| The Warky Report: Something Barrowed, something blue (H) 15:20 - Dec 5 with 620 views | Warkystache |
My front room, hallway and kitchen looks like a cheap Thai brothel. Little coloured lights strewn everywhere, sometimes twinkling, sometimes flashing on and off like a mayday signal at sea, sometimes bright enough to read by. I let Paula help me put the Christmas decorations up after she pleaded and gave me the old 'cow eyes'. She was home by six yesterday. We drank wine. Then she pulled out her 'surprise'. I cowered momentarily, half-expectant of a positive pregnancy test with the piddle droplets still adhering to the white pen. But no, it was fairy lights. Reams and reams of them. I wondered if Morrisons had over-ordered and I'd been the lucky recipient.
We spent the next hour checking bulbs. An hour. The dinner was a side-show. I'd thoughtfully prepared her favourite, southern fried chicken from scratch with home-made fruity coleslaw and french fries. It was eaten with distraction as the lights took precedence. When she plugged the first roll in and they lit, it was like Archimedes without the nakedness. That came later, after a replay of Saudia Arabian F1 qualification replays and the closing trumpets of Match of the Day had tootled us to switch off the lights and retire. I missed most of Match of the Day anyway. The coleslaw wasn't the only fruity thing in my house last night. It was her cowgirl moment.
We're getting the tree on Monday. Apparently. We've both got Monday off. I'm meant to be working next Saturday so mine was in lieu. Paula doesn't work Mondays if she works a Sunday, as she is. She left at seven, after giving me a goodbye present that left me sweatily exhausted in bed still at seven-thirty.
Paula has given up her flat. It made no sense. She spends all her time with me at mine. I invited her to move in last week and by Tuesday she and I were driving the last of her goods that she hadn't palmed off on her mum or put into Big Yellow Storage back to mine. I'm now the proud co-owner of Blake's former acoustic guitar, an Ikea coffee table and a strange multi-coloured footrest which invests my existing furniture with a slightly dangerous 'LA Hood'-like glamour. We celebrated her new move in the formal way; a meal out and then a prolonged love-making session that started in the back of the taxi home with little 'squeezes' of my oft-abused genitals under cover of my coat in case the driver was watching.
Terry. Well. He's about to join the non-workers of Great Britain once more, only the likelihood of him claiming his £300-odd quid Universal Credit is nil, particularly because, as he bragged to me on Friday night when we met, "Ah've checked me bank yesterdee an' we've got over Free 'Undred grand in savin's'n'that so the wife says 'Why yer bovverin' working' then eh Tel' an' i 'ad ter admit I dunno". He sipped pensively from his pint of Estrella and nibbled the gratis mixed nuts the pub now puts on every table. They reminded me of the old pot pourri my grandma used to keep on her Ercol sideboard when she was mortal. They even looked dusty.
We didn't go for a curry in the end. We stayed and ate in the pub. Tel was "comfy inn'I?" and seemed happy with the standard pub fare of sausage, mash and incredibly oniony gravy, the strands translucent in the beefy gravy. I had the special of rack of pork ribs in jerk barbecue sauce and served incongruously with tiny roasted new potatoes and a half of corn-on-the-cob which I never touched. Even Tel turns his nose up at corn-on-the-cob. That and liver are the only things he never eats.
He was upset that Paula chose to go to her mum's rather than join us. 'She might pop in later' I told him, and he half-smiled. "Or yer'll be poppin' in 'er later" he said, a trace of Sid James' jocularity in his leering, dirty little laugh. He asked me how it was going with her later on, after he'd sunk enough beer to numb his earlier thirst and we were onto the neat Southern Comforts. I thought for a minute he meant sexually and smiled enigmatically. But no, he meant in general. So I told him. And a quarter of the way through, he said "Bleedin' 'ell, din't want 'er complete movements! Just wann'ed ter know 'ow yer bofe are". So I redacted my tale accordingly and told him the truth and he grinned and said "When's the weddin' then?" and I had to admit I didn't know, even though we're now semi-officially engaged (I asked last Monday - it just blurted out like my seminal fluid. And she said yes and then said 'let's not rush it though. Don't forget we've both been there before. The only difference is I'm happy this time' and that was balm to my very soul). And Tel nodded and added, hopefully "Yer'll need a best man n'all" and my first thought was "Good. He's already getting used to the idea".
He leaves his job on 15th December. He'll be paid to the end of the month as he took whatever leave he was owed. They are sorry to be losing him again, but Tel said "They don't need drivers any more; they've recruited six new HGV2's an' they'll be the future, not muggins 'ere 'oo can only drive the low-loaders an' the vans". So it's a mutual parting. The same type as Paul Cook seems to have had with the Town.
Yes, the Town. I didn't go yesterday. Few more Christmas pressies to buy and Paula's getting hers next weekend when she's off work and I'm working the Saturday, and the Saturday after that is Sunderland so we're back to me not working and her working. So I'm looking forward to that. Barrow at home in the FA Cup hardly seemed worthwhile a swap for getting my Christmas shopping sorted early. I did fleetingly check the score and it was 0-0 all the way and I felt depressed that we seemed to be going backwards again.
I checked the final score at 4.55pm as I left John Lewis in Ipswich for the drive back. 0-0. I swore a bit and wished we could have the same festive cheer as the local shops. Then I forgot about us once home and then checked when I got up, after a wet-arsed morning fag on the patio chairs and a walk which included the local Tesco for bacon and bread and butter and more fags. Then I saw that we'd sacked Paul Cook. It all seemed fairly benevolent. Yet haven't we all secretly hoped for this? I'm sorry that some think we're divided, because I don't agree. We all want the Town to be doing better. A change was needed. I think the time had come.
Paula's back at five-thirty tonight. We're going for a meal at Lucca's in Manningtree. The bet money is being divvied for next week when we're both joining Tel on Saturday night for a Thai in Harwich. We've not been as lucky this year. Still, just under a grand each isn't to be sniffed at.
It seems ironic in my life that, just as things look rosy, we sack a manager. It happened when Burley went (My first wife 'thought' she might be pregnant a week later; she was mistaken but it was a good time to be alive). It also happened when Mick McGiven went in 1995 (I graduated a few weeks after with a First in English).
We've not been a lucky club for a while, until these new owners came in and saved us from the purgatory of Marcus Evans and his cheeseparing parsimony. Let's hope they can do it. We all deserve a bit of joy soon. It's what makes us Ipswich fans. The long bouts of rain and grey have to lift eventually. They usually do.
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| The Warky Report: Something Barrowed, something blue (H) on 15:29 - Dec 5 with 550 views | J2BLUE |
I turn my back and you're engaged? How many chapters have I missed? I need to go back and piece together how this happened. Supposed to be working but I need to know... |  |
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| The Warky Report: Something Barrowed, something blue (H) on 17:10 - Dec 5 with 466 views | BanksterDebtSlave |
| The Warky Report: Something Barrowed, something blue (H) on 15:29 - Dec 5 by J2BLUE |
I turn my back and you're engaged? How many chapters have I missed? I need to go back and piece together how this happened. Supposed to be working but I need to know... |
Accidentally gave you an uppie...the shame of it! |  |
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