Day 5

Christ that was hard work, I knew there was going to be days like this, I got nowt done at work and only got home at 7, so I was up against time. Keris reckons I was being a tad dramatic when I said it was harder than giving birth, but what does she know???? Oh, yeah....

Predictably, Grant went ape-shit when he came back. I don’t mind him launching into his ‘deeply hurt at the trust he’s put in me’ routine, in fact, quite the opposite. The only thing I have to remember is not to laugh out loud in his face, that really pisses him off and he starts getting personal. No, the thing that bugs me is that he never does it when the shop’s shut and there’s no customers around to hear his pathetic rantings. I get embarrassed for them more than anything, if I was browsing for something to read on holiday or whatever, I wouldn’t want my musings interrupted by some oik berating the guy behind the counter. Sure enough, once Grant got into his stride, a guy who was on the verge of bringing over a copy of Irvine Welsh’s ‘Porno’ over to pay, stuck it back on the shelf and stalked out of the shop. Sean scuttled over to replace it under ‘Fiction – W’ from where the bloke had stuffed it in Art History. Grant would probably give him a lecture later about demarcation and remits or some bollocks.
“I wouldn’t mind so much, GG,” he started, “but I have made it very, very frickin’ clear that under no circumstances do we issue credit notes. I don’t care if the guy had just buried his wife!”

Yeah, two things you might have picked up on there. Firstly, I only ever accept ‘GG’ as a term of address from either Marlene or Shugsy and no other, not that they would even consider it and second, yes he did say ‘frickin’, he thinks that swearing when there’s a woman present, as there was at that moment, is dreadfully vulgar. It doesn’t seem to stop him when he’s with the ‘chaps’ and he peppers his speech with as many fucks as he can get in mind you, but there’s the mark of the man; a grade A two-faced fool. Anyway, back to the rant.

“Where’s the stock anyway? Maybe we can punt it on.” You’d think he was talking about a consignment of coffee beans or something.
“I priced it and ‘punted it’ onto the shelves” I said.
“You did what???” Grant spluttered, actually putting a hand out on the counter to steady himself. I was struggling to control myself now. Sean had disappeared into the back room.
“I priced it up and put it out. It’s all in the book. I think a couple of them have gone already.”
“Jesus pissin’ Christ George!” he said, “Oh, sorry,” he apologised to the woman customer, who by now had decided to take her custom elsewhere. I didn’t blame her, I wish I could go with her, but I was trapped behind the counter. “Give me the book.” We did have a book to record all purchases. We were supposed to individually itemise everything, but in practise I usually put general descriptions along with a total price paid. Thankfully in this case I’d been a bit more conscientious for a change and listed everything, along with the price I’d marked in each book before I put it on the shelf. Look, it’d been a slow day.
“How much did you give him for the Pullmans?”
“A quid apiece, they were in good nick.”
“Yeah but we must have how many already in. How many,” he looked in vain for Sean to back him up, “how many have we got in?”
“I dunno,” I said, “a few.”
“Don’t be disingenuous George, you always know what we’ve got out on display.” I like it when Grant learns a new word, he uses it then you can see the suspicion that he hasn’t applied it in the right context move across his brain like a juggernaut with four flat tyres. He’s got a mind like a steel prat has Grant.
The upshot was that he closed the shop half an hour early and we had an impromptu stock take of anything we’d taken in the last three months. To me, it defeated the object, we lost out on any passing trade of people going home from work and we found stuff that we shouldn’t still have lying around. Still, it made Grant happy in his petty insecurity. Amazingly, he even wanted to carry on the exercise past my Foxtrot Oscar time. I soon put him right by collecting my coat and scooting out as he stomped around in the store room, looking for a proof copy of ‘The Life of Pi’ that he was convinced we still had and he reckoned was somehow worth twenty quid, the twat. On the bus home, I had a quick flick through ‘Be Lucky’. At first (and second) glance it looked the worst kind of trashy self-help book that I would normally cross several streets to avoid. It looked like it should have been written by an American but the publisher’s details showed a PO Box in Norwich. Must have been a vanity publisher I thought. The author was someone called Guy Mattinson, there was even an author photo of a chinless wonder with what I can only describe as a towering mass of pubes on his head. So far, so crappy. I persevered through the ponderous introduction if only because I was intrigued by what the guy with the dead wife (as I liked to think of him) had said about it changing his life. It was just then that I remembered that I hadn’t asked him for ID either, Grant would have a cow when he realised that mistake. The bus turned into the road for my stop just then and then my mobile phone rang, or rather buzzed, I can’t be doing with ring-tones. It was Marlene and she was in bits..

