance to the front door.

And there it is.

No ring, no knock, no vapemail – just a letter. A miserable letter. A miserable excuse for a letter wrapped in the brown paper of doom. I draw deep on the GVC-fuelled Squape. I draw deep and resist the urge to kick Dog#2.

Kipling once wrote: “If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster – and treat those two impostors just the same…” Kipling was probably proud of that. He was probably as proud of it as the self-congratulatory business managers who quote it during training seminars. I’m going to hazard a guess that Kipling never waited for vapemail.