» House Guests

There's one house I luckily now have no reason to go near
Wavy lines and all that shite.

On Friday afternoons while I was at sixth form, I used to be free between 11.30 and about 4. Since the last lesson of the day was optional Foreign, I and friends would usually skip it and finish right on 11.30.

By midday, we'd be in the pub down the road that would serve us if we sat in the back room quietly supping and didn't act like students. This would usually follow on to me squirrelling the then girlfriend (Miss Harris, we'll call her) back to hers around 3 and doing my furious worst to her vadge until shortly before her parents got home around 6.

Guess what happened this one fateful Friday, kids? I'd finished dispensing the sweet loving and gone downstairs in only my boxers to make us a brew. Mr. Harris is at the kitchen table with an empty cup and plate and an open paper. I understood later that this meant he'd probably been there the entire three minutes we'd been loudly at it.

Realising as he looks up at me dejectedly that it might as well just be 'Dave' now, I offer, "Make you a brew, Dave?" He grunts a dismissive "Nah, lad". I get the brew on, choosing as the least awkward option to hover around the kitchen as the kettle comes to the boil. Dave cringes in disgust at my sweaty little presence, adding nothing to his initial grunt.

The daughter I’ve been enjoying is not Dave’s favourite. She’s his second daughter of two, the slightly more useless and less pretty one, the one that should really have been his only son, the one he sometimes in fact calls “Son” when he’s either pissed and jocular or pissed and bitter. I sense in him more dejected resignation than anger. My testicles peek out at him from behind my kidneys and thank him for his grown-up response to the situation.

After these few prickly minutes I carry the brews upstairs, knocking over one of Mrs H's tiny, square, wall-hung paintings as I go and smashing the glass out of the frame. I also spill some tea on my naked foot. I hop around briefly and loudly on the landing, which sits above the kitchen.

The girlfriend has realised her dad is home and cries a bit. I elect not to hang around till the lady of the house gets back. As far as I know, the girlfriend hid under the covers the rest of that evening in shame until the parents went to bed.

I found out the next day that Dave was home early from his factory job for the first time in 20 years because he'd been laid off. I haven’t been back since that day.
(Tue 11th Jan 2011, 16:05, More)

» The B3TA Confessional

First time. Go easy.
I was the one who ruined Christmas for baby bro when we were but sprogs, by sliding the plastic tray of his Advent calendar out of its perforated cardboard cover, removing the foil over the final day's chocolate treat, eating said treat slightly more hastily than would have been pleasurable and then putting the whole thing back together for him to discover just as he was expecting the biggest, tastiest, most Father-Christmas-shaped treat in the whole calendar.

I was about fourteen; he was about seven.

He sobbed for an hour, suddenly and brutally exposed to a new and frighteningly grown-up kind of self-doubt: Had he really been as good a little boy as mummy had assured him?


Father Christmas answered his question the next morning, perhaps ambiguously, with a book about world records.
(Thu 26th Aug 2010, 15:39, More)

» Dad stories


My dad was a joiner. He turned his off-cuts into Brio track for me and the siblings. He also set his machines to ‘big sawdust bits’ instead of ‘small sawdust bits’ so that we had bedding for our rabbit. Top, top dadding.

He’s dead now. I inherited his belt sander and broke it.
(Mon 29th Nov 2010, 14:29, More)

» Crappy relationships

We split up because I am a big fat racist
My crime? To be found in posession of white skin whilst remarking that an Asian girl serving us in an Asian bar who spoke no English (or indeed Latin) was lucky that her tattoo read 'carpe diem' and not 'dizzy fat slag' or some such.

This from a lass who wouldn't be seen hand in hand with me in the predominately Asian part of town where her Asian mother lived, for I am a white devil and to be seen on my arm would have earned her the nickname 'dizzy fat slag' or some such.
(Fri 22nd Oct 2010, 15:28, More)

» Complaining

Do I have a case?
This happened over the phone recently:

Me: Hello, council, I've just had a final demand for council tax payment with an extra £80 court fee thrown into the mix. I didn't get the first letter(s), however. I'd like to pay my tax without the legal fee, please.

Council: But the first two letters explained the legal fee.

Me: But I didn't get them. I clearly want to pay you, though, as you only have my name and address because I called you the first day I was in the house to give you my details.

Council: Not our fault.

Me: Did you send the reminder by recorded delivery?

Council: We don't have to. Our computer says we sent them.

I'm quite a fan of letters, and I will write one if there's one that could beat these gits. Any thoughts?
(Thu 2nd Sep 2010, 16:25, More)