Day 3

Three days in and already I'm obsessed with word counts, which is probably not a good sign, I should just be writing. Wasn't very happy with what I was writing at first today but I got more into it later and managed to break the magical 2000 word barrier. I'm still getting people coming up to me and saying "you're doing what??" even those I've told. And that's just me mother....

I’m a bit loath to re-enforce our little gang’s geek credentials still further, but for the sake of completion and historical accuracy, and given that you’ve stuck with me this far, I may as well lay it all on the line. At least it’s all in the open then and you can’t say you’ve not had fair warning.

Just remember that it makes us happy and if you had the kind of shitty jobs we have then you’d do whatever the hell it took to get you through the day in one piece. Most nights you’ll find us crashed out in front of a DVD, we’ll watch almost anything but chick flicks are out unless Mum is around. Me and Shugsy don’t bother with the TV much unless Sopranos is on, which is unmissable and Shugsy likes his CSI. Marlene lets the side down somewhat by watching all that crap with ‘nightmare’ or ‘hell’ or ‘swap’ in the title. Basically, anything that starts ‘Britain’s worst….’ And she’s there. And she encourages my mother as well. It’s usually our cue to disappear down the pub. Thankfully she draws the line at Pop Idol or Big Brother, saying it exploits the participants. I did try and point out the inconsistencies in her argument, considering the tripe she does watch but she had one of her sense of humour failures so I left it. I find it’s always best to let it go when Marlene starts getting intense, I love her to bits but when she gets upset, that’s when my balance gets thrown out and they start getting heavy.

Hey, look, I’m getting there alright? Just sit tight it’ll probably all work out in the end I promise. Maybe not for the best, but you’ll have to trust me. So if I start throwing in some odd concepts and weird shapes just humour me, my brain doesn’t exactly work like it used to. You’ll get the idea soon enough. It’s kind of like parallel lines, they never come together, but occasionally there’ll be a near coming together of my brain waves and that’s where things might take a turn for the unexpected. I can’t predict when it’s going to happen but it will sooner rather than later, so try and prepare yourself. I’ll try and give you some advance warning.

Right, where was I? Oh yeah, life outside work hours. We all enjoy walking, except Mum of course, although she likes to sit out in the garden and watch our progress up to the hills out the back until we disappear, for some reason it gives her some comfort. Then she wheels herself back into the house and makes supper for when we get back. I know it’s kind of a cliché, but she really doesn’t complain, there’s just the frustration when she can’t do something mundane, like opening a can. Before she moved into the home, I’d hear her downstairs, just sitting in the kitchen, giving herself a talking to as she tried to make a cup of tea. I did ask her about it once, one of the few times she talked about her condition with anyone except her doctor as far as I know,
“I just feel so tired sometimes, George. It’s not like me, it’s like I’m not in control of my own body anymore.” She did look tired. Tired and old all of a sudden. “You know what your da would have told me.”
“Aye, some crap about getting your eight hours kip. He were full of good advice, and full of shit.”
“George!” Mum was always a bit prudish about language. Personally, I like a good swear. There’s nothing like a good ‘fuck’ to break the ice at a party. And I mean that in it’s use as a noun or adjective, not a verb. I’ve never had a good verbing at a party. I’ve never got invited to parties either, but you get the idea.
“What do you reckon da would have been like now though. Same as ever, still swanning off down the boozer with his mates, not doing a tap around the house,” I said.
“I don’t know, he might have changed, but he didn’t like facing the truth your father,” Mum said pensively, “he was always more of a man for action than talking about something.”
“Well he certainly didn’t talk for long about doing one did he? That’s one time when I could have done with a man to man chat, before he acted,” I said, “I’m sorry, I know you don’t want to hear me slagging him off.” Mum was looking away, biting her lip. I stuck the kettle on again and finished making the tea and we chatted for a couple of hours about anything other than da until I fell asleep on the sofa. If the selfish sod had seen the shit he’d left behind, I wonder if he’d have thought twice before leaving, I doubt it somehow.

