The walk this morning was along the beach at Wrabness. Low tide, the geese honking out on the salt flats, the wind making my hair do that eighties thing. My boots sank into the mud and wet sand, the rain pattered against the breathable fabric of my cagoule. It was the type of morning where you'd scarce be surprised to see anything; mythological sea monsters, wrecked U-boats, a mass murderer dumping bodies. In the end, I shared my walk with an excitable collie, the geese, a muntjac which ran from me like the ex-wife and a woman in a green furry bobble hat, Super Dry jacket and jeans who owned the collie and stopped to chat.
In truth, it's been a difficult week at work. The end of the financial year is nigh. The pre-report audits are ongoing. We're in a sort of administrative purgatory. It meant I worked yesterday, rather than enjoy a blissful Saturday of illicit lovemaking, a post-oats walk and a hearty breakfast with my newly-scrubbed beloved. Yep, work. Birmingham by 9.30am and by traffic light and minor jams. Accompanied by Radio Suffolk, until I hit Huntingdon and the signal faded to a ghostly whisper. Then Radio Two and their seeming love of The Eagles and someone called Dour Lips. Then I found Absolute 80's and the car became my uncle's mobile disco all over again. Gary Numan's androgynous voice and Annie Lennox-with-heavy-synths.
To be fair to Birmingham, it does do a great breakfast. A bacon, egg and Daddies brown sauce bap from my favourite sarnie shop is £3.80 with a styrofoam cup of brick-red tea lobbed in for the hell of it. The traffic built around the Fiveways roundabout. Several 'old gold' shirted Wolves fans walked down from the direction of Edgbaston, pre-match pint before the train from New Street. I remembered they were playing the Scum in the cup and silently wished them luck. Although, surely, I thought as the Daddies dripped onto the white paper bag, they wouldn't need luck against that lot.
Indeed, the Wolves fans in the office were doing overtime from 8am-12pm, their home shirts on over sweatshirts and hoodies. Gold-plated Michelin men. No games for Villa and Brum. No-one fancied going to see Kiddie Harriers attempt the fifth round by doing the Hammers. "Selled out innit?" said one Blue nose to me as I enquired. Then he asked if we were in the play-offs yet. It was a rhetorical piss-take.
I worked til four and then left. Didn't get much done, well, not as much as I'd hoped. I rang P in the car and she'd enjoyed her trip to Braintree Freeport with her mum, Mrs Tel and Mrs Tel's sister-in-law. They had lunch in Wildwood, Italian, which she loves. Tel was sulking that I'd thrown up a day's drinking at the footy with him to go to work. "Bleedin' MADE for a decent drink termorra, wotch the Town a'rter, OK thass not gonna be great or nuffink but we could'a made a day of it, cab there'n'back late, dinner in Trongs". He snorted with derision and nearly blew the last poppadom off the plate. "Why d'yer 'ave to work termorra anyway? Thass wot I dun'unnerstand?". I sighed and repeated for the tenth time that they'd asked all of us in to sort out the audit cases for Tuesday. "But yer there all bleeding week?" he groused. "Yer could'a sorted that on Fursday". Then he relapsed into gloom. "Nice innit? Wife's out wiv the sister-in-law and YOUR wife-ter-be, spendin', an' there's Billy no mates 'ere spendin' the day on 'is lonesome in the local wotchin' bleedin' Plymuff get 'ammered in the cup on the telly".
So we ate the chicken jalfrezi and the lamb vindaloo and the lamb chops Kashmiri-style in near sulky silence. And he drank too much lager and brandy and then insisted on the pub for afters, calling Mrs Tel on his mobile to arrange for a later pick-up at midnight, and she came at 11pm as arranged anyway and he made a face as she walked in and I silently thanked her because I was up at five thirty next morning and had assiduously (and boringly) stuck to Pepsi for the last few as I was driving. And he took the mick out of this and remarked to all and sundry in the pub (mostly the last knockings of the middle-aged women done up in finest Monsoon who still fancied themselves and hung in gaggles around the tables drinking Bacardi'n'coke through a straw and furtively eyeing up any bloke unaccompanied who was younger than fifty) that I'd let 'im darn.
Still, the game sounded s**t. I reached Huntingdon just as they were interviewing McKenna on BBC Suffolk and the strange Procol Harum track I didn't recognise suddenly faded and morphed into Brenner Woolley and some Mancunian. "Looky terday" said Brenner, the end of the question, then Kieron said "yeah, didn't play well" or something and I switched off, safe in the knowledge we'd won so not too bothered by descriptors.
And the Wolves lost 1-0 at home to that sh*t so it'll be an interesting Monday morning at least. And I need to make it up to Tel. Preferably before he goes on holiday. Perhaps with another home game and a lot of drinks and a Trongs after? Who knows?
It's also 'new stuff' month this February. Paula bought a new jacket, some make-up and a new pair of earrings in Freeport. I nearly asked 'how much?' but bit my tongue. She looked great in the new jacket when she modelled it for me. Mind, she wasn't wearing anything else at the time, so I might have been biased. Still, it'll go well with her Levi's and a nice pair of low heels. Well, that's what she reckons anyway. Don't ask me. I'm just a tired old man with a penchant for too much sex these days. Life's never easy when you're two years two months off fifty.
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