That parvenu of the North East Essex prairies chose the pub we ended up watching the Cup Final in last weekend. Welcome back to this world of the moribund and the mundane.
I'd said previously that I didn't fancy writing one of these in what we sadly have to call 'the close season'. Ho hum. With the World Cup still months away and the new fixture list not even a glint in the FA's eye, we take our pleasures where we can. This means pretending to get excited about Everton's demise and the FA Cup Final. To be fair, Terry was a bit excited, despite the common factors being absent. Neither of us like Chelsea or Liverpool. Dr Johnson's theorem that when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life rang true. Even the old boys watching the horse racing were censorious of the football.
So the pub, bathed in sunlight, wasn't the local. No ne'er do wells displaying crap tattoos. No dogs**t in the euphemistically named 'Children's Play Paradise', a patch of scrubby lawn with a weedy sandpit and the sort of climbing frame you see on videos of Chernobyl twenty years after the nuclear disaster. This wasn't a local. We needed a cab to get there and back. Mrs Tel, our normal go-to designated driver, spent last Saturday shopping in Freeport with Sandy and her niece. I envied her a bit. Paula was at work. I envied her as well.
Mrs Tel is 'a lot beddah' by the way. I asked Tel as we sat at a picnic table with a faded Cinzano parasol and admired the capability of small children to simultaneously run, play and take occasional parent-enforced sips of their apple juices or J20's. We ordered food for 12.00 and it arrived at 12.45; good ribs, a burger the length of a forearm, constructed jenga-style with onion rings and other brown, cheese-covered goodies that reminded me of an issuing abscess. Tel was pleased with it though. He ate it. He also ate three of my ribs. My capacity has headed south for the summer. I've become a picker.
He enlarged upon Mrs Tel as the wind caught our paper napkins and wafted them haltingly along the ground for a good yard until we rescued them. The bones and scraps were cleared by a pleasingly attractive young lady in a pub-themed t-shirt and black jeans, who asked us if we 'fancid a pud?' and then disappeared for 30 minutes before remembering us and coming back with a Bic and a reporter's notepad. I demurred. Tel had the banana split with extra fudge sauce and a cherry. When it came, it lay obscenely off the edge of the plate.
We eventually watched the game in the bit they hacienda'd off from the main pub, a room that smelt of spills and BO and that scent hoovers make when they're new. The telly was huge. We were joined by a bloke in a 1980's Liverpool shirt, the old Crown Paints Admiral. Then four blue-shirted Chelsea supporters appeared just as the scousers were booing the national anthem. Tel snickered at this. One of the Chelsea blokes got a bit of the old red mist at the "lefties an' the farking militants". Then the game started and we all settled down.
120 minutes later, Tel and I were wondering why we'd bothered. No-one came in to collect the empties so we were all enjoying a game of 'pint-glass tower' until Tel ruined it by trying to fit his San Miguel thing in and it swayed dangerously. So we took it down again. Then, as penalties loomed, the Chelsea lads tempted us to have a few quid on who'd be the first and last penalty-takers for both sides. And no-one picked Liverpool's so we just pulled our pounds back and left for the bar and to ring the taxi company.
We ended up back at the local. It was empty. Jamie the landlord said something about it being full with Chelsea fans before but they'd gone, disappointed. A few stragglers were in the garden nursing amber pints and looking woebegone.
I got home at 2am. Pissed. Very pissed. I walked it from the local. The hedges tried obstructing me and the footpaths were poorly lit and trip-hazards. By the time I'd managed to unlock the front door, I had various grazes and sore spots. I could hear Paula snoring. I had a last drink in the kitchen, then a long, never-ending wee and went to join her. She'd nicked all the duvet so I lay and tried to refocus my eyes to the gloom. She woke me at 6.30am with a kiss on the forehead and a soft, whispered 'Bye, off to work'. Then the door went and her car started and she'd gone. So'd my head. Completely.
The week at work was banal and familiar, but then P came home early on Thursday complaining of a headache and a slightly sore throat. I came home at seven and found her fiddling with lateral flow kit and trying to squeeze a tiny clear plastic water holder into a plastic vial. Then she wadded a long thin cotton bud around her tonsils, gagging, and then up her nose. Then she squeezed it into the vial and applied it to the plastic reader and bingo, two red lines.
I should have done the same but felt fine. Besides, Friday was looking hectic. Birmingham always is. The rain that started yesterday morning was a bit of a dampener on the journey but, fuelled by a double sausage McMuffin and a coffee from the drive-thru at Kettering, and a shot of Ventura Highway by America as I skirted the metropolis and the sun appeared, I made it.
I felt vaguely poorly by 3pm. Not ill. No, just vaguely unwell. Headache, slight snotty feel in the throat. So I came home at 4pm, much to the bemusement of colleagues who muttered "'eese got that Covid, the bastad, bet oi ketch it next'" or seemingly looked like they said it when I was gone.
Home. Sneezing a bit, but then I often do. McDonalds drive thru again for a coffee and an apple pie. The apple pie tasted like sweet snot. I left half of it uneaten and managed to post the brown bag in one of their bins as I drove away. Home proper by six. Felt OK. Didn't do a test. Paula was in bed, a box of Kleenex and a half-empty bottle of Lucozade on her bedside drawer. Left her to it. Ordered a Chinese via Just Eat (our local has finally caught on and does delivery now). Waited for it. I wasn't meant to meet Tel until today for the play-off final. Sadly, circumstances have cancelled that. When I told him, he made it sound like I'd done it deliberately.
Positive test after a night spent snoring and all blocked up in one nostril. I awoke at 6am and did it. Two very fat red lines. Must have it badly, I thought. Paula blames herself, but I don't hold it against her, oh no. I do hold something else against her, or have today though. We're both not to ill to not enjoy a bit of R&R. It made me sweat a bit more than usual, which can't be bad.
A week off work sounds great in theory but it's not in practice. I had a few major meetings to attend next week. Looks like I'll be doing them via Zoom. I may also have infected half the office. I do feel sort of guilty for this. Then I don't. If I have, I'm sure we'll all laugh about it one day.
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Stay classy, good folk of TWTD. Just off to blow me nose again..... |  |
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