Christ, I’m off the subject again aren’t I? I do apologise, this is what happens, I wander between situations a lot these days, it does keep me from thinking about things too much, but it isn’t going to help you keep up is it? As I said, we go off walking in the countryside a lot. Shugsy can walk for miles without a break, but Marlene and I like to have a destination in mind, usually a pub or bus stop. That’s the problem with not having a car between us, you have to rely on public transport, which in this country is like taking four items at random out of the wardrobe and hoping that you’ll look dressed when you put them on. The nearest train station is a good, and by that I mean bad, bus ride away, so we’re a bit limited in where we can get to in a day. I can’t leave Mum by herself overnight so we always have to get back. Still, it’s amazing how far you can go in six or seven hours. The only thing I can’t be doing with is waking in bad weather, I just don’t see the attraction in trudging through driving rain just to say you did it, so in that regard I’m a bit of a fair-weather hiker. Marlene is worse than me, if it starts spitting she’s looking for the way home, and as for fog forget it. I think that stems from when we tried to get along Striding Edge to the summit of Helvellyn once and the fog came down. We only got through it by leading each other with baby footsteps, Shugsy taking point and me at the front, looking like those black and white films you see of soldiers in World War I who have been affected by mustard gas. When we got back down to near sea level, even Shugsy said ‘never again’. I like going off bird watching as well, the only thing I insist on doing solo, Shugsy only scares the wildlife off with his bulk and Marlene doesn’t have the patience to sit in a hide waiting for an avocet to wander into view. I don’t do anything organised and actively shun any groups who encourage you to record your sightings. I even get twitchy, so to speak, if anyone else comes into a hide, so I usually go early in the morning, taking my bicycle and being back home before lunch. I find it helps me to concentrate and I need my full concentration most of the time right now. Ok, I promise that’s enough already of the mystery, next time I’ll try and explain, is it deal?

I don’t really want to talk about my ‘brilliant’ career much either. I guess I’ll have to though, if only to explain what happened and why. I’ve already alluded to my part-time job, knocking out sub sandwiches to people thinking they’re doing well to cut McDonalds out of their fast food diet. It’s only part time and the money isn’t exactly special but I get to eat all the subs I want. Which isn’t often, because like anyone in the food industry, the last thing I want to do is eat anything I’ve been looking at all day, even if I know that I’ve been involved in the whole assembly and some miscreant hasn’t slipped a spoonful of something resembling mayonnaise onto my tuna six inch with salad, hold the olives and gherkins. Shugsy is less fussy though and will gladly accept anything I shove his way, although to be fair he does really graft for a living as a plasterer and refuels about six times a day. So much for the sarnies then, my main occupation as I would put in my passport if I had one is bookseller. Four days a week I can be found between ten and six at Grant’s Book Exchange and Graphic Novel Emporium. As you can guess from the title, it’s a bit of a nerd’s paradise, but despite the wanky title you do get more than the usual student and Trekkie clientele. The eponymous Grant is, however a proper wanker. If you could find someone less likeable to work for, well good luck and I’d like to compare notes. It’s not that he’s particularly odious, he just criticises everything. It doesn’t bother me as much as it used to, in fact it amuses me now to wind him up. Poor old Sean who also works there as the ‘graphic novel expert’ – Grant’s own job description – still can’t get his head around him and worries that he’s going to get sacked roughly once every other day. I’m nominally in charge of the book stock, but in practise Grant has to check every volume on the shelf, or at least he likes to think he does. In theory all of the stock is second-hand but he has a contact at a few publishers and he knocks out stock which never quite found it’s way to the shops or disappeared from a lay-by outside Mansfield and miraculously ended up a hundred miles away. Grant likes to fancy himself as a bit of a wide-boy, he actually does think he’s in Lock Stock or some shite sometimes, talking about shooters and geezers whereas he’d crap his boxers if he was ever faced with a slightly sharpened letter opener being thrust in front of him. He does however, pay over the odds for the work for some reason and he lets me and Sean have free rein over the choice of music on the shop stereo, which is a bonus. In fact, he’s very rarely actually in the place, which suits me fine as well, it’s just that when he is around, he doesn’t half let us know about it. Marlene can’t stand him at all which would make it even more galling for her to know that Grant fancies her, a fact he intimated to me once, on a rare occasion when he took ‘his staff’ for a beer after work. I didn’t tell him that she wouldn’t piss on him if he was on fire, come to think of it he’d probably get off on that, he’s a kinky bastard is Grant. If you’ve ever seen a Channel Four sitcom about the life of an alcoholic, misanthropic, curmudgeonly Irish second-hand bookshop owner and have had a mild hankering to spend your life surrounded by part-complete complete works of Dickens being harangued by a bloke who says he speaks as he finds and is somehow proud of the fact, well I’d not recommend it. It’s not that the work’s difficult, it’s just that it loses it’s somewhat limited thrill pretty quickly and becomes like any other job, even if you’re the most enthusiastic bibliophile. Sometimes the weight of all those collected words gets too much and I have this overwhelming urge to run amok amongst the Stephen Kings and do a Fahrenheit 451 and burn the lot. Thankfully those days are few and far between, and besides Sean would never recover from seeing his beloved ‘Sandman’ collection go up in smoke.

Daily Word Count: 2,027
Total Word Count: 5,309
% over target: 6.15%
Words to go: 44,691
Word of the day: miscreant