I’m skiving off work and school, blowing my noise and whispering consolingly to myself, trying to shake a dose of the ‘flu. No chicken in chicken nuggets, so it looks like I’m not dying.
Yesterday’s lying in bed feeling sorry for myself was brightened by my boss phoning me up and shouting at me for forty-five minutes.
Everybody else is having fun.
Bastards.
Books keeping me company as I languish in a snotty hole of self-pity:
Stalin - The Court of the Red Tsar by Simon Sebag-Montefiore
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins
This book will save your life by A.M Homes
The Boys from Brazil By Ira Levin
How to Be a Bad Birdwatcher by Simon Barnes
The Little Friend by Donna Tartt
The Essential Pritchett By V.S. Pritchett
Dry by Augusten Burroughs
Notes on a Scandal by Zoe Heller
There I am, standing in the queue for a taxi outside Brussels’ south station. It’s late on Sunday night. Sat on a bench thirty feet away is girl speaking on her mobile phone. A tall, trenchcoated man ambles up slowly behind her, peers into her handbag, which is placed on the seat next to her, puts his hand in and steals her wallet.
Like a slightly arthritic Superman (pre-disability), I leap to her defence. Well, meander really. I walk towards him, then walk slightly towards the door, wary of the fact he might have a knife. Or a Rottweiler. Or a large gun.
He stops. So do I. He takes a few steps sideways. So do I. He takes a few steps towards me. I almost run away. I get on my phone. Not really on it, like a horse, but on it like put it to my ear. He makes eye contact. Then starts to walk back the way he comes. I follow him (with my gaze) and he appears to put something back in the handbag.
A better Samaritan sees this and misconstrues it as the original theft, shouts “stop thief!” and gives chase.
I walk towards the girl on the phone, who’s still oblivious, and ask her if anything’s missing. She shoots me daggers and tells me to fuck off.
Who’d have thought? Me, a superhero.
The bar next door don’t like to disturb their customers, so they only turn their music up to earbleed volume once they’ve all left. This is normally around half-past midnight, but can occasionally be as late as three in the morning.
Because I’m a walkover, I normally wake up, scratch my eyes and call them on the phone. If they hear the phone, they apologise and turn it down for a bit. If they don’t hear the phone, I get out of bed, get half-dressed and knock on the door.
This has been going on for a year.
The owner is charming, if thick, and offers me beer, which I refuse, and says he’s sorry and that it won’t happen again. Then it happens again. So I phone, get half-dressed and etc etc.
This happens three to four times a week.
Now, if Buddhism had patron saints, I’d be the patron saint of Zen. My patience is glorious, my wick never-ending and my fuse not connected to the mains. I’d rather trot sleepy-eyed to work for a year than risk falling out with my neighbours. This is disgusting. I makes me a pussy, a coward afraid to stand up for his rights and suffer for somebody else’s selfishness.
So I was as surprised as anybody, when at half-past nothing this morning I stormed, fuming, through their front door in my slippers. They looked afraid and asked if they should lower the music.
“NO, YOU CAN FUCKING TURN THE WHOLE FUCKING THING OFF ALTO-FUCKING-GETHER!!“
A moment’s silence, then some daft bitch I hadn’t met before shouted back, “Talk to me like that and you can get out.”
“Fine,” I said, a bit deflated. There were eight of them.
I heard them laugh as I walked out.
So I called the police who came and told them off. It’s not the first time I’ve done it, but this time I hung around to see the result. The result was the daft bitch standing in the street, giving me a sarcastic round of applause and mouthing off. So I mouthed off back. The police told her to shut up and get inside while I got an apology from the owner.
Then I double-locked the front-door and worried all night about the consequences of falling out with your neighbours.
Hard as nails, me.