Entries Tagged 'Haec vita mea est' ↓

I love the UK because in the space of 24 hours, I ate turkey and tinsel (which stuck in the throat) with the Eastbourne Gilbert and Sullivan Society, followed by watching little brother (who asked for a mention) set the girls’ skirts on fire with his wheels of steel and Charles Manson (the killer, not the actor) style facial hair. Some slapper from Hastings told me that the label in my jacket said I was “fit” and then I burnt the roof of my mouth on a Ginster’s Chicken and Mushroom pie at 2 o’clock in the morning.

Life doesn’t get better. Meanwhile, is this the headline of the week?

I’m often uncomfortable, as in fear for for my safety uncomfortable. Sitting in passenger seats in fast moving cars, sitting in passenger seats in slow moving cars, walking through Eastbourne town centre at eight on a Friday night, scuba-diving, drinking milk that’s a day out of date … that sort of thing.

But around guns I’ve always reckoned myself pretty cool. Apart from the time at school a four-foot psycho called Wingnut explained to me that with his blank-firing cadet’s rifle that if he got really close and discharged it directly into my ear then the force would be enough to evacuate my brain out the other side. (He went on to be expelled for disabling a milk-man with a high-speed ball-bearing.)

I’ve hung out with former child soldiers in Cambodia (see picture) and fired off automatic machine guns. Didn’t even flinch.

But I was particularly uncomfortable on Friday night when, as the first arrival at Tippler’s Bond party, somebody went the whole hog and discharged some sort of fire-arm about three feet away. And it wasn’t a cap-gun. So I was the first departure as well.

It was, apparently, a starting pistol. Don’t care. Call me old-fashioned, but I remember the days when you could walk into a bar in Brussels and the only danger came from paranoid drug-dealing Albanians with sharp knives and big fists …

When you first buy a house, it’s exciting. The first eighty percent of boxes get unpacked, the fancy-smelling soaps get housed on their appropriate sinks and a new coffee machine takes pride of place on the carefully selected kitchen surface.

Weekends one and two are identified by the constant climbing stairs, unpacking, repacking and throwing out.

Then comes the rest. The joy of choosing curtains (I use the word “joy” loosely, but I hope the sentiment is understood) gets overtaken by the realisation that for every curtain you need a curtain rail, rawl plugs and endless hours in the DIY store. Light fittings need transformers and there’s a difference between wattage and voltage. Depending on who you speak to, your parquet flooring should either be treated with lots of wax or lots of water, or no water at all but a special soap that you can only buy in the Netherlands.

The bookshelves don’t build themselves and the procrastinating over spending thousands on massively-overpriced storage solutions means that every flat surface, including beds and floors, is used as a wardrobe.

I’m shutting my eyes and hoping that when I get back from my Christmas holidays, it will all have taken care of itself.