Marlene’s dad had suffered a heart attack. Apparently he’d recently taken up cycling in an attempt to keep up with his new, younger wife and had been coming back home from a ten mile spin along the beach not far from Santa Barbara where he lives (you might remember it from such films as ‘American Pie II’ and ‘Seabiscuit’) when he basically keeled over. Luckily he tipped onto the sand but he still suffered a gashed leg and numerous cuts and bruises as well. They were the least of his worries though I guess, apparently he was still in intensive care and from what Marlene could gather from the doctor she spoke to, the next forty-eight hours were critical. She was beside herself with worry and when I got in, I spent the first fifteen minutes just holding her as she sobbed into my shoulder. Then I did the only thing I could think of doing, I went on the internet and used my credit card to book her a return open flight to California.

She only briefly protested when I gave her the tickets but only because she thought I couldn’t afford it. In truth, I couldn’t really but I wasn’t about to let her know. Some things are worth more than money and I’d been brainwashed by the Mastercard advert. Marlene cried a bit more but then got practical and rushed around packing and hunting down her passport. Her flight was at six the next morning and I stayed up all night with her, alternately reassuring her, hugging her and making her laugh with some of my crappiest puns. It seemed to work, because she was never going to sleep but she was paranoid that she would nod off and miss the flight. I booked the taxi and took her case out to the car. Her face was still shiny with tears but there was something else there as she kissed me goodbye. I tried to ignore it but as I walked back to the house and pushed the door shut and let my head loll against it, finally exhausted, I knew that it was the look that my mother had seen and told me about. Marlene was in love with me.

Branston pickle. Not my choice of the cornerstone of a meal, especially not for breakfast, but Shugsy was tucking into what looked like a plate of pickle with a side order of sausages and hash browns. Shugs got through the chunky condiment like most people get through bread or milk and we had ended up sourcing the catering size jar from a specialist company who actually delivered the stuff to our door.
“Marlene get off alright then George?” he said, picking up a hunk of bread to mop his plate with, “there’s a couple of bangers in the grill pan,” he indicated with his fork.
“Cheers, big man,” I said, pulling out a plate from the cupboard. “Yeah, she should be there in good time, the check in was still two hours off. “
“Aye, hope there’s no delays, that’s some flight.”
“About nine hours it reckoned.” I said, buttering a couple of rounds of bread for a sausage butty. And yes, I do eat butties sometimes as long as it isn’t one of the fillings I have to make at work. There was a companionable silence as I munched and Shugsy slurped at his mug of tea.
“You been up all night? You looked knackered mate,” he said.
“Yeah, think I’ll get a few hours in before work. Can you give us a bell about two if you remember. I want to ring the hospital before I go.”
“Nae problem George, you get your head down for a bit.” Shugs stood up and batted me on the back as he lumbered out, pausing only to pick up his enormous lunch provisions (with a clump of Branston Pickle the size of a football no doubt), then he was off to work. As the door closed, the house suddenly seemed very quiet and I needed some noise. I slotted Muse’s ‘Origin of Symmetry’ into the kitchen CD player, then fell asleep in the front room to ‘Plug in Baby’. That’s how knackered I was.

Daily Word Count: 1,671
Total Count: 8,691
% over target: 4.27%
Words to go: 41,309
Word of the day: Disingenuous