God I hate weekends. Trust me, when you’ve retired, you’ll
hate them too. It is Sunday, and the
house is full of people, mainly my daughter and a bunch or her friends, and the
missus somewhere.
It’s 11.30am. I’ve had my muesli (yes, I am trying to be
good, and not eat fried eggs EVERY day).
So I just check if there is anything worth watching.
I trawl through the channels. Jeremy Kyle. Cash in the
Attic. Khazakstan’s Got Talent. The X Factor, The Y factor, the Y Do I Bother turning
on the TV Factor. Frasier. Aha! OK, acceptable viewing rubbish. First I have to
pay the price. Advert about how to straighten my hair, lengthen my hair, curl
my hair. I don't actually have any hair, but on and on it goes. How to increase
my hair volume (in my case you would need a shedload of fertilizer), how to
turn my hair the colour of summer meadows. Advert showing juvenile imbeciles
squirting huge handfuls of what looks like whipped cream at each other and
combing it into their lustrous hair, laughing like hyenas on nitrous oxide.
Advert on how to prevent the signs of aging (too late). Advert on how to fill
in your wrinkles (don't have any - full of fat). Advert of a car that looks
like any other car, saying how different, manly, and frankly, dangerous it is.
Advert on how to rehydrate your skin before it's too late. I now realise how
close to death I must be, and am about to open a vein, when Frasier finally
arrives back. I perk up, and put my buttered crumpet to my lips (what? I’ve had
the muesli, so that’s at least 300 negative calories isn’t it?) I sit back in
anticipation of some comic banter I have heard ten times before.
As I am about to take a bite, the phone rings. I ignore it. It is never for me, especially not during the day, and I don't have any friends. I shout to my missus, who is somewhere in the house. I yell my daughter's name and wait. It keeps ringing. I howl out their names. We have about 200 extensions throughout the house, so I know they can hear it. In fact, they must be able to hear the damn ringing across the road. They can certainly hear my febrile bellows for someone to answer the phone, which is about three inches away from my left hand.
Still it rings, and I am now hoarse from shouting. I know if I answer it, it will either be for my daughter, or an overenthusiastic twat trying to sell me health insurance “for my loved ones”. At present, as they are all too lazy to pick up the damn phone, frankly they can fend for themselves when they fall into the threshing machine.
As I am about to take a bite, the phone rings. I ignore it. It is never for me, especially not during the day, and I don't have any friends. I shout to my missus, who is somewhere in the house. I yell my daughter's name and wait. It keeps ringing. I howl out their names. We have about 200 extensions throughout the house, so I know they can hear it. In fact, they must be able to hear the damn ringing across the road. They can certainly hear my febrile bellows for someone to answer the phone, which is about three inches away from my left hand.
Still it rings, and I am now hoarse from shouting. I know if I answer it, it will either be for my daughter, or an overenthusiastic twat trying to sell me health insurance “for my loved ones”. At present, as they are all too lazy to pick up the damn phone, frankly they can fend for themselves when they fall into the threshing machine.
Goddam it, where is everybody? I mute Niles as he says
something pompous, slam my crumpet down, and snap up the receiver. 'Hello!', I
say with as much irritation as I can muster, which is considerable by now. A
breathy yet bored girl's voice asks for my daughter. Even though I knew it was
going to happen, this raises my fury to a new level, and I scream hysterically
for her, but to no avail. I slump back, exhausted.
Like a Golem staggering towards me out of the gloom,
the hideous truth of the situation bears down on me. I am going to have to get off the sofa. I steel myself, get up, open the door, and bellow to my daughter like a crazed wildebeest being set upon by a pride of lionesses, “PHONE!!!!!!” My daughter finally answers, her voice full of annoyance, as if I have interrupted her whilst negotiating the latest round of Palestine/Israeli peace talks, 'I'm on my mobile; put the call through up here!!'
We have a marvellous phone system, which is a digital, cordless phone with three million extensions all over the house. In the good old days, with our perfectly adequate analogue phone, anyone could pick up an extension and talk. With this new system, to make life a whole lot easier of course, you have to dial the other extension to transfer the call, for crying out loud, a system that I have absolutely no hope of ever figuring out, so I have to tramp upstairs, and thrust the phone into my daughter's one free and impatient finger-clicking hand, for which I am rewarded with a scowl and a flounce.
I return to the sofa. Fortunately, all is not lost, as I am just in time to find out how to increase the length of my eyelashes by up to 40%
Roll on Monday
Like a Golem staggering towards me out of the gloom,
the hideous truth of the situation bears down on me. I am going to have to get off the sofa. I steel myself, get up, open the door, and bellow to my daughter like a crazed wildebeest being set upon by a pride of lionesses, “PHONE!!!!!!” My daughter finally answers, her voice full of annoyance, as if I have interrupted her whilst negotiating the latest round of Palestine/Israeli peace talks, 'I'm on my mobile; put the call through up here!!'
We have a marvellous phone system, which is a digital, cordless phone with three million extensions all over the house. In the good old days, with our perfectly adequate analogue phone, anyone could pick up an extension and talk. With this new system, to make life a whole lot easier of course, you have to dial the other extension to transfer the call, for crying out loud, a system that I have absolutely no hope of ever figuring out, so I have to tramp upstairs, and thrust the phone into my daughter's one free and impatient finger-clicking hand, for which I am rewarded with a scowl and a flounce.
I return to the sofa. Fortunately, all is not lost, as I am just in time to find out how to increase the length of my eyelashes by up to 40%
Roll on Monday
No comments:
Post a Comment